So Apple wants to hinder Google to get my personal data? Good for me.
I consider the data trasmitted quite critical: My current location and a unique ID for the hardware I am using.
What's not so good is that Apple will get these data. I realy don't get why everyone is bothering about Apple vs Google, when the real issue is that Apple wants to have the current location and a unque ID tied to the hardware from the user. And the user gets the privilege to watch some iAds in exchange.
A few years ago such an idea would have caused a riot. But now it seems to be quite acceptable. How long are we away from the Minority Report style retinal scanning ads?
It is easy to block Flash ads. Might be much more complicated with sophisticated HTML5 ads.
I like the competition. It brought us SVG, HTML5 and faster JavaScript
It is just the right tool for some jobs. It is always nice to have a choice.
I don't get it why could not simply have both: HTML5 and Flash. Preferably with Flash that is better integrated in the browser than with the current API.
My humble opinion: On a mobile device flash should be avoided. Sometimes it consumes too much power. It does not easily cope with small screens and changes in resolution, e.g. when the device is rotated. And regarding to touch it does not integrate well with the rest of the system. And on most devices it seems only be available in a very limited version.
But on "real" PCs it is a very nice tool for rich multimedia web sites.
One thing amazes me about the present fiasco is that we don't hear of more accidents like this, how many offshore oilrigs are there round the world? I guess the oil industry is either pretty careful or pretty lucky when it comes to oil extraction (or good on PR cover-ups...)
The problem here is that this kind of extraction is one of the most difficult worldwide. Not only that drilling underwater is much more difficult than drilling on land or even harvestig oil sand, but it happens on a depth where drilling is only recently possible.
One should think that everyone is extremely careful when operating under such conditions. But according to recent information it looks like this was not the case.
So the real reason while you don't hear about similar accidents all the time might be that most oil harvesting operations are not happening under such extreme conditions.
[...]
In other words, is this really any different than, say, building quicktime playback natively into the browser rather than needing a plug-in?
[...]
You get better integration with the DOM. This enables thinks like CSS video effects (example on WebKit).
See it like this: Where you had animated GIFs before, you can now have embedded videos. This should be especially nice for browser games, etc.
With the new pepper API currently developped by Mozilla and Google plugins might gain the same degree of integration. But until then a native tag integrates much better in the DOM as a plugin, with repect to layers, scritability, etc.
Even better, use "15 minutes" batteries. These 2100 mAh NiMH batteries can be charged in about 15 minutes due to a special charge control chip integrated in each cell --- they are charged with up to 15A. So when a cell finally dies, you can charge it very quickly; there are charges that come with both, an AC supply and a car adater.
The "15 minutes" battries are even cheaper than these USB cells: about 5$ each vs. 12$ for an USB battery.
Being object oriented, it can leaverage the DotNET framework. Monad seems to be quite similar to "BeanShell" (aka "bsh" aka "JSR-274") nobody uses (and understands) beside some software developers.
No it isn't. It is built into the firmware and will change, when an error occurs. Just like beep codes on a PC, but sounds nicer.
Beside from not being customizable, the startup chrd can easily be turned off. There are a number of third party tools like StartupSound.prefPane and TinkerTool System
, or you could easily enter
sudo nvram boot-volume=0
on the command line of OS X, e.g. in the Terminal application.
To be more precise, it is part of the Open Firmware. The word "Open" in Open Firmware doesn't mean the firmware is open source, but that it has an open API. Thus one can manipulate the firmware using this API without having to deal with a proprietary BIOS screen. E.g. the
nvram
command line tool on Mac OS X uses this API to manipulate settings of the firmware while the operating system is running.
To disable the startup chime just execute
nvram boot-volume=0
on the command line, e.g. in the Mac OS X Terminal application. StartupSound.prefPane and TinkerTool System use similar techniques to disable the startup chime.
So the startup chime of the Open Firmware isn't mandatory, but it is not very well documented, how to disable it. From a sophisticated platform like the Mac, I would expect an easily accessible control in the system preferences, not some thirdpary add-ons or obscure acrobatic on the command line; but perhaps I'm just spoiled over the years with OS X.
Re:FYI SLASH-TARDS -- What Flash can do:
on
The Future of Flash
·
· Score: 1
Flash can access a user's webcam [...]
Flash can do what??? Thank's for the warning, I will instantly remove flash from my notebook. And don't bother me with security settings in flash -- when it is there, it will be exploited, sooner or later. Even Java applets had security issues.
The backups are most likely done via ZFS snapshots.
While this would be really cool, there is currently no real evidence, that Apple will port ZFS to Mac OS X. All we have for the moment is a post on a mailinglist.
If computer science isn't about computers, what is it about?
"Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes" -- Edsger Dijkstra [...]
Sorry, you're arguing against Dijkstra: you lose.:)
Ahem, since about the 13th century, astronomy is all about telescopes. Gallileo, Keppler, Cassini, Hyuygens -- all the great astronomers built their own telescopes. Even today are radio telescopes, the Hubble space telescopes and the VLT more than just a tool for astronomie. Perhaps in a thousand years, when peple can travel to the stars, telescopes might become obsolete. Until then, astronomie will stay all about telescopes.
It's the same with computers in computer science: binary functions, parallel algorithms, resource bounded complexity and so on are all about computers. Computers are mor than a tool, they are the heart of computer science. Without computers, their wouldn't be much progress beyond the description of the Turing machine. In computer science most problems deal with limitations of existing computers. E.g. on a turing machine, you can use one sorting algortihm for everything; in the real world there is a huge difference, if you want to sort 10 Bytes or 10 Terrabytes.
So Dijkstra is right: In a thousand years, when astronomers won't deal with telescopes anymore, computer science won't be about computers. Until then, both devices might be at least as important for innvoation as improvements in the theoretical world are.
What would interest me more is how they would put bittorrent to use with DRM?
It might work the same way, iTunes does: distribute the files without DRM and add the DRM in the client. The was even a story on slashdot about this. Quote:
Jon Johansen ("DVD Jon") has published a small program which allows the acquisition of DRM-free file from Apple's iTunes Music Store. He explains that his program works by bypassing iTunes which adds the DRM itself at the end of the transfer. His program, pymusique, is Windows-only compliant but it'd be easy to port it to other platforms."
This method has some advantages for apple, mainly the cheap distribution costs about inverese web proxies. But there is also a big disadvantage: in principle everyone can just grab the music and skip the DRM-step in the client. Apple's responded to this thread by obfuscating the protocol. Until now, this scheme seems to work at least for JHmyn, a program that removes DRM after the ITunes client has added it. Quote:
It appears that if you make any purchases using iTunes 6.0 (or, even without making any purchases use iTunes 6.0 for other Music Store activity which authorizes against your account, such as authorizing a new computer to play your music), from that point on you must use 6.0 -- and then JHymn won't work for you either. JHymn will have to learn how to perform the iTunes 6.0 protocol before this problem is likely to be fixed -- so hang on, it could be a bit of a wait.
Unlike DRM systems using hardware support, adding the DRM in the client is not a perfect solution. But with an obfuscated protocol it seems to be good enough -- and in the end DRM is always about obfuscation. BitTorrent (the protocol) fits very well in this scheme, because it helps to minimize distribution costs. In some distant future one could even use Palladium/TCPA/NGSCB/... to ensure that only certified clients can participate on the swarm. Of course, certified clients would always add the DRM. And of course the client can add any kind of DRM, be it FairPlay or some subscription service like Napster or anything else. So the media industrie gets both: DRMed music and movies and the clients pay for distribution. Nice.
I'm the same way, not a fan at all, but, I do wonder at what point, what would prevent MS from basically thumbing their nose at EU, and saying fine, we'll just withdraw all new products from you market...and if things got worse, just plain stop supporting the products currently out there in EU.
The EU created Airbus just to compete with Boeing. They could do something similar just to compete with Microsoft. And with Linux, BSD, etc. out there, this might be not such a huge investmend. Preinstalled on computers sold in the EU, a standarized Linux distribution with a binary driver interface added (e.g. using LLVM) could have a good stand against MS. Of course, the open source spirit will be lost, but it could be a huge commercial success.
To make a long story short: MS doesn't want to battle the EU. MS would not only loose a big market, but worse a real competitor might be created, subsided by huge amounts of EU money.
Other participants are irrational: The presence of your bid actually causes other people to bid higher than they otherwise would, for various unfathomable reasons which have no grounding in logic.
I don't think this behaviour is irrational; it is just a price finding process. People just stepwise refine their idea, what the item is worth. This is a possible strategy to deal with imperfect information. An indication for stepwise refinement is, that people don't increment their bid randomly, but usually in decreasing steps.
theres no way in hell i would install anything with either of those filenames.. geez good lord.
Right, because you are an educated user, so social engineering won't work. A clueless users would be glad to find that stuff, that isn't included in their distro by default. For the moment, most clueless users are equiped with windows; but this might change in some distant future. Unix is immune against a lot of attacks and becomes better and besster --- just think of SELinux and AppArmor integrated in some modern Linux distros. But Unix is not immune against social engineering when operated by uneducated users.
Now, while you are watching a cool graphics demo, it checks if you are logged in as root and, if you are, installs a nasty payload. If not, it could simply start emailing every file it finds in your home directory, or delete them, or encrypt them.
Better: It will search for some downloads and will add something like RealPlayer11-11.0.7-5.i586.rpm or wmv-codecs_13.1-1sarge1_all.deb. With some luck, you will find this file later and try to install it. Then the malware has root access...
The new Vista file copy progress dialog displays transfer rate. The fastest it ever got was about 300KB/s! Can you imagine waiting almost 10 minutes to transfer 150 megs locally?
It could be worse. On my Mac it takes 20 minutes to copy a 17 meg file... Just kidding.
However, they don't really have a choice anymore in the debt funding dept. They have to in order to insure the viability of their own investments.
Who do you think is easier to replace: Someone who funds your debts or someone who buys your goods? Especially when there are lots of emerging countries with a steadily increasing demand for electronic devices.
The future will have DRM in the main-stream whether you like it or not.
You might be right. But it's not necessary to have a technical solution. A kind of "DRM light" might be the solution, using watermarking and legal enforcement (e.g. LWDRM). It won't be absolutely secure, but perhaps good enough. So you could have both, open formats and most people paying for their content. Of course to make this work, fair pricing is needed --- people will rob the content providers, when the providers try to rob the people.
As I understand it, as a novice, the only way to communincate or syncronize data is via copies of data passed via something analogous to a socket. A Socket is a serial interface. If you think about this for a moment, you realize this could be thought of as one byte of shared memory. Thus a copy operation is in effect the iteration of this one byte over the data to share. At any one moment you can only syncronize that one byte.
But this suggests it's own solution. Why not share pages of memory in parallel between processes. This is short of full access to all of the state of another process. But it would allow locking and syncronization processes on entire system states and the rapid passing of data without copies.
There is another solution: All data shares the same address space, so it can be accessed by simple pointers; no copying is necessary. To ensure the integrity of the system, all code in the kernel space must be proofed for correctness. To decrease the cost of such proofs, automatic proofers are used. Such systems are already in use: the proofs are done using a type checker on a type system. The type system ensures, that the data is only modified on a certain way, e.g. using certain primitives. When the code is loaded, a type checker verifies, that the code is properly typed, i.e. follows the rules of the type system. Using an appropriate type system, it can be ensured, that correct locking is performed, that onlycertain modules can access specific data, or that each access is monitored by some security system.
Using a type system to ensure the integrity of the data is used in most modern programming languages. E.g. many applets can share the same address space in the same Java VM; but they cannot tinker with each others data -- the type system prevents this. Type checkers in an operating system are already in use. Examples for this are Kernel Mode Linux and Java Operating System.
To use a type system in the kernel context, it is not necessary to use a full blown virtual machine, which interpretes the code and provides garbage collection. But the assembler code must contain type information. This is ensured by modern assembler varaints, e.g. Typed Assemlber Language or the Low Level Virtual Machine.
Using this approach, you can have a better compromise between speed and isolation. Shared memory looks nice on the first glance, but gives an component full access on the shared data. Shared memory does not solve synchronization. Using a proper type system, synchronisation becomes trivial. Just think of the synchronized keyword or the atomic datatypes in Java.
While I understand what you mean, you might want to avoid casual use of the term 'prior art' as it is a term of art in patent law, and this is essentially a copyright discussion.
Now it starts. Patent law influences everyday language. Arrgh!
But while new functions are being added, existing software stagnates. Mac OS X is nice and robust, but UI improvements over Mac System 7 are tiny to nonexistent. Windows shows a similar lack of progress. Word processing is not fundamentally different from 1984.
So we have an exponential growth in the hardware sector while the progress of software seems to stagnate. The consequences are simple: Exponential growth is not enough. For software to evolve, we need more than exponential growht on speed and memory capacity.
Not tested any others but I'm sure Xylescope, TextMate and OmniBrowser all use WebKit too.
This is not completely true. OmniWeb seems to use an old version of WebCore and hence doesn't pass ACID2. WebCore is the predecessor of WebKit and didn't have a very stable API. Looks like the upcoming release of OmniWeb 5.5 is based on WebKit, according to the OmniWeb mailing list:
[...] WebKit does have stable API, so applications built on top of it can upgrade to newer versions of WebKit without having to rewrite their code with each release. OmniWeb 5.5 will be the first version of OmniWeb to be based on WebKit rather than WebCore, taking advantage of all of the latest performance enhancements in Safari 2 as well as making it easier to stay on top of those changes in the future.
Perhaps OmniWeb 5.5 will pass ACID2, the current version of OmniWeb doesn't. I would post a screenshot, but I don't want to kill my poor server:)
Slashdot Mirror
I consider the data trasmitted quite critical: My current location and a unique ID for the hardware I am using.
What's not so good is that Apple will get these data. I realy don't get why everyone is bothering about Apple vs Google, when the real issue is that Apple wants to have the current location and a unque ID tied to the hardware from the user. And the user gets the privilege to watch some iAds in exchange.
A few years ago such an idea would have caused a riot. But now it seems to be quite acceptable. How long are we away from the Minority Report style retinal scanning ads?
I don't get it why could not simply have both: HTML5 and Flash. Preferably with Flash that is better integrated in the browser than with the current API.
My humble opinion: On a mobile device flash should be avoided. Sometimes it consumes too much power. It does not easily cope with small screens and changes in resolution, e.g. when the device is rotated. And regarding to touch it does not integrate well with the rest of the system. And on most devices it seems only be available in a very limited version. But on "real" PCs it is a very nice tool for rich multimedia web sites.
[...]
One thing amazes me about the present fiasco is that we don't hear of more accidents like this, how many offshore oilrigs are there round the world? I guess the oil industry is either pretty careful or pretty lucky when it comes to oil extraction (or good on PR cover-ups...)
The problem here is that this kind of extraction is one of the most difficult worldwide. Not only that drilling underwater is much more difficult than drilling on land or even harvestig oil sand, but it happens on a depth where drilling is only recently possible.
One should think that everyone is extremely careful when operating under such conditions. But according to recent information it looks like this was not the case.
So the real reason while you don't hear about similar accidents all the time might be that most oil harvesting operations are not happening under such extreme conditions.
[...] In other words, is this really any different than, say, building quicktime playback natively into the browser rather than needing a plug-in? [...]
You get better integration with the DOM. This enables thinks like CSS video effects (example on WebKit).
See it like this: Where you had animated GIFs before, you can now have embedded videos. This should be especially nice for browser games, etc.
With the new pepper API currently developped by Mozilla and Google plugins might gain the same degree of integration. But until then a native tag integrates much better in the DOM as a plugin, with repect to layers, scritability, etc.
Even better, use "15 minutes" batteries. These 2100 mAh NiMH batteries can be charged in about 15 minutes due to a special charge control chip integrated in each cell --- they are charged with up to 15A. So when a cell finally dies, you can charge it very quickly; there are charges that come with both, an AC supply and a car adater.
The "15 minutes" battries are even cheaper than these USB cells: about 5$ each vs. 12$ for an USB battery.
There will be a shell, even an object oriented one. It's called "Monad" (aka "Windows PowerShell" aka "Microsoft Shell" aka "MSH"). To be fair, it will probably not be included in the OS but provided as a separate download.
Being object oriented, it can leaverage the DotNET framework. Monad seems to be quite similar to "BeanShell" (aka "bsh" aka "JSR-274") nobody uses (and understands) beside some software developers.
No it isn't. It is built into the firmware and will change, when an error occurs. Just like beep codes on a PC, but sounds nicer.
Beside from not being customizable, the startup chrd can easily be turned off. There are a number of third party tools like StartupSound.prefPane and TinkerTool System , or you could easily enter
on the command line of OS X, e.g. in the Terminal application.To be more precise, it is part of the Open Firmware. The word "Open" in Open Firmware doesn't mean the firmware is open source, but that it has an open API. Thus one can manipulate the firmware using this API without having to deal with a proprietary BIOS screen. E.g. the
command line tool on Mac OS X uses this API to manipulate settings of the firmware while the operating system is running.To disable the startup chime just execute
on the command line, e.g. in the Mac OS X Terminal application. StartupSound.prefPane and TinkerTool System use similar techniques to disable the startup chime.So the startup chime of the Open Firmware isn't mandatory, but it is not very well documented, how to disable it. From a sophisticated platform like the Mac, I would expect an easily accessible control in the system preferences, not some thirdpary add-ons or obscure acrobatic on the command line; but perhaps I'm just spoiled over the years with OS X.
Ahem, since about the 13th century, astronomy is all about telescopes. Gallileo, Keppler, Cassini, Hyuygens -- all the great astronomers built their own telescopes. Even today are radio telescopes, the Hubble space telescopes and the VLT more than just a tool for astronomie. Perhaps in a thousand years, when peple can travel to the stars, telescopes might become obsolete. Until then, astronomie will stay all about telescopes.
It's the same with computers in computer science: binary functions, parallel algorithms, resource bounded complexity and so on are all about computers. Computers are mor than a tool, they are the heart of computer science. Without computers, their wouldn't be much progress beyond the description of the Turing machine. In computer science most problems deal with limitations of existing computers. E.g. on a turing machine, you can use one sorting algortihm for everything; in the real world there is a huge difference, if you want to sort 10 Bytes or 10 Terrabytes.
So Dijkstra is right: In a thousand years, when astronomers won't deal with telescopes anymore, computer science won't be about computers. Until then, both devices might be at least as important for innvoation as improvements in the theoretical world are.
It might work the same way, iTunes does: distribute the files without DRM and add the DRM in the client. The was even a story on slashdot about this. Quote:
This method has some advantages for apple, mainly the cheap distribution costs about inverese web proxies. But there is also a big disadvantage: in principle everyone can just grab the music and skip the DRM-step in the client. Apple's responded to this thread by obfuscating the protocol. Until now, this scheme seems to work at least for JHmyn, a program that removes DRM after the ITunes client has added it. Quote:
I don't know whether PyMusique or the newer SharpMusique still works with iTunes 6.Unlike DRM systems using hardware support, adding the DRM in the client is not a perfect solution. But with an obfuscated protocol it seems to be good enough -- and in the end DRM is always about obfuscation. BitTorrent (the protocol) fits very well in this scheme, because it helps to minimize distribution costs. In some distant future one could even use Palladium/TCPA/NGSCB/... to ensure that only certified clients can participate on the swarm. Of course, certified clients would always add the DRM. And of course the client can add any kind of DRM, be it FairPlay or some subscription service like Napster or anything else. So the media industrie gets both: DRMed music and movies and the clients pay for distribution. Nice.
The EU created Airbus just to compete with Boeing. They could do something similar just to compete with Microsoft. And with Linux, BSD, etc. out there, this might be not such a huge investmend. Preinstalled on computers sold in the EU, a standarized Linux distribution with a binary driver interface added (e.g. using LLVM) could have a good stand against MS. Of course, the open source spirit will be lost, but it could be a huge commercial success.
To make a long story short: MS doesn't want to battle the EU. MS would not only loose a big market, but worse a real competitor might be created, subsided by huge amounts of EU money.
Who do you think is easier to replace: Someone who funds your debts or someone who buys your goods? Especially when there are lots of emerging countries with a steadily increasing demand for electronic devices.
You might be right. But it's not necessary to have a technical solution. A kind of "DRM light" might be the solution, using watermarking and legal enforcement (e.g. LWDRM). It won't be absolutely secure, but perhaps good enough. So you could have both, open formats and most people paying for their content. Of course to make this work, fair pricing is needed --- people will rob the content providers, when the providers try to rob the people.
There is another solution: All data shares the same address space, so it can be accessed by simple pointers; no copying is necessary. To ensure the integrity of the system, all code in the kernel space must be proofed for correctness. To decrease the cost of such proofs, automatic proofers are used. Such systems are already in use: the proofs are done using a type checker on a type system. The type system ensures, that the data is only modified on a certain way, e.g. using certain primitives. When the code is loaded, a type checker verifies, that the code is properly typed, i.e. follows the rules of the type system. Using an appropriate type system, it can be ensured, that correct locking is performed, that onlycertain modules can access specific data, or that each access is monitored by some security system.
Using a type system to ensure the integrity of the data is used in most modern programming languages. E.g. many applets can share the same address space in the same Java VM; but they cannot tinker with each others data -- the type system prevents this. Type checkers in an operating system are already in use. Examples for this are Kernel Mode Linux and Java Operating System.
To use a type system in the kernel context, it is not necessary to use a full blown virtual machine, which interpretes the code and provides garbage collection. But the assembler code must contain type information. This is ensured by modern assembler varaints, e.g. Typed Assemlber Language or the Low Level Virtual Machine.
Using this approach, you can have a better compromise between speed and isolation. Shared memory looks nice on the first glance, but gives an component full access on the shared data. Shared memory does not solve synchronization. Using a proper type system, synchronisation becomes trivial. Just think of the synchronized keyword or the atomic datatypes in Java.