Thanks for that nizo. Using this information, I should have your/. login cracked within the next half hour:).
The big problem I see with this is that technically you're actually making the cracking easier by halving the actual number of possible keys that will fit into a given password size. If you're on a system with an enforced 8-character password, we now know what your password is in fact four pairs selected from 26 posssible pairs. If my combinatorics are correct, for a fixed 8 character password system, your password is now only one posssibility out of 14950 character pairs. If anyone gets hold of your matrix, you're dead -- a computer can run through those possibilities exceedingly quickly, and won't even have to go through all of them if you use a dictionary-atttack against the unencoded password (in your example, "bank").
Even deconstructing your matrix from a few known passwords wouldn't be all that hard, as presumably the words you're selecting don't use an even distribution of the letters. How many of them use Q, X, or Z, compared to, say, A, E and T?
And we now also know that all of your passwords (in encoded form) are an even number of characters in length -- which in and of itself is enough to half the search space.
Admittedly, you're system is better than that of many people I know. It's protected from basic dictionary attacks (or just simple guessing) -- but all in all, it's not really that secure.
ust the fact that it's in XML doesn't make it that much easier. There are still the images and things to deal with.
Which isn't a major problem once you realize that Pages files are stored as a bundle, with the images contained in the document stored in a stand-alone form as, well, images (or potentially PDF's).
I don't know if OpenDocument format permits linked images, although I would imagine it would.
I suppose you are somewhat correct -- as Pages files are bundles there is a bit more involved than just a direct XML transform. Files might have to be moved around somewhat -- however it still shouldn't be excessively difficult. These things can be revese engineered, if someone wants to do so:).
Microsoft's attitude is actually really easy to understand here.
I misspoke somewhat. What I really should have said is that the reasons MS is giving publicly are complete and total crap. I'm very well aware of what their real reasons are for not doing this -- it's just that their publicly stated reasons don't stand up to a bit of scrutiny.
I really don't intend to be the prissy poster here. But what areas may that exactly be?
Hopefully someone else can help you. I haven't used a Microsoft product since 1992, and have never used their Office suite.
I guess to be more clear, I said there may be some advantages. I've heard a few MS-zealots in this debate claim that there are (although the ones they usually mention sound like things that 99.99% of users wouldn't care about in a million years).
I'm just being generous today I suppose:). There may be an advantage of some sort that someone could come up with for the DOC file format -- but again it shouldn't prevent Microsoft from implementing OpenDocument. The reasining I keep hearing as to why MS "officially" won't do this (I'm well aware of the "unofficial" reasons...) is because OpenDocument can't do such-and-such that DOC files can handle; which to me is a red herring because MS supports importing and exporting to a whole variety of formats which can't handle everything that DOC files can (RTF being one good example. Does Office support TXT output as well? That would certainly be another).
My point is, Microsoft could supply the state with compatible software if it wanted to. It doesn't. That isn't the states fault -- it's Microsoft's. They have an easy way to solve the perceived "problem", and simply refuse to take it because it will erode their hedgemony.
But then again, if more jurisdictions follow suit, that MS is going to miss the boat. Then again, it won't have been the first boat MS has missed, which they later have tried to embrace an extend...
I don't know what Apple's plans might be, but it's certainly an idea I'd support.
I wonder, however, how difficult it would be to create a stand-alone transformation package. Pages uses XML. OpenDocument uses XML. There are XML Transformation tools out there. Someone only need describe the transform, and you should be all set.
I really don't understand Microsoft's attitude on this one. Their reasoning for not implementing OpenDocument in Office just isn't sound. Sure, there may be areas where Microsoft's native Office formats have some advantages, but last I checked Office still supported saving to RTF and HTML formats, both of this are significantly less feature complete than OpenDocument. And you don't hear anyone moaning that these shouldn be removed from Office (or shouldn't have been implemented in the first place).
Microsoft has an out in this battle -- just implement OpenDocument format as an export format and be done with it. Their "problems" are entirely of their own creation because they refuse to take the obvious step to rectify the situation.
I was able to get in with iChat v3.0, but I had to tell it to use port 5223 and connect via SSL. Otherwise, I've connected without any issues -- now I just need some buddies to chat with:).
Don't know about the lions, but according to the keeper at the Metro Toronto Zoo, the elephants there quite enjoy the snow.
I imagine they might possibly find ways to cope with the weather -- what I think they'd have a hard time adapting to is the lack of food during the winter months. Zoo elephants may enjoy the snow, but they don't have to worry about where their next meal comes from.
Besides which, there is enough problems with racoons in Toronto dumpsters. Just imagine if the next time you take out the garbage late one winter night there was an elephant waiting there for you...
It would be wonderful to have a massive wild reserve in North America where Grizzlies, Wolves, Buffalo and numerous other endangered North American species could actually exist in their natural state devoid of human pressure.
Um...a UPS? Or small personal generator? An inverter hooked up through your car (I actually used this once for temporary power when the power was out in my house, in conjunction with a long extension cable, because I couldn't find a wired phone). All you have to do is think outside the box, and you could easily have power to your router/modem during an outage for quite some time.
But the question is, will your ISP's equipment still have power during this time? Having your modem power doesn't do any good if there isn't a signal coming through the line, or if the routers on the other end aren't sending your packets onward.
I have a DC-AC inverter myself, and a portable power pack, and have put my home network hardware on them during times of power failure, and it seems that during any significant power outage, my cable ISP is typically offline as well. Thinking outside the box isn't terribly useful if the other end of your connection goes dead due to the same event that necessitated the need for an external power system in the first place.
In Fortune-100-America, everything possible must be stamped with a (c) or (tm) or patent#. Advancement up the technical ladder is difficult without getting a few patents for the company.
As someone who had four patents pending at one of my former places of work, and who was canned anyways after his project was cancelled, don't count on it being a huge amount of help. Being a corporate suck-up usually counts for more than real technical prowess.
Canada does have that effect on everyone who visits the country. Here in Toronto, there are many places where strangers say 'hi' to each other as they walk by, like people do in small villages. Toronto is the biggest city.
I was born in the Toronto area, and have lived here in the GTA for the vast majority of my life. So I know what you speak of very well. I'm rather sorry I missed Taste of the Danforth two weekends ago -- I used to live in the Victoria Park and Danforth area, and if any event shows off Toronto at its best, it's Taste of the Danforth. Fortunately, I'm back in town to enjoy the CNE (Canadian National Exhibition), which is my other favorite summer happening in our fair city.
Let's face it -- there are complete ass-hats here in Canada as well. I just happen to think we have a lower overall ratio of ass-hats:).
in Toronto/Montreal/Winnipeg/Vancouver, they all just stand around keeping away from other people. When the belts move, everyone stays still. Sometimes, people say "excuse me" and someone will move over and let them. There are no armed guards, and no one tries to steal your bag.
I wanted to amplify this. I just flew from Vancouver to Toronto this past Friday, and while it took a while to get my luggage due to the plane landing at the IFT (Infield Terminal), it did give me a chance to stand around and watch the human animal.
I have to say, watching these people at Canada's biggest and busiest airport, I felt pretty good about ourselves as a people. There was no pushing or shoving. Everyone did indeed stand two or three paces back waiting for their bags to show up. The only "event" was mostly a non-event: a petite woman who flew in from China with a suitcase that probably weighed as much as she did asked me if I could help her get her bag off the carousel (for which I had to say "excuse me" to a few people so I could manhandle it off).
If I can generalize for a moment, in all of my travels the vast majority of people I see behaving badly in airports are Americans. Earlier this decade I was travelling back to Toronto from Schiphol Airport (in Amsterdam, The Netherlands). I had been warned by airport staff well in advance of my flight that it is a good idea to get into the line to get your passport stamped at least a hour before boarding time, so I did (actually, it was probably closer to two hours in advance -- I got there early, and was trying to enjoy a leisurely day).
By the time I made it to the half-way point in line after about 30 minutes, a man and woman sudddenly forced themselves into line in front of me, mumbling something about their flight leaving in 20 minutes (note: they didn't ask -- they just shoved me out of the way while they jammed their luggage in front of me). I was cheesed, but to be honest I had lots of time, felt for their situation somewhat, and decided to say nothing. After all, I have that world-renouned "Canadian politeness" to live up to.
And to be honest, at that point I didn't know that these people were Americans. Just minor league jerks. But then they spent the next half hour bitching about how they wouldn't have had to stand in line back in the US, and how terrible air travel is in the rest of the world.
(Okay -- hint for those Americans reading this who have never been outside their own country: IMO, Schiphol Airport gets an A. It was very efficient, and the staff was super nice. Additionally, just try being a foreigner travelling at a US airport, and the situation is often much, much worse than what little wait these people had to put up with).
By the time I had made it to the front of the line, I had let nearly a dozen more Americans into line in front of me, all of whom had arrived "just minutes" before their flight was to leave (or, in the case of one couple, as their flight was leaving). They all seemed to congragate around this woman who was (at this point) very loudly bitching about having to stand in a line at the airport. They berated the airport, the airport staff, and the whole country of The Netherlands in general. I was embarassed to admit I was from the same continent as these people.
Now admittedly there were probably 20 or more other Americans in the line who got to the airport in plenty of time who were likewise embarassed by the actions of these people. But it seeems that every time I travel anywhere and run into someone behaving badly in the airport and ask them where they're from, it turns out they're from the US. You never see those people helping old ladies get their baggage off, or letting louts who arrived at the airport 10 minutes before their flight was to leave get into line in front of them because they arrived in sufficient time.
So maybe it shouldn't be any wonder that the grandparent routinely sees people bahaving b
Additionally the power plant should be able to run cleaner per Watt produced - they should have better polution reduction equipment.
That, and the fact that fossil-fuel power plants are typically doing continual burns against the fuel, as opposed to creating several thousand tiny explosions per second.
I don't know when both will be available at the Apple Store at Yorkdale (if they aren't there already), but they are likewise both listed at the Apple Store Yorkdale online store.
I'm hoping to pick-up one of the new minis for my mother, and might try to take a trip to Yorkdale later this week.
Let's re-use your position as part of a hypothetical bricks and mortar department store we'll use for the sake of argument. This store wants to keep track of how many unique visitors go to each department, how much time they spend there, what displays they're spending the most time looking at, how long they wait in line at the checkout and complaints department -- basically the same sorts of activities you want to track through your website.
Would you want to shop at a store where every time you walked in someone at the front door slapped a sticker on your back, with some sort of unique ID number? Sure, you'd still be anonymous, and yes, perhaps you would be helping the store do a slightly better job or serving you -- but at a cost to your personal dignity, privacy, and security.
And presuming for a moment you'd actually be okay with wearing that sticker on your back while inside the store, would you feel anything for the stores management when they started to complain about how people were taking the sticker off their jackets when they left the store? Would your attitude be "Oh those poor store managers", or would it be more akin to "Screw them, I'm not walking around with a big sticker on my back everywhere I go!" (especially if that sticker was using some sort of super glue that made it difficult to easily remove from your favorite leather jacket:) ).
Cookies are way overused. I agree that they have been vilified in the general public -- but that's a result of too many instances of cookies being abused by retail outlets and advertisers. It's the fault of websites akin to your own (and note that I'm not specifically blaming the site you helped build -- its cookie use could indeed have been completely innocuous) that people feel the need to block or delete cookies on a frequent basis (myself included).
So we can't blame the users on this one. It is they who are being inconvienenced, and one of the rules of business is that you shouldn't go around inconvienencing your customers just because it's convienent for you (that being the royal "you", and not necessarily you in particular).
"You see, most blokes will be playing at 10. You're on 10, all the way up, all the way up...Where can you go from there? Nowhere. What we do, is if we need that extra push over the cliff...Eleven."
If enough people switch, the viruses will come. I'm a firm believer that this is primarily a result of market share (yes, also helped by poor security...but not security is never any better than a user's clue level and vigilence). Does that mean that once viruses hit the Apples, that people will switch to Linux? What will be the next thing after that, a FreeBSD migration?
This will only ever be an issue if we ever reach a Mac-dominated monoculture, and I don't forsee that occuring. When some 90% of Internet users aree running Windows, it's easy for those e-mail worms and other network connected malware to spread from system to system. When more than 80% of the population is at risk, the spread of a computer virus acros a network is quite rapid, and can hit hard.
But if we're in a situation where you're not in a monoculture, the ability for malware to spread is going to be diminished. When I was running OS/2, I got hit to the tune of about 800 messages per day during one of the previous Windows e-mail virus epidemics. It was a PITA, but you know what? I wasn't running Windows, so my system was immune, but perhaps more importantly my system was a hole which the virus would fall into and never propogate.
Windows' two biggest problems are a) lack of security (and generally crappy design overall), and the fact that it's a monopoly monoculture. OS X is significantly more secure than Windows, and will probably never be the dominant OS on the Internet (while OS X is currently my personal OS of choice, and while I do recommend it to everyone I talk to, intellectually I'm an OS pluralist, and don't want any OS to hold a monopoly sway on the market). The viruses may come, but their spread willo probably never be anywhere as bad as the daily crap that floods Windows systems.
Mod the parent down. It's not "Informative", it's "Misleading"
That's better advice for your response, as opposed to the grandparent post.
The Java platform (i.e. java.lang.*), never enters into it.
That's not true. All of the java.lang.* classes are available. In fact, you can even make calls to javax.swing.* classes (although you have to be really careful in terms of event threads, so it's dangerous to do so). Cocoa-Java still uses java.lang.Class, java.lang.Object, java.lang.String, java.lang.Classloader, and any of the other java.lang classes.
Instead of using javax.swing.JFrame, you use com.apple.cocoa.NSWindow (the exact package name escapes me, but you get the idea), and you compile it into native code using Xcode, not bytecode using javac.
That is also not true. Cocoa Java bundles include the JAR files for their Java components. Only a small stub is compiled natively. Just view the package contents of any Cocoa Java application and you'll find the JAR file. Or build a Cocoa Java application in Xcode, and see something like the following in the build log (with lots of snippage...):
JavaCompile.default Cocoa blah.app
frameworkjars=""
for i in `echo/System/Library/Frameworks/Cocoa.framework/Resourc es/Java/*.jar/System/Library/Frameworks/Cocoa.framework/Resourc es/Java/*.zip ` ; do if [ -f "$i" ] ; then frameworkjars="$frameworkjars":"$i" ; fi ; done
classpath="/blah:"`/usr/bin/javaconfig DefaultClasspath`
/usr/bin/javac -J-Xms64m -J-XX:NewSize=4M -J-Dfile.encoding=UTF8 -g -encoding MACINTOSH -sourcepath...
Sorry, but you're talking out of your ass, and have no idea what you're talking about.
I'd be interested in hearing from an actual developer who *is* impacted by this.
Hello! I'm here!
I'm doing some development using Cocoa-Java, and this could impact me, although as the information is extremely brief, I haven't figured out yet how or how much it will affect my work.
I'm in the situation where I already have a very large Java library which was written on other platforms (which has taken ~8 man-years of development effort, and has been heavily debugged and tested int hat time), but works flawlessly on OS X. The Swing application built atop it works on OS X, but many portions of its basic design don't work too well on OS X in terms of UI integration (it works, but it really looks like it was designed for another platform).
As such, to better support the Mac community, I decided one evening to create a Cocoa version using Cocoa-Java. It took me only about 2 hours of effort, and I had a native Mac version of my application that looks and acts like an OS X application, supporting all of the standard OS X controls and menu items.
Yes, Apple says I should just use Objective-C, but honestly I have years and years worth of work that has been put into the Java library and engine code. It's completely multi-platform, and is used on multiple platforms. Rewriting it in Objective-C isn't feasible from either a time standpoint, or from a platform availability standpoint (even if I did have years to rewrite and retest all this code in Objective-C, it would then only compile and run on OS X, and perhaps Linux if I was very careful). So it's not going to happen.
As such, I'm quite possibly impacted by this decision. However, the wording of the "annoucement" leaves much to be desired. Presumably based on their wording, they aren't dropping Cocoa-Java completely -- only that new Cocoa features won't be bridged. The GUI needs for my application are well served by the existing Cocoa-Java bindings, so if Cocoa-Java continues to be installed as a part of OS X, at least my application won't be unusuable before it is released to the public.
I am a bit surprised in some ways, however. With the announcement a few weeks ago of the move to Intel-based processors, I thought they might actually work to improve Cocoa-Java, due to its immediate cross-platform benefits (although Xcode 2.1 won't generate Universal Binaries for Cocoa-Java projects).
I'm holding out hope that OS X 10.5 and 10.6 don't drop the existing level of Cocoa-Java support. To be honest, I don't expect every feature of Cocoa to be made available to Java (as it doesn't always make sense to do so), so not putting anything new in, while disappointing, doesn't bother me a whole lot. It's the concern that at some point in the next few years Cocoa-Java could be dropped altogether that worries me.
The biggest issue is in order to write Cocoa applications using Java you have to learn Cocoa. If you're going through that effort it is a lot simpler to spend the two days learning Objective-C and getting used to retain counts. You'll find there's a lot more support and documentation than writing Cocoa apps in Java.
This line of reasoning bugs me, because it presupposes that you're building an application from scratch.
However, what if you have a large and specialized existing Java library that has taken years to write and has been very strenuously tested, and want to use it inside a Cocoa application? Cocoa-Java was excellent for this -- it took me less than an hour to build a Cocoa interface atop such a Java library, giving me much better integration with OS X's UI than Swing with an Aqua L&F ever would, with a lot less coding.
Yes, if you're building an application from scratch, Objective-C is a better option (I've developed some Obj-C Cocoa applications as well). But if you have an existing library which has taken you years to write in Java, why would you want to re-do all of that work in Objective-C, when you can just use Cocoa-Java?
I'm hoping we few of the Cocoa-Java community can convince Apple to release the Cocoa-Java framework to the Open Source community so we could contain to maintain and update it. The only consoltaion I'm gaining from the current "announcement" (if you can call it that) is that it looks like future versions of OS X will support Cocoa-Java -- they just won't be adding anything new to Cocoa-Java past 10.4. So at least my existing Cocoa-Java application (which is only in limited release at the moment) won't be completely obsolete the day it is released.
If it is THEIR code they can do with THEIR code WHATEVER THEY FRICKING WANT!
You misunderstand my example. I didn't state that a company writing the OSS code would like the BSD license better; the idea is that a company that wants to grab some free off-the-shelf code and who doesn't want to share it with others is much more likely to prefer to use an OSS project which is BSD licensed.
I think it's about time we hash this out once and for all: is purple better than the GPL? The colour purple has several significant advantages over the GPL. For example, a woman can wear a purple dress, but they can't wear the GPL. You can paint your walls purple, but can't paint your walls GPL. Purple grapes are quite yummy, whereas the GPL (in hard copy) leaves a paper-cut-like after taste, and has little nutritional value.
Still, the GPL is a better software license than the colour purple, which isn't a license at all. Especially if you want to ensure that derivitive works are also GPL'ed.
Next week: which is better? Mr. T, or the GPL?
* * *
Okay -- this is silly. Neither license is better than the other. They have different purposes, and which is "better" is completely subjective, and depeneds on ones view-point. If you're a company which wants to get some free source code to implement a complex feature set, but who doesn't want to have to share their enhancements, modifications, or any source code at all, then you'd probably like the BSD license better.
If, on the other hand, you're a corporation in an area which isn't directly computer related, and need to create some custom software which you can't realistically afford to develop on your own, than GPL (or LGPL) is a significantly better solution, as you can crate a community of others with the same needs to develop a standard solution. Or you can help to improve an existing piece of GPL'ed software in order to make it work better for your customers by ensuring it will work well with your data sources/applications/operating systems/hardware.
In the end, which one is better depends on which one aligns better with your goals, and often depends on whether you're a producer or a consumer of the software in question.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for that nizo. Using this information, I should have your /. login cracked within the next half hour :).
The big problem I see with this is that technically you're actually making the cracking easier by halving the actual number of possible keys that will fit into a given password size. If you're on a system with an enforced 8-character password, we now know what your password is in fact four pairs selected from 26 posssible pairs. If my combinatorics are correct, for a fixed 8 character password system, your password is now only one posssibility out of 14950 character pairs. If anyone gets hold of your matrix, you're dead -- a computer can run through those possibilities exceedingly quickly, and won't even have to go through all of them if you use a dictionary-atttack against the unencoded password (in your example, "bank").
Even deconstructing your matrix from a few known passwords wouldn't be all that hard, as presumably the words you're selecting don't use an even distribution of the letters. How many of them use Q, X, or Z, compared to, say, A, E and T?
And we now also know that all of your passwords (in encoded form) are an even number of characters in length -- which in and of itself is enough to half the search space.
Admittedly, you're system is better than that of many people I know. It's protected from basic dictionary attacks (or just simple guessing) -- but all in all, it's not really that secure.
Yaz.
Which isn't a major problem once you realize that Pages files are stored as a bundle, with the images contained in the document stored in a stand-alone form as, well, images (or potentially PDF's).
I don't know if OpenDocument format permits linked images, although I would imagine it would.
I suppose you are somewhat correct -- as Pages files are bundles there is a bit more involved than just a direct XML transform. Files might have to be moved around somewhat -- however it still shouldn't be excessively difficult. These things can be revese engineered, if someone wants to do so :).
Yaz.
I misspoke somewhat. What I really should have said is that the reasons MS is giving publicly are complete and total crap. I'm very well aware of what their real reasons are for not doing this -- it's just that their publicly stated reasons don't stand up to a bit of scrutiny.
Yaz.
Hopefully someone else can help you. I haven't used a Microsoft product since 1992, and have never used their Office suite.
I guess to be more clear, I said there may be some advantages. I've heard a few MS-zealots in this debate claim that there are (although the ones they usually mention sound like things that 99.99% of users wouldn't care about in a million years).
I'm just being generous today I suppose :). There may be an advantage of some sort that someone could come up with for the DOC file format -- but again it shouldn't prevent Microsoft from implementing OpenDocument. The reasining I keep hearing as to why MS "officially" won't do this (I'm well aware of the "unofficial" reasons...) is because OpenDocument can't do such-and-such that DOC files can handle; which to me is a red herring because MS supports importing and exporting to a whole variety of formats which can't handle everything that DOC files can (RTF being one good example. Does Office support TXT output as well? That would certainly be another).
My point is, Microsoft could supply the state with compatible software if it wanted to. It doesn't. That isn't the states fault -- it's Microsoft's. They have an easy way to solve the perceived "problem", and simply refuse to take it because it will erode their hedgemony.
But then again, if more jurisdictions follow suit, that MS is going to miss the boat. Then again, it won't have been the first boat MS has missed, which they later have tried to embrace an extend...
Yaz.
I don't know what Apple's plans might be, but it's certainly an idea I'd support.
I wonder, however, how difficult it would be to create a stand-alone transformation package. Pages uses XML. OpenDocument uses XML. There are XML Transformation tools out there. Someone only need describe the transform, and you should be all set.
I really don't understand Microsoft's attitude on this one. Their reasoning for not implementing OpenDocument in Office just isn't sound. Sure, there may be areas where Microsoft's native Office formats have some advantages, but last I checked Office still supported saving to RTF and HTML formats, both of this are significantly less feature complete than OpenDocument. And you don't hear anyone moaning that these shouldn be removed from Office (or shouldn't have been implemented in the first place).
Microsoft has an out in this battle -- just implement OpenDocument format as an export format and be done with it. Their "problems" are entirely of their own creation because they refuse to take the obvious step to rectify the situation.
Yaz.
The Google Talk website is now online: http://www.google.com/talk/.
I was able to get in with iChat v3.0, but I had to tell it to use port 5223 and connect via SSL. Otherwise, I've connected without any issues -- now I just need some buddies to chat with :).
Yaz.
I imagine they might possibly find ways to cope with the weather -- what I think they'd have a hard time adapting to is the lack of food during the winter months. Zoo elephants may enjoy the snow, but they don't have to worry about where their next meal comes from.
Besides which, there is enough problems with racoons in Toronto dumpsters. Just imagine if the next time you take out the garbage late one winter night there was an elephant waiting there for you...
Yaz.
We have such a place. We call it "Canada".
Yaz.
But the question is, will your ISP's equipment still have power during this time? Having your modem power doesn't do any good if there isn't a signal coming through the line, or if the routers on the other end aren't sending your packets onward.
I have a DC-AC inverter myself, and a portable power pack, and have put my home network hardware on them during times of power failure, and it seems that during any significant power outage, my cable ISP is typically offline as well. Thinking outside the box isn't terribly useful if the other end of your connection goes dead due to the same event that necessitated the need for an external power system in the first place.
Yaz.
Sir Bedevere: ...and that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana shaped
King Arthur: This new learning amazes me, Sir Bedevere. Explain again how sheep's bladders may be employed to prevent earthquakes.
Yaz.
As someone who had four patents pending at one of my former places of work, and who was canned anyways after his project was cancelled, don't count on it being a huge amount of help. Being a corporate suck-up usually counts for more than real technical prowess.
Yaz.
I was born in the Toronto area, and have lived here in the GTA for the vast majority of my life. So I know what you speak of very well. I'm rather sorry I missed Taste of the Danforth two weekends ago -- I used to live in the Victoria Park and Danforth area, and if any event shows off Toronto at its best, it's Taste of the Danforth. Fortunately, I'm back in town to enjoy the CNE (Canadian National Exhibition), which is my other favorite summer happening in our fair city.
Let's face it -- there are complete ass-hats here in Canada as well. I just happen to think we have a lower overall ratio of ass-hats :).
Yaz.
I wanted to amplify this. I just flew from Vancouver to Toronto this past Friday, and while it took a while to get my luggage due to the plane landing at the IFT (Infield Terminal), it did give me a chance to stand around and watch the human animal.
I have to say, watching these people at Canada's biggest and busiest airport, I felt pretty good about ourselves as a people. There was no pushing or shoving. Everyone did indeed stand two or three paces back waiting for their bags to show up. The only "event" was mostly a non-event: a petite woman who flew in from China with a suitcase that probably weighed as much as she did asked me if I could help her get her bag off the carousel (for which I had to say "excuse me" to a few people so I could manhandle it off).
If I can generalize for a moment, in all of my travels the vast majority of people I see behaving badly in airports are Americans. Earlier this decade I was travelling back to Toronto from Schiphol Airport (in Amsterdam, The Netherlands). I had been warned by airport staff well in advance of my flight that it is a good idea to get into the line to get your passport stamped at least a hour before boarding time, so I did (actually, it was probably closer to two hours in advance -- I got there early, and was trying to enjoy a leisurely day).
By the time I made it to the half-way point in line after about 30 minutes, a man and woman sudddenly forced themselves into line in front of me, mumbling something about their flight leaving in 20 minutes (note: they didn't ask -- they just shoved me out of the way while they jammed their luggage in front of me). I was cheesed, but to be honest I had lots of time, felt for their situation somewhat, and decided to say nothing. After all, I have that world-renouned "Canadian politeness" to live up to.
And to be honest, at that point I didn't know that these people were Americans. Just minor league jerks. But then they spent the next half hour bitching about how they wouldn't have had to stand in line back in the US, and how terrible air travel is in the rest of the world.
(Okay -- hint for those Americans reading this who have never been outside their own country: IMO, Schiphol Airport gets an A. It was very efficient, and the staff was super nice. Additionally, just try being a foreigner travelling at a US airport, and the situation is often much, much worse than what little wait these people had to put up with).
By the time I had made it to the front of the line, I had let nearly a dozen more Americans into line in front of me, all of whom had arrived "just minutes" before their flight was to leave (or, in the case of one couple, as their flight was leaving). They all seemed to congragate around this woman who was (at this point) very loudly bitching about having to stand in a line at the airport. They berated the airport, the airport staff, and the whole country of The Netherlands in general. I was embarassed to admit I was from the same continent as these people.
Now admittedly there were probably 20 or more other Americans in the line who got to the airport in plenty of time who were likewise embarassed by the actions of these people. But it seeems that every time I travel anywhere and run into someone behaving badly in the airport and ask them where they're from, it turns out they're from the US. You never see those people helping old ladies get their baggage off, or letting louts who arrived at the airport 10 minutes before their flight was to leave get into line in front of them because they arrived in sufficient time.
So maybe it shouldn't be any wonder that the grandparent routinely sees people bahaving b
That, and the fact that fossil-fuel power plants are typically doing continual burns against the fuel, as opposed to creating several thousand tiny explosions per second.
Yaz.
Just FYI, I'm seeing similar behaviour, although in my case I think it was more like 5 minutes before it popped on screen. Ugh.
Yaz.
For anyone who is thinking of grabbing the OS X version, please note that like OpenOffice, InkScape is using X11 to render its display.
I'm a bit disappointed, as this does make it somewhat less nice to use on OS X, however it isn't v1.0 yet, so I'll remain hopefully optimistic.
Yaz.
Take a look at Apple Canada's Online Store, which lists both the new iBooks and Mac minis.
I don't know when both will be available at the Apple Store at Yorkdale (if they aren't there already), but they are likewise both listed at the Apple Store Yorkdale online store.
I'm hoping to pick-up one of the new minis for my mother, and might try to take a trip to Yorkdale later this week.
Yaz.
Let's re-use your position as part of a hypothetical bricks and mortar department store we'll use for the sake of argument. This store wants to keep track of how many unique visitors go to each department, how much time they spend there, what displays they're spending the most time looking at, how long they wait in line at the checkout and complaints department -- basically the same sorts of activities you want to track through your website.
Would you want to shop at a store where every time you walked in someone at the front door slapped a sticker on your back, with some sort of unique ID number? Sure, you'd still be anonymous, and yes, perhaps you would be helping the store do a slightly better job or serving you -- but at a cost to your personal dignity, privacy, and security.
And presuming for a moment you'd actually be okay with wearing that sticker on your back while inside the store, would you feel anything for the stores management when they started to complain about how people were taking the sticker off their jackets when they left the store? Would your attitude be "Oh those poor store managers", or would it be more akin to "Screw them, I'm not walking around with a big sticker on my back everywhere I go!" (especially if that sticker was using some sort of super glue that made it difficult to easily remove from your favorite leather jacket :) ).
Cookies are way overused. I agree that they have been vilified in the general public -- but that's a result of too many instances of cookies being abused by retail outlets and advertisers. It's the fault of websites akin to your own (and note that I'm not specifically blaming the site you helped build -- its cookie use could indeed have been completely innocuous) that people feel the need to block or delete cookies on a frequent basis (myself included).
So we can't blame the users on this one. It is they who are being inconvienenced, and one of the rules of business is that you shouldn't go around inconvienencing your customers just because it's convienent for you (that being the royal "you", and not necessarily you in particular).
Yaz.
It just has to be said...
"You see, most blokes will be playing at 10. You're on 10, all the way up, all the way up...Where can you go from there? Nowhere. What we do, is if we need that extra push over the cliff...Eleven."
Yaz.
This will only ever be an issue if we ever reach a Mac-dominated monoculture, and I don't forsee that occuring. When some 90% of Internet users aree running Windows, it's easy for those e-mail worms and other network connected malware to spread from system to system. When more than 80% of the population is at risk, the spread of a computer virus acros a network is quite rapid, and can hit hard.
But if we're in a situation where you're not in a monoculture, the ability for malware to spread is going to be diminished. When I was running OS/2, I got hit to the tune of about 800 messages per day during one of the previous Windows e-mail virus epidemics. It was a PITA, but you know what? I wasn't running Windows, so my system was immune, but perhaps more importantly my system was a hole which the virus would fall into and never propogate.
Windows' two biggest problems are a) lack of security (and generally crappy design overall), and the fact that it's a monopoly monoculture. OS X is significantly more secure than Windows, and will probably never be the dominant OS on the Internet (while OS X is currently my personal OS of choice, and while I do recommend it to everyone I talk to, intellectually I'm an OS pluralist, and don't want any OS to hold a monopoly sway on the market). The viruses may come, but their spread willo probably never be anywhere as bad as the daily crap that floods Windows systems.
Yaz.
That's better advice for your response, as opposed to the grandparent post.
That's not true. All of the java.lang.* classes are available. In fact, you can even make calls to javax.swing.* classes (although you have to be really careful in terms of event threads, so it's dangerous to do so). Cocoa-Java still uses java.lang.Class, java.lang.Object, java.lang.String, java.lang.Classloader, and any of the other java.lang classes.
That is also not true. Cocoa Java bundles include the JAR files for their Java components. Only a small stub is compiled natively. Just view the package contents of any Cocoa Java application and you'll find the JAR file. Or build a Cocoa Java application in Xcode, and see something like the following in the build log (with lots of snippage...):
Sorry, but you're talking out of your ass, and have no idea what you're talking about.
Yaz.
(Cocoa-Java Developer).
Hello! I'm here!
I'm doing some development using Cocoa-Java, and this could impact me, although as the information is extremely brief, I haven't figured out yet how or how much it will affect my work.
I'm in the situation where I already have a very large Java library which was written on other platforms (which has taken ~8 man-years of development effort, and has been heavily debugged and tested int hat time), but works flawlessly on OS X. The Swing application built atop it works on OS X, but many portions of its basic design don't work too well on OS X in terms of UI integration (it works, but it really looks like it was designed for another platform).
As such, to better support the Mac community, I decided one evening to create a Cocoa version using Cocoa-Java. It took me only about 2 hours of effort, and I had a native Mac version of my application that looks and acts like an OS X application, supporting all of the standard OS X controls and menu items.
Yes, Apple says I should just use Objective-C, but honestly I have years and years worth of work that has been put into the Java library and engine code. It's completely multi-platform, and is used on multiple platforms. Rewriting it in Objective-C isn't feasible from either a time standpoint, or from a platform availability standpoint (even if I did have years to rewrite and retest all this code in Objective-C, it would then only compile and run on OS X, and perhaps Linux if I was very careful). So it's not going to happen.
As such, I'm quite possibly impacted by this decision. However, the wording of the "annoucement" leaves much to be desired. Presumably based on their wording, they aren't dropping Cocoa-Java completely -- only that new Cocoa features won't be bridged. The GUI needs for my application are well served by the existing Cocoa-Java bindings, so if Cocoa-Java continues to be installed as a part of OS X, at least my application won't be unusuable before it is released to the public.
I am a bit surprised in some ways, however. With the announcement a few weeks ago of the move to Intel-based processors, I thought they might actually work to improve Cocoa-Java, due to its immediate cross-platform benefits (although Xcode 2.1 won't generate Universal Binaries for Cocoa-Java projects).
I'm holding out hope that OS X 10.5 and 10.6 don't drop the existing level of Cocoa-Java support. To be honest, I don't expect every feature of Cocoa to be made available to Java (as it doesn't always make sense to do so), so not putting anything new in, while disappointing, doesn't bother me a whole lot. It's the concern that at some point in the next few years Cocoa-Java could be dropped altogether that worries me.
Yaz.
This line of reasoning bugs me, because it presupposes that you're building an application from scratch.
However, what if you have a large and specialized existing Java library that has taken years to write and has been very strenuously tested, and want to use it inside a Cocoa application? Cocoa-Java was excellent for this -- it took me less than an hour to build a Cocoa interface atop such a Java library, giving me much better integration with OS X's UI than Swing with an Aqua L&F ever would, with a lot less coding.
Yes, if you're building an application from scratch, Objective-C is a better option (I've developed some Obj-C Cocoa applications as well). But if you have an existing library which has taken you years to write in Java, why would you want to re-do all of that work in Objective-C, when you can just use Cocoa-Java?
I'm hoping we few of the Cocoa-Java community can convince Apple to release the Cocoa-Java framework to the Open Source community so we could contain to maintain and update it. The only consoltaion I'm gaining from the current "announcement" (if you can call it that) is that it looks like future versions of OS X will support Cocoa-Java -- they just won't be adding anything new to Cocoa-Java past 10.4. So at least my existing Cocoa-Java application (which is only in limited release at the moment) won't be completely obsolete the day it is released.
Yaz.
You misunderstand my example. I didn't state that a company writing the OSS code would like the BSD license better; the idea is that a company that wants to grab some free off-the-shelf code and who doesn't want to share it with others is much more likely to prefer to use an OSS project which is BSD licensed.
I hope this clears up the confusion.
Yaz.
I think it's about time we hash this out once and for all: is purple better than the GPL? The colour purple has several significant advantages over the GPL. For example, a woman can wear a purple dress, but they can't wear the GPL. You can paint your walls purple, but can't paint your walls GPL. Purple grapes are quite yummy, whereas the GPL (in hard copy) leaves a paper-cut-like after taste, and has little nutritional value.
Still, the GPL is a better software license than the colour purple, which isn't a license at all. Especially if you want to ensure that derivitive works are also GPL'ed.
Next week: which is better? Mr. T, or the GPL?
* * *
Okay -- this is silly. Neither license is better than the other. They have different purposes, and which is "better" is completely subjective, and depeneds on ones view-point. If you're a company which wants to get some free source code to implement a complex feature set, but who doesn't want to have to share their enhancements, modifications, or any source code at all, then you'd probably like the BSD license better.
If, on the other hand, you're a corporation in an area which isn't directly computer related, and need to create some custom software which you can't realistically afford to develop on your own, than GPL (or LGPL) is a significantly better solution, as you can crate a community of others with the same needs to develop a standard solution. Or you can help to improve an existing piece of GPL'ed software in order to make it work better for your customers by ensuring it will work well with your data sources/applications/operating systems/hardware.
In the end, which one is better depends on which one aligns better with your goals, and often depends on whether you're a producer or a consumer of the software in question.
So can we now stop the insanity?
Yaz.