Mosfet.org (homepage of the head theme/style developer for KDE) was updated a couple days ago after a long quiet period. Anyone interested in KDE/Qt themes should read what Mosfet has to say.
Among other things, he talks about pros and cons of both GTK and KDE themes. He also the future of KDE styles up to and beyond the KDE2 release, and gives his take on recent XFree86 developments.
One developer has started a port of the standard monolithic kernel to first-generation (NuBus) PowerMacs. There is documentation on his web page, and penguinppc.org has a US mirror of the files.
Or if you want a really stripped-down system, just run Darwin, the open source BSD operating system upon which MacOS X is built.
I installed Darwin on my own box a few months ago. It works fine for running Apache and other server software. I didn't have the time to hunt down good docs for NetInfo just so I could manage accounts properly, so I went back to using Linux as soon as I was done playing around.
BeOS isn't even Unix-based (it aims at POSIX compliance, but lack the Unix heritage of BSD, MacOS X, or even Linux), but most popular free non-X11 Unix programs have been compiled for BeOS. GeekGadgets even provides a thorough GNU platfom for Be users. For just a simple recompile or occasionally some minimal porting work (made easy by autoconf et al), BeOS users get a slew of standard, well-known and time-tested programs. Several less trivial Unix->BeOS ports have been done too, including some GUI software.
The basic POSIX underpinnings of BeOS mean that the cost of porting the new platform is fairly low, so ports have been both rapid and widespread. All of the same applies to MacOS X.
In fact, Kuro5hin encourages anonymous browsing and posting. Anonymous messages on Scoop sites like K5 are posted under the username "Anonymous Hero." Both stories and comments can be posted anonymously, though only logged-in users can vote in the polls and moderation queue.
Well, Slash and Scoop and mod_virgule are all free and are all written in Perl, so there's plenty to start with for anyone who wants to use features from all three.
Whoops, scoop.kuro5hin.org seems to be down right now, not surprisingly. You can still the Scoop project on sourceforge, though.
Much of the recent development work on LyX has been focused on GUI independence. Efforts to port to other toolkits have mostly been put on hold until it is fully supported by the main trunk of the code. The goal is to give developers a clean and supported way to maintain multiple GUIs under different toolkits/platforms, while still sharing as much code as possible (ala AbiWord).
As for existing ports, KLyX (an aging but functional KDE port) was already mentioned. There is also a more recent Windows port.
Re:Not Mac OS X, just Darwin
on
MacOSX and X11
·
· Score: 1
Wrong again. Carmack led the X11 port for MacOS X Server. As far as I know he hasn't been involved in the more-recent Darwin port of XFree86, though his work on the OS X Server version may have been utilized.
When you want to use crypto without anyone knowing, you use steganography ("hidden writing"). For example, there are free programs (like steghide) that will hide an encrypted message inside an image file or other large binary file. The resulting file will appear almost identical to the original image, but with the correct key and algorithm the encrypted message will be revealed.
You can also use decoy tactics -- sending a lot of fake encrypted messages in addition to your real ones. Some of my mathematician friends' ideas of a good time involve sending large blocks of white noise to suspicious overseas addresses. "Gotta keep the NSA on their toes." This has the added advantage of defeating traffic analysis (sometimes it's enough just to know when and where messages are sent, without knowing their contents).
And of course, if all traffic is encrypted then encryption won't be grounds for suspicion. This is a major goal of Phillip Zimmerman, who said in an interview:
There's safety in numbers. An argument could be made that as a matter of solidarity with the rest of the population you should encrypt your email.
If we lived in a society where everyone sent their messages on postcards instead of envelopes--I'm talking about written communications on paper--then anyone who decided to use an envelope would draw suspicion because while everyone else was using a postcard this guy decided to use an envelope, therefore he must have something to hide.
Fortunately we don't have that kind of social expectation. There's nothing suspicious about putting your mail in envelopes. So there should also be nothing suspicious about encrypting your electronic mail.
Jabber is client-server based in the same way that e-mail is. Anyone can set up a server, and the servers are indepent (like netnews and email, and unlike IRC or Napster). If you don't trust anyone else to run a server, run one yourself.
A person's jabber ID has the same form as an e-mail address. For example, if you were using a Jabber account on a server run by your school, other Jabber users would contact you as jdoe@jabber.state.edu.
There is no one central authority that users must trust, or that is vulnerable to legal, physical or network attacks. Again, this works just like the e-mail system you know and love. It's not "distributed" down to the individual client level --- that would be highly impractical for the needs of an IM network (including presence sensing for hundreds of kilo-users) --- but it is definitely decentralized.
what's so bad about not being able to listen to the movie in Japanese?
Two reasons? The script and the voice acting.
I have seen Mononoke Hime in its original Japanese, in a fan-subbed English translation, and with the Princess Mononoke's dubbed translation.
First, I strongly disagree with some of Neil Gaiman's decisions in "adapting" the English translation. Attempting to make the film seem less foreign to North American audiences, he completely lost much of the feel of the original script. The other English translations I've read retain Japanese names for gods and spirits. Gaiman decided to change tatarigami to "demon monster," which sounds stupid after several repetitions, and shishigami became "Great God of the Forest," which was just incredibly clumsy. These are only the most prominent examples.
The translation also changed some blocks of dialogue to provide background info on some of the Nipponese history and culture in the film. Thanks, but no thanks. I'd prefer to get the original dialogue and not be treated like an ignorant gaijin.
Then there's the voice acting. The talent featured in the Japanese voice track were among the best voice actors I have ever heard. The voice of Ashitaka in particular was really the essence of his character, and for me that made the movie. I can't describe it; you'll have to hear the performance for yourself.
The U.S. has no real professional vocal talent (and even the best-known are poorly paid, such as the actors on The Simpsons), so as usual the American version was done by Hollywood screen actors not trained in voice acting. Their performances were good, but no match for the acting in the original. Many of the characters (cough - Moro) were severely changed by the acting alone. Actors with noticeable American or English accents (Billy Bob Thornton, Minnie Driver, Claire Danes) were especially out of place in this story, which was so rooted in the place and culture of Japan. A monk from ancient Japan should not use dialect from the Southern United States.
As an added slap in the face, I believe they also decided to translate the music. Why?!
For reference, here is an excellent annotated English/Japanese script. Sorry, I don't know if or where you can find a copy of the Princess Mononoke adaptation.
Jabber is a non-centralized free IM system. It is based on open standards, with free (GPL) implementations. The Jabber protocol has been submitted to the IETF instant messenging group as a proposed standard.
The protocol and server just hit 1.0; this is a real, working system. Good clients are available for X11 and Win32, and are in progress on other platforms.
Jabber is interoperable with AIM, ICQ, and (soon, at least) IRC and e-mail. Interoperability is server-side, so that clients don't need any changes to support new protocols.
Speaking of the Peace Corps, this seems like an appropriate place to mention the Geek Corps, a program to help volunteer computer nerds work on connectivity in developing countries. They're starting with a volunteer program in Ghana this fall.
My school's computer science department and the staff of their student-run servers barred all plaintext logins (telnet, FTP, rlogin, rsh) to their systems over a year ago. We wish that admins of the other servers on campus would do the same.
The department had continued problems, though, with students too lazy to install ssh clients on their own desktops who would telnet into one of the other campus Unix machines and then ssh into the CS servers. Of course, this completely defeats the security. Warnings and reprimands didn't work; the staff eventually had to implement automatic filtering to stop people from doing this.
Poorly-behaved users will make any security scheme worthless. The most important thing IT departments can do to improve their security is help users understand why it's important, and what they can do to help. Many students don't realize that when they leave their own box insecure or broadcast their own password over the network, they are not only endangering themselves. A single weak point on a LAN endangers everyone, and makes it easier for an attacker to breach every other box on the network. Keeping your own accounts and connections secure is part of being a good neighbor to those whose systems you share.
It's true that Apple doesn't have a 'BIOS', but they do have undocumented chips which you would need to engineer around.
Good point. I was thinking from the point of view of porting alternative operating systems to run on Apple's hardware, while the thread was actually about building alternative hardware to run Apple's OS.
Yes, since Apple abandoned CHRP/PREP, their motherboards use custom PCI controllers, power management units, and other proprietary chips. This effectively prevents other companies from building their own boxes that MacOS will support.
On the other hand, Darwin (the kernel for OS X Server and the upcoming MacOS X) is open source, which should allow alternative hardware manufacturers to port the OS to new hardware themselves -- assuming anyone has the motivation to do so.
On top of that, you would need to include a retail copy of MacOS with every machine, even if Apple would sell you a copy and the licence would allow you to install it.
This, on the other hand, is something that only Apple (read: Steve Jobs) could fix.
Sorry, Macs don't have anything called "BIOS." On most PowerPC and related architectures (including PowerMacs, IBM workstations and servers, and others), Open Firmware performs most of the functions of the PC BIOS. OF is an open standard that is not controlled by Apple. Of course, Linux and NetBSD developers have had to deal with Apple's various poor OF implementations, but that's a different story...
What you're thinking of is the Mac ROM, which used to be a megabyte or two of low-level code stored in a ROM chip on the mainboard. These were copyrighted by Apple, and were necessary for MacOS to run. This meant that PowerMac cloners had to license the ROM from Apple, and that MacOS emulators and virtual machines (Mac-on-linux, SheepShaver et al) needed a ROM image in order to run.
Since MacOS 8.6 however, the "ROM" actually resides in a system file loaded into memory straight from disk. New Macs being manufactured don't even have a traditional style "MacOS ROM" chip. Programs like MOL boot MacOS just fine using nothing but the ROM file from the install CD.
My primary Debian box is an iMac DV, and I also run Linux on an old Power Computing PPC clone. Even so, I wouldn't recommend the iBook to most Linux users, at least not right now.
First, the support for the hardware is lacking, and probably a couple months away from being comparably to PC or older Mac notebooks (these problems apply to the latest-generation PowerBook as well). The Linux kernel doesn't support the power management chips in the iBook, and battery life suffers tremendously. Crucial patches to support the graphics hardware exist, but haven't been integrated into the upstream Xfree and kernel sources yet (actually, the latest 2.2.17pre and 2.4.0-test1-ac kernels may have the support in them). The coolest feature, AirPort, isn't supported at all yet, though able programmers are working on it.
Second, the iBook lacks a lot of critical features that a typical Linux user will probably expect from a computer. Even if you don't mind the builtin 800x600 screen (which admittedly is a very high-quality LCD), you'll be disappointed to find you can't add an external monitor. Upgradability in general is not good. This is mostly due to Apple's efforts to keep the iBook from eating into sales of their pricier PowerBook G3. By keeping features out of the iBook, they've created a notebook that'll meet the needs of many students and home users, while forcing computer professionals to stick with the higher-margin PowerBook.
On the other hand, I do recommend the PowerBook to Linux portable users who can afford it (not me!). Sure, the newest generation has some of the same issues with regard to kernel support, but those will be fixed soon enough, and this baby is a machine that you'll be keeping for a long time. AirPort and FireWire drivers are both in the works. All around, it's a good machine -- DVD, nice display, firewire, USB, 100 Mbit ethernet, (but kinda heavy). My friend runs Linux on his PB G3, and it's a really nice setup.
I have to wonder about these new fanless iMacs. I've seen the demo machines in stores, and I have to tell you, those suckers are hot to the touch.
Much of that heat is coming off of the CRT, which is a major heat source in any machine. The heat that does come from the other componentry rises pretty quickly to the top of the case. Feel the bottom of the next demo unit you see and you'll find that it's quite cool.
I do worry a bit about my iMac 350 when it's running Linux for too long, since the new power management unit isn't supported by the kernel yet, and the builtin monitor in the slot-loading models doesn't respond to standard vesa blanking. I can spin down the harddrive to reduce heat generation, however.
Slashdot Mirror
I also remember an old FAQ response from the Be website, shortly before the Be Book came out in print from O'Reilly:
The last machine I saw with dual PPCs had no problems with overheating...
Actually, Mosfet (AKA Daniel M. Duley) is male.
Among other things, he talks about pros and cons of both GTK and KDE themes. He also the future of KDE styles up to and beyond the KDE2 release, and gives his take on recent XFree86 developments.
Plus, the M18 builds for MacOS have those cool pinstripes in the Classic skin. ;-)
One developer has started a port of the standard monolithic kernel to first-generation (NuBus) PowerMacs. There is documentation on his web page, and penguinppc.org has a US mirror of the files.
I installed Darwin on my own box a few months ago. It works fine for running Apache and other server software. I didn't have the time to hunt down good docs for NetInfo just so I could manage accounts properly, so I went back to using Linux as soon as I was done playing around.
The basic POSIX underpinnings of BeOS mean that the cost of porting the new platform is fairly low, so ports have been both rapid and widespread. All of the same applies to MacOS X.
In fact, Kuro5hin encourages anonymous browsing and posting. Anonymous messages on Scoop sites like K5 are posted under the username "Anonymous Hero." Both stories and comments can be posted anonymously, though only logged-in users can vote in the polls and moderation queue.
Whoops, scoop.kuro5hin.org seems to be down right now, not surprisingly. You can still the Scoop project on sourceforge, though.
And I suppose we should hire executives as ops for popular IRC channels, too.
As for existing ports, KLyX (an aging but functional KDE port) was already mentioned. There is also a more recent Windows port.
Wrong again. Carmack led the X11 port for MacOS X Server. As far as I know he hasn't been involved in the more-recent Darwin port of XFree86, though his work on the OS X Server version may have been utilized.
You can also use decoy tactics -- sending a lot of fake encrypted messages in addition to your real ones. Some of my mathematician friends' ideas of a good time involve sending large blocks of white noise to suspicious overseas addresses. "Gotta keep the NSA on their toes." This has the added advantage of defeating traffic analysis (sometimes it's enough just to know when and where messages are sent, without knowing their contents).
And of course, if all traffic is encrypted then encryption won't be grounds for suspicion. This is a major goal of Phillip Zimmerman, who said in an interview:
There's also a very informative comment attached to the freshmeat announcement.
A person's jabber ID has the same form as an e-mail address. For example, if you were using a Jabber account on a server run by your school, other Jabber users would contact you as jdoe@jabber.state.edu.
There is no one central authority that users must trust, or that is vulnerable to legal, physical or network attacks. Again, this works just like the e-mail system you know and love. It's not "distributed" down to the individual client level --- that would be highly impractical for the needs of an IM network (including presence sensing for hundreds of kilo-users) --- but it is definitely decentralized.
Two reasons? The script and the voice acting.
I have seen Mononoke Hime in its original Japanese, in a fan-subbed English translation, and with the Princess Mononoke's dubbed translation.
First, I strongly disagree with some of Neil Gaiman's decisions in "adapting" the English translation. Attempting to make the film seem less foreign to North American audiences, he completely lost much of the feel of the original script. The other English translations I've read retain Japanese names for gods and spirits. Gaiman decided to change tatarigami to "demon monster," which sounds stupid after several repetitions, and shishigami became "Great God of the Forest," which was just incredibly clumsy. These are only the most prominent examples.
The translation also changed some blocks of dialogue to provide background info on some of the Nipponese history and culture in the film. Thanks, but no thanks. I'd prefer to get the original dialogue and not be treated like an ignorant gaijin.
Then there's the voice acting. The talent featured in the Japanese voice track were among the best voice actors I have ever heard. The voice of Ashitaka in particular was really the essence of his character, and for me that made the movie. I can't describe it; you'll have to hear the performance for yourself.
The U.S. has no real professional vocal talent (and even the best-known are poorly paid, such as the actors on The Simpsons), so as usual the American version was done by Hollywood screen actors not trained in voice acting. Their performances were good, but no match for the acting in the original. Many of the characters (cough - Moro) were severely changed by the acting alone. Actors with noticeable American or English accents (Billy Bob Thornton, Minnie Driver, Claire Danes) were especially out of place in this story, which was so rooted in the place and culture of Japan. A monk from ancient Japan should not use dialect from the Southern United States.
As an added slap in the face, I believe they also decided to translate the music. Why?!
For reference, here is an excellent annotated English/Japanese script. Sorry, I don't know if or where you can find a copy of the Princess Mononoke adaptation.
The protocol and server just hit 1.0; this is a real, working system. Good clients are available for X11 and Win32, and are in progress on other platforms.
Jabber is interoperable with AIM, ICQ, and (soon, at least) IRC and e-mail. Interoperability is server-side, so that clients don't need any changes to support new protocols.
Speaking of the Peace Corps, this seems like an appropriate place to mention the Geek Corps, a program to help volunteer computer nerds work on connectivity in developing countries. They're starting with a volunteer program in Ghana this fall.
The department had continued problems, though, with students too lazy to install ssh clients on their own desktops who would telnet into one of the other campus Unix machines and then ssh into the CS servers. Of course, this completely defeats the security. Warnings and reprimands didn't work; the staff eventually had to implement automatic filtering to stop people from doing this.
Poorly-behaved users will make any security scheme worthless. The most important thing IT departments can do to improve their security is help users understand why it's important, and what they can do to help. Many students don't realize that when they leave their own box insecure or broadcast their own password over the network, they are not only endangering themselves. A single weak point on a LAN endangers everyone, and makes it easier for an attacker to breach every other box on the network. Keeping your own accounts and connections secure is part of being a good neighbor to those whose systems you share.
- A simple, intuitive interface
- Robust design and reliable performance
- Lots of killer applications
- Portable hardware
- Easy maintenance and security
Clearly, this will be an excellent weapon in the war against Microsoft.Good point. I was thinking from the point of view of porting alternative operating systems to run on Apple's hardware, while the thread was actually about building alternative hardware to run Apple's OS.
Yes, since Apple abandoned CHRP/PREP, their motherboards use custom PCI controllers, power management units, and other proprietary chips. This effectively prevents other companies from building their own boxes that MacOS will support.
On the other hand, Darwin (the kernel for OS X Server and the upcoming MacOS X) is open source, which should allow alternative hardware manufacturers to port the OS to new hardware themselves -- assuming anyone has the motivation to do so.
On top of that, you would need to include a retail copy of MacOS with every machine, even if Apple would sell you a copy and the licence would allow you to install it.
This, on the other hand, is something that only Apple (read: Steve Jobs) could fix.
What you're thinking of is the Mac ROM, which used to be a megabyte or two of low-level code stored in a ROM chip on the mainboard. These were copyrighted by Apple, and were necessary for MacOS to run. This meant that PowerMac cloners had to license the ROM from Apple, and that MacOS emulators and virtual machines (Mac-on-linux, SheepShaver et al) needed a ROM image in order to run.
Since MacOS 8.6 however, the "ROM" actually resides in a system file loaded into memory straight from disk. New Macs being manufactured don't even have a traditional style "MacOS ROM" chip. Programs like MOL boot MacOS just fine using nothing but the ROM file from the install CD.
First, the support for the hardware is lacking, and probably a couple months away from being comparably to PC or older Mac notebooks (these problems apply to the latest-generation PowerBook as well). The Linux kernel doesn't support the power management chips in the iBook, and battery life suffers tremendously. Crucial patches to support the graphics hardware exist, but haven't been integrated into the upstream Xfree and kernel sources yet (actually, the latest 2.2.17pre and 2.4.0-test1-ac kernels may have the support in them). The coolest feature, AirPort, isn't supported at all yet, though able programmers are working on it.
Second, the iBook lacks a lot of critical features that a typical Linux user will probably expect from a computer. Even if you don't mind the builtin 800x600 screen (which admittedly is a very high-quality LCD), you'll be disappointed to find you can't add an external monitor. Upgradability in general is not good. This is mostly due to Apple's efforts to keep the iBook from eating into sales of their pricier PowerBook G3. By keeping features out of the iBook, they've created a notebook that'll meet the needs of many students and home users, while forcing computer professionals to stick with the higher-margin PowerBook.
On the other hand, I do recommend the PowerBook to Linux portable users who can afford it (not me!). Sure, the newest generation has some of the same issues with regard to kernel support, but those will be fixed soon enough, and this baby is a machine that you'll be keeping for a long time. AirPort and FireWire drivers are both in the works. All around, it's a good machine -- DVD, nice display, firewire, USB, 100 Mbit ethernet, (but kinda heavy). My friend runs Linux on his PB G3, and it's a really nice setup.
Much of that heat is coming off of the CRT, which is a major heat source in any machine. The heat that does come from the other componentry rises pretty quickly to the top of the case. Feel the bottom of the next demo unit you see and you'll find that it's quite cool.
I do worry a bit about my iMac 350 when it's running Linux for too long, since the new power management unit isn't supported by the kernel yet, and the builtin monitor in the slot-loading models doesn't respond to standard vesa blanking. I can spin down the harddrive to reduce heat generation, however.
(I run Debian on my iMac/350.)