I was talking about a hypothetical extended VFAT (see GGGP). If we already add symlinks on top of VFAT by using special files and add journaling by similar means, we can as well have the VFS transparently handle large files by splitting them up into fragments. There's no implementation of that yet (and, having read the WP article on exFAT, there probably won't be as exFAT already addresses the large file issue and will probably be FAT32's successor).
Correction: OS X does not actually support ext3. There's a third-party driver that supports ext2, but you can't actually count on write support or stability. Under OS X I'd recommend VMWare player (Virtual PC on PPC Macs) and a Linux VM plus NFS or Samba.
No problem. Large files are transparently split up by the VFS. While you see "LargeVideo.avi", someone without the VFS would see "LargeVideo.avi._1" through "LargeVideo.avi._N". That's suboptimal, but it allows for large files while maintaining mountability on non-supporting systems.
I know it would be hideously complex and expensive, but maybe someone should invent a chip that transparently converts between an internal file system and ext3/HFS+/NTFS. The OS mounts the disk and the chip determines which FS is wanted (this step probably doesn't actually work) and presents the internal FS as the target FS. The advantage would be that the device is sharable between the three biggest OSes; the disadvantage would be that the internal FS would need to not only incorporate all functionality the three public FSes support but also implement stuff like fsck etc. with public-FS-specific functionality as well.
The alternative would be to get a free FS out the door and convince Microsoft and Apple to include it. Which makes the hardware translator the best feasible option.
Make that "read". At least for me (G4 iBook/Tiger/HDD via USB), ext2ifx refuses to write to the filesystem at all; even fsck can't actually mmake any changes (which means that once a filesystem is not unmounted cleanly you can never mount it again until a Linux or Win box has examined it).
I found that part rather pitiable, too... Not only did they have to buy an electric security system but also a dog. A dog! OH LORD, WHY WON'T YOU HAVE MERCY ON THEIR SOULS!
I would suggest that this is because Fink is too slow with upgrades, not because there's something wrong with the design. (I do think there's something wrong with the design, though; the GUI is nowhere near simple enough to replace app bundles.)
Seeing that Fink allows the user to build all packages from source it's not quite easy to see why you can't tell it to get over the fact that you're not using its favourite GCC build and just compile itself. They can not-support systems without XCode 2.2.1 all they want, but there should at least be an option to force the installation, ABI issues be damned.
As for USE flags vs. tiny packages: Okay, one could have tiny packages for everything, but I rather like the fact that (e.g.) you can just globally define USE="-doc" and can avoid any documentation being built. Sure, you could do the same with tiny packages, but in the end it's just the difference between a setting defining which subpackage gets installed or a setting defining how a package is configured. A binary-default Portage could just use the USE flag as an instruction to download a certain binary patch and apply it to the package archive before installation.
If Apple were to, say, pick up Fink -- or Apt, or Portage, or anything -- and develop a nice, slick GUI for it, have Software Update use it, and make it possible to add third-party repositories, then this problem wouldn't exist.
Note that this is rather hard to get right. If Apple don't do it exactly right, they might end up with a RedHat-like system (ie. any system upgrade having a chance of completely hosing the system by breaking third- and even first-party packages).
What's more, having software registered with Apple doesn't seem to be a big deal. Considering the above, it doesn't even have to be Apple. And considering that just about everything Mac is on VersionTracker somewhere, it seems people actually welcome registering their software with a third party if it means they might have more users.
True, but some people don't trust big corporations to be impartial when it comes to software distribution.
Worse, some open source versions come in.dmg.gz, which adds a third step, and a third temporary file you have to delete on your own.
It's hardly Apple's fault that some people either don't understand that.dmg is already compressed or are not capable to tell their server to send.dmg as something other than text/plain. Putting AddType application/x-apple-diskimage dmg into an.htaccess file is not rocket science.
As for "prompting whether they want to install": Sure, that'd work. I still prefer the simplicity of app bundles, though. With self-updating capabilities becoming more and more pervasive in the Mac world (even though I agree that having a central API for that would be nice) the drawbacks are rather small, at least as far as I am concerned.
An official package manager for traditional *nix apps would be nice, but Fink (essentially Apt for OS X, btw) actually comes close there. Fink's big weakness is that they take their binary approach too serious - currently my Fink is unusable because I don't have the exact build of the GCC it requires and installing said version would require me to download a 900 MiB archive from Apple in order to do a downgrade. Portage is far superior to Fink, but unfortunately the Gentoo package maintainers don't give a shit about Prefixed Portage, which is the special version of Portage used for OSes that aren't Gentoo Linux; thus, Portage has only a handful of working packages. When I'll set up my Leopard box I'm going to see how good Mac Ports is. I tried it before and wasn't impressed, but I hear they have improved.
Yeah, an official package manager would be nice. Not Fink-based, though. Not everyone wants to join the Apple Developer Connection so they can install GnuCash. Maybe a Ports/Portage variant that defaults to using binary packages. That way semi-casual users get their shell apps and power users get the power of USE flags.
As for global config settings being files: Same with OS X. OS X prefers property lists over dotfiles, but the end result is still the same.
As for app bundles being wasteful compared to Linux-style global dependencies: Agreed. However, that way native OS X apps can avoid some issues like two apps demanding specific versions of a library that can't be slotted (granted, that is less common these days). When I can choose between an app bundle and installing the same app via Portage/Fink, I choose the bundle; less issues that way and usually the bundled libraries don't eat up much space. Both Portage/OS X and Fink can be quite capricious, especially when you use both in order to overcome the holes in their package trees.
Also, global dependencies only work when the packages appear in the package tree. OS X being a platform with less open source stuff you'd either need to have every program come in its own package file that defines a new branch of the package tree (hello, RPM) or have every program registered with Apple. Both aren't nearly as convenient as drag-and-drop application bundles.
As for uninstallation being difficult: Yup, that could be improved. Making uninstallation routines mandatory for.pkgs (or providing an own standard uninstaller) would solve the problem, as.pkgs are "saved" to/Library/Receipts after installation.
Compare that to Linux, or even Windows -- add/remove programs, click "uninstall". Done.
You forgot "and hunt around for whatever crap it left behind". Neither Windows' uninstall dialog nor any Linux package manager will clean up everything for you, especially not configuration settings. They usually don't even know that such settings exist as they just maintain a list of all installed files. So yes, using the uninstall dialog or the package manager's uninstall function is 100% equivalent to deleting the application bundle.
Add to that the fact that any changes made to third-party configuration files (like an X extension changing/etx/X11/xorg.conf) are likely to persist as well and you end up with a similar situation on all OSes. Clean uninstallation is not common, nowhere.
Linux, Fidel Castro, the communist leader that has been in office for ages, just refuses to resign or die and points nukes at Windows from time to time.
Don't confuse those with telecommunications lines! What your pictures show are the overland lines that form the long-range backbones of the electric grid. Those have nothing to do with the last mile or (usually) telecommunication - they end in transformation facilities outside the town; the individual houses are connected underground. Phone and fiber lines are underground as well. There still are a couple laat-mile phone masts in some exceptionally backwater places, but (at least in Germany) they are quickly dying out. I, personally, haven't seen one since the early nineties.
Except for the fact that a lot of movies are based on PD'd works. "Escape from LA" shows many parallels to Dante's Inferno. "Romeo Must Die" is obvious. There's a number of remakes of "The Time Machine".
And no, if some old Spiderman issues would be PD'd they wouldn't have made that movie without paying Marvel becauase a) newer Spidey comics are copyrighted and b) Spidey is most likely trademarked. So it doesn't matter that The Amazing Spider-Man #14 would be no longer copyrighted because the movie is not about The Amazing Spider-Man #14 but about a trademarked figure.
Derivative works based upon a work already in the Public Domain are themselves in the Public Domain and cannot be copyrighted.
Problematic. That would essentially mean that copyright does not apply to music as pretty much all music can be traced to preexisting music. You'd have to really relax the definition of "derived work" in order to make that one work.
This is true, if we don't have privacy. Otherwise, you're goiong to have to explain why the pentagon was hit, why we are missing two towers in Manhatan, and why except for chance we would have lost Congress.
Because, even though you did have government agencies collecting data about people, certain people were unable to actually react to a threat that they already knew about. Privacy is not a binary decision.
If we have privacy, we don't need to attack the military (its pointless to do that anyway). And if there was an uprising against a real Hitler-type dictator, most of the military would probably refuse to do anything anyway.
Because there's nothing the government can do wrong except violating your privacy? Sorry, but there might be a need to take out the government without them having spied on you beforehand. A government can become dangerous without being obviously fascist.
And please remember that those UAVs are not sentient or something. A citizen still controls them.
But it's a lot easier to kill a little man you see on a screen than to kill someone right in front of you. You don't even need to see his mangled corpse afterwards; some of those UAVs are single-use.
Remember, we're talking about Europe here. Over here "rural" means "more than thirty kilometers from the next big city". Also, we usually have the last mile undergound anyway, so hanging fiber is not an issue.
Please don't post a long reply explaining how renice differs from this cheat thing. It isn't necessary.
Too late.
renice and cheat are pretty different, actually. I mean, they have a Levenshtein difference of 6. With the longer of the two only having six characters that makes them completely different beasts.
<Insert ten more paragraphs detailing how these strings are differing, involving hash comparisons and an in-depth discussion of the Levenshtein algorithm, here>
Hey, they were guilty of the crime of being, having been or being related to a Jew. That was a pretty serious crime back then. Of course it usually wasn't their decision and they already were before it was outlawed, but the crime was not becoming a Jew, it was being (etc.) a Jew, which they did at the time so they were clearly violating the law!
So if you object to your government declaring anything you are or do illegal and you can't even hide the fact due to no privacy: Tough luck, lawbreaker.
Yes, that's a damn cynical stance to take. And it is true, disgusting as it is. If you don't allow for the possibility of unethical laws (as many I-have-nothing-to-hide people do) what happened to the Jews was perfectly justifiable*. Abuse of power is common and it could hit you just as well as anyone else - and not only through the government but also through corporations etc.
* Now that's a last half of a sentence I don't want to get quoted out of context on...
Slashdot Mirror
I was talking about a hypothetical extended VFAT (see GGGP). If we already add symlinks on top of VFAT by using special files and add journaling by similar means, we can as well have the VFS transparently handle large files by splitting them up into fragments. There's no implementation of that yet (and, having read the WP article on exFAT, there probably won't be as exFAT already addresses the large file issue and will probably be FAT32's successor).
Correction: OS X does not actually support ext3. There's a third-party driver that supports ext2, but you can't actually count on write support or stability. Under OS X I'd recommend VMWare player (Virtual PC on PPC Macs) and a Linux VM plus NFS or Samba.
No problem. Large files are transparently split up by the VFS. While you see "LargeVideo.avi", someone without the VFS would see "LargeVideo.avi._1" through "LargeVideo.avi._N". That's suboptimal, but it allows for large files while maintaining mountability on non-supporting systems.
I know it would be hideously complex and expensive, but maybe someone should invent a chip that transparently converts between an internal file system and ext3/HFS+/NTFS. The OS mounts the disk and the chip determines which FS is wanted (this step probably doesn't actually work) and presents the internal FS as the target FS. The advantage would be that the device is sharable between the three biggest OSes; the disadvantage would be that the internal FS would need to not only incorporate all functionality the three public FSes support but also implement stuff like fsck etc. with public-FS-specific functionality as well.
The alternative would be to get a free FS out the door and convince Microsoft and Apple to include it. Which makes the hardware translator the best feasible option.
Make that "read". At least for me (G4 iBook/Tiger/HDD via USB), ext2ifx refuses to write to the filesystem at all; even fsck can't actually mmake any changes (which means that once a filesystem is not unmounted cleanly you can never mount it again until a Linux or Win box has examined it).
I found that part rather pitiable, too... Not only did they have to buy an electric security system but also a dog. A dog! OH LORD, WHY WON'T YOU HAVE MERCY ON THEIR SOULS!
I would suggest that this is because Fink is too slow with upgrades, not because there's something wrong with the design. (I do think there's something wrong with the design, though; the GUI is nowhere near simple enough to replace app bundles.)
Seeing that Fink allows the user to build all packages from source it's not quite easy to see why you can't tell it to get over the fact that you're not using its favourite GCC build and just compile itself. They can not-support systems without XCode 2.2.1 all they want, but there should at least be an option to force the installation, ABI issues be damned.
As for USE flags vs. tiny packages: Okay, one could have tiny packages for everything, but I rather like the fact that (e.g.) you can just globally define USE="-doc" and can avoid any documentation being built. Sure, you could do the same with tiny packages, but in the end it's just the difference between a setting defining which subpackage gets installed or a setting defining how a package is configured. A binary-default Portage could just use the USE flag as an instruction to download a certain binary patch and apply it to the package archive before installation.
If Apple were to, say, pick up Fink -- or Apt, or Portage, or anything -- and develop a nice, slick GUI for it, have Software Update use it, and make it possible to add third-party repositories, then this problem wouldn't exist.
.dmg.gz, which adds a third step, and a third temporary file you have to delete on your own.
.dmg is already compressed or are not capable to tell their server to send .dmg as something other than text/plain. Putting AddType application/x-apple-diskimage dmg into an .htaccess file is not rocket science.
Note that this is rather hard to get right. If Apple don't do it exactly right, they might end up with a RedHat-like system (ie. any system upgrade having a chance of completely hosing the system by breaking third- and even first-party packages).
What's more, having software registered with Apple doesn't seem to be a big deal. Considering the above, it doesn't even have to be Apple. And considering that just about everything Mac is on VersionTracker somewhere, it seems people actually welcome registering their software with a third party if it means they might have more users.
True, but some people don't trust big corporations to be impartial when it comes to software distribution.
Worse, some open source versions come in
It's hardly Apple's fault that some people either don't understand that
As for "prompting whether they want to install": Sure, that'd work. I still prefer the simplicity of app bundles, though. With self-updating capabilities becoming more and more pervasive in the Mac world (even though I agree that having a central API for that would be nice) the drawbacks are rather small, at least as far as I am concerned.
An official package manager for traditional *nix apps would be nice, but Fink (essentially Apt for OS X, btw) actually comes close there. Fink's big weakness is that they take their binary approach too serious - currently my Fink is unusable because I don't have the exact build of the GCC it requires and installing said version would require me to download a 900 MiB archive from Apple in order to do a downgrade. Portage is far superior to Fink, but unfortunately the Gentoo package maintainers don't give a shit about Prefixed Portage, which is the special version of Portage used for OSes that aren't Gentoo Linux; thus, Portage has only a handful of working packages. When I'll set up my Leopard box I'm going to see how good Mac Ports is. I tried it before and wasn't impressed, but I hear they have improved.
Yeah, an official package manager would be nice. Not Fink-based, though. Not everyone wants to join the Apple Developer Connection so they can install GnuCash. Maybe a Ports/Portage variant that defaults to using binary packages. That way semi-casual users get their shell apps and power users get the power of USE flags.
As for global config settings being files: Same with OS X. OS X prefers property lists over dotfiles, but the end result is still the same.
.pkgs (or providing an own standard uninstaller) would solve the problem, as .pkgs are "saved" to /Library/Receipts after installation.
As for app bundles being wasteful compared to Linux-style global dependencies: Agreed. However, that way native OS X apps can avoid some issues like two apps demanding specific versions of a library that can't be slotted (granted, that is less common these days). When I can choose between an app bundle and installing the same app via Portage/Fink, I choose the bundle; less issues that way and usually the bundled libraries don't eat up much space. Both Portage/OS X and Fink can be quite capricious, especially when you use both in order to overcome the holes in their package trees.
Also, global dependencies only work when the packages appear in the package tree. OS X being a platform with less open source stuff you'd either need to have every program come in its own package file that defines a new branch of the package tree (hello, RPM) or have every program registered with Apple. Both aren't nearly as convenient as drag-and-drop application bundles.
As for uninstallation being difficult: Yup, that could be improved. Making uninstallation routines mandatory for
Compare that to Linux, or even Windows -- add/remove programs, click "uninstall". Done.
/etx/X11/xorg.conf) are likely to persist as well and you end up with a similar situation on all OSes. Clean uninstallation is not common, nowhere.
You forgot "and hunt around for whatever crap it left behind". Neither Windows' uninstall dialog nor any Linux package manager will clean up everything for you, especially not configuration settings. They usually don't even know that such settings exist as they just maintain a list of all installed files. So yes, using the uninstall dialog or the package manager's uninstall function is 100% equivalent to deleting the application bundle.
Add to that the fact that any changes made to third-party configuration files (like an X extension changing
Mark Erickson, is that you?
Linux, Fidel Castro, the communist leader that has been in office for ages, just refuses to resign or die and points nukes at Windows from time to time.
Don't confuse those with telecommunications lines! What your pictures show are the overland lines that form the long-range backbones of the electric grid. Those have nothing to do with the last mile or (usually) telecommunication - they end in transformation facilities outside the town; the individual houses are connected underground. Phone and fiber lines are underground as well. There still are a couple laat-mile phone masts in some exceptionally backwater places, but (at least in Germany) they are quickly dying out. I, personally, haven't seen one since the early nineties.
Please, spare us the technical diagrams.
how do they tell the difference?
If you ripped it yourself the file is in WMA format with the appropriate ownership information associated. Everything else is from filesharing.
Come on, do you really believe Microsoft will not use this to promote their own formats?
No, they just didn't let their wallets do the thinking for them. They actually had those old-fashioned whatchacallit.. ideals.
And now they're all dead.
Except for the fact that a lot of movies are based on PD'd works. "Escape from LA" shows many parallels to Dante's Inferno. "Romeo Must Die" is obvious. There's a number of remakes of "The Time Machine".
And no, if some old Spiderman issues would be PD'd they wouldn't have made that movie without paying Marvel becauase a) newer Spidey comics are copyrighted and b) Spidey is most likely trademarked. So it doesn't matter that The Amazing Spider-Man #14 would be no longer copyrighted because the movie is not about The Amazing Spider-Man #14 but about a trademarked figure.
Derivative works based upon a work already in the Public Domain are themselves in the Public Domain and cannot be copyrighted.
Problematic. That would essentially mean that copyright does not apply to music as pretty much all music can be traced to preexisting music. You'd have to really relax the definition of "derived work" in order to make that one work.
This is true, if we don't have privacy. Otherwise, you're goiong to have to explain why the pentagon was hit, why we are missing two towers in Manhatan, and why except for chance we would have lost Congress.
Because, even though you did have government agencies collecting data about people, certain people were unable to actually react to a threat that they already knew about. Privacy is not a binary decision.
If we have privacy, we don't need to attack the military (its pointless to do that anyway). And if there was an uprising against a real Hitler-type dictator, most of the military would probably refuse to do anything anyway.
Because there's nothing the government can do wrong except violating your privacy? Sorry, but there might be a need to take out the government without them having spied on you beforehand. A government can become dangerous without being obviously fascist.
And please remember that those UAVs are not sentient or something. A citizen still controls them.
But it's a lot easier to kill a little man you see on a screen than to kill someone right in front of you. You don't even need to see his mangled corpse afterwards; some of those UAVs are single-use.
That's not called "falling asleep", that's called "having an epileptic seizure".
Well, the UK didn't really want to be associated with continental Europe for a long time...
Remember, we're talking about Europe here. Over here "rural" means "more than thirty kilometers from the next big city". Also, we usually have the last mile undergound anyway, so hanging fiber is not an issue.
Interesting. Got more informatin on how the OS X scheduler does its thing?
Please don't post a long reply explaining how renice differs from this cheat thing. It isn't necessary.
Too late.
renice and cheat are pretty different, actually. I mean, they have a Levenshtein difference of 6. With the longer of the two only having six characters that makes them completely different beasts.
<Insert ten more paragraphs detailing how these strings are differing, involving hash comparisons and an in-depth discussion of the Levenshtein algorithm, here>
Hey, they were guilty of the crime of being, having been or being related to a Jew. That was a pretty serious crime back then. Of course it usually wasn't their decision and they already were before it was outlawed, but the crime was not becoming a Jew, it was being (etc.) a Jew, which they did at the time so they were clearly violating the law!
So if you object to your government declaring anything you are or do illegal and you can't even hide the fact due to no privacy: Tough luck, lawbreaker.
Yes, that's a damn cynical stance to take. And it is true, disgusting as it is. If you don't allow for the possibility of unethical laws (as many I-have-nothing-to-hide people do) what happened to the Jews was perfectly justifiable*. Abuse of power is common and it could hit you just as well as anyone else - and not only through the government but also through corporations etc.
* Now that's a last half of a sentence I don't want to get quoted out of context on...