I must say, I never understood why Windows/Linux users were so bent out of shape about multiple button mice. Then I tried to use them (in Parallels) without one. Ugh! Hidden options everywhere, some things cannot be done unless you use right-click etc.
The vast majority of users - even today - do not understand the difference between left and right clicking. Furthermore, contextual menus have been abused horribly on Windows (less so on Linux) to the point where they are the ONLY way to get at common commands - no corresponding menu bar options or buttons at all a lot of the time. This KILLS being able to discover functionality without looking it up in help, or randomly clicking things until you "get it right", which does nothing to help you in the next app.
The single button on the Mac prevents developers from pulling this kind of crap, because they physically can't assume a second button.
Meanwhile, since I've been using a Thinkpad loaded in Parallels, I actually find it easier to use the two-finger click to "right-click" thank to actually right-click on my USB mouse. Go figure.
The problem was not Christianity, but the tightly held monopoly of the Church of Rome that kept its people in the dark about the truths of scripture while allowing corrupt people to wield incredible power. The crusaders were told that they would be "forgiven of all sins" if they went on the crusade
Sad - substitute "Islam" for "Christianity and "fundamentalist Islam" for "Church of Rome" and you have a picture of what is going on today.
While I used Opera Mini 2.0 on my Treo and found it worked very well, the new version 3.0 crashes constantly (which, thanks to the lack of memory protection on the Palm, resets it). Reinstalled the JVM, Opera Mini, etc - no better. Downgraded to 2.0 and all was fine.
Might want to wait for some bug fixes (although Opera doesn't generally push.01 updates to its "Mini" product).
Treo's also use non-volatile flash - a dead battery means nothing more than that - memory is permanent. Keyboard is fine for my hands, with good button feel (purely subjective, of course). Had a 650 for two years, have yet to get a scratch anywhere.
The Palm OS is outdated - no argument there, and I believe I said as much. However, it also has by far the most refined user experience, and THAT is the topic - what is holding back most smartphones is their functionality is all but unusable.
(This is going to sound like an ad - so be it, I love the thing)
The only device I've seen that really makes is all work easily is the Palm OS-based Treos. Their phone functionality is excellent, the proven Palm interface continues to work well for the PIM tasks (and it's integrated very well into the phone and internet features), and you can extend its functionality with the interface scaling and still making sense.
The phone itself has no compromises. The PIM apps that support it are refined over a decade. Adding functionality is simple and straightforward.
Now, Palm OS has its warts - stability first and foremost (a phone should NOT crash - period), memory management a second. However, if you want a no-compromise smartphone, a Palm-based Treo is the way to go.
Normal users already apply the security updates because they show up in Software Update, which is checked weekly by default. No services are open to the outside world by default. We're smug because there are no avenues for attack on the vast majority of machines (and that doesn't get into the inherent added security of not running as administrator/root). Name an attack vector and get back to us.
Trojans executed by stupid people? Sorry, not much you can do beyond what's already in place. If the user gives up their root password or administrator access too easily, no amount of security will do anything (I'm looking at you, over-used desensitizing UAC in Vista).
Doesn't a lot of the networking code mentioned come from BSD, which is MIT-licensed? Microsoft would be completely free to use that if they wanted.
Another reason to prefer the MIT license to the GPL - a rising tide raises ALL ships. And I don't see BSD dying (despite Netcraft) due to lack of contributions and effort.
As an add on to that question, since you can distribute extensions with the installer, why not just make these "official" extensions rather than building them into the app? Then people could easily switch them off or substitute third party ones (think tab management).
You've created a great extension management system, yet aren't using it yourselves.
No, you just have glibc change and have to recompile everything. Currently my gentoo system has been compiling for three days straight and isn't done.// Fiddle around with getting GCC 4.1 installed and configured first...
emerge -eav system emerge -eav world
This takes a LONG time, my friends.
Ironically, I was only in Gentoo so I could use it to backup my Dapper installation before upgrading to Edgy! Thanks to Gentoo, I've missed out on all of this hell.;-)
And if you think your little arsenal of a dozen guns is going to stop the government if they want to get you, you're dreaming. Face it - with the spending on military and "defense", if the government is truly out to get you, you're dead.
In the meantime, your paranoid little arms cache will more likely be used to injure your own family, or a school shooting (despite precautions such as "gun safes" and the like).
I wrote a simple script that simply switches between wireless and wired networks automatically without disconnecting any of my existing connections on IRC and so on.
I plug in the Ethernet cable, a script automatically starts and disables wi-fi card, duplicates NIC settings from the wi-fi card (IP address and so on) then brings up Ethernet. My applications just continue running, still connected to servers and such. If I pull out the ethernet cable, Wi-fi starts up, connects to the relevant network (if it's there) and my applications still aren't disconnected from anything.
This is really useful for me when I need to move around, but every now and then, I need to connect to a wired network so I can do network intensive tasks quickly, such as speedy backups, huge file copies, low latency network gaming, conference calling (works fine over wi-fi, but artifacts sometimes occur).
Mac OS X does this automatically, without needing that little script you wrote. Just give both interfaces the same IP information, and it will seamlessly switch to whichever is higher in the list of connections.
Once again, all kinds of power, and a GUI that makes it trivial to use.
The other thing is, whenever I need to use a scanner, tablet, Bluetooth dongle, wi-fi card -- anything. I can just plug it in, and it works, no need to download drivers, configure the thing. It just works almost instantly. Now, MacOSX? I find a lot of hardware doesn't "just work" on that, if it works at all. I have a Bluetooth dongle that crashes the OS, but works fine on Windows and Linux.
Not exactly persuasive, since it's personal experience. My experience has been that pretty much anything that's USB or Firewire just works, including such dongles, serial adapters, modems, printers, etc. Most PCI/AGP/PCI-Express works as well, although that is more spotty. A lot of that is thanks to class drivers, and a lot is thanks to open source (CUPS and Gimp-Print, for instance).
At the same time, I can sit here and spin tales of how my MegaRAID adapter in my server wasn't recognized by several Linux install CD's, then was broken in the kernel for a few versions, and when I finally switched to an IBM ServeRAID 3L, it wasn't supported by Windows XP!
In 20 years of using the Mac and 10 years of Windows and Linux experience, I'd say you're most likely to get something to work with full functionality on Windows. You may have problems and conflicts, but full feature support is a priority. You're most likely to get most functionality on Mac OS X. Some things are only partially supported (printer or scanner features, for instance), and there are occasional devices that don't work (video cards needing Mac-specific firmware - why is that?). As for Linux, all I can say is it's very hit or miss, distro to distro, version to version. Things break much more often on Linux. It might just need some new package or config tweak, but running a system update (synaptic, yum, emerge, etc) is sometimes like russian roulette. I backup my Linux system fully before applying updates - I don't need to with OS X or Windows.
All this does is give you Darwin. Its hardly a "hack" - just compiling Darwin/x86, which you've been able to do with Apple's blessing for years (save a brief interlude when kernel sources weren't ready yet).
Now if they get around the binary signing on critical GUI components (Finder, WindowServer, etc) then I'll be more impressed.
But it would apply to companies wanting to use it within US borders, wouldn't it? Given the multinational reach of companies these days, I see this as a major stumbling block. Also, considering the amount of reciprocity the US has with other economic trading partners, I would expect this to largely quash it in many other countries as well. If too much of a market is lost due to such legal ramifications, it still won't be realisticly useful.
No, I don't agree with the law. But I'm seeing if this can feasibly work within the current legal structure.
"Unfortunately it's often pro-Linux people (rather than just random press idiots) who promote this world domination crap. We need to realize that we've got a great platform, it works for us, and it's continuing to improve and work for even more people. The world domination and "ready for desktop" talk is tiresome and it just makes us look stupid."
Unfortunately, that's where you run into the great schism in Linux - those who use and promote it as a political agenda (GNU), and those who use it as good technology (Linux). Idealists vs pragmatists; you'll never win that one.
If you're a developer, you can easily set the boot time arguments to log to the screen. Meanwhile, panic information is logged, so you ca always get at it post-mortem.
For end users, a bunch of hexadecimal won't mean squat. Telling them to reboot in a non-scary way is a Good Thing.
Crossover will not survive in corporations when Parallels is around. Why support something that might 90% work when you can just run Windows in Parallels and be done with it?
Never underestimate support costs and their influence on corporate policy.
Most Mac users do not run AV, do not shutdown services, and run with wide-open wifi and bluetooth settings.
No viruses, check. No services running on a default install, check. Airport doesn't join unknown networks by default and Bluetooth off by default, check.
Mac OS X as an operating system is not secure - nothing is. It's default settings, however, are. Name one remote attack vector on a default system and get back to me.
Respected and intelligent people have offered huge incentives for something as simple as a blackbox presentation of the exploit, with no technical details, and have not had their generous offer accepted. Apple has said pont-blank they have not been contacted in any way regarding the exploit, despite the bloggings of being "leaned on hard by Apple". The "security experts" keep changing their story, from something that impacts Apple's drivers and hardware, to something that only hits third party hardware/drivers, to something that only might hit third-party drivers/hardware.
Show any evidence whatsoever to a reliable third party and I'll pay some attention. Until that point, they have utterly no credibility.
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I must say, I never understood why Windows/Linux users were so bent out of shape about multiple button mice. Then I tried to use them (in Parallels) without one. Ugh! Hidden options everywhere, some things cannot be done unless you use right-click etc.
The vast majority of users - even today - do not understand the difference between left and right clicking. Furthermore, contextual menus have been abused horribly on Windows (less so on Linux) to the point where they are the ONLY way to get at common commands - no corresponding menu bar options or buttons at all a lot of the time. This KILLS being able to discover functionality without looking it up in help, or randomly clicking things until you "get it right", which does nothing to help you in the next app.
The single button on the Mac prevents developers from pulling this kind of crap, because they physically can't assume a second button.
Meanwhile, since I've been using a Thinkpad loaded in Parallels, I actually find it easier to use the two-finger click to "right-click" thank to actually right-click on my USB mouse. Go figure.
It's up to intelligent people to decide for themselves what they like, think or believe.
Exactly why Wal-Mart must NOT carry it.
The problem was not Christianity, but the tightly held monopoly of the Church of Rome that kept its people in the dark about the truths of scripture while allowing corrupt people to wield incredible power. The crusaders were told that they would be "forgiven of all sins" if they went on the crusade
Sad - substitute "Islam" for "Christianity and "fundamentalist Islam" for "Church of Rome" and you have a picture of what is going on today.
Christians = 1, Fundamentalists = 0
While I used Opera Mini 2.0 on my Treo and found it worked very well, the new version 3.0 crashes constantly (which, thanks to the lack of memory protection on the Palm, resets it). Reinstalled the JVM, Opera Mini, etc - no better. Downgraded to 2.0 and all was fine.
.01 updates to its "Mini" product).
Might want to wait for some bug fixes (although Opera doesn't generally push
Treo's also use non-volatile flash - a dead battery means nothing more than that - memory is permanent. Keyboard is fine for my hands, with good button feel (purely subjective, of course). Had a 650 for two years, have yet to get a scratch anywhere.
The Palm OS is outdated - no argument there, and I believe I said as much. However, it also has by far the most refined user experience, and THAT is the topic - what is holding back most smartphones is their functionality is all but unusable.
(This is going to sound like an ad - so be it, I love the thing)
The only device I've seen that really makes is all work easily is the Palm OS-based Treos. Their phone functionality is excellent, the proven Palm interface continues to work well for the PIM tasks (and it's integrated very well into the phone and internet features), and you can extend its functionality with the interface scaling and still making sense.
The phone itself has no compromises. The PIM apps that support it are refined over a decade. Adding functionality is simple and straightforward.
Now, Palm OS has its warts - stability first and foremost (a phone should NOT crash - period), memory management a second. However, if you want a no-compromise smartphone, a Palm-based Treo is the way to go.
Dammit - more coffee before I post. :)
Normal users already apply the security updates because they show up in Software Update, which is checked weekly by default. No services are open to the outside world by default. We're smug because there are no avenues for attack on the vast majority of machines (and that doesn't get into the inherent added security of not running as administrator/root). Name an attack vector and get back to us.
Trojans executed by stupid people? Sorry, not much you can do beyond what's already in place. If the user gives up their root password or administrator access too easily, no amount of security will do anything (I'm looking at you, over-used desensitizing UAC in Vista).
Thanks for playing.
Doesn't a lot of the networking code mentioned come from BSD, which is MIT-licensed? Microsoft would be completely free to use that if they wanted.
Another reason to prefer the MIT license to the GPL - a rising tide raises ALL ships. And I don't see BSD dying (despite Netcraft) due to lack of contributions and effort.
As an add on to that question, since you can distribute extensions with the installer, why not just make these "official" extensions rather than building them into the app? Then people could easily switch them off or substitute third party ones (think tab management).
You've created a great extension management system, yet aren't using it yourselves.
Christ, and what's your alternative - NOT being able to get to your tabs at all? There IS a menu right next to that (ala Safari and others).
Seriously - what the hell should the behavior be?
The ACLU did admit this up front. As you'll notice, they only object to a single section - you might want to read the fine summary.
No, you just have glibc change and have to recompile everything. Currently my gentoo system has been compiling for three days straight and isn't done. // Fiddle around with getting GCC 4.1 installed and configured first...
;-)
emerge -eav system
emerge -eav world
This takes a LONG time, my friends.
Ironically, I was only in Gentoo so I could use it to backup my Dapper installation before upgrading to Edgy! Thanks to Gentoo, I've missed out on all of this hell.
The hard drive is indeed a shame, as my older MacBook Pro has a 7200rpm drive. That alone helps me avoid too much envy of the newer models.
And if you think your little arsenal of a dozen guns is going to stop the government if they want to get you, you're dreaming. Face it - with the spending on military and "defense", if the government is truly out to get you, you're dead.
In the meantime, your paranoid little arms cache will more likely be used to injure your own family, or a school shooting (despite precautions such as "gun safes" and the like).
I wrote a simple script that simply switches between wireless and wired networks automatically without disconnecting any of my existing connections on IRC and so on.
I plug in the Ethernet cable, a script automatically starts and disables wi-fi card, duplicates NIC settings from the wi-fi card (IP address and so on) then brings up Ethernet. My applications just continue running, still connected to servers and such. If I pull out the ethernet cable, Wi-fi starts up, connects to the relevant network (if it's there) and my applications still aren't disconnected from anything.
This is really useful for me when I need to move around, but every now and then, I need to connect to a wired network so I can do network intensive tasks quickly, such as speedy backups, huge file copies, low latency network gaming, conference calling (works fine over wi-fi, but artifacts sometimes occur).
Mac OS X does this automatically, without needing that little script you wrote. Just give both interfaces the same IP information, and it will seamlessly switch to whichever is higher in the list of connections.
Once again, all kinds of power, and a GUI that makes it trivial to use.
The other thing is, whenever I need to use a scanner, tablet, Bluetooth dongle, wi-fi card -- anything. I can just plug it in, and it works, no need to download drivers, configure the thing. It just works almost instantly. Now, MacOSX? I find a lot of hardware doesn't "just work" on that, if it works at all. I have a Bluetooth dongle that crashes the OS, but works fine on Windows and Linux.
Not exactly persuasive, since it's personal experience. My experience has been that pretty much anything that's USB or Firewire just works, including such dongles, serial adapters, modems, printers, etc. Most PCI/AGP/PCI-Express works as well, although that is more spotty. A lot of that is thanks to class drivers, and a lot is thanks to open source (CUPS and Gimp-Print, for instance).
At the same time, I can sit here and spin tales of how my MegaRAID adapter in my server wasn't recognized by several Linux install CD's, then was broken in the kernel for a few versions, and when I finally switched to an IBM ServeRAID 3L, it wasn't supported by Windows XP!
In 20 years of using the Mac and 10 years of Windows and Linux experience, I'd say you're most likely to get something to work with full functionality on Windows. You may have problems and conflicts, but full feature support is a priority. You're most likely to get most functionality on Mac OS X. Some things are only partially supported (printer or scanner features, for instance), and there are occasional devices that don't work (video cards needing Mac-specific firmware - why is that?). As for Linux, all I can say is it's very hit or miss, distro to distro, version to version. Things break much more often on Linux. It might just need some new package or config tweak, but running a system update (synaptic, yum, emerge, etc) is sometimes like russian roulette. I backup my Linux system fully before applying updates - I don't need to with OS X or Windows.
All this does is give you Darwin. Its hardly a "hack" - just compiling Darwin/x86, which you've been able to do with Apple's blessing for years (save a brief interlude when kernel sources weren't ready yet).
Now if they get around the binary signing on critical GUI components (Finder, WindowServer, etc) then I'll be more impressed.
But it would apply to companies wanting to use it within US borders, wouldn't it? Given the multinational reach of companies these days, I see this as a major stumbling block. Also, considering the amount of reciprocity the US has with other economic trading partners, I would expect this to largely quash it in many other countries as well. If too much of a market is lost due to such legal ramifications, it still won't be realisticly useful.
No, I don't agree with the law. But I'm seeing if this can feasibly work within the current legal structure.
"forming a dark vortex large enough to engulf two-thirds of the United States."
I'd like to know when this will happen so I can move to, say, Canada.
I'd get a move on, since it's already engulfed 50% of the US as of 2004...
"Unfortunately it's often pro-Linux people (rather than just random press idiots) who promote this world domination crap. We need to realize that we've got a great platform, it works for us, and it's continuing to improve and work for even more people. The world domination and "ready for desktop" talk is tiresome and it just makes us look stupid."
Unfortunately, that's where you run into the great schism in Linux - those who use and promote it as a political agenda (GNU), and those who use it as good technology (Linux). Idealists vs pragmatists; you'll never win that one.
If you're a developer, you can easily set the boot time arguments to log to the screen. Meanwhile, panic information is logged, so you ca always get at it post-mortem.
For end users, a bunch of hexadecimal won't mean squat. Telling them to reboot in a non-scary way is a Good Thing.
Crossover will not survive in corporations when Parallels is around. Why support something that might 90% work when you can just run Windows in Parallels and be done with it?
Never underestimate support costs and their influence on corporate policy.
Most Mac users do not run AV, do not shutdown services, and run with wide-open wifi and bluetooth settings.
No viruses, check. No services running on a default install, check. Airport doesn't join unknown networks by default and Bluetooth off by default, check.
Mac OS X as an operating system is not secure - nothing is. It's default settings, however, are. Name one remote attack vector on a default system and get back to me.
Respected and intelligent people have offered huge incentives for something as simple as a blackbox presentation of the exploit, with no technical details, and have not had their generous offer accepted. Apple has said pont-blank they have not been contacted in any way regarding the exploit, despite the bloggings of being "leaned on hard by Apple". The "security experts" keep changing their story, from something that impacts Apple's drivers and hardware, to something that only hits third party hardware/drivers, to something that only might hit third-party drivers/hardware.
Show any evidence whatsoever to a reliable third party and I'll pay some attention. Until that point, they have utterly no credibility.
Have you seen what they've come up with lately?
*shudder*
I'll take Spock and Bones' "witty reparte" over that any day...