In October, a hitherto-unknown Hawaiian company, Maui X-Stream, rocked the tech world with news of CherryOS, a Mac emulator for Windows PCs that supposedly ran wicked fast and cost only $50. The software was offered as a download, but the stampeding hordes of closet Apple lovers at Slashdot crashed the servers before anyone could get it.
I resent being called a closet Apple lover....I am in fact a flaming Apple lover.
How did this pass muster? The article clearly states:
Various vulnerabilities were found and fixed [emphasis added] in Mozilla-based products,
ranging from a potential buffer overflow and temporary files disclosure
to anti-spoofing issues.
While I recognize the article does state in the middle of it that it was for releases prior to the current ones, why not say that in the title or somewhere in the first sentence. Saying something like, "People using older versions of.....may be vulnerable to security flaws." At first glance, this article is a little misleading.
I have to agree with you here. I am obviously an avid Mac guy, but I would like to see more devices like this open to Linux users. I am thinking about setting up a second desktop at home and I very much want to make it a Linux box. However, it makes it difficult to do that when I see things like this.
Having browsed the article, I like what I see. I like the set up, I like the single controller, I like that I can also control it from my desktop, and I like that it is based on Linux (i.e. Probably a little more crash-proof than what we saw from Bill and his minions earlier this week.) I also think it has a nice look to it. I have a lot of digital audio files and being able to store them in one location would be great. I know this is not a new innovation, but so far I think it is the most attractive option to me. Might be able to get rid of that CD tower in my living room. Might be a little pricey right now, but I am sure that will come down.
I am more than happy with my $90 Palm. It syncs with my address book and iCal on my Mac....and fits in my pocket. And, if something bad happens to it during my travels, I am out $90...not $800. I just think these PDA's are getting crazy.
I am also confused why it is a linux PDA, yet you have to have windoze or a mac to sync with the thing. That sucks. If I am a linux guy I want a linux PDA that will work with my computer...
While I wish it was easier to converted the protected files to mp3 a little easier, I cannot fault Apple for making it difficult. They have a good catalog and I can get any song from their store for 99 cents. I imagine that part of the reason they got so many artists to participate was offering some protection of their music.
Having said all of that, it,I>is possible to convert the music...although it does take a little more work than simply exporting the files. There are several ways, some included here:
I also believe you should be able to burn your protected songs to a CD and then ripping them to mp3 from the CD
I do not profess to understand the legalities of all of this, but these are the ways to do it. If you are converting this music to mp3 for personal use, I believe you are allowed to convert it legally.
Actually, no one died. What happened was that MS, through a hostile takeover, now own J. Edgar Hoover, Jr. and Bill has co-opted his personna.
Seriouly though. This whole episode is way too easy to make a joke about. Gee Bill, now you too have had the typical windows experience. It would be so much easier if they did not try to copy the innovations of other companies and simply fixed their broken software.
What Joel says can also be applied to a number of technical disciplines. I am an engineer, but much of what he is talking about can be applied to us too. It amazes me what passes for writing skills in engineering. It is so frustrating to try to pick up on previous work that is poorly documented. Then, what documentation is present is written in something like english, but so badly written you have to re-read it several times to understand what the heck someone is trying to say.
I also enjoyed his comment, "You need to spend at least a semester getting close to the machine". Understanding these machines is so important. I really had no idea what happened in the guts of a machine until I took a class programming microcontrollers in assembly and in C. Made me appreciate things a lot more.
That was what I was alluding to. I remember reading the Spectrum article back in 2000. Knowing what I did about where mobile communications was going with 802.11 and such I thought, here is a company that is well-positioned. The low power consumption was a major advantage. When code-morphing was added to this platform, they really should have succeeded. But, yes, Intel was right there too and they have that name recognition that is important in consumer devices. I just wonder, with hindsight being 20/20, if they could not have done something better to get that chip into more devices. Thanks for the feedback
I remember back a few years when their Crusoe chips were touted as the next great development in chips. IEEE Spectrum had a big article that really pumped them up. Here is the abstract from that:
Abstract:
It took Transmeta engineers $100 million, five years of secret toil, and a little magic to create fast low-power chips that turn into x86s in a microsecond. Transmeta Corporation's Crusoe chips look nothing like Intel's Pentium processors. They do not even have a logic gate in common. They are smaller, consume between one-third and one-thirtieth the power (depending on the application), and implement none of the same instructions in hardware. However the Crusoe microprocessors can run the same software that runs on IBM PC-compatible personal computers with Pentium chips-for instance, Microsoft Windows or versions of Unix, along with their software applications. The paper describes the development of the Crusoe chips
All that development and hype, yet now they are getting out of the market. Seems they should have been well positioned to dominate in the handheld and portable market. Bad business practices? The EE Times also has a good article on this.
When I first saw that notebook page, I worried that someone had posted a page from one of my notebooks from an undergraduate EE class. Seriously though, it is pages like those that generally lead to great progress.
Obviously I am a Mac fan. However, even if I weren't, I would still read Andy Hertzfeld's book and enjoy interviews such as these. I have visited the folklore site and it is pretty cool. Maybe I am too much of a nerd, but I think reading about the history of technology is simply a great read. One of my early faves was Soul of a New Machine. Obviously this interview was too short to really get into details, but there were a few little tidbits in there that were interesting. I am really looking forward to anything he puts out on Woz.
I agree with all of those above who say a pizza box is a bad idea. I know way too may people who would pass a laptop bag up to get that pizza.
However, I could leave my Error Control Coding, LaTeX, or Unix Manual anywhere for days and they would be there when I returned. Books are probably not the right size, but maybe as a laptop sleeve.
I am not disagreeing with you, but I have read both sides to that. I do agree that there was probably some hesistancy on their part to go forward. I am just not convinced yet that it was a concerted effort to prevent the bomb from being made. I think it would be easier for them to say after the fact that they were dragging their feet. By saying this, they were hoping not be associated with Hitler.
That is a very excellent book. In fact, I believe the main point of this article is dealt with in that book. The import of this was that until that point, scientists had been much more isolated from these types of political interventions. As a previous poster here has pointed out, this intervention is more common now.
I think something else to consider with this was that a lot of the people pushing to keep the Germans in the dark had a good idea of what they were dealing with. Many of these scientists were former residents of Germany, Italy, and some of the other countries of Europe. They felt it to their core that Hitler would stop at nothing and would use all the means at his disposal to win. They were firm in their belief that if Hitler got the bomb, he would use it without hesitation. It seemed to them that there were two ways to defeat this.
First, keeping Hitler in the dark as much as possible. Reports after the fact on Hitler Germany's progess with a bomb show that they were pretty well in the dark. Secondly, they thought they should work towards building a bomb as quickly as possible to defeat Hitler. They were pretty succuessful on that point too.
I imagine the look on the robot's face will be similar to the look my dog gets when my wife puts him in a Christmas sweater or when he has one of those stupid bows on his head from the groomers
Who the heck is running the show at NASA these days, Martha Stewart?
When I converted to Mac, one of the first things I did was eliminate MS IE, which for some reason was bundled on my machine. All my Mac friends run either Safari, Firefox, or Mozilla.
Personally, I now use Firefox about 90% of the time--maybe more and Safari sometimes if I am Googling or looking for technical papers because I find Safari is faster when I might be moving between sites quickly. I finally found a decent plug-in too that eliminates the need to download every pdf link I click. That was a huge bonus for me considering that sometimes I might be looking at 20-30 papers to find a few that pertain to what I am researching. This plug-in loads into both Safari and Firefox, which is great.
I have not switched to Thunderbird yet. I am comfortable with Apple's Mail, but I have been happy with the other Mozilla products, so I am intrigued. Do you use Thunderbird and, if so, what would be the benefits of it over Mail?
Don't worry about sounding fanatical. You are talking to a guy who owns two Macs. Admittedly, I did not join the Mac fan club until after OS-X, but now that I am there...wow. I get a great GUI and UNIX.....ahhh heck, I better not get started:)
Maybe this will help. Mine is a soldiers complaint. As I said, I was infantry. However, there were times when I was in units that were turned into glorified police units. Almost to a man, soldiers hate it when their mission changes like that. I was trained for a specific mission--in my days it was killing Soviets. Taking me out of that paradigm sucked because I was untrained for it. It is more like I am commiserating with the French grunt than bashing him.
I agree that is the situation a lot of our soldiers are in right now in Iraq. And, if you asked them off camera, they would say "this sucks" Taking fire in battle is different...it is expected. Taking fire when you are helping to build a hospital somewhere is not expected. Both suck, but I was trained to handle the first, not the second.
My use of the surrender monkey comment was out of anger over the revelations that they may have been aiding Sadaam brutalize his people. The French government was awefully self-righteous when they were proclaiming their non-support for our military action due to concerns for peace. Reading some of the things I have been reading about their actions in the Oil for Food program makes me doubt they were honest. I think they were happy with the status quo because they were making lots of money. And, who knows, maybe I was just in a bad mood yesterday and felt like ranting.
By the way, I am definitely drinking champagne tonight:) No way I am going to let a little squabble with the French interfere with that.
I cannot disagree with anything in that quote except to say that we have to figure out something. There has to be something done about the illegal immigration problem. And I am not some racist red-neck who worries about too many of them brown people coming over here. I have compassion for them and want them to come. I would like to figure out a way to document it though.
There are economic concerns for border states that are forced to pay medical costs for illegal aliens who have no medical insurance. There are economic concerns for school districts that have budgets based on census data that is incorrect due to the unknown number of illegal aliens. There are security concerns due to that fact that it is not just poor mexicans crossing the border. There are some who wish to do this country harm crossing that same border.
I just don't feel like we can stick with the status quo on this.
I could not imagine giving up my C64 for $5. We only do it every once in awhile anymore, but my wife and I will occasionally drag that thing out and play some of the games we have for it. They are so 1985, but that is just fine by me. They run pretty well and I do not have to load them on my hard drive. Sure, the graphics are not as cool as today's games, but I do not play games for the graphics.
I remember something about them having a musical interface, but I was not into that at that time. Is that what you use the C64's for?
Damn, I think I might have to drag that out this weekend.
First of all, I was 11B/11C (Infantry) in the US Army--Armored Cav. My service commitment was up a long time ago, as such I was fortunate enough not to have to go to Afghanistan. Furthermore, I have the upmost respect for the other soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who are not in front-line situations. Everyone who serves with honor deserves that respect. My criticism is not directed at the French soldiers. I met some attending Ranger school at Ft. Benning and they were always squared away.
My criticism is with the French government. They made a big deal about sending troops to serve hand in hand with the US to fight terrorism. However, what they sent were peace-keeping forces. Again, I respect the work the actual French soldier has done, but I resent that the French government tried to score points by making their mission in Afghanistan sound different than what it was. I am just a little pissed they were not more honest in saying that they were sending peace-keeping and support personnel.
Slashdot Mirror
For the CherryOS award, the Wired article stated:
In October, a hitherto-unknown Hawaiian company, Maui X-Stream, rocked the tech world with news of CherryOS, a Mac emulator for Windows PCs that supposedly ran wicked fast and cost only $50. The software was offered as a download, but the stampeding hordes of closet Apple lovers at Slashdot crashed the servers before anyone could get it.
I resent being called a closet Apple lover....I am in fact a flaming Apple lover.
How did this pass muster? The article clearly states:
Various vulnerabilities were found and fixed [emphasis added] in Mozilla-based products, ranging from a potential buffer overflow and temporary files disclosure to anti-spoofing issues.
While I recognize the article does state in the middle of it that it was for releases prior to the current ones, why not say that in the title or somewhere in the first sentence. Saying something like, "People using older versions of.....may be vulnerable to security flaws." At first glance, this article is a little misleading.
I have to agree with you here. I am obviously an avid Mac guy, but I would like to see more devices like this open to Linux users. I am thinking about setting up a second desktop at home and I very much want to make it a Linux box. However, it makes it difficult to do that when I see things like this.
Having browsed the article, I like what I see. I like the set up, I like the single controller, I like that I can also control it from my desktop, and I like that it is based on Linux (i.e. Probably a little more crash-proof than what we saw from Bill and his minions earlier this week.) I also think it has a nice look to it. I have a lot of digital audio files and being able to store them in one location would be great. I know this is not a new innovation, but so far I think it is the most attractive option to me. Might be able to get rid of that CD tower in my living room. Might be a little pricey right now, but I am sure that will come down.
I am more than happy with my $90 Palm. It syncs with my address book and iCal on my Mac....and fits in my pocket. And, if something bad happens to it during my travels, I am out $90...not $800. I just think these PDA's are getting crazy.
I am also confused why it is a linux PDA, yet you have to have windoze or a mac to sync with the thing. That sucks. If I am a linux guy I want a linux PDA that will work with my computer...
While I wish it was easier to converted the protected files to mp3 a little easier, I cannot fault Apple for making it difficult. They have a good catalog and I can get any song from their store for 99 cents. I imagine that part of the reason they got so many artists to participate was offering some protection of their music.
Having said all of that, it ,I>is possible to convert the music...although it does take a little more work than simply exporting the files. There are several ways, some included here:
http://www.bpurcell.org/blog/index.cfm?mode=entry& entry=1036
http://www.tunebite.com/index.php?affiliate=1002
I also believe you should be able to burn your protected songs to a CD and then ripping them to mp3 from the CD
I do not profess to understand the legalities of all of this, but these are the ways to do it. If you are converting this music to mp3 for personal use, I believe you are allowed to convert it legally.
Actually, no one died. What happened was that MS, through a hostile takeover, now own J. Edgar Hoover, Jr. and Bill has co-opted his personna.
Seriouly though. This whole episode is way too easy to make a joke about. Gee Bill, now you too have had the typical windows experience. It would be so much easier if they did not try to copy the innovations of other companies and simply fixed their broken software.
What Joel says can also be applied to a number of technical disciplines. I am an engineer, but much of what he is talking about can be applied to us too. It amazes me what passes for writing skills in engineering. It is so frustrating to try to pick up on previous work that is poorly documented. Then, what documentation is present is written in something like english, but so badly written you have to re-read it several times to understand what the heck someone is trying to say.
I also enjoyed his comment, "You need to spend at least a semester getting close to the machine". Understanding these machines is so important. I really had no idea what happened in the guts of a machine until I took a class programming microcontrollers in assembly and in C. Made me appreciate things a lot more.
That was what I was alluding to. I remember reading the Spectrum article back in 2000. Knowing what I did about where mobile communications was going with 802.11 and such I thought, here is a company that is well-positioned. The low power consumption was a major advantage. When code-morphing was added to this platform, they really should have succeeded. But, yes, Intel was right there too and they have that name recognition that is important in consumer devices. I just wonder, with hindsight being 20/20, if they could not have done something better to get that chip into more devices. Thanks for the feedback
All that development and hype, yet now they are getting out of the market. Seems they should have been well positioned to dominate in the handheld and portable market. Bad business practices? The EE Times also has a good article on this.
When I first saw that notebook page, I worried that someone had posted a page from one of my notebooks from an undergraduate EE class. Seriously though, it is pages like those that generally lead to great progress.
Obviously I am a Mac fan. However, even if I weren't, I would still read Andy Hertzfeld's book and enjoy interviews such as these. I have visited the folklore site and it is pretty cool. Maybe I am too much of a nerd, but I think reading about the history of technology is simply a great read. One of my early faves was Soul of a New Machine. Obviously this interview was too short to really get into details, but there were a few little tidbits in there that were interesting. I am really looking forward to anything he puts out on Woz.
I agree with all of those above who say a pizza box is a bad idea. I know way too may people who would pass a laptop bag up to get that pizza.
However, I could leave my Error Control Coding, LaTeX, or Unix Manual anywhere for days and they would be there when I returned. Books are probably not the right size, but maybe as a laptop sleeve.
I am not disagreeing with you, but I have read both sides to that. I do agree that there was probably some hesistancy on their part to go forward. I am just not convinced yet that it was a concerted effort to prevent the bomb from being made. I think it would be easier for them to say after the fact that they were dragging their feet. By saying this, they were hoping not be associated with Hitler.
I hope that you are not saying that Hitler is only a terrorist because he lost WWII.
That is a very excellent book. In fact, I believe the main point of this article is dealt with in that book. The import of this was that until that point, scientists had been much more isolated from these types of political interventions. As a previous poster here has pointed out, this intervention is more common now.
I think something else to consider with this was that a lot of the people pushing to keep the Germans in the dark had a good idea of what they were dealing with. Many of these scientists were former residents of Germany, Italy, and some of the other countries of Europe. They felt it to their core that Hitler would stop at nothing and would use all the means at his disposal to win. They were firm in their belief that if Hitler got the bomb, he would use it without hesitation. It seemed to them that there were two ways to defeat this.
First, keeping Hitler in the dark as much as possible. Reports after the fact on Hitler Germany's progess with a bomb show that they were pretty well in the dark. Secondly, they thought they should work towards building a bomb as quickly as possible to defeat Hitler. They were pretty succuessful on that point too.
Another good book by Rhodes that continues from where "Making the Atomic Bomb leaves off is Dark Sun: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/068I imagine the look on the robot's face will be similar to the look my dog gets when my wife puts him in a Christmas sweater or when he has one of those stupid bows on his head from the groomers
Who the heck is running the show at NASA these days, Martha Stewart?
When I converted to Mac, one of the first things I did was eliminate MS IE, which for some reason was bundled on my machine. All my Mac friends run either Safari, Firefox, or Mozilla.
Personally, I now use Firefox about 90% of the time--maybe more and Safari sometimes if I am Googling or looking for technical papers because I find Safari is faster when I might be moving between sites quickly. I finally found a decent plug-in too that eliminates the need to download every pdf link I click. That was a huge bonus for me considering that sometimes I might be looking at 20-30 papers to find a few that pertain to what I am researching. This plug-in loads into both Safari and Firefox, which is great.
I have not switched to Thunderbird yet. I am comfortable with Apple's Mail, but I have been happy with the other Mozilla products, so I am intrigued. Do you use Thunderbird and, if so, what would be the benefits of it over Mail?/begin{Sarcasm}
You know, when I found out that Microsoft would no longer develop IE for Macs, I was so sad.
\end{Sarcasm}
Don't worry about sounding fanatical. You are talking to a guy who owns two Macs. Admittedly, I did not join the Mac fan club until after OS-X, but now that I am there...wow. I get a great GUI and UNIX.....ahhh heck, I better not get started :)
Maybe this will help. Mine is a soldiers complaint. As I said, I was infantry. However, there were times when I was in units that were turned into glorified police units. Almost to a man, soldiers hate it when their mission changes like that. I was trained for a specific mission--in my days it was killing Soviets. Taking me out of that paradigm sucked because I was untrained for it. It is more like I am commiserating with the French grunt than bashing him.
I agree that is the situation a lot of our soldiers are in right now in Iraq. And, if you asked them off camera, they would say "this sucks" Taking fire in battle is different...it is expected. Taking fire when you are helping to build a hospital somewhere is not expected. Both suck, but I was trained to handle the first, not the second.
My use of the surrender monkey comment was out of anger over the revelations that they may have been aiding Sadaam brutalize his people. The French government was awefully self-righteous when they were proclaiming their non-support for our military action due to concerns for peace. Reading some of the things I have been reading about their actions in the Oil for Food program makes me doubt they were honest. I think they were happy with the status quo because they were making lots of money. And, who knows, maybe I was just in a bad mood yesterday and felt like ranting.
By the way, I am definitely drinking champagne tonight:) No way I am going to let a little squabble with the French interfere with that.
I cannot disagree with anything in that quote except to say that we have to figure out something. There has to be something done about the illegal immigration problem. And I am not some racist red-neck who worries about too many of them brown people coming over here. I have compassion for them and want them to come. I would like to figure out a way to document it though.
There are economic concerns for border states that are forced to pay medical costs for illegal aliens who have no medical insurance. There are economic concerns for school districts that have budgets based on census data that is incorrect due to the unknown number of illegal aliens. There are security concerns due to that fact that it is not just poor mexicans crossing the border. There are some who wish to do this country harm crossing that same border.
I just don't feel like we can stick with the status quo on this.
Well, it was known. But then NASA messed something up in their converstion from grams to pounds....forgot to carry a one or something.
I could not imagine giving up my C64 for $5. We only do it every once in awhile anymore, but my wife and I will occasionally drag that thing out and play some of the games we have for it. They are so 1985, but that is just fine by me. They run pretty well and I do not have to load them on my hard drive. Sure, the graphics are not as cool as today's games, but I do not play games for the graphics.
I remember something about them having a musical interface, but I was not into that at that time. Is that what you use the C64's for?
Damn, I think I might have to drag that out this weekend.
Too funny...I have never seen that strip. Thanks for the corrected link. Thought my network connection was getting sluggish.
First of all, I was 11B/11C (Infantry) in the US Army--Armored Cav. My service commitment was up a long time ago, as such I was fortunate enough not to have to go to Afghanistan. Furthermore, I have the upmost respect for the other soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who are not in front-line situations. Everyone who serves with honor deserves that respect. My criticism is not directed at the French soldiers. I met some attending Ranger school at Ft. Benning and they were always squared away.
My criticism is with the French government. They made a big deal about sending troops to serve hand in hand with the US to fight terrorism. However, what they sent were peace-keeping forces. Again, I respect the work the actual French soldier has done, but I resent that the French government tried to score points by making their mission in Afghanistan sound different than what it was. I am just a little pissed they were not more honest in saying that they were sending peace-keeping and support personnel.