Yes, and the DMCA passed Congress without a single no vote. The Senate passed it 99-0, and the House passed it on a voice vote (which generally means that there wasn't any real opposition).
I don't know if the parent was attempting to point out that Democrats are solely to blame for things like the DMCA and the Broadcast flag or if he was trying to point out that both parties are to blame. It seems clear to me from the record that you can't blame things on just one party. People shouldn't get the impression that the Republicans have somehow been the guardians of our fair use rights against attacks conducted solely by the Democrats.
Okay, this is cool and all, but this doll can recognize "more than 600 words and objects" (which, as pointed out elsewhere, is not that many), and they used one of them on the German word for bird??
Er, isn't recommended by whom? Apple's iPod FAQ (warning: low signal to hype ratio) says running is fine, and by my experience with mine, I'm inclined to agree.
I do agree that a solid state player is preferable under some circumstances, but the iPod and other hard disk players I've seen do pretty well with running/exercise. I think the main difference in my mind is that it's much more difficult to build a small durable hard disk player than it is to build a small durable solid state player, which makes the former much more expensive. (Witness the iPod which starts at $300.. ouch)
How so? OK, so the user called root is disabled by default. But the username you're asked to enter when you install the OS has all kinds of privileges, including the ability to install software into privileged areas.
The username you're asked to enter when you install the OS is an ordinary user; tasks requiring root access have to be done using sudo (or the GUI equivalent), so require the password of the user. And of course, if the attacker already had the user's password, s/he wouldn't need this exploit.
If the root user leaves the machine screen-locked then anyone can access the system. How is this not bad?
Agreed that this is bad, but the root user is disabled by default on OSX. If you enable the root account in Netinfo, log into the GUI with it, and then leave it logged in with a screen saver running, you're a fucking idiot anyway, and you really deserve what you get.
That said, this will be a good test of Apple's response time for security issues. My understanding is that they've been pretty good about that; I guess we'll see.
We were given a detector pen to use on 20s or higher that turns brown on real money, black on most everything else. When the new bills came out in the late 90s, we were specifically instructed to check for that color-shifting ink in addition to that pen.
Just out of curiosity, did you ever find a counterfeit bill with that pen? When I worked for the government, they sent out a memo throughout our agency that we weren't to use those pens because they didn't work. I don't remember whether they said in exactly what way they didn't work, just that we were forbidden to use them.
As you mention, there are several other ways to detect counterfeit US currency... nothing a well equipped counterfeiter can't overcome, perhaps, but certainly enough to foil people printing money with an inkjet.
1. You are allowed to make a copy of the stuff you've bought legally: (a) for archival purposes, as long as you destroy any such copies when you no longer legally own the work, or (b) in order to "perform or display" the work, as long as it is not a public performance or display.
2. If a work is distributed subject to a non-negotiable license, that license is not enforceable to the extent that it infringes on fair use rights.
3. You are allowed to make a copy of a work and sell the copy, if you destroy the original and all copies you kept.
4. It is not illegal to circumvent copy protection if you need to do so in order to make any use of the work that is not copyright infringment, and if the copyright owners did not provide a method for such use "without additional cost or burden."
5. It is not illegal to manufacture, distribute, or market means of circumventing copy protection for purposes of enabling non-infringing uses of the work if the copyright owners did not provide such a means themselves.
All in all, this is a very big step in the right direction, IMHO, which also means that it has very little chance of actually getting anywhere.:-/
So why didn't they just "revert back" to Windows 3.1? Or even DOS 2? For some reason, they got past those releases and moved onto Windows 95, why?
Because the Windows 95 interface was better in many tangible ways than the Windows 3.1 interface. I'm sure there was some resistance to the changes, simply because there is always resistance to change, but I don't think there are many people that would want to go back to 3.1, having experienced the improvements in 95.
The XP interface, however, was not improved significantly. They just took the old interface and gave everything bright colors, that in my opinion and in the opinions of many others, was a significant step backwards. The point is that there was no functionality added in the new interface, so we have lost nothing by switching back. The only effect is that we have created an environment that we consider more asthetically pleasing.
There were a couple of improvements in XP, like the new Start menu, and an improved taskbar, but those things are completely independent of which widget theme you choose.
The changes are fairly minor but do allow you to access things more quickly.
Which changes are you referring to here? As far as I could tell, aside from the new Start menu the interface was pretty much exactly the same as the old one, only with ugly garish colors.
I gave it a couple of days, then switched it back. The old look is much cleaner; more "professional" I suppose.
As for the new Start menu, I gave that a few days and then turned that off too. I tend to dislike interfaces that are heavily oriented around my recent activities... I prefer consistency.
That's nice...but, this will not be very useful compared to todays apps and emulators...now if they could get the hardware down to size, this would be a great PDA...
You've entirely missed the point... this is not meant to be a "useful" machine, but rather a hobbyist machine. Something for people who want to be able to tinker and play with a computer with a relatively simple design that allows a programmer to have more or less complete control of the machine. Modern PCs are much too complex to fit this niche.
Think of it as something like a more advanced version of the C64 (or other 8-bits). Not something for people trying to do serious work -- that's what your desktop computer is for -- but something for people that like really get into the guts of the system.
Web designers can't test web pages properly because most of their users use a browser that doesn't exist for the Macintosh (IE 6.x)
As is well known, the Mac IE code base is completely different from the Windows IE code base. There is NO major feature that I am aware of that is present in the current version of Windows IE that is missing from the Mac version of IE. If I'm mistaken about this, please point me in the direction of something that references such a feature.
Of course, MS probably likes to perpetuate this myth by not bumping the version number of its Mac product....
The other browsers for the Mac are either immature (Chimera, Safari), obsolete (IE 5.x) or clunky ports (Mozilla).
Maybe Chimera and Safari are immature, but IE5 for Mac is certainly not obsolete, and the statement that Mozilla for Mac is a clunky port (but the Windows version isn't) is just silly. If you don't like those, there's also Opera or OmniWeb, both mature browsers that are also highly standards-compliant.
Microsoft Office is behind the Windows version and StarOffice only runs under X-windows.
MS Office for Mac is "behind" the Windows version how, exactly? Mac Office doesn't have Access, so if you need Access, then the Mac isn't for you. Other than that... No speech recognition? I don't consider that a problem. VBA support slightly behind in some areas? Ditto. What else is there?
I'm not saying that Apple is going out of business but there is a problem with the fact that the Apple is always an afterthought for application developers.
For some developers, Apple is an afterthought, yes. But there are plenty of other developers for which Apple is not an afterthought, and believe it or not, Microsoft has been one of them. You make it out to sound like the state of software on the Mac is in the dark ages or something, but the truth is that in the two areas you mention, web browsers and office software, there are plenty of good choices out there. The only major area I can think of that is lacking on the Mac is gaming.
And besides, if you consider this such a problem, why not just get a Windows PC and be done with it? The rest of us will happily continue using our "obsolete" web browsers and office software.
In the United States they've managed to create such a complicated system that with few exceptions, the services of a professional - or the use of sophistcated and costly software - are necessary. This is ridiculous!
Not defending the US Tax Code -- it is too complicated, and gets more complicated every year...
But I've never understood this attitude. Taxes aren't, for the vast majority of people, all that hard. The worksheets are pretty damn straightforward, the instructions are easy to follow, and if you need clarification about something, IRS publications (free from the IRS web site) have all the information you could possibly need about the various tax laws.
A little research and a four-function calculator are all most people need. It seems like a lot of people have this attitude like "there's no way I could possibly do this on my own," and that, I don't understand.
It's one thing if you're going to say "the time I would have spent doing my own taxes is more valuable to me than the money I'm going to spend having someone else/tax software do it." That, I can respect. It's another thing entirely to say that you are somehow incapable of doing it on your own -- that you need an accounting service, or tax software.
I don't get it. Maybe it would be different if you have unusually complex taxes, but for myself, I've never once felt the urge to have someone else do my taxes.
I don't know that much about international salvage law, but my understanding was that it only applies at sea, and even then you don't get to keep what you've salvaged; you have to give it back to the owner in exchange for a salvage fee determined by the courts.
Regardless, as you say, international law obviously does not apply here.
Jeez, hope nobody takes legal advice from you. This is absolutely false.
Possession may be nine tenths of the law, but it is not the whole law. The fact that items belonging to another accidentally fell on your land does not, in itself, automatically convert it to your property. Generally the person originally owning the property has to intend to part with it, or at least reasonably foresee that the property would end up in the possession of another.
It's just common sense, if you think about it. Say you're riding your motorcycle down a public road, and you wipe out, and some specific item that has value to you (your wallet, say) happens to land on someone's lawn. Would you really want that person to be able to run outside before you can pick yourself off the ground, grab your wallet, and say "haha! I found your wallet on my property, so it's mine and you can't have it back!"?
The government certainly has not ceded its claim to the wreckage, so you can't claim "salvage" no matter where you might find it. The fact is that it is illegal for someone to "convert to his use... any property made or being made under contract for the United States" (18 USC 641) and at least two people have already been indicted in federal court under this statute for taking shuttle wreckage.
The 9th Circuit did not "okay the vote swapping site." They did not rule that California was wrong in shutting the site down, and they did not rule that such sites are legal under the US Constitution.
All they did in this ruling was hold that the district court abused its discretion when it dismissed the lawsuit under Railroad Commission v. Pullman, a fairly obscure case allowing federal courts to abstain from hearing a case when issues of state law would moot the federal issues. They held, in essence, that abstaining from hearing a case under Pullman is generally inappropriate when the case involves First Amendment issues, because the federal courts have a strong interest in protecting First Amendment rights.
They said nothing at all about the merits of the case; they only said that because the case is brought under the First Amendment, it should be allowed to go forward in federal court.
Hence the quote (right there on the front page, you don't even have to read the article!), "We're pleased that the court's ruling permits us to challenge the legality of the secretary of state's partisan attempt to silence political speech on the Internet during the 2000 election." (Emphasis added)
So calm down, this case is far from decided yet. And regardless of whatever the Supreme Court's record in overturning the 9th Circuit may be (that's another rant entirely, but suffice it to say that the statistics are somewhat misleading in this case), I'd be very surprised if the Court even heard an appeal from this decision, let alone overturned it. Not only is it a fairly minor procedural issue, unlikely to attract the attention of a Court that decides less than 100 cases a year, but the decision is entirely in accord with all the relevant Supreme Court precedent.
There probably aren't even 3 million macs today in total.
Wrong -- a quick look at Apple's most recent annual report reveals that Apple sold over 3 million Macs in FY 2002 alone, and over 10 million over the last three years.
In fact, Apple sold less than 3 million units in only two of the last ten years.
I doubt the Classic environment is making its way to x86! Not a big deal in itself, and a break from Classic would be super, but hang on... That probably means Carbon, the compatibility layer that helps apps written for Classic run natively on OS X, is also out. Now we're talking problems. Legacy 3rd party code is out the window in many cases.
Wrong. Carbon under OS X has nothing to do with Classic. It's not a "compatibility layer" and it doesn't make any app written for Classic run natively. It's a new API developed by Apple to be as similar as possible to the Classic APIs while throwing out all the old cruft, enabling the same apps to be run in both the old Mac OS and Mac OS X. Unmodified Classic apps will (99% of the time) not compile unmodified under Carbon.
If Apple's done their job right, it wouldn't hard at all for them to compile the Carbon libs under x86. And then any Carbon app would run natively on x86 with a simple recompile.
I think the main obstacle to Apple would be the necessity of having an integrated PPC emulator, but they've already proven their ability to switch processor architectures without too much pain, and this time they have the advantage of having an more well-designed OS that doesn't rely on huge amounts of undocumented assembly code.
And there's no reason Classic couldn't run using said emulator, either.
As an old Mac hand, it pains me somewhat to say this, but as time goes on, it's looking more and more like this is the way to go for Apple. It is true that the performance gap is smaller than would be implied by the difference in processor speeds, but the gap is there, and it is real. PPC is being left farther and farther behind, and although we'd have to deal with annoyances like fat binaries, and although there would be a performance hit at first for existing apps (since performance of a PPC emulator on a 2.5GHz P4 would be lower than a 1GHz G4), I think it would be an excellent idea for Apple to switch over as soon as they can. The PPC vendors obviously don't care too much about putting enough development money into their products to compete, so it's time to switch to a vendor that does care.
In fact, it might seem that the path from UNIX text mode interface to Anti-Mac interface is a lot more natural than from Mac or Windows to Anti-Mac. For instance, the typical X screen, be it using GNOME, KDE, Afterstep, or FVWM2, is a lot less metaphor-laden than a Windows or Mac desktop. Where the Mac and Windows desktops show your computer, containing different drives, documents all over the desktop, etc., this is much less common on an X desktop. The Mac and Windows interfaces are centered a lot more around a metaphor driven (desktop, folder, document) experience than the X desktop, where, even though file managers exist, users are more likely to open a shell window to manipulate their files.
Also, ever since CDE, all the way up to GNOME, X desktops have typically had a launcher panel, which can contain buttons to start applications or perform other actions, as well as embedded programs that show system information. This interface is a lot more abstract and power-user oriented than the "let's model your office" metaphor of the Mac. Notice that Windows has actually moved away from the Mac interface lately, towards more abstract representations of the user's environment, with such things as the task bar and start menu, "recent files", and so on.
Now, I agree that there are a lot of things wrong with certain elements of the Mac interface, but the idea that the typical X setup is less metaphor-laden than Mac or Windows is absurd. Most file and window managers for X attempt to be as much like the Mac or Windows interfaces as possible (with varying degrees of success). File managers use the same "folder" and "document" icons as everything else. The bottom layer of the screen is invariably referred to as the "desktop." (etc etc) This doesn't become any less true because most X users prefer to use the command line.
Besides, I don't see how the launcher used on many X desktops is any most abstract than, say, the Mac's launcher or its control strip. How is the Windows start menu any different than the Apple menu? How is the Windows "recent files" feature any different the Mac's "recent files" feature? Apple has been "moving away from the Mac interface" as much as anyone else, apparently.
It may be correct that true UI innovation is more likely to happen on UNIX than on other systems -- it is hard to imagine Apple or MS discarding the interfaces they have invested so much in. We shouldn't kid ourselves into thinking that X is closer to this ideal than other systems, though.
Slashdot Mirror
Clinton signed the DMCA into law
Yes, and the DMCA passed Congress without a single no vote. The Senate passed it 99-0, and the House passed it on a voice vote (which generally means that there wasn't any real opposition).
I don't know if the parent was attempting to point out that Democrats are solely to blame for things like the DMCA and the Broadcast flag or if he was trying to point out that both parties are to blame. It seems clear to me from the record that you can't blame things on just one party. People shouldn't get the impression that the Republicans have somehow been the guardians of our fair use rights against attacks conducted solely by the Democrats.
Okay, this is cool and all, but this doll can recognize "more than 600 words and objects" (which, as pointed out elsewhere, is not that many), and they used one of them on the German word for bird??
Even running isn't recommended.
Er, isn't recommended by whom? Apple's iPod FAQ (warning: low signal to hype ratio) says running is fine, and by my experience with mine, I'm inclined to agree.
I do agree that a solid state player is preferable under some circumstances, but the iPod and other hard disk players I've seen do pretty well with running/exercise. I think the main difference in my mind is that it's much more difficult to build a small durable hard disk player than it is to build a small durable solid state player, which makes the former much more expensive. (Witness the iPod which starts at $300.. ouch)
Read/write to /Applications, yes, but not to /etc, /dev, /var, /System, /Users, etc.
How so? OK, so the user called root is disabled by default. But the username you're asked to enter when you install the OS has all kinds of privileges, including the ability to install software into privileged areas.
The username you're asked to enter when you install the OS is an ordinary user; tasks requiring root access have to be done using sudo (or the GUI equivalent), so require the password of the user. And of course, if the attacker already had the user's password, s/he wouldn't need this exploit.
If the root user leaves the machine screen-locked then anyone can access the system. How is this not bad?
Agreed that this is bad, but the root user is disabled by default on OSX. If you enable the root account in Netinfo, log into the GUI with it, and then leave it logged in with a screen saver running, you're a fucking idiot anyway, and you really deserve what you get.
That said, this will be a good test of Apple's response time for security issues. My understanding is that they've been pretty good about that; I guess we'll see.
Why do we have to pay for incoming anything?
Um, because you've chosen a provider that charges for incoming messages? There are companies that don't charge for incoming messages -- AT&T, for one.
We were given a detector pen to use on 20s or higher that turns brown on real money, black on most everything else. When the new bills came out in the late 90s, we were specifically instructed to check for that color-shifting ink in addition to that pen.
Just out of curiosity, did you ever find a counterfeit bill with that pen? When I worked for the government, they sent out a memo throughout our agency that we weren't to use those pens because they didn't work. I don't remember whether they said in exactly what way they didn't work, just that we were forbidden to use them.
As you mention, there are several other ways to detect counterfeit US currency... nothing a well equipped counterfeiter can't overcome, perhaps, but certainly enough to foil people printing money with an inkjet.
HB 1009, if anyone's interested.
Er, you can already switch tabs using only the keyboard in the standard Mozilla client, with Ctrl-PgUp/PgDn. Or are you talking about something else?
Close, but not quite:
:-/
1. You are allowed to make a copy of the stuff you've bought legally: (a) for archival purposes, as long as you destroy any such copies when you no longer legally own the work, or (b) in order to "perform or display" the work, as long as it is not a public performance or display.
2. If a work is distributed subject to a non-negotiable license, that license is not enforceable to the extent that it infringes on fair use rights.
3. You are allowed to make a copy of a work and sell the copy, if you destroy the original and all copies you kept.
4. It is not illegal to circumvent copy protection if you need to do so in order to make any use of the work that is not copyright infringment, and if the copyright owners did not provide a method for such use "without additional cost or burden."
5. It is not illegal to manufacture, distribute, or market means of circumventing copy protection for purposes of enabling non-infringing uses of the work if the copyright owners did not provide such a means themselves.
All in all, this is a very big step in the right direction, IMHO, which also means that it has very little chance of actually getting anywhere.
So why didn't they just "revert back" to Windows 3.1? Or even DOS 2? For some reason, they got past those releases and moved onto Windows 95, why?
Because the Windows 95 interface was better in many tangible ways than the Windows 3.1 interface. I'm sure there was some resistance to the changes, simply because there is always resistance to change, but I don't think there are many people that would want to go back to 3.1, having experienced the improvements in 95.
The XP interface, however, was not improved significantly. They just took the old interface and gave everything bright colors, that in my opinion and in the opinions of many others, was a significant step backwards. The point is that there was no functionality added in the new interface, so we have lost nothing by switching back. The only effect is that we have created an environment that we consider more asthetically pleasing.
There were a couple of improvements in XP, like the new Start menu, and an improved taskbar, but those things are completely independent of which widget theme you choose.
The changes are fairly minor but do allow you to access things more quickly.
Which changes are you referring to here? As far as I could tell, aside from the new Start menu the interface was pretty much exactly the same as the old one, only with ugly garish colors.
I gave it a couple of days, then switched it back. The old look is much cleaner; more "professional" I suppose.
As for the new Start menu, I gave that a few days and then turned that off too. I tend to dislike interfaces that are heavily oriented around my recent activities... I prefer consistency.
That's nice...but, this will not be very useful compared to todays apps and emulators...now if they could get the hardware down to size, this would be a great PDA...
You've entirely missed the point... this is not meant to be a "useful" machine, but rather a hobbyist machine. Something for people who want to be able to tinker and play with a computer with a relatively simple design that allows a programmer to have more or less complete control of the machine. Modern PCs are much too complex to fit this niche.
Think of it as something like a more advanced version of the C64 (or other 8-bits). Not something for people trying to do serious work -- that's what your desktop computer is for -- but something for people that like really get into the guts of the system.
I'll go see it in order to say the line "and now his failure is complete".
And by doing so, you will be helping to ensure that his success is complete, in the only way that matters.
+3 Insightful? What the hell?
:)
You, sir, are a troll.
Web designers can't test web pages properly because most of their users use a browser that doesn't exist for the Macintosh (IE 6.x)
As is well known, the Mac IE code base is completely different from the Windows IE code base. There is NO major feature that I am aware of that is present in the current version of Windows IE that is missing from the Mac version of IE. If I'm mistaken about this, please point me in the direction of something that references such a feature.
Of course, MS probably likes to perpetuate this myth by not bumping the version number of its Mac product....
The other browsers for the Mac are either immature (Chimera, Safari), obsolete (IE 5.x) or clunky ports (Mozilla).
Maybe Chimera and Safari are immature, but IE5 for Mac is certainly not obsolete, and the statement that Mozilla for Mac is a clunky port (but the Windows version isn't) is just silly. If you don't like those, there's also Opera or OmniWeb, both mature browsers that are also highly standards-compliant.
Microsoft Office is behind the Windows version and StarOffice only runs under X-windows.
MS Office for Mac is "behind" the Windows version how, exactly? Mac Office doesn't have Access, so if you need Access, then the Mac isn't for you. Other than that... No speech recognition? I don't consider that a problem. VBA support slightly behind in some areas? Ditto. What else is there?
And there most certainly IS a Mac version of OpenOffice.
I'm not saying that Apple is going out of business but there is a problem with the fact that the Apple is always an afterthought for application developers.
For some developers, Apple is an afterthought, yes. But there are plenty of other developers for which Apple is not an afterthought, and believe it or not, Microsoft has been one of them. You make it out to sound like the state of software on the Mac is in the dark ages or something, but the truth is that in the two areas you mention, web browsers and office software, there are plenty of good choices out there. The only major area I can think of that is lacking on the Mac is gaming.
And besides, if you consider this such a problem, why not just get a Windows PC and be done with it? The rest of us will happily continue using our "obsolete" web browsers and office software.
(There. I've fed the troll. Now I feel better.
In the United States they've managed to create such a complicated system that with few exceptions, the services of a professional - or the use of sophistcated and costly software - are necessary. This is ridiculous!
Not defending the US Tax Code -- it is too complicated, and gets more complicated every year...
But I've never understood this attitude. Taxes aren't, for the vast majority of people, all that hard. The worksheets are pretty damn straightforward, the instructions are easy to follow, and if you need clarification about something, IRS publications (free from the IRS web site) have all the information you could possibly need about the various tax laws.
A little research and a four-function calculator are all most people need. It seems like a lot of people have this attitude like "there's no way I could possibly do this on my own," and that, I don't understand.
It's one thing if you're going to say "the time I would have spent doing my own taxes is more valuable to me than the money I'm going to spend having someone else/tax software do it." That, I can respect. It's another thing entirely to say that you are somehow incapable of doing it on your own -- that you need an accounting service, or tax software.
I don't get it. Maybe it would be different if you have unusually complex taxes, but for myself, I've never once felt the urge to have someone else do my taxes.
I don't know that much about international salvage law, but my understanding was that it only applies at sea, and even then you don't get to keep what you've salvaged; you have to give it back to the owner in exchange for a salvage fee determined by the courts.
Regardless, as you say, international law obviously does not apply here.
Jeez, hope nobody takes legal advice from you. This is absolutely false.
... any property made or being made under contract for the United States" (18 USC 641) and at least two people have already been indicted in federal court under this statute for taking shuttle wreckage.
Possession may be nine tenths of the law, but it is not the whole law. The fact that items belonging to another accidentally fell on your land does not, in itself, automatically convert it to your property. Generally the person originally owning the property has to intend to part with it, or at least reasonably foresee that the property would end up in the possession of another.
It's just common sense, if you think about it. Say you're riding your motorcycle down a public road, and you wipe out, and some specific item that has value to you (your wallet, say) happens to land on someone's lawn. Would you really want that person to be able to run outside before you can pick yourself off the ground, grab your wallet, and say "haha! I found your wallet on my property, so it's mine and you can't have it back!"?
The government certainly has not ceded its claim to the wreckage, so you can't claim "salvage" no matter where you might find it. The fact is that it is illegal for someone to "convert to his use
The 9th Circuit did not "okay the vote swapping site." They did not rule that California was wrong in shutting the site down, and they did not rule that such sites are legal under the US Constitution.
All they did in this ruling was hold that the district court abused its discretion when it dismissed the lawsuit under Railroad Commission v. Pullman, a fairly obscure case allowing federal courts to abstain from hearing a case when issues of state law would moot the federal issues. They held, in essence, that abstaining from hearing a case under Pullman is generally inappropriate when the case involves First Amendment issues, because the federal courts have a strong interest in protecting First Amendment rights.
They said nothing at all about the merits of the case; they only said that because the case is brought under the First Amendment, it should be allowed to go forward in federal court.
Hence the quote (right there on the front page, you don't even have to read the article!), "We're pleased that the court's ruling permits us to challenge the legality of the secretary of state's partisan attempt to silence political speech on the Internet during the 2000 election." (Emphasis added)
So calm down, this case is far from decided yet. And regardless of whatever the Supreme Court's record in overturning the 9th Circuit may be (that's another rant entirely, but suffice it to say that the statistics are somewhat misleading in this case), I'd be very surprised if the Court even heard an appeal from this decision, let alone overturned it. Not only is it a fairly minor procedural issue, unlikely to attract the attention of a Court that decides less than 100 cases a year, but the decision is entirely in accord with all the relevant Supreme Court precedent.
Get me drunk sometime and I'll tell you all about Jurassic Park Interactive...
Don't think I can help you get drunk, but tell us anyway!
I still remember the day I took my copy of JPI home.. "What the hell is this? Space Invaders?!?!?!?"
Ah, those were good times.
There probably aren't even 3 million macs today in total.
Wrong -- a quick look at Apple's most recent annual report reveals that Apple sold over 3 million Macs in FY 2002 alone, and over 10 million over the last three years.
In fact, Apple sold less than 3 million units in only two of the last ten years.
I doubt the Classic environment is making its way to x86! Not a big deal in itself, and a break from Classic would be super, but hang on... That probably means Carbon, the compatibility layer that helps apps written for Classic run natively on OS X, is also out. Now we're talking problems. Legacy 3rd party code is out the window in many cases.
Wrong. Carbon under OS X has nothing to do with Classic. It's not a "compatibility layer" and it doesn't make any app written for Classic run natively. It's a new API developed by Apple to be as similar as possible to the Classic APIs while throwing out all the old cruft, enabling the same apps to be run in both the old Mac OS and Mac OS X. Unmodified Classic apps will (99% of the time) not compile unmodified under Carbon.
If Apple's done their job right, it wouldn't hard at all for them to compile the Carbon libs under x86. And then any Carbon app would run natively on x86 with a simple recompile.
I think the main obstacle to Apple would be the necessity of having an integrated PPC emulator, but they've already proven their ability to switch processor architectures without too much pain, and this time they have the advantage of having an more well-designed OS that doesn't rely on huge amounts of undocumented assembly code.
And there's no reason Classic couldn't run using said emulator, either.
As an old Mac hand, it pains me somewhat to say this, but as time goes on, it's looking more and more like this is the way to go for Apple. It is true that the performance gap is smaller than would be implied by the difference in processor speeds, but the gap is there, and it is real. PPC is being left farther and farther behind, and although we'd have to deal with annoyances like fat binaries, and although there would be a performance hit at first for existing apps (since performance of a PPC emulator on a 2.5GHz P4 would be lower than a 1GHz G4), I think it would be an excellent idea for Apple to switch over as soon as they can. The PPC vendors obviously don't care too much about putting enough development money into their products to compete, so it's time to switch to a vendor that does care.
My Japanese isn't that great, but it would seem that the order form they link to doesn't actually have the BBA on it (when I checked, anyway).
The order form I found is here
It has a couple of routers, a Dreamcast karaoke box, and a couple of wireless networking products, but no BBA.
I couldn't find anything that had a price, either.
In fact, it might seem that the path from UNIX text mode interface to Anti-Mac interface is a lot more natural than from Mac or Windows to Anti-Mac. For instance, the typical X screen, be it using GNOME, KDE, Afterstep, or FVWM2, is a lot less metaphor-laden than a Windows or Mac desktop. Where the Mac and Windows desktops show your computer, containing different drives, documents all over the desktop, etc., this is much less common on an X desktop. The Mac and Windows interfaces are centered a lot more around a metaphor driven (desktop, folder, document) experience than the X desktop, where, even though file managers exist, users are more likely to open a shell window to manipulate their files.
Also, ever since CDE, all the way up to GNOME, X desktops have typically had a launcher panel, which can contain buttons to start applications or perform other actions, as well as embedded programs that show system information. This interface is a lot more abstract and power-user oriented than the "let's model your office" metaphor of the Mac. Notice that Windows has actually moved away from the Mac interface lately, towards more abstract representations of the user's environment, with such things as the task bar and start menu, "recent files", and so on.
Now, I agree that there are a lot of things wrong with certain elements of the Mac interface, but the idea that the typical X setup is less metaphor-laden than Mac or Windows is absurd. Most file and window managers for X attempt to be as much like the Mac or Windows interfaces as possible (with varying degrees of success). File managers use the same "folder" and "document" icons as everything else. The bottom layer of the screen is invariably referred to as the "desktop." (etc etc) This doesn't become any less true because most X users prefer to use the command line.
Besides, I don't see how the launcher used on many X desktops is any most abstract than, say, the Mac's launcher or its control strip. How is the Windows start menu any different than the Apple menu? How is the Windows "recent files" feature any different the Mac's "recent files" feature? Apple has been "moving away from the Mac interface" as much as anyone else, apparently.
It may be correct that true UI innovation is more likely to happen on UNIX than on other systems -- it is hard to imagine Apple or MS discarding the interfaces they have invested so much in. We shouldn't kid ourselves into thinking that X is closer to this ideal than other systems, though.