You can't compare TV and software. You can compare DVD (or video tape) and software. You can compare TV and www (in some manner).
Making software available by subscription if IMHO the worse way for the customer to pay for this software. Why ? Because he will pay for a time lapse during he can use the software, whatever how much he does effectively make use of it. The current pay per release is more fair because he pay for an unlimited in time use of the software.
Currently they are some companies that practice the upgrade strategy to artificially force their customers to pay more. This can be done in two ways:
fix bugs in next paying release. Introduce new one in the meantime for the next upgrade. The customer that is annoyed will purchase the upgrade. Example: Win95 -> Win98
change the file format for the new release, remove the old release from the storeshelves and make it difficult to exchange data back an forth so that most of the previous users will upgrade to the latest version to be able to read document made by new users. Example: MS-Office every 2 releases.
Making software purchase a subscription for limited in time use will introduce a thirs unfair practice for conmsumers: private data file format.
Currently, lot of proprietary software does not come with the info to reread their data from another program. This make these data being tied to the software. But since the software supposedly work for an unlimited time you should be able to reread it in the future. Hence not documenting the file format does not specifically tie the user to purchase the upgrade. But, is the software can't be used if the user don't pay, it is unlinkely that software companies will make sure you can't reread your data in the future without paying their software again.
Perhaps this practice will help pushing open source software and it will be a great opportunity for all the Open Source Developers. Just because Open Source software also provide freedom for data format: how can you prevent others to read the file your program generated if the source code for this program is available !
How easy is it to build current FreeBSD software on X?
Quite easy unless it require X or anything depending on it.
Are there any standard package managers included by default?
Apple's (inherited from NeXT). Pretty limited in fact.
Does it come with all of the build tools needed so you can normally just do the "./configure; make" mambo?
You need to get the SDK. But when you have it,./configure ; make ; make install mostly work. You may need to replace config.guess and config.sub with the one provided.
What are the biggest differences that you notice from the shell prompt between a typical FreeBSD installation and OSX?
CSS encoding is a completely anticompetitive practice. The way it works is as follow:
the disk contains a private key to decrypt it. This key is encoded 400 times by 400 different keys that match 400 possible licencee (note that the 400 number as to be checkd, but you get the deal)
a manufacturer that get it own DVD license get it's own key that match one of the keys mentionned above.
when the DVD player want to decrypt the disk, it fetch the disc key using its lincencee key and decrypt the MPEG steam with it
Now imagine that the World Company that have almost 80% of the video publishing companies as well as several DVD Player manufacturer wants to make it's main competitor (ACME DVD, a DVD player manufacturer) bites the dust. In this case the World Company only have to remove the ACME DVD CSS key from their DVD disc, so that WC DVD cannot be played on ACME DVD.
Don't you find this unfair ?
On the other side, CSS does not prevent raw copy of DVD, hence it does not offer a good copy protection scheme.
And I don't find decrypting a DVD to play it when we have purchased it legally is violating author's right. After all buying the DVD gives us the right to watch it as much as we want, when we want, where we want (unless it is public broadcasting or other condition prohibited by law).
What bugs me is this whole reginon code nonsense. There is really no reason for it to exist other than to create artificial trade barriers. I do not mind paying for DVD movies but I will continue to approve of efforts like OMS while idiotic schemes like Region codes continue to come out of messed up brains of Hollywood beancounters.
That's why it is so easy (at least in France) to find zone free DVD player (I talk about real DVD player hardware).
Region encoding is just another way to control what get sold and where.
Outlook is evil because it does not respect Internet standard: try quoting a mail to put your reply after the quoted part (that you should expurge). Unless you do it manually, there is no way to make it work the way any client should.
Outlook makes you use proprietary client/server protocol if you wish to employ 100% of it's feature. This proprietary protocol prevents you from using something else than Microsoft Windows, either as a client or server (unless you use Notes, but the problem is the same). Don't talk me about the Mac client, it is a complete joke, just to convince the DoJ that they don't make a monopoly. It lack most of the feature that make Outlook/Exchange useful (ie calendaring)
I'm not even talkin about GUI weirdness like reodering folders in the treeview each time you put a message in...
Oh, I forgot: I have used Mutt during 1 and 1/2 year with MS-Exchange as a server because of stupid corporate policy in a company that think it is best to spend money to buy Windows machine to UNIX developer (that have their own SUN box) rather than to have a cross platform IT strategy.
Don't forget that most of Linux software come withe source code. And that makes a huge difference in term of availability. For OS/2, I don't remember it hit the shelves. It was born dead AFAIK.
One of the things that makes me sad about the WWW today is that:
Lot of webmasters target web site to specific system: they are optimized for IE or Netscape, for a specific screen size making them unusable on smaller screen
They also requires Javascript, which despite the fact that it is available only in Netscape or IE, make also webas dangerous as walking on mines (see recente CERT advisory)
Does not even consider respecting HTML. This is also software vendor fault as the make pseudo-WYSIWYG page generator that generates HTML that does not pass thru the W3C validator.
Some of them even require proprietary technology like Flash.
I really miss the time were browsing was doable with NCSA Mosaic.
I would use QuickTime or MPEG because they are truly cross-platform a/v formats. And FREE. You can serve QuickTime movies (streaming even) for free, hello DARWIN. QuickTime movies are easy to make and they look and sound damn good for the compression you get. Also, if you use QT3, Xanim can play it under Linux/UNIX (not sure about QT4 though... last I checked you couldn't). QuickTime 3 mainly use Sorenson video codec. Apple has an exclusive licensing agreement that prevent Sorenson maker to license it to someone else, making it proprietary. QuickTime 3 use RTSP (RFC 2326) and RTP (RFC 2343) protocols to stream its content. The content of a QuickTime stream and a QuickTime file IS documented and several "open source" implementation exists for both a file opener and an streaming server. But, the video codec used is not documented. That what prevent implementation of player on anything else not blessed by Apple. Perhaps we should investigate on the MPEG-2 side. Why not ?
ClarisWorks have been renamed to AppleWorks a still exists.
They alreay have trouble giving away file format specification (I'd really like to get AppleWorks file format), so I don't think there is even a chance to see an open source version of this.
In SO 4.0 for Mac, they just made a Mac Windows with anything drawn in it that looked like Star Office for UNIX. The menu bar had only Apple menu and File menu with the only Quit command.
Indeed this was a real crappy port and I hope SUN won't do this again. Even M$-Office is better written on this point.
The problem with PowerPlant, is that it is intrinsicly tied to MacOS: it has been developped under MacOS for MacOS. This makes it a bad choice for cross-platform development.
I know at least 2 app that use PowerPlant as a back end for a cross-platform development. One of these is Netscape...
On the other side, CodeWarrior is developped using PowerPlant, the Windows version being ported using Mac2Win from Altura Software and the UN*X version being ported using Latitude. This means that it is used as a front-end and that Mac API are emulated.
Other than that, once you understand how PowerPlant works, it is nice.
This API is quite good, but it lack several features.
First, it lacks layouting system. All views (that can be drawing canvas, widget, etc) are placed upon the coordinate system with anchor rules (like follow left, follow top, follow all, etc). This is really a pain to make resizable dialog boxes with a lot of widgets. You are forced to handle resizing by hand. This also cause problems since you can customize the font used to draw widget labels. You can make the GUI useless because the controls are sized to a fixed pixel number instead to a unit that depends on parameters like font size and al.
Second, it lacks of a GUI building. I whish I could generate GUI layout by writting a separate file that describe it, separating GUI strings and layouts from the source code. There is none. We can store any window and its content to a datastream (a flattened BMessage object), but this is after it has been constructed and it is not human readable or even in a documented format. The layout should also be stored into a resource (not X-like but MacOS-like resource) since BeOS does support resource concept
The object oriented APIs are purely C++ based which really sucks: there is no language abstraction, and it purely depends on the vtable format as generated by the C++ compiler. They should have used an ORB (more preferably a CORBA compliant ORB), but they did not because it was too slow (from their side). This also leads to the FBC (Fragile Base Class) problem which makes it difficult to make the API evolves without breaking binary compatibility
They don't have library versionning like in UN*X, which cumulated with the FBC problem described above may lock the evolution capabilities drastically.
All of this make BeOS API not that ideal. BTW it is also proprietary non-portable toolkit tied to a closed-source commercial OS.
Personnally I wouldn't mind if someone worked on something like this, but open sourced, and improved.
Just by providing and supporting LinuxPPC on their platform.
For the "student" market this can be determining as I have seen, in 1996 (just at the time the first PowerMac Linux as been released), that some people refused to buy a Mac because they couldn't run Linux as well as MacOS... In this case they bought a Windoze PC.
I have a 2-button mouse from Kensington. Really good be expensive.
USB will IMHO make multi-button mice more affordable. Since Apple USB mice are crappy (they fit well in kids hands, not hands like mine), you'll still have to buy one anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
Making software available by subscription if IMHO the worse way for the customer to pay for this software. Why ? Because he will pay for a time lapse during he can use the software, whatever how much he does effectively make use of it. The current pay per release is more fair because he pay for an unlimited in time use of the software.
Currently they are some companies that practice the upgrade strategy to artificially force their customers to pay more. This can be done in two ways:
- fix bugs in next paying release. Introduce new one in the meantime for the next upgrade. The customer that is annoyed will purchase the upgrade. Example: Win95 -> Win98
- change the file format for the new release, remove the old release from the storeshelves and make it difficult to exchange data back an forth so that most of the previous users will upgrade to the latest version to be able to read document made by new users. Example: MS-Office every 2 releases.
Making software purchase a subscription for limited in time use will introduce a thirs unfair practice for conmsumers: private data file format. Currently, lot of proprietary software does not come with the info to reread their data from another program. This make these data being tied to the software. But since the software supposedly work for an unlimited time you should be able to reread it in the future. Hence not documenting the file format does not specifically tie the user to purchase the upgrade. But, is the software can't be used if the user don't pay, it is unlinkely that software companies will make sure you can't reread your data in the future without paying their software again.Perhaps this practice will help pushing open source software and it will be a great opportunity for all the Open Source Developers. Just because Open Source software also provide freedom for data format: how can you prevent others to read the file your program generated if the source code for this program is available !
Quite easy unless it require X or anything depending on it.
Are there any standard package managers included by default?
Apple's (inherited from NeXT). Pretty limited in fact.
Does it come with all of the build tools needed so you can normally just do the "./configure; make" mambo?
You need to get the SDK. But when you have it, ./configure ; make ; make install mostly work. You may need to replace config.guess and config.sub with the one provided.
What are the biggest differences that you notice from the shell prompt between a typical FreeBSD installation and OSX?
Some path are weird for a UNIX.
Now imagine that the World Company that have almost 80% of the video publishing companies as well as several DVD Player manufacturer wants to make it's main competitor (ACME DVD, a DVD player manufacturer) bites the dust. In this case the World Company only have to remove the ACME DVD CSS key from their DVD disc, so that WC DVD cannot be played on ACME DVD.
Don't you find this unfair ?
On the other side, CSS does not prevent raw copy of DVD, hence it does not offer a good copy protection scheme.
And I don't find decrypting a DVD to play it when we have purchased it legally is violating author's right. After all buying the DVD gives us the right to watch it as much as we want, when we want, where we want (unless it is public broadcasting or other condition prohibited by law).
That's why it is so easy (at least in France) to find zone free DVD player (I talk about real DVD player hardware).
Region encoding is just another way to control what get sold and where.
Outlook makes you use proprietary client/server protocol if you wish to employ 100% of it's feature. This proprietary protocol prevents you from using something else than Microsoft Windows, either as a client or server (unless you use Notes, but the problem is the same). Don't talk me about the Mac client, it is a complete joke, just to convince the DoJ that they don't make a monopoly. It lack most of the feature that make Outlook/Exchange useful (ie calendaring)
I'm not even talkin about GUI weirdness like reodering folders in the treeview each time you put a message in...
Oh, I forgot: I have used Mutt during 1 and 1/2 year with MS-Exchange as a server because of stupid corporate policy in a company that think it is best to spend money to buy Windows machine to UNIX developer (that have their own SUN box) rather than to have a cross platform IT strategy.
Don't forget that most of Linux software come withe source code. And that makes a huge difference in term of availability. For OS/2, I don't remember it hit the shelves. It was born dead AFAIK.
- Lot of webmasters target web site to specific system: they are optimized for IE or Netscape, for a specific screen size making them unusable on smaller screen
- They also requires Javascript, which despite the fact that it is available only in Netscape or IE, make also webas dangerous as walking on mines (see recente CERT advisory)
- Does not even consider respecting HTML. This is also software vendor fault as the make pseudo-WYSIWYG page generator that generates HTML that does not pass thru the W3C validator.
- Some of them even require proprietary technology like Flash.
I really miss the time were browsing was doable with NCSA Mosaic.I would use QuickTime or MPEG because they are truly cross-platform a/v formats. And FREE. You can serve QuickTime movies (streaming even) for free, hello DARWIN. QuickTime movies are easy to make and they look and sound damn good for the compression you get. Also, if you use QT3, Xanim can play it under Linux/UNIX (not sure about QT4 though... last I checked you couldn't). QuickTime 3 mainly use Sorenson video codec. Apple has an exclusive licensing agreement that prevent Sorenson maker to license it to someone else, making it proprietary. QuickTime 3 use RTSP (RFC 2326) and RTP (RFC 2343) protocols to stream its content. The content of a QuickTime stream and a QuickTime file IS documented and several "open source" implementation exists for both a file opener and an streaming server. But, the video codec used is not documented. That what prevent implementation of player on anything else not blessed by Apple. Perhaps we should investigate on the MPEG-2 side. Why not ?
They alreay have trouble giving away file format specification (I'd really like to get AppleWorks file format), so I don't think there is even a chance to see an open source version of this.
Indeed this was a real crappy port and I hope SUN won't do this again. Even M$-Office is better written on this point.
Pascal strings are used widely in the toolbox that is why they are here. Monotasking is how MacOS works so is unprotected memory.
The lack of drawing routines in PowerPlant it because it would have been to much overhead since it is designed to be a MacOS-only framework.
I know at least 2 app that use PowerPlant as a back end for a cross-platform development. One of these is Netscape...
On the other side, CodeWarrior is developped using PowerPlant, the Windows version being ported using Mac2Win from Altura Software and the UN*X version being ported using Latitude. This means that it is used as a front-end and that Mac API are emulated.
Other than that, once you understand how PowerPlant works, it is nice.
- First, it lacks layouting system. All views (that can be drawing canvas, widget, etc) are placed upon the coordinate system with anchor rules (like follow left, follow top, follow all, etc). This is really a pain to make resizable dialog boxes with a lot of widgets. You are forced to handle resizing by hand. This also cause problems since you can customize the font used to draw widget labels. You can make the GUI useless because the controls are sized to a fixed pixel number instead to a unit that depends on parameters like font size and al.
- Second, it lacks of a GUI building. I whish I could generate GUI layout by writting a separate file that describe it, separating GUI strings and layouts from the source code. There is none. We can store any window and its content to a datastream (a flattened BMessage object), but this is after it has been constructed and it is not human readable or even in a documented format. The layout should also be stored into a resource (not X-like but MacOS-like resource) since BeOS does support resource concept
- The object oriented APIs are purely C++ based which really sucks: there is no language abstraction, and it purely depends on the vtable format as generated by the C++ compiler. They should have used an ORB (more preferably a CORBA compliant ORB), but they did not because it was too slow (from their side). This also leads to the FBC (Fragile Base Class) problem which makes it difficult to make the API evolves without breaking binary compatibility
- They don't have library versionning like in UN*X, which cumulated with the FBC problem described above may lock the evolution capabilities drastically.
All of this make BeOS API not that ideal. BTW it is also proprietary non-portable toolkit tied to a closed-source commercial OS.Personnally I wouldn't mind if someone worked on something like this, but open sourced, and improved.
X11 is just a windowed display system, not a GUI. But GUI on UN*X depends on X11 (or OpenWindows on old SunOSes).
Oh yes, I know, I'm getting off-topic now.
OK, the project was killed, but that is another story.
Beam me up Scotty !
Yes. We are hearing this every 2 monthes for 15 years. You are probably right. But this seems not prevent them to still sells computers :-)
For the "student" market this can be determining as I have seen, in 1996 (just at the time the first PowerMac Linux as been released), that some people refused to buy a Mac because they couldn't run Linux as well as MacOS... In this case they bought a Windoze PC.
PowerMac board are less and less proprietary, but the currently are not that far from CHRP... at least for the G3 serie and later.
USB will IMHO make multi-button mice more affordable. Since Apple USB mice are crappy (they fit well in kids hands, not hands like mine), you'll still have to buy one anyway.