Given that they wanted to change it, what else would you call it? And at the end of the day, does it matter that it's the same on OS X?
I'd argue that yes -- yes it does. But perhaps not for quite the reasons some might expect.
Microsoft has long been about doing things ever so slightly differently in order to maintain a firm grip on platform lock-in as much as possible. They have done a lot of work over the years to try to mould user expectations in order to make it harder for them to move from Widows to another platform. And for many, many users, where to find their files and how to organize them is a HUGE part of this lock-in.
This seems to be falling to the wayside somewhat with Vista, however, and IMO that's a good thing for users (and for the record, I haven't used Vista at all, and am not a Windows user at all, so I'm going on what I've heard both here on/. and elsewhere). If Microsoft aligns Vista closer and closer to the way OS X does things, it will make it easier for Windows users to make the jump from one platform to another (from a usability standpoint). Someone trained on one system can use the other.
I wonder how long it will take before a user-friendly Linux distro decides to switch from "/home" to "/Users" to align with OS X and Vista (although obviously the entire "/Users" tree is a direct derivative of the way Unix and Linux have been doing things for ages, for many people naming consistency is very important. Far too many people out there don't have the memory capacity for naming that most of us in the industry have).
You are assuming that the AAA would find it in its best interest to have a low cost AutoCAD clone runnign around.
And you have assumed that for something to be Open Source Software, it must be made available for free to everyone.
This is not the case. If a large organization decides that as part of their purchasing contract specify that all software provided to them be under an Open Source license, this does not require the software developer to make it freely available to anyone and everyone who comes around. Just the organization doing the purchasing. It would then be up to the purchaser as to whether or not they decided to redistribute the software, and to whom they did the redistribution.
Open Source does not mean "free as in beer". Nor does it mean "available to anyone who wants it". Yes, many OSS projects follow just this model (often to their advantage), however it is hardly a requirement.
So, to get back to the original article a bit, if the US DoD wanted to license some cryptographic software, and specified in the tender announcement that OSS was a requirement, and Vendor X wins the bid and provides the software under the GPL, the DoD can deploy the binaries how they desire, take the source code, and lock it away where only properly authorized personnel with the necessary security clearance can get at it. Vendor X in this case is in no way required to license their software as Open Source to any other entity, and the DoD is not required to put the source code or binaries online for anyone to download. Their only requirement is that if they redistribute the software (say for example they send copies to the Canadian DND for inter-force communications in Afghanistan), they must make the source code available in a standard machine readable format upon request (note that licenses like the GPL don't even require you provide the sources with the binaries -- only that you make them available upon request of anyone you give the binaries to. And they don't have to be provided via a network either -- physical media is perfectly acceptable as well)).
OSS is designed to give additional rights to people who legally acquire program binaries. It is not designed to make software free to any and all who want it. Yes, in practice many of the most popular OSS packages do follow this model (to their, and our, great benefit), but that dosen't make it a requirement of the licensing model.
You have to assume the DoD is both smart and non-corrupt, and the evidence clearly shows that as a gestalt they are neither.
Fair enough in this specific case I suppose -- however, my comments apply to any organization, particularly any large organization (as they have more money, and thus more leverage).
By way of an example, back in 2005 I attended a Health Informatics conference in Toronto, where a colleague of mine asked a panel of self-described "doers" whether or not they had considered Open Source software. I blogged about it here. In essence, they too were treating Open Source software as if it were a product that sat on the shelf, and not as something that you, as a customer, can demand. It is interesting to note that they discussed all sorts of development and partnership problems that OSS could solve for them, however collectively their attitude was pretty much to look for an existing OSS solution to their problems, and when they didn't find one, go to a commercial developer and use whatever license that developer dictated to them.
This is where organizations are going wrong with OSS. There is nothing wrong with using a commercial developer -- just mandate that the development they do for you is licensed under an OSS license. Canada Health Infoway claimed at the time they had $1.8 billion to spend in the field.
And maybe it's just me, but the customer with $1.8 billion should be the one calling the shots. The problem isn't that they lacked the clout -- only that they lacked the knowledge to know what to ask for. They are at the whim of the development companies they contract out (which has bit these people on the butt before -- there have been a number of cases in this field where organizations have spent millions of dollars and spent years having a custom solution developed, only to find that it no longer suits their current needs (which have changed since development began), and/or won't run on their current deployment environment anymore, necessitating scrapping it and starting all over again).
Doesn't Microsoft already have shared source with select partners?
Shared Source != Open Source.
Open Source is about more than just being able to look at and build the source code. It's about the freedom to redistribute the software with your changes at will. It's about being able to hire on whatever development company you desire to enhance and improve the software.
Shared Source is mostly just a rouse to appear open, to try to stave off a migration to more truly open options. Shared Source doesn't really give you much in the way of additional freedoms -- Open Source does (and by Open Source, I am specifically referring to software that is licensed in such a way that it conforms to the Open Source Definition).
This is in response to Behlendorf's description of FOSS development as organic, relatively unplanned. It frequently doesn't include deadlines, guaranteed results, even release dates.
While this is frequently the case, it isn't necessarily the case.
Far too many people think that FOSS is just something you download off the web. Something that someone else creates, but which you, as the customer, have no control over. That choosing an Open Source product is like going to the grocery store, and that you only get to pick whatever products are being offered, and that you otherwise have no say in their design.
However, this isn't necessarily the case. I've spoken to a number of groups on this subject at length, and what a lot of people don't realize is that you can continue to use your existing sources of software, but that you simply have to demand that the developer provide it to you under an Open Source license. That's it. You can still contract out the development work to the companies you're using for custom development. You can still buy from your approved vendors list. The license that the software is provided under is a contractual issue, and thus is something that can be negotiated.
Yes, the vendor may want more money in order to provide their software as OSS. However, if you're a really large corporation or organization (like the US DoD), in generally you'll be able to specify these requirements. Either your vendors meet them, or they don't (in which case you take your business elsewhere). Same as any other requirement specified in the tendering process.
FOSS doesn't have to mean "downloaded from some guys website". For a big organization like the US DoD, this probably isn't terribly desirable (unless the software does exactly what you want, and you can either form a business relationship with the developer, do continued development in-house, or are willing to contract out feature additions and bug fixes to a third party -- this is, after all, the biggest strength of FOSS).
(I wonder what would happen if a really big organization like the US DoD went to Microsoft when it comes time to renew their bulk licensing contract and specified that the software must be licensed as OSS, and in return offered them twice the amount of the previous contract. What would win out? Greed and good business sense, or jealous protection of the code and the loss of a major customer?)
Congratulations to all who bit at this troll, and took it hook, line, and sinker.
Let's ignore your assumption that this person is a troll for a second (something which I do not necessarily believe, although I also can't discount it as a possibility). When a technical falsehood like this goes unchallenged, those who are less technically inclined are likely to believe it, and pass it on as truth.
Slashdot is known as a technical site. If such claims do not go unchallenged, there is a very good chance that someone out there is going to read this, and relay it to their non-technical friends and family as the truth, because they read it on Slashdot.
I routinely have to explain reality to far too many people around me because they read something that is physically impossible on the web, and then believe it (and pass it on). Certain family members in particular are highly susceptible to such claims. They wouldn't be able to spot it as a troll, however dozens of posts from respectable, knowledgeable people pointing out the falsehoods may cause them to question the veracity of the trolls claims.
Troll or not, falsehoods need to be challenged, especially in the technical realm, which is really just "magic" to the layman in the first place.
Of course the computer will identify them as being the same, its job is to work with discrete components in the form of bits, where the human ear can hear on a lower level than that. I'm no digital maven, so I can't say the EXACT reason why, but I've been selling, repairing and setting up high end audio systems for 17 years. It's my job to know what sounds the same and what sounds different. Perhaps the bits themselves are longer or shorter than before encryption, or perhaps they're a bit (pun intended) higher voltage where a computer will still read it as a "1" when it's in a bass waveform, therefore things like md5sum will claim it's the same file, but if you knew anything about signals over a wire you'd know things like a waveform that can be represented digitally can look (and sound) very different depending on the size of the peaks and troughs.
As it happens, I know quite a bit about digital signaling. I also know that that "bit" you're reading is going to be converted several times from when you read it fro the hard disk, by a variety of independent subsystems which set their own bit levels as high or low, based on their own signaling specifications.
You read some bits off your hard drive. The bits sitting on your drive have no voltage -- they're simply a magnetic field. This field get translated into either a 1 or a 0 bit. The drive controller copies this into a voltage that it then transmits across the drive bus to a bus controller. This bus controller then copies the bit to the system bus. The system bus copies it to the CPU, which copies it to RAM, which is then refreshed thousands of times per second. This is then copied back onto the system bus, and send to your audio hardware, which feeds it through a DAC.
Each of these transmissions is a copy operation on the bit -- not on the strength of the magnetic field, or whatever voltage was being applied to the transmitting component. So signaling in this case makes no difference -- so long as each field or voltage fits within the proper tolerances, it will be treated as a 1 or a 0, and will be raised high or low at the new voltage level as a completely new signal during each conversion. As such, it isn't the case that if the bit is magnetically weak on your hard drive that it will have a lower-than-normal voltage once it finally gets into RAM.
Thinking of it another way, it isn't like using a tin-can-and-string telephone to transmit data. It's more like the telephone game, where someone says something to someone, who then tells the message to the next person, and so on until the recipient receives the message. It doesn't matter if the first speaker is male or female -- the last person to pass on the message is going to state the same message regardless, in their own voice. The only difference in the case of a computer is that most stages have integrity checking to verify that the message is received properly, and in some cases can either request a retransmission if the integrity checking fails, or can receive the data in a manner that it can be reconstructed with mathematical certainty by using appropriate data encodings.
Encryption makes no difference. The system is not analogue -- it is digital. And the system only knows two digits. Each individual subsystem has completely different mechanisms for representing those bits, and that representation is completely independent of other subsystems. Reading an encrypted block from your hard drive causes the encrypted data to be copied into RAM, from which a decrypted copy is placed into RAM. This copy is generated electrically in exactly the same fashion if it had been read unencrypted from the hard drive. By the time it gets to the audio DAC, the data is identical from both a data and a signaling standpoint.
I'm sure you can handily replace the needle on a record player arm, but you know absolutely squat about digital signaling.
ol. If you had ears worth a damn you would know that encryption of any kind irreversibly changes the data being streamed through it, and thus causes a definite change in the sound.
This is the biggest load of crap I've read on/. in a long time. Congratulations!
Encryption makes the data appear pseudo-random, however the decryption will return the bits, before they are inserted into the audio buffer, to the exact same state they were in prior to encryption.
Your own test bears this out -- just do a comparison of the resulting files. The computer has no way of knowing that the "encrypted" file was ever even encrypted (as you aren't replacing the bits -- you're duplicating them). If you can hear a difference, it's only because the voices in your head are getting louder. Or maybe your tinfoil hat is askew.
Yaz.
Re:My Linux Annoyances as a Hardended Windows user
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Would You Date Microsoft?
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· Score: 4, Insightful
2. Why the hell do I have to install a new kernel? Why? I've never had to on Windows - why is Linux different? Is it so buggy? I installed with a factory version something ending 054. Now I have something ending 122 I believe. I did it ok, but that's not the point I'm making; were there really 68 cock-ups so great in the kernel build from release-time until that now they had to re-release 68 times? I'm guessing probablly not, but still.
How do you know you've never installed a new kernel in Windows? Do you think it has been static, and hasn't been updated numerous times through both Windows Update and new versions of Windows? Do you not think that Microsoft has hundreds of internal kernel revisions that never get out to the public? This is simply the way that software development is done -- the fact that it's noticeable in the Linux world is a testament to its open development model.
That having been said, I don't know why you "had" to install a new kernel. Did you require a module which hasn't been back-ported? Did some other piece of software have the new kernel as a pre-req? Or did you just notice one come down the pipe when you did a yum update?
Every OS has kernel updates. Linux is admittedly more susceptible to updates due to the way that device drivers (modules) are tied to it, and the lack of a stable binary interface for drivers (which requires them to be compiled against the kernel you're running). In the end, however, it generally works the same for the end user: updates give you new features, functionality, and drivers. Package management tools like yum make this sort of update process easy.
I have a lot of problems with Linux on the desktop as well (on the client side, I'm a Mac OS X person), but this seems to be such a silly one to complain about. The Windows kernel is updated all the time via Windows Update -- you just don't see the word "kernel" on the display, and thus don't realize it. Linux is just more open about this sort of thing.
It also is kind of ironic. The people talking about choice and openess can't even get IE to work with their site. And since it's *only* 25% of the users, it's not a priority.
At the same time, what incentive does Microsoft have to fix their bugs and incompatibilities if everyone just works around them?
It really is about high time that users take MS to task because their web browser isn't fully compatible with set standards. They don't now because every website simply codes in work-arounds -- the web developers go through a lot of pain, but to the IE user everything just appears to work, so they have no incentive to complain to MS.
However, if (potentially) millions of users start to complain to MS that their favorite sites don't work because those sites refuse to expend an enormous amount of development effort to work around them, maybe MS would be driven to do something about the issue, to the benefit of everyone.
The Win32 BSOD does give you better information so you can try to diagnose the problem.
Which is kinda lacking in the OSX Panic screen.
The OS X panic details get logged to a file, so you can easily get this information in a nice digital form after you've rebooted (or by setting the system into target disk mode). Which, on the plus side, means you don't have to sit and scribble down a bunch of hex and hope that you got in all correct before typing into your system to e-mail to someone for diagnosis.
Likewise, upon reboot the Mac will realize it had paniced, and will offer to e-mail the details to Apple for analysis.
I do find it interesting that Mac fans always point to Dell as their preferred price comparision. I mean....Dell? Is that really the space Apple is competing?
Well, the reason is simple -- every Mac fan online has been bombarded for years by Windows fans using low-end Dell computers to "prove" that Apple's computers are overpriced. Like here, and here.
Obnoxious Windows zealots have been making such a comparison for years -- do you really expect Mac zealots to stay silent now that the opposite is true?
Even if they figure out it is being used, it will take months or maybe even years of FOIA requests to get the offending agency to even acknowledge the project exists.
And that is assuming that the country using the code is indeed one that even honours the concept of Freedom of Information.
What it comes down to is this: if North Korea decides to use this software to build a cheap supercomputer from which to run missile design simulations, what is the developer going to do about it? Invade?
I can understand (and somewhat applaud) the developers wanting to keep their software out of the hands of people whose only interest is the military conquest of others. While I have worn my country's uniform myself, I have to admit that I really don't want the dictators and terrorists of this world to use OSS code that I've written to oppress or attack innocent people.
There are, however, more practical considerations. What about using the software to defend those same oppressed/innocent people? If the military could use it to prevent the wanna-be conquerers of this world from running roughshod over all their neighbors, would you really want to prevent this?
Besides which, there is also the practical consideration that in times of war between two nations, the enemy nation can't be expected to honour contracts. Indeed, most nations would hardly balk at passing legislation at times of war making such contracts null and void anyhow. So how are you going to enforce it? All you've done is tie the hands of anyone who is willing to honour such a contract, while empowering those who are more than happy to ignore it as unenforceable (which would be your enemies).
Besides which, the military in most countries has a mandate beyond offense and defense. What about search and rescue? What about public engineering projects? What about disaster relief?
So while I'd hate for my software to be used to hurt innocent people, the only good way to do this is to close the source, and control every channel through which my software is distributed to ensure it only gets sold to people I like. And even then, there are no guarantees (US companies aren't permitted by law to ship most types of goods to Syria, North Korea, Iran, Cuba, and certain other countries, but I'm willing to bet if you go to one of these countries you'll find recent US-made goods and technologies there that have been channeled through other nations).
So while I applaud their ideals, it's just not realistic. People and nations who want to do nasty things to other people aren't going to let a piece of (digital) paper get in their way.
> Macs are featured as being used by people smarter, hipper and better looking than you or me (well, me anyway). These people are elite. If Apple ever want's to be considered anything but elitist, they can start by showing ads of a receptionist using a Mac.
You have it a bit backwards. Apple isn't targeting the "faithful" -- that doesn't build market share. And they aren't necessarily specifically targeting geeks in suits, as these people are generally already polarized as to which platform they are using.
Apple is trying to appeal to the "average person", who just wants to use a computer as a tool to get things done. People who very specifically don't want to be geeks in suits. Apple has tried to use spokespeople who are as distant from what people associate with a "geek" or a "nerd".
Now if you think that this is being elitist, perhaps you need to look at your own motivations for making such an assumption.
Luckily MPC can use quicktime file formats, though I'm sure apple is mad about that one.
Why? Apple freely publishes the Quicktime file format for anyone to view and implement. It's just a container format -- you can use a wide variety of codecs with it, including standard formats (h.264, MPEG-4, MPEG-2, AAC) and proprietary formats (DivX, 3ivx, Sorensen, Cinepak).
As such, I doubt Apple is mad at all. What's the point in opening your file formats if you don't want people to implement them?
This move really underscores the rift in the Open Source community as to what the goal of Open Source really is. Should we be spreading a philosophy, or just trying to get as many people using our favorite software as possible? If we're trying to spread the Open Source ideal, then partnering with a company known for distributing spyware and generally embodying all of the worst aspects of closed source software is a bad idea. If all we're trying to do is get everyone to use the same software that we do, why do we even care if that software is open source to begin with?
Here's the problem: Open Source Software and Free Software, by their very definition and nature, are free to redistribute. As such, in a very real sense, Mozilla has no real way to prevent anyone from redistributing Firefox. If they did have such a capability, the software wouldn't really be Free.
I have no idea what sort of negotiations may have been involved between Real and Mozilla, but Real hardly needs Mozilla's permission to redistribute Firefox. As such, it is probably in Mozilla's interest to partner with Real, as this way they have some sort of negotiated framework where they can hopefully have some influence on how Real redistributes and uses their product.
Part of granting freedoms to redistribute your software means that you don't get to choose who can distribute your software. If Microsoft wanted to bundle Firefox with Windows, they could (so long as they conform to the MPL) -- they don't need Mozilla's permission (except for, potentially, the trademark, which is easily modified).
Who ever said that corn is the only potential source of ethanol?
I happen to agree with you -- ethanol isn't going to be a 100% panacea, at least not any time soon. However, with investment comes newer technologies which can improve the yields and reduce the costs. What about cellulose ethanol? It is derived from waste straw and corn husks, stalks, and leaves -- all non-food products. What other such plant waste that we currently just throw onto the compost heap could we use to extract further ethanol? Can we develop the necessary technologies to do it in a cheap and reliable manner, creating new economies along the way? And could we perhaps reduce food prices by giving farmers an added significant source of income for the waste parts of their crops? (And I'm thinking this could be extremely valuable in third-world countries, where the Western world currently tends to disadvantage their agri-products in favor of subsidizing their own farmers, but which are also the countries which burn the most fuel, hopefully giving some countries with struggling economies a way to leverage their agricultural capacities in a manner that the West is happy to pay for).
Admittedly, I'm not an energy analyst, but it seems to me there is a huge undertaped agricultural capacity out there in the world. Yes, it takes fuel to produce and transport the ethanol -- but it also takes fuel to produce and transport oil and gas. Oil and water pumps don't run off pixie sticks and good intentions, and the fuel required to run tankers would generally be a wash (per unit volume. Per unit energy might be a different matter, of course, however if the energy is renewable and significantly less polluting, do we really care?).
If further investment can improve the number of sources which we can use to process ethanol in the first place, and can improve the yields, its production may help us extend the lifetime of (and reduce the pollution from) the worlds oil and gas supplies, until such time that we're ready to transition to other energy sources.
Right now I see people on just about every tech site that will tear into Microsoft for packaging a browser with Windows, but praise Apple for packaging an OS with every PC, and dozens of applications with every OS.
Peoples real problem with IE isn't that it's included with every copy of Windows, but that it's bolted on in a way that makes it impossible for people to remove and avoid.
Way back when Microsoft first started including IE with Windows I had to explain to a number of Windows fanatics that the problem that people had with the way Microsoft decided to integrate IE with Windows was that it bolted it onto the OS with a private interfacing mechanism. If Microsoft were truly interested in making their OS open to third party developers, they should have designed a publicly defined interface that would have allowed any browser (or better yet, rendering engine) to interface with the OS. Microsoft could have still included their IE renderer and browser UI with Windows, and many people would have probably used it because it came with their computers -- but at least they would have had the ability to plug-in a different rendering engine and browser interface if they had wanted to.
And isn't this exactly what an OS is supposed to do -- provide a set of standard interfaces to enable the development of applications? Is this what you want your OS provider to provide? Microsoft chose not to do this, as they have always been against the idea of any form of real competition. Their OS is designed to lock out competition they don't like.
Apple is different in this regard. Yes, they bundle a lot of their own apps with their computers, but each and every one of them is removable. You can delete iTunes, or Quicktime, or iPhoto, or Mail.app, or iCal, or iChat...or even Safari for that matter. And Apple even provides an interface for browsers to respond to HTTP URLs that the user interacts with (a bit more than just being able to specify your default browser, but also less than having the concept of plug-in rendering engines).
In earlier version of Windows (IE3 and IE4 era, for example), even removing the IE icon from your desktop was often difficult. MS wanted it to be in your face, and wanted it to be non-removable. A competent court of law found them guilty of monopoly abuse for just such tactics.
Apple may include a lot of apps with their OS -- but the reasons why many people have taken MS to task haven't been because of the apps they've included, but how they've bolted them into the shell in an attempt to exclude and disadvantage competitors to their applications.
And in the end, MS's customers have paid the price. Sure, MS took over the browser market on Windows, but they were happy to let the product stagnate. Considering how anti-customer MS is, it's a surprise anyone uses their OS at all.
But enough rant. The point is that Apple's apps aren't bolted on -- the playing field for competition is level on OS X, whereas MS often makes it difficult for developers and the users of their products to play on a level field. That is the problem people have with the way MS included IE in their OS -- not the fact that it was included in the first place.
If you are not aware of it (I wasn't until earlier today) Microsoft is now putting Virtual PC 04 and 07 [still in beta] out for free.
Just in case anyone is wondering, it appears that Microsoft's VirtualPC for Mac has not been released for free as its Windows brethern have been. FWIW.
Yeah, I know. All I'm saying is that the longer you wait, the harder it'll get -- if I were you I'd do it now and get it over with, especially since the cost of not doing it includes the time spent maintaining the various obsolete software until the day you finally get around to it.
Unfortunately it is already too late. I got rid of my last OS/2 system at the beginning of the year. I do still have original CD media for both the core OS and all of SmartSuite, however. Parallels is out of the question at the moment as I'm not yet on an Intel-based Mac -- my PowerBook G4 is going to have to last me at least another few months (actually, I'm hoping to stretch its usefulness until whenever the revision 2 MacBooks are released).
Now I suppose I could look at VM solutions for one of my Linux machines, but both are older systems (a Celeron 550 and a P3-450), one of which runs headless and provides local network services and network file storage. The one with a keyboard, mouse, and monitor only had a 9GB hard drive and 384MB of RAM, and so I don't think that either of these systems are really up to the task of running OS/2 in a VM solution.
If I were in a hurry, I'd probably try to find a Windows machine and a Windows copy of Lotus WordPro to do the conversion to some format I could convert to ODF (or some other useful format -- I don't generate a lot of documents, and right now my document package of choice is Apple Pages, which does at least store document data as XML), rather than wait to try to run OS/2 under Parallels on an Intel Mac.
I like the idea -- I just lack the ability to execute on it right now, so I'm going to have to hold off for now.
You might want to consider converting them to OpenDocument instead of relying on WordPro for OS/2 running in emulation. I mean, sooner or later you're going to lose your OS/2 disc or your WordPro disc or the emulator will stop working in new versions of the host OS or whatever, and it's going to become more and more of a hassle to read those files.
This is in fact what I would like to do -- however, AFAIK there is no WordPro for OS/2 -> ODF converter out there. My old copy of WordPro for OS/2 would have been released long before ODF existed, so exporting to ODF from within WordPro isn't an option.
Still, the first step to such a conversion will be to actually be able to load the documents in WordPro, convert them to some intermediary format (I shudder to think that this may have to be an MS Office format) and then convert them to ODF (and then fix up any formatting errors that have cropped up along the way for all of these conversions).
Not exactly a task I relish -- fortunately, these documents are purely of personal interest, and aren't for business purposes, and aren't frequently accessed anyhow, so this is not a significant issue at the moment.
Did I read that correctly? The media forgot to call it an ipod-killer!? Heads are going to roll down at the Seattle Times.
Not at all. Haven't you noticed that calling something an "iPod Killer" is the kiss of death?
I know if I were a portable device maker the last thing I'd want the media to do is decide my device is an "iPod Killer". I'd rather let the consumers decide that by making a device that appeal to them (you know, like the iPod itself).
I really don't understand the point, for most Mac users. I have it sitting on my computer with XP, but after the initial WOW! factor wore off, I really never touched it again. I've been using a Mac for roughly 4 years now, and have discovered alternatives to all my old Windows apps, bought all the "need-to-have" cross platform apps (Photoshop and Word), and completely adapted my work style to my Mac (running a computer without Quicksilver is painful). I really don't see the point outside of advertising and a very small amount of niche users.
I will admit to being a niche user up front, but here is how I would like to use something like this once I upgrade from my PowerBook G4 to one of the new MacBooks (eventually).
I'm an OS/2 refugee. I moved to OS X from the OS/2 world a few years ago because OS/2's software ecosystem was in tatters, and even suppport for things such as WiFi was virtually non existant. OS X is vastly more advanced in most regards.
Still, I do have some users of OSS Java code I've written who run OS/2. And I have a very large library of OS/2 software from over the years that it would be useful to run now and then (I have a lot of old documents saved in Lotus WordPro format, for example, that are hard to read these days).
Now dedicating a machine to OS/2 would be a waste. I reformatted my last OS/2 system back in January after noticing that I hadn't even bothered to turn it on in months (and prior to that it had been in storage for several years), and put Debian on it (although I'm thinking of switching it to Ubuntu when I have some time). And at the same time, it would be nice to run it on my laptop from time to time, and take advantage of the WiFi capabilities built into the hardware that OS/2 doesn't otherwise support.
Parallels would allow me to do that. With the virtualization of much of the hardware, I don't have to care that this old OS doesn't have drivers for most of my Mac hardware. And considering the OS was designed to run on Pentium II's and III's (at best), chances are very good that it is going to appear to absolutely fly under virtualization.
This is one area where virtualization is potentially really useful for: running old OSs you may have need to support, but which won't run easily on modern hardware due to lack of drivers and which you probably wont spend enough time in to make it worth your while to find a really old machine and install on to it.
Of course, before I do any of this I have to be able to afford to buy a fully tricked-out MacBook. Maybe in the fall...
Slashdot Mirror
I'd argue that yes -- yes it does. But perhaps not for quite the reasons some might expect.
Microsoft has long been about doing things ever so slightly differently in order to maintain a firm grip on platform lock-in as much as possible. They have done a lot of work over the years to try to mould user expectations in order to make it harder for them to move from Widows to another platform. And for many, many users, where to find their files and how to organize them is a HUGE part of this lock-in.
This seems to be falling to the wayside somewhat with Vista, however, and IMO that's a good thing for users (and for the record, I haven't used Vista at all, and am not a Windows user at all, so I'm going on what I've heard both here on /. and elsewhere). If Microsoft aligns Vista closer and closer to the way OS X does things, it will make it easier for Windows users to make the jump from one platform to another (from a usability standpoint). Someone trained on one system can use the other.
I wonder how long it will take before a user-friendly Linux distro decides to switch from "/home" to "/Users" to align with OS X and Vista (although obviously the entire "/Users" tree is a direct derivative of the way Unix and Linux have been doing things for ages, for many people naming consistency is very important. Far too many people out there don't have the memory capacity for naming that most of us in the industry have).
Yaz.
And you have assumed that for something to be Open Source Software, it must be made available for free to everyone.
This is not the case. If a large organization decides that as part of their purchasing contract specify that all software provided to them be under an Open Source license, this does not require the software developer to make it freely available to anyone and everyone who comes around. Just the organization doing the purchasing. It would then be up to the purchaser as to whether or not they decided to redistribute the software, and to whom they did the redistribution.
Open Source does not mean "free as in beer". Nor does it mean "available to anyone who wants it". Yes, many OSS projects follow just this model (often to their advantage), however it is hardly a requirement.
So, to get back to the original article a bit, if the US DoD wanted to license some cryptographic software, and specified in the tender announcement that OSS was a requirement, and Vendor X wins the bid and provides the software under the GPL, the DoD can deploy the binaries how they desire, take the source code, and lock it away where only properly authorized personnel with the necessary security clearance can get at it. Vendor X in this case is in no way required to license their software as Open Source to any other entity, and the DoD is not required to put the source code or binaries online for anyone to download. Their only requirement is that if they redistribute the software (say for example they send copies to the Canadian DND for inter-force communications in Afghanistan), they must make the source code available in a standard machine readable format upon request (note that licenses like the GPL don't even require you provide the sources with the binaries -- only that you make them available upon request of anyone you give the binaries to. And they don't have to be provided via a network either -- physical media is perfectly acceptable as well)).
OSS is designed to give additional rights to people who legally acquire program binaries. It is not designed to make software free to any and all who want it. Yes, in practice many of the most popular OSS packages do follow this model (to their, and our, great benefit), but that dosen't make it a requirement of the licensing model.
Yaz.
Fair enough in this specific case I suppose -- however, my comments apply to any organization, particularly any large organization (as they have more money, and thus more leverage).
By way of an example, back in 2005 I attended a Health Informatics conference in Toronto, where a colleague of mine asked a panel of self-described "doers" whether or not they had considered Open Source software. I blogged about it here. In essence, they too were treating Open Source software as if it were a product that sat on the shelf, and not as something that you, as a customer, can demand. It is interesting to note that they discussed all sorts of development and partnership problems that OSS could solve for them, however collectively their attitude was pretty much to look for an existing OSS solution to their problems, and when they didn't find one, go to a commercial developer and use whatever license that developer dictated to them.
This is where organizations are going wrong with OSS. There is nothing wrong with using a commercial developer -- just mandate that the development they do for you is licensed under an OSS license. Canada Health Infoway claimed at the time they had $1.8 billion to spend in the field.
And maybe it's just me, but the customer with $1.8 billion should be the one calling the shots. The problem isn't that they lacked the clout -- only that they lacked the knowledge to know what to ask for. They are at the whim of the development companies they contract out (which has bit these people on the butt before -- there have been a number of cases in this field where organizations have spent millions of dollars and spent years having a custom solution developed, only to find that it no longer suits their current needs (which have changed since development began), and/or won't run on their current deployment environment anymore, necessitating scrapping it and starting all over again).
Yaz.
Shared Source != Open Source.
Open Source is about more than just being able to look at and build the source code. It's about the freedom to redistribute the software with your changes at will. It's about being able to hire on whatever development company you desire to enhance and improve the software.
Shared Source is mostly just a rouse to appear open, to try to stave off a migration to more truly open options. Shared Source doesn't really give you much in the way of additional freedoms -- Open Source does (and by Open Source, I am specifically referring to software that is licensed in such a way that it conforms to the Open Source Definition).
Yaz.
While this is frequently the case, it isn't necessarily the case.
Far too many people think that FOSS is just something you download off the web. Something that someone else creates, but which you, as the customer, have no control over. That choosing an Open Source product is like going to the grocery store, and that you only get to pick whatever products are being offered, and that you otherwise have no say in their design.
However, this isn't necessarily the case. I've spoken to a number of groups on this subject at length, and what a lot of people don't realize is that you can continue to use your existing sources of software, but that you simply have to demand that the developer provide it to you under an Open Source license. That's it. You can still contract out the development work to the companies you're using for custom development. You can still buy from your approved vendors list. The license that the software is provided under is a contractual issue, and thus is something that can be negotiated.
Yes, the vendor may want more money in order to provide their software as OSS. However, if you're a really large corporation or organization (like the US DoD), in generally you'll be able to specify these requirements. Either your vendors meet them, or they don't (in which case you take your business elsewhere). Same as any other requirement specified in the tendering process.
FOSS doesn't have to mean "downloaded from some guys website". For a big organization like the US DoD, this probably isn't terribly desirable (unless the software does exactly what you want, and you can either form a business relationship with the developer, do continued development in-house, or are willing to contract out feature additions and bug fixes to a third party -- this is, after all, the biggest strength of FOSS).
(I wonder what would happen if a really big organization like the US DoD went to Microsoft when it comes time to renew their bulk licensing contract and specified that the software must be licensed as OSS, and in return offered them twice the amount of the previous contract. What would win out? Greed and good business sense, or jealous protection of the code and the loss of a major customer?)
Yaz.
Let's ignore your assumption that this person is a troll for a second (something which I do not necessarily believe, although I also can't discount it as a possibility). When a technical falsehood like this goes unchallenged, those who are less technically inclined are likely to believe it, and pass it on as truth.
Slashdot is known as a technical site. If such claims do not go unchallenged, there is a very good chance that someone out there is going to read this, and relay it to their non-technical friends and family as the truth, because they read it on Slashdot.
I routinely have to explain reality to far too many people around me because they read something that is physically impossible on the web, and then believe it (and pass it on). Certain family members in particular are highly susceptible to such claims. They wouldn't be able to spot it as a troll, however dozens of posts from respectable, knowledgeable people pointing out the falsehoods may cause them to question the veracity of the trolls claims.
Troll or not, falsehoods need to be challenged, especially in the technical realm, which is really just "magic" to the layman in the first place.
Yaz.
As it happens, I know quite a bit about digital signaling. I also know that that "bit" you're reading is going to be converted several times from when you read it fro the hard disk, by a variety of independent subsystems which set their own bit levels as high or low, based on their own signaling specifications.
You read some bits off your hard drive. The bits sitting on your drive have no voltage -- they're simply a magnetic field. This field get translated into either a 1 or a 0 bit. The drive controller copies this into a voltage that it then transmits across the drive bus to a bus controller. This bus controller then copies the bit to the system bus. The system bus copies it to the CPU, which copies it to RAM, which is then refreshed thousands of times per second. This is then copied back onto the system bus, and send to your audio hardware, which feeds it through a DAC.
Each of these transmissions is a copy operation on the bit -- not on the strength of the magnetic field, or whatever voltage was being applied to the transmitting component. So signaling in this case makes no difference -- so long as each field or voltage fits within the proper tolerances, it will be treated as a 1 or a 0, and will be raised high or low at the new voltage level as a completely new signal during each conversion. As such, it isn't the case that if the bit is magnetically weak on your hard drive that it will have a lower-than-normal voltage once it finally gets into RAM.
Thinking of it another way, it isn't like using a tin-can-and-string telephone to transmit data. It's more like the telephone game, where someone says something to someone, who then tells the message to the next person, and so on until the recipient receives the message. It doesn't matter if the first speaker is male or female -- the last person to pass on the message is going to state the same message regardless, in their own voice. The only difference in the case of a computer is that most stages have integrity checking to verify that the message is received properly, and in some cases can either request a retransmission if the integrity checking fails, or can receive the data in a manner that it can be reconstructed with mathematical certainty by using appropriate data encodings.
Encryption makes no difference. The system is not analogue -- it is digital. And the system only knows two digits. Each individual subsystem has completely different mechanisms for representing those bits, and that representation is completely independent of other subsystems. Reading an encrypted block from your hard drive causes the encrypted data to be copied into RAM, from which a decrypted copy is placed into RAM. This copy is generated electrically in exactly the same fashion if it had been read unencrypted from the hard drive. By the time it gets to the audio DAC, the data is identical from both a data and a signaling standpoint.
I'm sure you can handily replace the needle on a record player arm, but you know absolutely squat about digital signaling.
Yaz.
This is the biggest load of crap I've read on /. in a long time. Congratulations!
Encryption makes the data appear pseudo-random, however the decryption will return the bits, before they are inserted into the audio buffer, to the exact same state they were in prior to encryption.
Your own test bears this out -- just do a comparison of the resulting files. The computer has no way of knowing that the "encrypted" file was ever even encrypted (as you aren't replacing the bits -- you're duplicating them). If you can hear a difference, it's only because the voices in your head are getting louder. Or maybe your tinfoil hat is askew.
Yaz.
How do you know you've never installed a new kernel in Windows? Do you think it has been static, and hasn't been updated numerous times through both Windows Update and new versions of Windows? Do you not think that Microsoft has hundreds of internal kernel revisions that never get out to the public? This is simply the way that software development is done -- the fact that it's noticeable in the Linux world is a testament to its open development model.
That having been said, I don't know why you "had" to install a new kernel. Did you require a module which hasn't been back-ported? Did some other piece of software have the new kernel as a pre-req? Or did you just notice one come down the pipe when you did a yum update?
Every OS has kernel updates. Linux is admittedly more susceptible to updates due to the way that device drivers (modules) are tied to it, and the lack of a stable binary interface for drivers (which requires them to be compiled against the kernel you're running). In the end, however, it generally works the same for the end user: updates give you new features, functionality, and drivers. Package management tools like yum make this sort of update process easy.
I have a lot of problems with Linux on the desktop as well (on the client side, I'm a Mac OS X person), but this seems to be such a silly one to complain about. The Windows kernel is updated all the time via Windows Update -- you just don't see the word "kernel" on the display, and thus don't realize it. Linux is just more open about this sort of thing.
Yaz.
At the same time, what incentive does Microsoft have to fix their bugs and incompatibilities if everyone just works around them?
It really is about high time that users take MS to task because their web browser isn't fully compatible with set standards. They don't now because every website simply codes in work-arounds -- the web developers go through a lot of pain, but to the IE user everything just appears to work, so they have no incentive to complain to MS.
However, if (potentially) millions of users start to complain to MS that their favorite sites don't work because those sites refuse to expend an enormous amount of development effort to work around them, maybe MS would be driven to do something about the issue, to the benefit of everyone.
Well, a guy can hope at least...
Yaz.
The OS X panic details get logged to a file, so you can easily get this information in a nice digital form after you've rebooted (or by setting the system into target disk mode). Which, on the plus side, means you don't have to sit and scribble down a bunch of hex and hope that you got in all correct before typing into your system to e-mail to someone for diagnosis.
Likewise, upon reboot the Mac will realize it had paniced, and will offer to e-mail the details to Apple for analysis.
Yaz
Providing reasonable download times for people on older, slower network connections comes to mind.
Yaz.
Well, the reason is simple -- every Mac fan online has been bombarded for years by Windows fans using low-end Dell computers to "prove" that Apple's computers are overpriced. Like here, and here.
Obnoxious Windows zealots have been making such a comparison for years -- do you really expect Mac zealots to stay silent now that the opposite is true?
Yaz.
And that is assuming that the country using the code is indeed one that even honours the concept of Freedom of Information.
What it comes down to is this: if North Korea decides to use this software to build a cheap supercomputer from which to run missile design simulations, what is the developer going to do about it? Invade?
That would be ironic, wouldn't it? :)
Yaz.
I can understand (and somewhat applaud) the developers wanting to keep their software out of the hands of people whose only interest is the military conquest of others. While I have worn my country's uniform myself, I have to admit that I really don't want the dictators and terrorists of this world to use OSS code that I've written to oppress or attack innocent people.
There are, however, more practical considerations. What about using the software to defend those same oppressed/innocent people? If the military could use it to prevent the wanna-be conquerers of this world from running roughshod over all their neighbors, would you really want to prevent this?
Besides which, there is also the practical consideration that in times of war between two nations, the enemy nation can't be expected to honour contracts. Indeed, most nations would hardly balk at passing legislation at times of war making such contracts null and void anyhow. So how are you going to enforce it? All you've done is tie the hands of anyone who is willing to honour such a contract, while empowering those who are more than happy to ignore it as unenforceable (which would be your enemies).
Besides which, the military in most countries has a mandate beyond offense and defense. What about search and rescue? What about public engineering projects? What about disaster relief?
So while I'd hate for my software to be used to hurt innocent people, the only good way to do this is to close the source, and control every channel through which my software is distributed to ensure it only gets sold to people I like. And even then, there are no guarantees (US companies aren't permitted by law to ship most types of goods to Syria, North Korea, Iran, Cuba, and certain other countries, but I'm willing to bet if you go to one of these countries you'll find recent US-made goods and technologies there that have been channeled through other nations).
So while I applaud their ideals, it's just not realistic. People and nations who want to do nasty things to other people aren't going to let a piece of (digital) paper get in their way.
Yaz.
You have it a bit backwards. Apple isn't targeting the "faithful" -- that doesn't build market share. And they aren't necessarily specifically targeting geeks in suits, as these people are generally already polarized as to which platform they are using.
Apple is trying to appeal to the "average person", who just wants to use a computer as a tool to get things done. People who very specifically don't want to be geeks in suits. Apple has tried to use spokespeople who are as distant from what people associate with a "geek" or a "nerd".
Now if you think that this is being elitist, perhaps you need to look at your own motivations for making such an assumption.
Yaz.
Why? Apple freely publishes the Quicktime file format for anyone to view and implement. It's just a container format -- you can use a wide variety of codecs with it, including standard formats (h.264, MPEG-4, MPEG-2, AAC) and proprietary formats (DivX, 3ivx, Sorensen, Cinepak).
As such, I doubt Apple is mad at all. What's the point in opening your file formats if you don't want people to implement them?
Yaz.
Here's the problem: Open Source Software and Free Software, by their very definition and nature, are free to redistribute. As such, in a very real sense, Mozilla has no real way to prevent anyone from redistributing Firefox. If they did have such a capability, the software wouldn't really be Free.
I have no idea what sort of negotiations may have been involved between Real and Mozilla, but Real hardly needs Mozilla's permission to redistribute Firefox. As such, it is probably in Mozilla's interest to partner with Real, as this way they have some sort of negotiated framework where they can hopefully have some influence on how Real redistributes and uses their product.
Part of granting freedoms to redistribute your software means that you don't get to choose who can distribute your software. If Microsoft wanted to bundle Firefox with Windows, they could (so long as they conform to the MPL) -- they don't need Mozilla's permission (except for, potentially, the trademark, which is easily modified).
Yaz.
Who ever said that corn is the only potential source of ethanol?
I happen to agree with you -- ethanol isn't going to be a 100% panacea, at least not any time soon. However, with investment comes newer technologies which can improve the yields and reduce the costs. What about cellulose ethanol? It is derived from waste straw and corn husks, stalks, and leaves -- all non-food products. What other such plant waste that we currently just throw onto the compost heap could we use to extract further ethanol? Can we develop the necessary technologies to do it in a cheap and reliable manner, creating new economies along the way? And could we perhaps reduce food prices by giving farmers an added significant source of income for the waste parts of their crops? (And I'm thinking this could be extremely valuable in third-world countries, where the Western world currently tends to disadvantage their agri-products in favor of subsidizing their own farmers, but which are also the countries which burn the most fuel, hopefully giving some countries with struggling economies a way to leverage their agricultural capacities in a manner that the West is happy to pay for).
Admittedly, I'm not an energy analyst, but it seems to me there is a huge undertaped agricultural capacity out there in the world. Yes, it takes fuel to produce and transport the ethanol -- but it also takes fuel to produce and transport oil and gas. Oil and water pumps don't run off pixie sticks and good intentions, and the fuel required to run tankers would generally be a wash (per unit volume. Per unit energy might be a different matter, of course, however if the energy is renewable and significantly less polluting, do we really care?).
If further investment can improve the number of sources which we can use to process ethanol in the first place, and can improve the yields, its production may help us extend the lifetime of (and reduce the pollution from) the worlds oil and gas supplies, until such time that we're ready to transition to other energy sources.
Yaz.
Peoples real problem with IE isn't that it's included with every copy of Windows, but that it's bolted on in a way that makes it impossible for people to remove and avoid.
Way back when Microsoft first started including IE with Windows I had to explain to a number of Windows fanatics that the problem that people had with the way Microsoft decided to integrate IE with Windows was that it bolted it onto the OS with a private interfacing mechanism. If Microsoft were truly interested in making their OS open to third party developers, they should have designed a publicly defined interface that would have allowed any browser (or better yet, rendering engine) to interface with the OS. Microsoft could have still included their IE renderer and browser UI with Windows, and many people would have probably used it because it came with their computers -- but at least they would have had the ability to plug-in a different rendering engine and browser interface if they had wanted to.
And isn't this exactly what an OS is supposed to do -- provide a set of standard interfaces to enable the development of applications? Is this what you want your OS provider to provide? Microsoft chose not to do this, as they have always been against the idea of any form of real competition. Their OS is designed to lock out competition they don't like.
Apple is different in this regard. Yes, they bundle a lot of their own apps with their computers, but each and every one of them is removable. You can delete iTunes, or Quicktime, or iPhoto, or Mail.app, or iCal, or iChat...or even Safari for that matter. And Apple even provides an interface for browsers to respond to HTTP URLs that the user interacts with (a bit more than just being able to specify your default browser, but also less than having the concept of plug-in rendering engines).
In earlier version of Windows (IE3 and IE4 era, for example), even removing the IE icon from your desktop was often difficult. MS wanted it to be in your face, and wanted it to be non-removable. A competent court of law found them guilty of monopoly abuse for just such tactics.
Apple may include a lot of apps with their OS -- but the reasons why many people have taken MS to task haven't been because of the apps they've included, but how they've bolted them into the shell in an attempt to exclude and disadvantage competitors to their applications.
And in the end, MS's customers have paid the price. Sure, MS took over the browser market on Windows, but they were happy to let the product stagnate. Considering how anti-customer MS is, it's a surprise anyone uses their OS at all.
But enough rant. The point is that Apple's apps aren't bolted on -- the playing field for competition is level on OS X, whereas MS often makes it difficult for developers and the users of their products to play on a level field. That is the problem people have with the way MS included IE in their OS -- not the fact that it was included in the first place.
Yaz.
Just in case anyone is wondering, it appears that Microsoft's VirtualPC for Mac has not been released for free as its Windows brethern have been. FWIW.
Yaz.
Unfortunately it is already too late. I got rid of my last OS/2 system at the beginning of the year. I do still have original CD media for both the core OS and all of SmartSuite, however. Parallels is out of the question at the moment as I'm not yet on an Intel-based Mac -- my PowerBook G4 is going to have to last me at least another few months (actually, I'm hoping to stretch its usefulness until whenever the revision 2 MacBooks are released).
Now I suppose I could look at VM solutions for one of my Linux machines, but both are older systems (a Celeron 550 and a P3-450), one of which runs headless and provides local network services and network file storage. The one with a keyboard, mouse, and monitor only had a 9GB hard drive and 384MB of RAM, and so I don't think that either of these systems are really up to the task of running OS/2 in a VM solution.
If I were in a hurry, I'd probably try to find a Windows machine and a Windows copy of Lotus WordPro to do the conversion to some format I could convert to ODF (or some other useful format -- I don't generate a lot of documents, and right now my document package of choice is Apple Pages, which does at least store document data as XML), rather than wait to try to run OS/2 under Parallels on an Intel Mac.
I like the idea -- I just lack the ability to execute on it right now, so I'm going to have to hold off for now.
Yaz.
This is in fact what I would like to do -- however, AFAIK there is no WordPro for OS/2 -> ODF converter out there. My old copy of WordPro for OS/2 would have been released long before ODF existed, so exporting to ODF from within WordPro isn't an option.
Still, the first step to such a conversion will be to actually be able to load the documents in WordPro, convert them to some intermediary format (I shudder to think that this may have to be an MS Office format) and then convert them to ODF (and then fix up any formatting errors that have cropped up along the way for all of these conversions).
Not exactly a task I relish -- fortunately, these documents are purely of personal interest, and aren't for business purposes, and aren't frequently accessed anyhow, so this is not a significant issue at the moment.
Yaz.
Not at all. Haven't you noticed that calling something an "iPod Killer" is the kiss of death?
I know if I were a portable device maker the last thing I'd want the media to do is decide my device is an "iPod Killer". I'd rather let the consumers decide that by making a device that appeal to them (you know, like the iPod itself).
Yaz.
I will admit to being a niche user up front, but here is how I would like to use something like this once I upgrade from my PowerBook G4 to one of the new MacBooks (eventually).
I'm an OS/2 refugee. I moved to OS X from the OS/2 world a few years ago because OS/2's software ecosystem was in tatters, and even suppport for things such as WiFi was virtually non existant. OS X is vastly more advanced in most regards.
Still, I do have some users of OSS Java code I've written who run OS/2. And I have a very large library of OS/2 software from over the years that it would be useful to run now and then (I have a lot of old documents saved in Lotus WordPro format, for example, that are hard to read these days).
Now dedicating a machine to OS/2 would be a waste. I reformatted my last OS/2 system back in January after noticing that I hadn't even bothered to turn it on in months (and prior to that it had been in storage for several years), and put Debian on it (although I'm thinking of switching it to Ubuntu when I have some time). And at the same time, it would be nice to run it on my laptop from time to time, and take advantage of the WiFi capabilities built into the hardware that OS/2 doesn't otherwise support.
Parallels would allow me to do that. With the virtualization of much of the hardware, I don't have to care that this old OS doesn't have drivers for most of my Mac hardware. And considering the OS was designed to run on Pentium II's and III's (at best), chances are very good that it is going to appear to absolutely fly under virtualization.
This is one area where virtualization is potentially really useful for: running old OSs you may have need to support, but which won't run easily on modern hardware due to lack of drivers and which you probably wont spend enough time in to make it worth your while to find a really old machine and install on to it.
Of course, before I do any of this I have to be able to afford to buy a fully tricked-out MacBook. Maybe in the fall...
Yaz.