it finally has a coherent LUA story and by default I can run all my apps with low priviledges.
So Vista may ship with a credible protection model, only 40 years after the party? I heard Windows described as the biggest beta test in history, but is it also the biggest and slowest game of catch-up?
Compare the cost/loss/impact of a single Windows worm/virus/whatever today with the total cost of all vulnerabilities ever discovered in SunOS and Solaris (heck, roll in VMS and all other flavours of vendor UNIX too)...
Apple did no such thing - they maintained a compatibility mode in the OS and more importantly kept the Carbon APIs around mostly complete so legacy code could be ported over very easily.
That's not quite the full picture.
Yes, the Classic 'compatibility mode' does suffer, in its own protected sandbox, from the same problems as the 'legacy' MacOS - no memory protection, no pre-emptive multitasking, limited permission system.
Applications compiled for the Carbon APIs on OS X certainly do not. They inherit all the modern advantages, performance and robustness of UNIX, and can't meaningfully be said to be suffering from a legacy tax. (In fact, until Cocoa paths gained attention post-10.0, Carbon applications were faster.)
Furthermore, as designed, the Carbon API is platform agnostic, and reduces supporting new hardware architectures such as Intel to little more than a recompile. But NEXTSTEP always was transparently portable, so Apple followers should not have been surprised...
They took concepts and the chief designer from VMS (who consequently produced his first operating system lemon) but not, as far as I know, any actual code. I suppose it is possible they may have had to license a few patents. According to Wikipedia, Cutler has 20.
Agreed. (Having played with a 8MP Canon Digital Rebel XT over the last few weeks - i.e. a decent consumer camera.)
Second, you say it's a "long way" off. Even if you needed 20Mpix to compete with good 35mm film profesionally developed, that's still a *short* way off.
Agreed. But I was talking about medium and large format photography. My other camera (Mamiya RB-67, 2 1/4") can easily achieve 150MP. 4x5" offers north of 250MP. Then there's 8x10", which is still being used (you do the math:) Digital equivalents are definitely a long way off.
Third, the *advantages* of digital are so huge, and so uncontested that *even* if digital could never reach the quality-level of film, everyone except a very few phanaticals would still use it.
The pro and consumer photographic markets have always been rather different (how many people buy Hasselblads for their family photos?); and I guess it's hard for non-professionals to get a grasp of the quality demanded by buyers of expensive commercial images. Most people probably don't realise that even 35mm is considered a very low quality format for many uses - and the quality difference between 35mm and 2 1/4mm is well understood by professionals. Digital's niche in pro work, to date, has been a cut-rate, cheap alternative, with a commensurate drop in quality.
Yes, there is 'pro' digital gear. Yes, it's very expensive. And no, it can't compete with pro film cameras in quality. But it can beat film in cost, convenience and rapid turnaround, plus eliminates the step of drum scanning - all of which makes pro digital perfect for high volume, studio work such as catalogues.
That's about right. I estimate it at 15-20. It's nice that the article summary repeated a fact that most people overlook: that digital is a long way from approaching medium- and large-format film. More details here.
they were reports which primarily defense industries were receiving from their contractors and, according to their rules, they had to send these reports to someone for review. This was something new for me. But when I saw these reports my eyes almost popped out of my head because this was wild nonsense. I saw that there were some absolutely ridiculous projects which contradicted all the principles of physics but claimed, at a minimum, to be discoveries.
... Soon after I attempted to somehow influence the ministry's policy, I suddenly received a secret government decree that enormous work was beginning, with financing of about a billion dollars, as Glaz'yev told me (at new prices), to adopt and use new forces, rays, and particles discovered 30 years ago in secret laboratories of the Soviet Union.
How many of you would be willing to place that kind of warranty on YOUR CODE?
Well, since my code is mostly GPL, it does not have a binding warranty. But my policy (as with many other open source producers) is to fix bugs at no cost to the user; so in effect, open source software typically makes the same promise. There are probably many reasons why this is so, not least of which is simple pride in workmanship and desire to maintain a reputation.
nearly a quarter think they are watching high definition video when they actually haven't set it up correctly
I bet the same thing happened when colour TV was introduced...
But seriously. Other posters ask what the fuss about HDTV is - when correctly configured, it's stunning. For me, though, it's not about watching the same old rubbish on TV, but sharper; it's about a new medium for watching good film - that's the killer app. Before HDTV you'd have had to operate your own 16mm or 35mm projector to get that quality watching film in the home (laserdisc defenders, don't even start).
people will be disappointed beyond measure when their idealistic view of Canada doesn't jive with the reality
Ignore my message if you wish: but to repeat, I am not one of those people; I am more comfortable to call Canada home than the terminally Americanised country left behind. Perhaps if you had made a similar experiment you would be less inclined to deny the potential rewards of emigration. I am not the first to find greater quality of life and I will not be the last.
As for the USA being "not perfect," I can only hope your gift for understatement is matched by an urge to help put its self-destructive (arguably universally destructive) engines into hard reverse. It appears the iceberg was struck some time ago, however, so better look for a lifeboat.
Trying to find a family doctor is nearly impossible,
Maybe in your district. This month in Toronto I found one in about 20 minutes using the Physicians directory. (Despite the dribble of objections from the middle class who have captured the notion that privatisation solves everything, some level of public health service is necessary in a socially just state. That's one big point in Canada's favour...)
(What does "excessive snow" actually mean? How is snow "excessive"? It's snow, for goodness' sake. If you have such a problem with it, sure, you probably want to live somewhere else, at least for those couple of months (Dec/Jan/Feb in Toronto). Frankly, I find the Toronto Summer much harder to cope with than the Winter...)
I can't buy a fully-detached house with two car garage for under $400k,
Have you priced that in any other first world country lately? Then try pricing one in Europe. Canada's real estate prices are quite reasonable compared to comparable New World cities of my acquaintance.
As for education, I cannot comment on the elementary levels, since I'm personally done with that phase. I'm sorry if it's not working out with your kids. However, should I choose tertiary, I know that the cities I'm familiar with - Toronto, Montreal - boast many world class institutions. So presumably you weren't talking about university level "education".
On the subject of city life: The infrastructure Just Works(TM); there is clean and efficient public transport (Montreal's Metro can hold its own with any city's); the streets of Toronto are (still) much safer than US cities; Canadians are incredibly, touchingly polite and civil; they read books; they are informed and interested in things outside their own borders; etc.
several times reporters were spied on, wiretapped or just simply had their personal files confiscated without a warrant by corrupt police who feel that due process is an inconvenience.
I can't think of a "democracy" where that hasn't happened from time to time. Ditto for the corruption/kickback/etc things that I'm sorry to say are not uniquely Canadian. Put that one down to human nature: "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance," n'est-ce pas? We can still hope that something less than armed revolution is necessary to keep a Canadian government (relatively) honest...
There are 36,000 deportation orders on illegal immigrants that can't be executed because the government doesn't know where they are.
I don't think this situation is unique to Canada by any means. It is effectively impossible to locate every alien who doesn't want to be found and deported, especially given Canada's geography. Sure, with a few hundred million thrown at the problem, you could find maybe 70% of them (volunteering your tax dollars?) That last few percent just won't ever be found... could just be they really want to live here! (Duh.)
If you think you're going to...satisfy your ideological cravings by coming up to Canada, you are gravely mistaken
Au contraire. I moved here largely for ideological reasons. Canada did not support the Iraq occupation nor the Vietnam adventure, unlike my previous country of residence. I believe in voting with one's passport and Canada's values as a nation do not make me sick to my heart. The arrogance is at least partly justified; and a healthy and judicious distaste for today's America puts Canadians who feel that way in very good company worldwide.
Canada is able to lay claim to more than its fair share of progressive thinkers. Heck, I hear it's one of only 4 countries in the world that countenances gay marriage, and won't give you a life sentence for a couple of grams of dope. Which reminds me. We're METRIC! If that's not enough to make you want to live here, then nothing will...
... The cheaper your hardware the better. Another oddity with linux is that it runs on really expensive IBM mainframes. Anything in the middle and you're better off with another OS.
You don't know what you're talking about. I've installed and run Linux on probably 70 different machines from el-crappo PCs, high end PCs, laptops, low and middle end servers... Runs beautifully on all of them. You should try it some time.
richard stallman is the guy that made this all possible. His vision is to give everyone NEXTSTEP by duplicating software from 1988 that steve jobs had and rebranding it GNU/Mach GNU/Hurd and using the GNUSTEP and windowmaker software to accomplish his task. Someday we'll have free NEXTSTEP.
See above: This is complete rubbish. For Stallman's vision, see gnu.org and fsf.org.
just like the working stiffs then
on
NetBSD 2.1 Released
·
· Score: 2, Funny
"writing code others will get rich [from]" -- sounds like a perfect description of any ordinary proprietary commercial programmer to me. Those guys don't get showered in gold, and rarely even recognition outside their cubicle farm.
However, if you are trying to draw a distinction between the BSD license and a free license such as the GPL, you might have a point.
But then there's always that slim, slim chance you have neither a point, nor a clue how open source works.
Your point seems to lack some potency. While not as impressive as NetBSD (with 55 ports over 17 hardware architectures), Linux now ports to at least a dozen or two. The GNU programs, which many of us use every day on a variety of machines, were always very portable, by design; in fact, GNU's definition of free software names four necessary "freedoms":
The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
Clarifying freedom 0, it includes the unambiguous statement,
The freedom to use a program means the freedom for any kind of person or organization to use it on any kind of computer system, for any kind of overall job, and without being required to communicate subsequently with the developer or any other specific entity. [emphasis mine]
That clearly means technical portability, and also prohibits "DeActivation" features (phone home to decide whether to run) in any free product. But even if one ignores the portability requirement, "DeActivation" features of the operating system, for instance, revoke freedom 0 for anything running on that O/S. (Perhaps there is a loophole for editions of Windows that don't include DeActivation.) I am sure Richard Stallman has much more to say about this.
Freedom Zero would seem to be a no-brainer. Even proprietary software allows you to run it as you like, right? Actually, not necessarily. More and more, we are seeing programs which - if you bother to read the fine print before you click on "I agree" - impose restrictions on the user. Windows XP, for example, insists on "product activation" which is tied to the hardware - change your motherboard, and it might stop working. Or consider Oracle, popular database software which is licensed "per processor" - buy one copy, install it on a dual-processor machine and you will be in violation of your licensing terms. There are other proprietary programs which expire after a certain date, or can only be run a limited number of times, or are deliberately crippled in some other way (you might as well call it "crippleware"). [emphasis mine]
The purpose of these protection mechanisms is ostensibly to minimise software 'piracy', but the reality is that it doesn't have any effect whatsoever on piracy and really an attempt to maximise revenue by restricting how people use the software. [emphasis mine]
The opposite of freedom is restriction. It's not possible to run on Windows alone and claim freedom under GNU's definition. It's doubly impossible if you're talking about DeActivated Windows such as XP.
An Anonymous User has written about what this means in reality:
Activation often has problems with some hardware and OS configurations. It is infuriating when something that does not affect the program itself prevents it from running because the stupid activation scheme cannot deal with it properly.
Upgrading hardware and re-installs can easily become a nightmare when involving software requiring acti
None of the high rated comments mention the issue of portability (and they use the word zealot all too freely...reminiscent of certain other abuses of language lately, but nm!) Non-portable software is arguably a dead-end too, if it can't be ported to a free system when the time comes. A closed O/S, we have seen repeatedly, means obsolescence; it means the plug can be pulled at whim of the vendor.
Since XP, technological measures have been in place (DeActivation) that can separate you from your applications (not to mention your data) at any time, through wilful act of the vendor, or fault in the system, and this is regularly experienced by customers of M$ and Adobe.
It seems obvious that portability is part of the spirit of freedom as expressed in free and open source software. If your code can't migrate from Windows - then it's going to be taken from you and your users sooner or later.
Slashdot Mirror
n/t
So Vista may ship with a credible protection model, only 40 years after the party? I heard Windows described as the biggest beta test in history, but is it also the biggest and slowest game of catch-up?
Compare the cost/loss/impact of a single Windows worm/virus/whatever today with the total cost of all vulnerabilities ever discovered in SunOS and Solaris (heck, roll in VMS and all other flavours of vendor UNIX too)...
Yep. I thought so.
That's not quite the full picture.
Yes, the Classic 'compatibility mode' does suffer, in its own protected sandbox, from the same problems as the 'legacy' MacOS - no memory protection, no pre-emptive multitasking, limited permission system.
Applications compiled for the Carbon APIs on OS X certainly do not. They inherit all the modern advantages, performance and robustness of UNIX, and can't meaningfully be said to be suffering from a legacy tax. (In fact, until Cocoa paths gained attention post-10.0, Carbon applications were faster.)
Furthermore, as designed, the Carbon API is platform agnostic, and reduces supporting new hardware architectures such as Intel to little more than a recompile. But NEXTSTEP always was transparently portable, so Apple followers should not have been surprised...
They took concepts and the chief designer from VMS (who consequently produced his first operating system lemon) but not, as far as I know, any actual code. I suppose it is possible they may have had to license a few patents. According to Wikipedia, Cutler has 20.
It DOES?!? Maybe in the Jonestown sense...
The was citing the analyses of film and its information content -- properties of which haven't changed lately.
Agreed. (Having played with a 8MP Canon Digital Rebel XT over the last few weeks - i.e. a decent consumer camera.)
Second, you say it's a "long way" off. Even if you needed 20Mpix to compete with good 35mm film profesionally developed, that's still a *short* way off.
Agreed. But I was talking about medium and large format photography. My other camera (Mamiya RB-67, 2 1/4") can easily achieve 150MP. 4x5" offers north of 250MP. Then there's 8x10", which is still being used (you do the math :) Digital equivalents are definitely a long way off.
Third, the *advantages* of digital are so huge, and so uncontested that *even* if digital could never reach the quality-level of film, everyone except a very few phanaticals would still use it.
The pro and consumer photographic markets have always been rather different (how many people buy Hasselblads for their family photos?); and I guess it's hard for non-professionals to get a grasp of the quality demanded by buyers of expensive commercial images. Most people probably don't realise that even 35mm is considered a very low quality format for many uses - and the quality difference between 35mm and 2 1/4mm is well understood by professionals. Digital's niche in pro work, to date, has been a cut-rate, cheap alternative, with a commensurate drop in quality.
Yes, there is 'pro' digital gear. Yes, it's very expensive. And no, it can't compete with pro film cameras in quality. But it can beat film in cost, convenience and rapid turnaround, plus eliminates the step of drum scanning - all of which makes pro digital perfect for high volume, studio work such as catalogues.
Personally, I remain phanatical about philm.
That's about right. I estimate it at 15-20. It's nice that the article summary repeated a fact that most people overlook: that digital is a long way from approaching medium- and large-format film. More details here.
A Description of the RAN [Russian Academy of Science]'s Fight Against Pseudoscience in the Mass Media, by Ye. B. Aleksandrov, Academician of the RAN.
Well, since my code is mostly GPL, it does not have a binding warranty. But my policy (as with many other open source producers) is to fix bugs at no cost to the user; so in effect, open source software typically makes the same promise. There are probably many reasons why this is so, not least of which is simple pride in workmanship and desire to maintain a reputation.
Semi-OT, but Eclipse also has a plugin to support Ruby development and many other languages (overview).
Just askin'.
I bet the same thing happened when colour TV was introduced...
But seriously. Other posters ask what the fuss about HDTV is - when correctly configured, it's stunning. For me, though, it's not about watching the same old rubbish on TV, but sharper; it's about a new medium for watching good film - that's the killer app. Before HDTV you'd have had to operate your own 16mm or 35mm projector to get that quality watching film in the home (laserdisc defenders, don't even start).
You've (potentially inadvertently) equated "equivocate" and "equate".
Ignore my message if you wish: but to repeat, I am not one of those people; I am more comfortable to call Canada home than the terminally Americanised country left behind. Perhaps if you had made a similar experiment you would be less inclined to deny the potential rewards of emigration. I am not the first to find greater quality of life and I will not be the last.
As for the USA being "not perfect," I can only hope your gift for understatement is matched by an urge to help put its self-destructive (arguably universally destructive) engines into hard reverse. It appears the iceberg was struck some time ago, however, so better look for a lifeboat.
Maybe in your district. This month in Toronto I found one in about 20 minutes using the Physicians directory. (Despite the dribble of objections from the middle class who have captured the notion that privatisation solves everything, some level of public health service is necessary in a socially just state. That's one big point in Canada's favour...)
(What does "excessive snow" actually mean? How is snow "excessive"? It's snow, for goodness' sake. If you have such a problem with it, sure, you probably want to live somewhere else, at least for those couple of months (Dec/Jan/Feb in Toronto). Frankly, I find the Toronto Summer much harder to cope with than the Winter...)
I can't buy a fully-detached house with two car garage for under $400k,
Have you priced that in any other first world country lately? Then try pricing one in Europe. Canada's real estate prices are quite reasonable compared to comparable New World cities of my acquaintance.
As for education, I cannot comment on the elementary levels, since I'm personally done with that phase. I'm sorry if it's not working out with your kids. However, should I choose tertiary, I know that the cities I'm familiar with - Toronto, Montreal - boast many world class institutions. So presumably you weren't talking about university level "education".
On the subject of city life: The infrastructure Just Works(TM); there is clean and efficient public transport (Montreal's Metro can hold its own with any city's); the streets of Toronto are (still) much safer than US cities; Canadians are incredibly, touchingly polite and civil; they read books; they are informed and interested in things outside their own borders; etc.
several times reporters were spied on, wiretapped or just simply had their personal files confiscated without a warrant by corrupt police who feel that due process is an inconvenience.
I can't think of a "democracy" where that hasn't happened from time to time. Ditto for the corruption/kickback/etc things that I'm sorry to say are not uniquely Canadian. Put that one down to human nature: "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance," n'est-ce pas? We can still hope that something less than armed revolution is necessary to keep a Canadian government (relatively) honest...
There are 36,000 deportation orders on illegal immigrants that can't be executed because the government doesn't know where they are.
I don't think this situation is unique to Canada by any means. It is effectively impossible to locate every alien who doesn't want to be found and deported, especially given Canada's geography. Sure, with a few hundred million thrown at the problem, you could find maybe 70% of them (volunteering your tax dollars?) That last few percent just won't ever be found... could just be they really want to live here! (Duh.)
If you think you're going to...satisfy your ideological cravings by coming up to Canada, you are gravely mistaken
Au contraire. I moved here largely for ideological reasons. Canada did not support the Iraq occupation nor the Vietnam adventure, unlike my previous country of residence. I believe in voting with one's passport and Canada's values as a nation do not make me sick to my heart. The arrogance is at least partly justified; and a healthy and judicious distaste for today's America puts Canadians who feel that way in very good company worldwide.
Canada is able to lay claim to more than its fair share of progressive thinkers. Heck, I hear it's one of only 4 countries in the world that countenances gay marriage, and won't give you a life sentence for a couple of grams of dope. Which reminds me. We're METRIC! If that's not enough to make you want to live here, then nothing will...
I was planning on ignoring it at least through 2088 anyway.
One day people will wake up and realise that DRM, DeActivation, Treacherous Computing - are all entirely concerned with taking things away.
Yeah OK. You suck!
You don't know what you're talking about. I've installed and run Linux on probably 70 different machines from el-crappo PCs, high end PCs, laptops, low and middle end servers... Runs beautifully on all of them. You should try it some time.
richard stallman is the guy that made this all possible. His vision is to give everyone NEXTSTEP by duplicating software from 1988 that steve jobs had and rebranding it GNU/Mach GNU/Hurd and using the GNUSTEP and windowmaker software to accomplish his task. Someday we'll have free NEXTSTEP.
See above: This is complete rubbish. For Stallman's vision, see gnu.org and fsf.org.
However, if you are trying to draw a distinction between the BSD license and a free license such as the GPL, you might have a point.
But then there's always that slim, slim chance you have neither a point, nor a clue how open source works.
n/t
Clarifying freedom 0, it includes the unambiguous statement,
That clearly means technical portability, and also prohibits "DeActivation" features (phone home to decide whether to run) in any free product. But even if one ignores the portability requirement, "DeActivation" features of the operating system, for instance, revoke freedom 0 for anything running on that O/S. (Perhaps there is a loophole for editions of Windows that don't include DeActivation.) I am sure Richard Stallman has much more to say about this.
Robert Storey of DistroWatch paraphrased a speech by Stallman as follows:
Openz has a similar take:
The opposite of freedom is restriction. It's not possible to run on Windows alone and claim freedom under GNU's definition. It's doubly impossible if you're talking about DeActivated Windows such as XP.
An Anonymous User has written about what this means in reality:
Since XP, technological measures have been in place (DeActivation) that can separate you from your applications (not to mention your data) at any time, through wilful act of the vendor, or fault in the system, and this is regularly experienced by customers of M$ and Adobe.
It seems obvious that portability is part of the spirit of freedom as expressed in free and open source software. If your code can't migrate from Windows - then it's going to be taken from you and your users sooner or later.