So now you can spend ~$150 for the first time ever in that machine's life and get 10.4 on it.
Actually not even that much, you can buy a copy of Tiger on eBay $50 or less. The grandparent is trolling for shits and giggles, so no point in trying to refute him.
Both NX flag and ASLR are present Leopard. For a number of compatibility reasons they are not implemented as extensively as they are on other systems, but it's disingenuous to say Mac OS X doesn't have them.
you'd realize that Charlie Miller is milking his 15 min of fame for all they are worth with his incendiary comments - basically trolling for publicity.
Oh, guess what - it turns out that of the 8 tests, which Firefox 3.1b2 fails (at least on my machine) exactly zero are CSS3 related. firefox fails:
#26 - on performance (I can live with this one)
#70 - check for well-formedness of UTF-8 encoded XML
#71 - HTML 4.0 Transitional
#75 through # 80 - a bunch of SVG tests (SVG fonts and SVG animation stuff)
Not only is the argument of you lot mighty hypocritical - ACID matters when Firefox passes it and IE doesn't, but it's irrelevant when Firefox fails, but you also don't seem to know what the hell are you talking about.
I didn't say ACID3 tests full compliance with all those standards. I don't think I even implied that. What I pointed out, though, is that the test is about much more than "small rendering bugs, and CSS3". And although, yes, the ACID tests do test quirks, often not even covered by the respective standard, its goal is an important one - to make sure that all browsers are equally quirky.
Yeah, you're right - it's all unimportant shit. Totally irrelevant. Come to think of it, the Mozilla folks should not try to implement any of the stuff ACID3 tests at all. You know, 'cause they are just that cool.
The clones were poorly made and executed the old Mac OS rather poorly. This hurt Apple's overall reputation.
I don't think Apple's biggest problem with the Mac clones of the mid '90s was the tarnished reputation of Mac OS. A much, much bigger problem was something that you also point out in your comment - most people chose cheaper, not better. The prices of the clones did severely undercut the prices of "genuine" Macs and as result Apple's sales practically disappeared. And you are correct - the same would happen today, too.
If Apple is happy with their second tier status and falling behind as developers put more advanced products out for Windows (e.g. Adobe Photoshop CS4 64-bit) more power to them.
We can argue whether Apple are "second tier" and "falling behind", but I'd rather point out that your example with the 64-bit Photoshop CS4 is really not a good one. This is not Adobe laying their wrath upon Apple or ditching the Mac for the more prospective Windows platform. It's a combination of Adobe's lack of foresight and Apple pulling a fast one with the 64-bit Carbon. If anything Adobe are bringing their audio/video software back to the Mac after abandoning it for Windows half a decade ago. I guess that says something about how much is the Mac falling behind, doesn't it?
The comments don't reflect the "evil" practices that Apple engages in on a daily basis. Why is Apple immune from the righteous wrath that they deserve for their business practices?
What's so "evil" about Apple's business model, which is what is being disputed in the lawsuit between Apple and Psystar?
From the install disk bundled with the computer maybe?
But that doen't even have to be an issue. If push comes to shove, Apple have a surprisingly big number of options how to restrict sales or installs of OS X to only "genuine" hardware owners. An alternative to mollymoo's solution can be something like this: Apple will only sell you a copy of OS X only if you can provide a valid machine serial number. Or they may add product activation. How about a hardware key being required to install or even run the OS (a la "Trusted Computing").
I think you are reading too much in this. I may be mistaken for I am not a lawyer, but I think there is a federal law mandating district courts to require the parties in civil lawsuits to try alternative dispute resolution before going to court. So this whole thing probably is nothing more than Psystar (and maybe Apple) buying themselves some time. Also, given Apple's motion for dismissal of Psystar's counterclaims, it seems Apple's attorneys are pretty confident Psystar doesn't have a leg to stand on.
I don't think Apple are really interested in paying out Psystar. Unless the resolution send a clear message that Apple does not tolerate Mac clones and will pursue their manufacturers/sellers to the bitter and expensive end, nothing will prevent a "StarPsy" form popping up again in a few months, hoping to either make a mint selling "open computers", or at worst to get a cool few millions form the mothership.
I agree with you that this is a very stupid thing for Apple to do. It will needlessly alienate a lot of people - not enough to hurt sales, but, again, needlessly many. However, I am very much against jail-breaking, especially as a result of Apple doing something wrong. It simply doesn't send Apple a message that whatever they've done is not going to be tolerated by the market. Once they've sold you the device, they couldn't care less how much you disagree with them. And they'll do the same thing again.
What bothers me more than this is that the AppStore restricts any frameworks that one _could_ use to write good applications, like movie players (CoreSurface) and programs that interact with iTunes. If you look at older versions of the firmware, these were all public frameworks until the AppStore rolled out.
Well, technically before there was an App Store and an official SDK all the frameworks used on the iPhone were private.
Although I very much disagree with the grandparent, your "analogy" also doesn't work because, at least in the PC OS market, Microsoft are, all together now, a monopoly. Apple are not one in the smart phone arena. If you do not like Apple's device, services, distribution model, etc. you can go buy one of dozens of devices form a dozen manufacturers, claiming they do more than the iPhone. So, although massively stupid move on Apple's part, it's fair game.
Does it really matter? If the grandparent have said he has, say, an iPhone it would not have made his point any better, but rather it would have turned the thread into a iPhone sucks - iPhone rocks flamewar.
What the activists want is for proprietary stuff tu become free. And if there is no costumer, who would rather have a proprietary stuff, then this is clear win situation for costumer.
The thing is that it's not up to these activists to decide whether someone else's property should be free or not. In trying to force companies like Apple to "free" their products, the activists are diminishing, if not outright denying, Apple's freedom to decide how to use the product of their labor, which is much more akin to slavery than the opposite.
As for slavery and choosing proprietary stuff. For example, Skype is proprietary system, I don't trust it, you could tell me not to use it, but it is required in my workplace. Now you could tell "get another job", to what I would say "like emigrate to another country if I don't like things that happen here", which is pretty much giving up. Avoiding issue is an option, of course, but if one care about state of things, this is not the best one.
In your example you seem to be a "slave" to your company, not proprietary software. And if your mistrust for the piece of proprietary software you are "forced" to use is not caused by a cognitive bias, but is actually founded in real facts, as probably is the case with Skype, and there is a reasonable free alternative, I'm sure you'll be able to reason with your employer, your government, or whoever that a change is due.
The whole thing of freedom is very fuzzy. Everybody can't be free in every imaginable sense.
For example, if I want to be free to keep slaves then there will be people who will have very limited freedoms.
Some people fight for free software, to grant users ability to do with device what they want. They care not for companies, who make the device.
By the way, as a costumer, all other things equal, why would you choose proprietary device/software over free one?
All other things equal, I most certainly wont. Wont choose the proprietary device/software, that is. However in reality not all other things are equal. I choose the proprietary device because I see it as being better in at least one regard. E.g. the iPhone compared to OpenMoko FreeRunner.
And what does slavery have to do with, and I quote, "the freedom of a company to offer a "not exactly free" product and the freedom of a person to freely choose said "not exactly free" product over a "free-er" alternative". In what way are those two freedoms hurting anyone, so you can draw an analogy with slavery?
Even though Apple prohibit installation of their software on non-apple hardware, I think this is a good think as it might just make Jobs realise that it's time to open-up and prove that their OS is really up to the battle with the competition.
If only there were a specific hardware component such as a usb key that could be purchased to turn any computer into an apple-compatible one I would most certainly buy one to try out OS X once and for all.
There is no executive at Apple, not even Steve Jobs with the RDF turned on 11, that can justify before the shareholders the huge loss of revenue and profit that will result from such an action. Especially now that Apple are doing exceptionally well sales-wise. So don't get your hopes high, Mac OS X legally on generic x86 hardware is not going to happen in the next 10 years, at the very least and maybe not even then.
Oh yes, EULAs fly completely in the face of all contract law - the idea of hidden contracts and such - but let's just assume they're valid until we hear otherwise. And then let's assume that whatever other crazy legal ideas the software companies have are right until specifically overturned.
Perhaps, if we're just going to trust someone, we could pick someone other than the companies directly using those "laws" against us.
How are EULAs hidden? I'm yet to see a piece of software that comes with an EULA and doesn't require you to agree to it before the software can be installed and/or run.
Breaking what, the "contract" you don't see until long after you've become the legal owner of the software?
You don't become the legal owner of the software, when you purchase a program in a store. You become the legal owner of a license to use said software - a license that comes with specific terms described in an EULA. If you install the software, thereby agreeing to the EULA, those terms become very much legal and binding, unless deemed illegal by a court of law (e.g. in may countries preventing the resale of the license is explicitly forbidden and such a clause will be considered void). If you disagree with the terms of the EULA, you can return the software to the vendor and you are entitled to (usually) complete refund.
N.B.: IANAL and this is not meant to be legal advice.
Since you didn't provide a source where one could find more about this particular case, I'll have to go by what little information I were able to find - a couple of sentences in a 1998 essay by Richard Stallman called Copyleft: Pragmatic Idealism, hardly an unbiased source. From what I could gather, NeXT wrote the Objective-C frontend for GCC, something I would not describe as mere "Objective C modifications", and wanted for some undisclosed in the essay reason to provide it to the GNU project in the form of.o files instead of as source code. Now, I don't know what NeXT's motivation could have been, but given that the late 80's was still the heyday of proprietary software and barely the dawn of open source, I can see them doing it out of farce of habit. And the only reason this can be considered a GPL violation is that both the license and the "anti-modular" design of GCC were specifically created to prevent such cases. Otherwise the Objective-C frontend probably was/is a self-contained chunk of code, entirely written by NeXT, and not using any GPL-ed code but only interfacing such.
At any rate, your statement "Not anymore, but not for lack of trying." somehow does not suggest that all you have is a single, not so clear-cut case form more than 18 years ago, that seems to have been quickly and amicably resolved.
This is the proverbial me telling people your sister is a dirty wore, and letting you prove that you don't actually have a sister. Would you care to give a few examples of Apple trying to violate GPL?
I thought that one of the mainstays of free software is "if you have an itch you have the ability to scratch it".
Unless, of course, we're talking about a chunk of proprietary software -- that is, iTunes and the iPod firmware. And the iPhone, which seems downright hostile towards free software at all.
iTunes uses Quicktime to decode media, so the Quicktime component will at least let people enjoy Vorbis/Theora content on their computers, in their media jukebox software of choice. And if the component is rock solid stable, featureful and efficient enough it just might persuade Apple to adopt it in their other products. Then again, it might not, but you have a better shot at it that way than by whining or performing DoS attacks on Apple stores.
Furthermore, the usual "scratch" is to install RockBox, or to buy another player -- not to fix Apple's shortcomings for them.
Well, if those work for you, why are we discussing Apple's lack of support of Ogg then? And wouldn't you be fixing Apple's shortcomings for yourself (and for others like you), anyway?
Whatever happened to the concept of freedom of choice?
Do FSF people cut your hands off when you buy iPhone? You can do whatever you freaking want. They are after the ones who restrict the freedom (iPhone is not exactly free now is it).
I guess I'm still a bit fuzzy on this whole newfangled concept of "freedom". I thought that "freedom" included also the freedom of a company to offer a "not exactly free" product and the freedom of a person to freely choose said "not exactly free" product over a "free-er" alternative.
I'm surprised that so many people here on Slashdot have vehement feelings about Ogg support in iTunes and on the iPod, but there is what seems like only one person working part time on the Ogg Quicktime component. Neither you SanityInAnarchy, nor anyone form FSF seems to be doing anything but bitching and whining. I thought that one of the mainstays of free software is "if you have an itch you have the ability to scratch it". Am I right?
Slashdot Mirror
So now you can spend ~$150 for the first time ever in that machine's life and get 10.4 on it.
Actually not even that much, you can buy a copy of Tiger on eBay $50 or less. The grandparent is trolling for shits and giggles, so no point in trying to refute him.
Both NX flag and ASLR are present Leopard. For a number of compatibility reasons they are not implemented as extensively as they are on other systems, but it's disingenuous to say Mac OS X doesn't have them.
If you go look at Jordan Hubbard's From the Server Room to Your Pocket presentation:
http://www.usenix.org/event/lisa08/tech/hubbard_talk.pdf
or listen to it:
http://www.usenix.org/media/events/lisa08/tech/mp3/hubbard.mp3
you'd realize that Charlie Miller is milking his 15 min of fame for all they are worth with his incendiary comments - basically trolling for publicity.
Oh, guess what - it turns out that of the 8 tests, which Firefox 3.1b2 fails (at least on my machine) exactly zero are CSS3 related. firefox fails:
#26 - on performance (I can live with this one)
#70 - check for well-formedness of UTF-8 encoded XML
#71 - HTML 4.0 Transitional
#75 through # 80 - a bunch of SVG tests (SVG fonts and SVG animation stuff)
Not only is the argument of you lot mighty hypocritical - ACID matters when Firefox passes it and IE doesn't, but it's irrelevant when Firefox fails, but you also don't seem to know what the hell are you talking about.
I didn't say ACID3 tests full compliance with all those standards. I don't think I even implied that. What I pointed out, though, is that the test is about much more than "small rendering bugs, and CSS3". And although, yes, the ACID tests do test quirks, often not even covered by the respective standard, its goal is an important one - to make sure that all browsers are equally quirky.
Yeah, you're right - it's all unimportant shit. Totally irrelevant. Come to think of it, the Mozilla folks should not try to implement any of the stuff ACID3 tests at all. You know, 'cause they are just that cool.
I don't think Apple's biggest problem with the Mac clones of the mid '90s was the tarnished reputation of Mac OS. A much, much bigger problem was something that you also point out in your comment - most people chose cheaper, not better. The prices of the clones did severely undercut the prices of "genuine" Macs and as result Apple's sales practically disappeared. And you are correct - the same would happen today, too.
We can argue whether Apple are "second tier" and "falling behind", but I'd rather point out that your example with the 64-bit Photoshop CS4 is really not a good one. This is not Adobe laying their wrath upon Apple or ditching the Mac for the more prospective Windows platform. It's a combination of Adobe's lack of foresight and Apple pulling a fast one with the 64-bit Carbon. If anything Adobe are bringing their audio/video software back to the Mac after abandoning it for Windows half a decade ago. I guess that says something about how much is the Mac falling behind, doesn't it?
What's so "evil" about Apple's business model, which is what is being disputed in the lawsuit between Apple and Psystar?
From the install disk bundled with the computer maybe?
But that doen't even have to be an issue. If push comes to shove, Apple have a surprisingly big number of options how to restrict sales or installs of OS X to only "genuine" hardware owners. An alternative to mollymoo's solution can be something like this: Apple will only sell you a copy of OS X only if you can provide a valid machine serial number. Or they may add product activation. How about a hardware key being required to install or even run the OS (a la "Trusted Computing").
I think you are reading too much in this. I may be mistaken for I am not a lawyer, but I think there is a federal law mandating district courts to require the parties in civil lawsuits to try alternative dispute resolution before going to court. So this whole thing probably is nothing more than Psystar (and maybe Apple) buying themselves some time. Also, given Apple's motion for dismissal of Psystar's counterclaims, it seems Apple's attorneys are pretty confident Psystar doesn't have a leg to stand on.
I don't think Apple are really interested in paying out Psystar. Unless the resolution send a clear message that Apple does not tolerate Mac clones and will pursue their manufacturers/sellers to the bitter and expensive end, nothing will prevent a "StarPsy" form popping up again in a few months, hoping to either make a mint selling "open computers", or at worst to get a cool few millions form the mothership.
I agree with you that this is a very stupid thing for Apple to do. It will needlessly alienate a lot of people - not enough to hurt sales, but, again, needlessly many. However, I am very much against jail-breaking, especially as a result of Apple doing something wrong. It simply doesn't send Apple a message that whatever they've done is not going to be tolerated by the market. Once they've sold you the device, they couldn't care less how much you disagree with them. And they'll do the same thing again.
What bothers me more than this is that the AppStore restricts any frameworks that one _could_ use to write good applications, like movie players (CoreSurface) and programs that interact with iTunes. If you look at older versions of the firmware, these were all public frameworks until the AppStore rolled out.
Well, technically before there was an App Store and an official SDK all the frameworks used on the iPhone were private.
Although I very much disagree with the grandparent, your "analogy" also doesn't work because, at least in the PC OS market, Microsoft are, all together now, a monopoly. Apple are not one in the smart phone arena. If you do not like Apple's device, services, distribution model, etc. you can go buy one of dozens of devices form a dozen manufacturers, claiming they do more than the iPhone. So, although massively stupid move on Apple's part, it's fair game.
Way to mention what phone it is that you have...
Does it really matter? If the grandparent have said he has, say, an iPhone it would not have made his point any better, but rather it would have turned the thread into a iPhone sucks - iPhone rocks flamewar.
What the activists want is for proprietary stuff tu become free. And if there is no costumer, who would rather have a proprietary stuff, then this is clear win situation for costumer.
The thing is that it's not up to these activists to decide whether someone else's property should be free or not. In trying to force companies like Apple to "free" their products, the activists are diminishing, if not outright denying, Apple's freedom to decide how to use the product of their labor, which is much more akin to slavery than the opposite.
As for slavery and choosing proprietary stuff. For example, Skype is proprietary system, I don't trust it, you could tell me not to use it, but it is required in my workplace. Now you could tell "get another job", to what I would say "like emigrate to another country if I don't like things that happen here", which is pretty much giving up. Avoiding issue is an option, of course, but if one care about state of things, this is not the best one.
In your example you seem to be a "slave" to your company, not proprietary software. And if your mistrust for the piece of proprietary software you are "forced" to use is not caused by a cognitive bias, but is actually founded in real facts, as probably is the case with Skype, and there is a reasonable free alternative, I'm sure you'll be able to reason with your employer, your government, or whoever that a change is due.
The whole thing of freedom is very fuzzy. Everybody can't be free in every imaginable sense.
For example, if I want to be free to keep slaves then there will be people who will have very limited freedoms.
Some people fight for free software, to grant users ability to do with device what they want. They care not for companies, who make the device.
By the way, as a costumer, all other things equal, why would you choose proprietary device/software over free one?
All other things equal, I most certainly wont. Wont choose the proprietary device/software, that is. However in reality not all other things are equal. I choose the proprietary device because I see it as being better in at least one regard. E.g. the iPhone compared to OpenMoko FreeRunner.
And what does slavery have to do with, and I quote, "the freedom of a company to offer a "not exactly free" product and the freedom of a person to freely choose said "not exactly free" product over a "free-er" alternative". In what way are those two freedoms hurting anyone, so you can draw an analogy with slavery?
Says you. The "clone wars" of the mid 90's say otherwise - everyone but the most hardcore Apple fans will choose the cheaper offering.
Even though Apple prohibit installation of their software on non-apple hardware, I think this is a good think as it might just make Jobs realise that it's time to open-up and prove that their OS is really up to the battle with the competition. If only there were a specific hardware component such as a usb key that could be purchased to turn any computer into an apple-compatible one I would most certainly buy one to try out OS X once and for all.
There is no executive at Apple, not even Steve Jobs with the RDF turned on 11, that can justify before the shareholders the huge loss of revenue and profit that will result from such an action. Especially now that Apple are doing exceptionally well sales-wise. So don't get your hopes high, Mac OS X legally on generic x86 hardware is not going to happen in the next 10 years, at the very least and maybe not even then.
Oh yes, EULAs fly completely in the face of all contract law - the idea of hidden contracts and such - but let's just assume they're valid until we hear otherwise. And then let's assume that whatever other crazy legal ideas the software companies have are right until specifically overturned.
Perhaps, if we're just going to trust someone, we could pick someone other than the companies directly using those "laws" against us.
How are EULAs hidden? I'm yet to see a piece of software that comes with an EULA and doesn't require you to agree to it before the software can be installed and/or run.
Breaking what, the "contract" you don't see until long after you've become the legal owner of the software?
You don't become the legal owner of the software, when you purchase a program in a store. You become the legal owner of a license to use said software - a license that comes with specific terms described in an EULA. If you install the software, thereby agreeing to the EULA, those terms become very much legal and binding, unless deemed illegal by a court of law (e.g. in may countries preventing the resale of the license is explicitly forbidden and such a clause will be considered void). If you disagree with the terms of the EULA, you can return the software to the vendor and you are entitled to (usually) complete refund.
N.B.: IANAL and this is not meant to be legal advice.
Since you didn't provide a source where one could find more about this particular case, I'll have to go by what little information I were able to find - a couple of sentences in a 1998 essay by Richard Stallman called Copyleft: Pragmatic Idealism , hardly an unbiased source. From what I could gather, NeXT wrote the Objective-C frontend for GCC, something I would not describe as mere "Objective C modifications", and wanted for some undisclosed in the essay reason to provide it to the GNU project in the form of .o files instead of as source code. Now, I don't know what NeXT's motivation could have been, but given that the late 80's was still the heyday of proprietary software and barely the dawn of open source, I can see them doing it out of farce of habit. And the only reason this can be considered a GPL violation is that both the license and the "anti-modular" design of GCC were specifically created to prevent such cases. Otherwise the Objective-C frontend probably was/is a self-contained chunk of code, entirely written by NeXT, and not using any GPL-ed code but only interfacing such.
At any rate, your statement "Not anymore, but not for lack of trying." somehow does not suggest that all you have is a single, not so clear-cut case form more than 18 years ago, that seems to have been quickly and amicably resolved.
Not anymore, but not for lack of trying.
This is the proverbial me telling people your sister is a dirty wore, and letting you prove that you don't actually have a sister. Would you care to give a few examples of Apple trying to violate GPL?
I thought that one of the mainstays of free software is "if you have an itch you have the ability to scratch it".
Unless, of course, we're talking about a chunk of proprietary software -- that is, iTunes and the iPod firmware. And the iPhone, which seems downright hostile towards free software at all.
iTunes uses Quicktime to decode media, so the Quicktime component will at least let people enjoy Vorbis/Theora content on their computers, in their media jukebox software of choice. And if the component is rock solid stable, featureful and efficient enough it just might persuade Apple to adopt it in their other products. Then again, it might not, but you have a better shot at it that way than by whining or performing DoS attacks on Apple stores.
Furthermore, the usual "scratch" is to install RockBox, or to buy another player -- not to fix Apple's shortcomings for them.
Well, if those work for you, why are we discussing Apple's lack of support of Ogg then? And wouldn't you be fixing Apple's shortcomings for yourself (and for others like you), anyway?
Whatever happened to the concept of freedom of choice?
Do FSF people cut your hands off when you buy iPhone? You can do whatever you freaking want. They are after the ones who restrict the freedom (iPhone is not exactly free now is it).
I guess I'm still a bit fuzzy on this whole newfangled concept of "freedom". I thought that "freedom" included also the freedom of a company to offer a "not exactly free" product and the freedom of a person to freely choose said "not exactly free" product over a "free-er" alternative.
I'm surprised that so many people here on Slashdot have vehement feelings about Ogg support in iTunes and on the iPod, but there is what seems like only one person working part time on the Ogg Quicktime component. Neither you SanityInAnarchy, nor anyone form FSF seems to be doing anything but bitching and whining. I thought that one of the mainstays of free software is "if you have an itch you have the ability to scratch it". Am I right?