Apple has always supported SCSI, so those options are all available, AFAIK. Including Amanda.
From comments on that page, the inconvenience with traditional UNIX archive tools on OS X is generally that they haven't handled resource forks and Finder info - which is where Retrospect comes in (not to mention Retrospect's searching interface is good for nontechnical users).
it was rather obvious Apple would have to take some sort of action to keep their OS from being widely pirated
Nobody seems to have figured out that there are much more difficult things to solve before OS X can "run everywhere": There are no drivers for 99% of the white box hardware out there. This has always been the #1 reason, IMHO, why nobody should have expected a shrinkwrap OS X.
Why would Apple want to get into the same driver morass that M$ is in? If there is a driver problem with Windoze, it looks like a M$ problem, whether it is or not. Hence the certification program. But that doesn't really make life any easier: Imagine the nuisance value for an O/S vendor having to certify and keep track of 100,000 random device drivers... Software support is hard enough just in a niche (for example, imagine Dantz's headaches supporting Retrospect and the endless combinations of host/adapter/drive!) But an O/S vendor has to support every permutation to some degree, or at least give an appearance of caring.
Apple's big win in this area was (like Sun, SGI, and dozens of other high end vendors) was controlling both the hardware design and the O/S, so they only had to support a relatively tiny set of hardware, and they had perfect access to its specifications and often designed it themselves anyway. That perfect integration is not available to generic O/S vendors like M$ - and the difference in end product has always been stark (for those who bothered to compare).
Today's Toronto Star has an article (apparently not online) about the heated competition in "space tourist" ventures, and highlighted the London, Ontario, firm Planetspace, which believes it could be the earliest to offer public flights.
Funded by Dr Chirinjeev Kathuria, they see the secret to success as a modernised liquid oxygen/alcohol rocket motor based on the German V2, which proved its reliability in over 3,000 past flights (more history via that web page). The company uses the Canadian Arrow Space Centre.
See the unfortunate case of Fernando Gont, and his attempts to responsibly disclose ICMP implementation flaws (not even a Cisco-specific problem):
Once Fernando understood the vulnerabilities he'd found in the ICMP protocol, he began to try and safely report the problem... To begin, he wrote an internet draft which he submitted to the IETF in August of 2004. At that time he contacted CERT/CC and NISCC, and privately notified several open source projects... as well as larger vendors such as Microsoft, Cisco, and Sun Microsystems....
Around this same time, Fernando began receiving emails from Cisco who had numerous technical questions about his solutions to the problems. He continued to reply thoroughly to all their questions, until two months later when he received an email from Cisco's lawyer claiming that Cisco held a patent on his work. He asked their lawyer for specifics, but they refused to reveal any details. For two more months this continued, until Fernando was cc'd on an email thread between Cisco, Linus Torvalds, and David Miller. Reading back through the thread, Fernando found where David Miller had asked Cisco how they could possibly patent sequence tracking as Linux had been doing it for many years, and later in the same thread Cisco noted that they had withdrawn their patent....
While the patent issue was happening with Cisco, CERT/CC created a mailing list to allow vendors to communicate amongst themselves about the newly discovered vulnerability. "They blamed me for submitting my work," Fernando said in exasperation. "One of Cisco's managers of PSIRT said I was cooperating with terrorists, because a terrorist could have gotten the information in the paper I wrote!" Fernando was familiar with intellectual property arguments with last year's Slipping In The Window paper, so he had intentionally publicly published his findings to prevent it from being patented. "Then they accused me of working with terrorists, and even still tried to patent my work!" He noted that he now suspected had he actually worked exclusively with Cisco as they had requested, they probably would have managed to patent all of his ideas....
Fernando also found Microsoft difficult to work with. "Microsoft's acknowledgment policy says that you must report the issues to them 'confidentially'", he explained. As he chose to contact CERT and various open source projects as well, he claimed that they refused to give him credit for the discovery. Only with much effort did he finally get them to acknowledge that he had discovered the issue.
On Wednesday, May 9th, over twenty military, intelligence, government, corporate and scientific witnesses came forward at the National Press Club in Washington, DC to establish the reality of UFOs or extraterrestrial vehicles, extraterrestrial life forms, and resulting advanced energy and propulsion technologies. The weight of this first-hand testimony, along with supporting government documentation and other evidence, will establish without any doubt the reality of these phenomena, according to Dr. Steven M. Greer, director of the Disclosure Project which hosted the event.
in many ways...notably excepting portability
on
Why FreeBSD
·
· Score: 2, Informative
In many ways, FreeBSD has always been the operating system that GNU/Linux-based operating systems should have been.
And if you want a portable BSD, don't overlook NetBSD, arguably the most portable and ported modern high-performance operating system in existence.
There are also substantial Iranian, Estonian, Pakistani communities... If you don't speak their languages, how is that their problem? Most of them have made the effort to learn yours. Here are Orkut's actual demographic statistics. It would be interesting to see statistics based on proportion-of-population. I think Estonia would be quite high on the list. Where else could you meet these guys if you don't travel?
The Indexes claim is wrong. +Indexes enables DirectoryIndexes just as you'd expect.
I'm not sure if I can be bothered to comb through the bile for his other mistakes. I've never found Apache very difficult to use, and somehow I get the feeling the sites I've used it on are much more complex than this guy's.
I mean case-sensitivity is a problem?? Don't ever write a C or Java program or use a UNIX shell, buddy, you won't be able to cope. You should keep those training wheels on your bike.
As I said to my friend today wrestling with mail stored in Outlook. (Shudder!)
Fourmilab has been doing this for years
on
Google Moon Debuts
·
· Score: 3, Informative
John Walker's wonderful Earth & Moon Viewer has been around for as long as I can remember. See this page for a catalogue of formations, landing sites and other points of interest.
Can you quote the relevant parts? If what you say is true, I wouldn't sign it. I'd be happy to be fired by anyone who puts that sort of thing into a legal document.
Microsoft and Google, along with Yahoo Inc. (YHOO), are locked in a fierce battle to dominate search,
Um, this "fierce battle" is entirely in the writer's imagination. Google dominates. M$ has said they plan to catch up one day. If the search tech on their own web site is any indication, they never will.
Really. What a windbag. It appears that having a well known byline has gone to his head and rotted his brain, as happens often to these pundits. I couldn't even finish the article. He just doesn't get the tiniest part of what is going on with community development. Come back with a clue, John.
One of the strangest (and scariest) things I've observed have been old "mainframe" guys who've embraced "The Micro$oft Way" when it clearly goes against every principle enshrined in the old days. You know, old-fashioned ideas like efficiency, reliability, availability.
You'd think they'd run from Windoze as fast as they can. But no -- perhaps because of some vague VMS gene still running around in 'doze -- they occasionally take to it like babes to the teat.
These guys do exist. I've heard one recently defend VSS as a reasonable source code control system -- when Micro$oft themselves won't touch it, and the following remark has been attributed to a M$ employee:
"Visual SourceSafe? It would be safer to print out all your code,
run it through a shredder, and set it on fire." -Fitz
Another one of these mainframer-turned-M$-nut dudes tried to explain to me that M$ is "redesigning the internet to use binary protocols" because "text formats obviously don't work" and are "breaking everything". He also believes Apple should be annihilated because they stand in the way of a total monoculture -- and he sees monoculture as necessary to achieve our "Star Trek future". The fact that he foresees a smoothly running galaxy running Windoze Everywhere is just plain amusing.
Buddy, if the future is like Star Trek, I don't want any damn part of it. Diversity is Life.
an incredibly expensive and complicated multi-year undertaking
No, that was the last transition, from 68K to PPC.
OS X and its APIs are platform agnostic. By starting with NEXTSTEP - a portable O/S (ran transparently to users and programmers on at least 4 very different architectures, from M68K to PA-RISC, SPARC and Intel) - Apple always had the ability to change underlying hardware with minimal impact. By transitioning all application developers to Carbon (which is platform agnostic) all the hard work was 95% done for ISVs - and that transition was completed years ago.
Internally Apple has been running the entire OS X system on Intel for years - that is simple prudence, or bet hedging. So changing the silkscreen on the CPU was hardly more than flicking a switch. I don't know why everyone sounds so surprised. The move was quite predictable (Aug 2002).
ONLY allow public key authentication. I've never seen such a box compromised remotely
It cuts the risk of someone guessing a password, but doesn't eliminate the chance of an exploit in ssh or elsewhere. As you say, have as many layers of security as possible. (I've never seen a compromise on my ssh servers either, touch wood.)
If you only need access from a limited set of machines which can have pre-generated keys, you can disable password authentication entirely (PasswordAuthentication no) and use RSA instead, with optional passphrase. In addition to PermitRootLogin no, I suggest judicious use of AllowUsers in sshd_config.
NeXTSTEP wouldn't have been around to save Apple from oblivion. Apple would have vanished while trying yet another OpenDoc, Pink, or MacApp
That does depend somewhat on Steve never having the product management authority that he wanted. If he had had free rein at Apple, it's likely his product design would have gone down a similar path to NeXT (internal politics aside). The abortive software projects (AFAIK) were initiatives of other colourless execs at Apple. Steve would likely have deep-sixed them (as he did the clone licensing program, later).
I agree that the whole process of being pushed out of Apple (after attempting a coup), cashing out all shares but one to $400m, and being highly "motivated" to try to beat them at their own game, probably contributed to the no-compromises purity of the NeXT direction. I am convinced the NeXT machine was on some level Steve's vision for the "next Apple" and several models designed after his return bear this out (not to mention the purchase of NeXT and NEXTSTEP).
Slashdot Mirror
Apple has always supported SCSI, so those options are all available, AFAIK. Including Amanda. From comments on that page, the inconvenience with traditional UNIX archive tools on OS X is generally that they haven't handled resource forks and Finder info - which is where Retrospect comes in (not to mention Retrospect's searching interface is good for nontechnical users).
Nobody seems to have figured out that there are much more difficult things to solve before OS X can "run everywhere": There are no drivers for 99% of the white box hardware out there. This has always been the #1 reason, IMHO, why nobody should have expected a shrinkwrap OS X.
Why would Apple want to get into the same driver morass that M$ is in? If there is a driver problem with Windoze, it looks like a M$ problem, whether it is or not. Hence the certification program. But that doesn't really make life any easier: Imagine the nuisance value for an O/S vendor having to certify and keep track of 100,000 random device drivers... Software support is hard enough just in a niche (for example, imagine Dantz's headaches supporting Retrospect and the endless combinations of host/adapter/drive!) But an O/S vendor has to support every permutation to some degree, or at least give an appearance of caring.
Apple's big win in this area was (like Sun, SGI, and dozens of other high end vendors) was controlling both the hardware design and the O/S, so they only had to support a relatively tiny set of hardware, and they had perfect access to its specifications and often designed it themselves anyway. That perfect integration is not available to generic O/S vendors like M$ - and the difference in end product has always been stark (for those who bothered to compare).
Funded by Dr Chirinjeev Kathuria, they see the secret to success as a modernised liquid oxygen/alcohol rocket motor based on the German V2, which proved its reliability in over 3,000 past flights (more history via that web page). The company uses the Canadian Arrow Space Centre.
And if you want a portable BSD, don't overlook NetBSD, arguably the most portable and ported modern high-performance operating system in existence.
Blaming USB for a privilege escalation is like blaming Ethernet for someone 0wning your box.
There are also substantial Iranian, Estonian, Pakistani communities... If you don't speak their languages, how is that their problem? Most of them have made the effort to learn yours. Here are Orkut's actual demographic statistics. It would be interesting to see statistics based on proportion-of-population. I think Estonia would be quite high on the list. Where else could you meet these guys if you don't travel?
I'm not sure if I can be bothered to comb through the bile for his other mistakes. I've never found Apache very difficult to use, and somehow I get the feeling the sites I've used it on are much more complex than this guy's.
I mean case-sensitivity is a problem?? Don't ever write a C or Java program or use a UNIX shell, buddy, you won't be able to cope. You should keep those training wheels on your bike.
(If you don't read Portuguese, how did you know it was abusive?)
In what sense? I can't really connect your statement with my knowledge of Smalltalk-80, but I confess I haven't used it in quite a few years.
As I said to my friend today wrestling with mail stored in Outlook. (Shudder!)
John Walker's wonderful Earth & Moon Viewer has been around for as long as I can remember. See this page for a catalogue of formations, landing sites and other points of interest.
Can you quote the relevant parts? If what you say is true, I wouldn't sign it. I'd be happy to be fired by anyone who puts that sort of thing into a legal document.
Um, this "fierce battle" is entirely in the writer's imagination. Google dominates. M$ has said they plan to catch up one day. If the search tech on their own web site is any indication, they never will.
Nice abuse of rhetoric though.
Really. What a windbag. It appears that having a well known byline has gone to his head and rotted his brain, as happens often to these pundits. I couldn't even finish the article. He just doesn't get the tiniest part of what is going on with community development. Come back with a clue, John.
Don't you editors read the mails you get complaining about story problems?? Please fix the bad markup in the story summary.
You'd think they'd run from Windoze as fast as they can. But no -- perhaps because of some vague VMS gene still running around in 'doze -- they occasionally take to it like babes to the teat.
These guys do exist. I've heard one recently defend VSS as a reasonable source code control system -- when Micro$oft themselves won't touch it, and the following remark has been attributed to a M$ employee:
Another one of these mainframer-turned-M$-nut dudes tried to explain to me that M$ is "redesigning the internet to use binary protocols" because "text formats obviously don't work" and are "breaking everything". He also believes Apple should be annihilated because they stand in the way of a total monoculture -- and he sees monoculture as necessary to achieve our "Star Trek future". The fact that he foresees a smoothly running galaxy running Windoze Everywhere is just plain amusing.
Buddy, if the future is like Star Trek, I don't want any damn part of it. Diversity is Life.
No, that was the last transition, from 68K to PPC.
OS X and its APIs are platform agnostic. By starting with NEXTSTEP - a portable O/S (ran transparently to users and programmers on at least 4 very different architectures, from M68K to PA-RISC, SPARC and Intel) - Apple always had the ability to change underlying hardware with minimal impact. By transitioning all application developers to Carbon (which is platform agnostic) all the hard work was 95% done for ISVs - and that transition was completed years ago.
Internally Apple has been running the entire OS X system on Intel for years - that is simple prudence, or bet hedging. So changing the silkscreen on the CPU was hardly more than flicking a switch. I don't know why everyone sounds so surprised. The move was quite predictable (Aug 2002).
It cuts the risk of someone guessing a password, but doesn't eliminate the chance of an exploit in ssh or elsewhere. As you say, have as many layers of security as possible. (I've never seen a compromise on my ssh servers either, touch wood.)
Yes, good point. I always try to have more than one machine configured with access for this reason.
It's also important to revoke keys if the client machine is stolen or otherwise compromised, although passphrases help in this situation.
If you only need access from a limited set of machines which can have pre-generated keys, you can disable password authentication entirely (PasswordAuthentication no) and use RSA instead, with optional passphrase. In addition to PermitRootLogin no, I suggest judicious use of AllowUsers in sshd_config.
n/t
You must have the memory of a /. editor: The story first appeared here on 30 May and (this being /. ...) 22 January. Three times not enough for you?
That does depend somewhat on Steve never having the product management authority that he wanted. If he had had free rein at Apple, it's likely his product design would have gone down a similar path to NeXT (internal politics aside). The abortive software projects (AFAIK) were initiatives of other colourless execs at Apple. Steve would likely have deep-sixed them (as he did the clone licensing program, later).
I agree that the whole process of being pushed out of Apple (after attempting a coup), cashing out all shares but one to $400m, and being highly "motivated" to try to beat them at their own game, probably contributed to the no-compromises purity of the NeXT direction. I am convinced the NeXT machine was on some level Steve's vision for the "next Apple" and several models designed after his return bear this out (not to mention the purchase of NeXT and NEXTSTEP).