'' so now the caveat to freedom of the press is: print what you like, so long as what you print is evidence of a health, safety or welfare hazard affecting all, or a government employee who reveals mismanagement. ''
Absolutely not. This case is about trade secrets. Any information that you aquired legally without signing an NDA (or without being bound by an NDA signed by your employer, or similar situations) is not a trade secret, purely by the fact that you know it and therefore it is not secret, so you can publish it. If you find out something that Apple wants to keep secret because they are careless, it is not a trade secret, and you can publish it.
If you find out information because an employee acts illegally, or because you or someone else stole documents etc., then it is still a trade secret, You are not allowed to publish it.
Conclusion: Go through Apple's garbage cans and you can publish anything you can find. Pay money to Apple's employees for information and you are in deep shit.
'' 1. If the blogger signed a NDA, Apple has every right to sue his ass off.
2. If the blogger didn't sign an NDA, how can he be any way responsible for any damage?
If somebody else signed an NDA and passed the information to a media outlet, the signer did the infringement, not the media. ''
It seems that you don't understand at all what the NDA actually means.
The NDA serves two purposes. First, it is a legally binding contract. The person signing the NDA is not allowed to disclose certain information. Even if that information is not secret at all, the person is still not allowed to disclose it. (However, NDA's usually contain some close that allow you to talk about something once it becomes public knowledge). As far as the contract goes, someone passing on information received under an NDA commits a contract violation, and someone who didn't sign the NDA is not bound by it.
But secondly, if for example Apple discloses a trade secret to a third party under NDA, the information remains a trade secret. Apple has to take reasonable steps to keep the information secret, and making a third party sign an NDA is such a reasonable step. Or putting terms into employment contracts. A trade secret stays a trade secret until it either loses its value (a secret can only be a trade secret if it gives the company some advantage compared to other companies), until it is disclosed on purposes (like the Mac Mini ceased to be a trade secret once it was announced), or until it becomes known to the public through carelessness (like the G5 one day before it was officially announced). Illegal disclosure, after espionage or theft, or disclosure by violating a contract, doesn't prevent it from being a trade secret.
The person who signed the NDA has two legal problems: He acted against a legally binding contract, and he illegally disclosed a trade secret. The blogger has one legal problem: He illegally disclosed a trade secret.
'' Somebody explain to me why, once the Majority of Mac's are Intel based a windows developer would port their app over to OS X if you could run the windows version of the app at native speeds on the same screen as OS X? ''
In order to increase the percentage of customers among the users.
I can guarantee that the amount of Windows software bought by Macintosh owners will be very, very close to zero. Windows-only games will be _used_ on Macs using Bootcamp to a certain degree, but they will not be _sold_.
HDCP generates a cipher bitstream. The cipher depends on the key in the graphics card, the key in the receiver, and a random seed. The graphics card outputs (content xor cipher). If you can record the encrypted output stream, and then convince the graphics card to send a black screen to the monitor, encrypted using the same random seed (and the keys are the same because you use the same graphics card and monitor), then you can know record (black xor cipher).
'' I'll pay $60 for RAM from crucial and Apple will charge $150 for the same one. ''
That's interesting. I just checked out what memory for the 1.83 GHz Core Duo iMac costs. At the Apple Store, you pay $300 for an upgrade from 512 MB to 2 GB. At Crucial, the 1 GB chip costs $158, so you pay $316 for 2 GB and you can keep a 512 MB chip as a spare.
Are we checking different web sites, are you living in an alternative universe, or are you just making your numbers up?
'' It probably doesn't help much that Photoshop is Carbon either. Not to mention they've got lots of Altivec code. ''
Carbon doesn't hurt either. Carbon works just as fine on Intel Macs as it does on PowerPC Macs.
And Altivec code doesn't hurt either. Whatever Altivec code Adobe has, they should have SSE2 or SSE3 code for Pentium doing exactly the same things. This is not their first x86 version of Photoshop, you know.
'' It is not the fist time. Back in the 16 bit times you could install MacOS (V.3 ??) on Atari computers. And if you owned an set of original Apple ROM there was nothing Apple could do. They whined but they could not do a thing. At least not here in Germany. ''
Oh yes, I remember that one. The company producing the software shipped it with a nice license that stopped their customers for example from disassembling and modifying the software in any way. And then it came with a list of instructions how to modify your applications so that they would actually run on MacOS on an Atari computer. What a bunch of hypocrites.
But now, since you started it, please point us to a place where I can buy a legal copy of MacOS X for Intel computers (without one of those rather expensive dongles called MacMini, iMac and MacBook Pro)
'' Also interestingly: What happens if MS refuse to pay? I can't imagine there being much chance of them refusing, but would the EU have powers to strongarm MS's bank to pay up on behalf of Microsoft? ''
Of course they do.
And if there is no money in the bank, they can take away Microsoft's office furniture, they can order Microsoft customers to make any payments to the EU instead of Microsoft and so on.
If they can't get the money that way, then Microsoft in Europe gets closed down.
'' EU wants to play hardball? If they're smart, Microsoft could REALLY play this off to their advantage, making themselves look like a victim and getting the EU to back down.
Stop selling products in Europe. Deny tech support to companies/users in Europe. Buy advertising stating why they're pulling out of the market. ''
And what do you think would be the reaction?
Day one: Panic. Day fourteen: Dell signs a contract with Apple to ship all Dell computers in Europe with MacOS X pre-installed. Day twentyone: All other major PC companies follow. Six months later: Microsoft is forgotten.
'' Then why not just release a paperback version first with 40% higher price tag and once early adopters have wasted their money, decrease the price to "normal". Is there any reason the publisher should use 10% valuable item for the first release? If the audience is ready to buy an overpriced product, they will do it anyway regardless of were it a paperback or a hardcover. ''
Of course they wouldn't. With the hardcover book, you pay more money, but there is a perceived higher value. The customer knows that the producer does this to maximise profit, but they also get higher value.
If the publisher only produced the paperback at initial higher price, customers would just feel ripped off and boycott that product. There is a thin line between maximising profit and ripoff. If your customers think you crossed that line, you're in trouble.
'' Here is the problem. You run linux and your software is an asset used to help run your company. Who owns it? Does Linus own the kernel? What about the distro owner? How about the 250 people who contributed to the kernel? ''
That is really very simple. Your company can just make a statement like: "In our company, we are using 500 copies of Linux and 500 copies of OpenOffice. Both Linux and OpenOffice are owned by their respective copyright holders; we are using this software under the GPL license. We are also using 500 copies of Windows XP and Microsoft Office which are both owned by Microsoft; we are allowed to do this because we paid Microsoft lots of money for the licenses. "
If in reality you only paid for 100 licenses of Windows XP and Microsoft Office and someone finds out, then you are not only in trouble with Microsoft, but also with SOX. And should you be violating the terms of the GPL license in such a way that you are not allowed to use Linux and OpenOffice (and I am not quite sure at the moment how you would do that), then you are also in trouble with SOX.
'' Minis come with the laptop 2.5 inch hard disks. Disk I/O is one of the major bottlenecks for powerbooks and minis. If they were to include a 3.5 inch 7500+ rpm disk "simultaneous" reads and writes would be much improved. 5400 may be enough to simply record. But it's not enough to record and watch at the same time. ''
Bullshit. My Digifusion box records two channels and plays back a third channel simultaneously, with a 5400 RPM harddisk that has been selected for lowest possible power consumption, and a 150 MHz processor. Each channel is just 500 KB per second. Even standard DV is just 3.6 MByte per second, that is absolutely nothing for a 5400 RPM harddisk.
''Looks like they still have some bugs to work out, as the PowerBook G4 still outperforms the MacBook in some of the benchmarks.''
Absolutely. The XBench guys have to work out some serious bugs in their so-called "benchmark".
The Intel versions get lower marks in the user interface tests because XBench tries to redraw some buttons as fast as possible, and the Mac very reasonably flatly refuses to do it faster than the screen refresh rate.
>> Well, as I read the GPL, if said government agency creates a GPLed tool and distributes it internally, then they must also make the source available internally; I see no exceptions allowing you to not provide source to employees on demand. I also see no exceptions allowing you to require that said receiving employees do not distribute the code outside of the agency.
You haven't thought this through.
If you are an employee at a government agency, or an employee at any company, and some Open Source software gets installed on your computer, then that software may be "distributed", but it is most definitely NOT distributed to YOU!. You as an employee have no rights whatsoever; the government agency or company has rights. And since the government agency in this case already _has_ the source code, and by installing the software on your computer it has gained the right to get that source code from itself, nothing has actually happened.
Now you may think that as an employee you would have the right to make a copy of that GPL'd software and take it home. You don't. Unless your company gives you permission, you are not allowed to copy software from work, even if the copyright holder allows you to do so. It is not your right to decide whether copies should be made. Think about it: If you, as an employee, made a copy of GPL'd software that your company has written without permission, and as a result, the company would have to publish source code that they didn't want to publish, then YOU are responsible for the resulting damages.
'' Blocking images on emil is an unreasonable step that shouldn't be required. ''
It is absolutely unavoidable for privacy reasons. If your mail reader loads an image from an email, the server holding that image gets a request from your machine. If spam is designed at least half intelligently, then that request will somehow identify your email address. So the server holding the picture will actually know that someone opened a spam email, which verifies your email address as correct, so you will get more spam in the future.
The MacOS X "Mail" program has a "Load Images" button if there are any unloaded images in your email, so you can decide. But if you don't load the images, no spammer can know that your email was read.
'' Sadly, there's almost no FPU hardware to speak of: 32-bit single precision floats in hardware; 64-bit double precision floats are [somehow?] implemented in software and bring the chip to its knees. ''
Don't believe everything you read on Wikipedia.
"Almost no FPU hardware to speak of": Each cell processor can issue four fused multiply-adds each cycle, and there are seven cells per chip, that is 28 madds or 56 fops per cycle. Not bad.
Double precision is not implemented in software. Maximum two fused multiply-adds (one instruction working on two vector elements) can be issued every 7 cycles, with 14 cycles latency. Doesn't sound much, but that means it is very easy to get absolutely close to peak performance, no matter how many other operations you have to do between floating point operations; you only need to have two independent operations to cover latency, and you can issue six non-fp instructions between any two fp instructions to do the legwork. Multiply by seven, take the higher clockrate, add in the PowerPC processor that can do some more work, and you beat a G5 easily on most problems.
'' They would NEVER threaten that ban - in fact, I'd say microsoft threatening to totally withdraw product sales and support from europe would be more a threat to european interests than microsofts. ''
That's what you think. If Microsoft disappeared from the face of the earth forever, there would be about two weeks of panic. After two weeks, Dell would ship half of its computers with Linux, and the other half with MacOS X (can you imagine how quick they would have a deal with Apple? ). After six months, Microsoft would be forgotten.
'' Wrong. They don't sell copies. The only way to get osx-x86 is to buy an intel mac. ''
So the only ones who could run MacOS X on a non-Macintosh machine both without copyright infringement and _reasonably_, would be people who buy a quad core super duper AMD machine, and a MacMini Intel (when it is released in a few months), remove MacOS X from the MacMini, put the MacMini away, and get MacOS X running on the AMD machine. (I can't tell whether this would violate any license agreements and whether such agreements are enforcable, but it wouldn't be a copyright infringement).
Doing the same with an iMac and a $499 Dull box would be exactly as legal, but completely unreasonable.
'' The G4 and G5 are nicer chips than Intel chips. I like 'em better. But they just can't compete with Intel's fabs. If Intel got the rights to put out G5s I'd prefer one of those (thought it will never happen). ''
Actually, if Intel got the rights to the G4, and attached the memory subsystem from Pentium or Pentium M, and put four of them on a chip which should be quite easy, considering the relatively small number of transistors, and moved it to a decent clockspeed, that would be one hell of a chip.
'' The trading standards officers regularly visit these places to look for counterfeit products. In the past, if music CD's or film DVD's are being sold, they would be confiscated immediately. Now, since a trader has started selling legally distributable software, the trading standards officers will have to examine each CD in order to read the software license agreement. ''
Not necessarily. All he has to do is ask the seller whether any of the goods the officer wants to confiscate is actually legal. If he says no, confiscate. Only if he says yes, things get more interesting. And if you have a copy of Firefox in the middle of hundred illegal copies of other software, maybe you wouldn't want to press the matter, because instead of getting just the illegal software confiscated, you are likely to end up in court.
'' Goodness me, I'll admit I don't know that much about the workings of OS X but I'm shocked to hear that meta data stored in a file is trusted in this fashion. ''
No, that is no problem at all. The problem is that two applications (Safari and Finder) used different code to decide whether this is a script or not. Safari thought it was a JPEG file. That would have been no problem at all if the Finder had agreed and had asked Photoshop to open that JPEG file. The problem was that the Finder looked at the same file with the same metadata and came to a different conclusion, believing that the same file was a shell script.
'' Mac OS X users can protect themselves simply by removing the check mark from the "Open safe files after downloading" option in Safari's preferences under the General tab. I have tested this and it works. This is quite a nasty little exploit so I suggest making the change ASAP. ''
The problem is not the "Open safe files after downloading" option. The problem is that someone used the wrong definition of "safe file".
Unsafe files are (for example): Executable files (that is files that the operating system will run as executable if you doubleclick), and shell scripts (files that the operating system will pass to the Terminal application for execution if you doubleclick). But Safari used a different definition: Executable files, and files that contain a pattern that is typical, but not required, for script files.
If both places used the same code to determine that something is an executable or shell script, there would be no danger. Either Safari would have detected that this is a shell script and therefore dangerous, or the Finder would have _failed_ to detect that this is shell script, and therefore would have _failed_ to open it.
Slashdot Mirror
'' so now the caveat to freedom of the press is: print what you like, so long as what you print is evidence of a health, safety or welfare hazard affecting all, or a government employee who reveals mismanagement. ''
Absolutely not. This case is about trade secrets. Any information that you aquired legally without signing an NDA (or without being bound by an NDA signed by your employer, or similar situations) is not a trade secret, purely by the fact that you know it and therefore it is not secret, so you can publish it. If you find out something that Apple wants to keep secret because they are careless, it is not a trade secret, and you can publish it.
If you find out information because an employee acts illegally, or because you or someone else stole documents etc., then it is still a trade secret, You are not allowed to publish it.
Conclusion: Go through Apple's garbage cans and you can publish anything you can find. Pay money to Apple's employees for information and you are in deep shit.
'' 1. If the blogger signed a NDA, Apple has every right to sue his ass off.
2. If the blogger didn't sign an NDA, how can he be any way responsible for any damage?
If somebody else signed an NDA and passed the information to a media outlet, the signer did the infringement, not the media. ''
It seems that you don't understand at all what the NDA actually means.
The NDA serves two purposes. First, it is a legally binding contract. The person signing the NDA is not allowed to disclose certain information. Even if that information is not secret at all, the person is still not allowed to disclose it. (However, NDA's usually contain some close that allow you to talk about something once it becomes public knowledge). As far as the contract goes, someone passing on information received under an NDA commits a contract violation, and someone who didn't sign the NDA is not bound by it.
But secondly, if for example Apple discloses a trade secret to a third party under NDA, the information remains a trade secret. Apple has to take reasonable steps to keep the information secret, and making a third party sign an NDA is such a reasonable step. Or putting terms into employment contracts. A trade secret stays a trade secret until it either loses its value (a secret can only be a trade secret if it gives the company some advantage compared to other companies), until it is disclosed on purposes (like the Mac Mini ceased to be a trade secret once it was announced), or until it becomes known to the public through carelessness (like the G5 one day before it was officially announced). Illegal disclosure, after espionage or theft, or disclosure by violating a contract, doesn't prevent it from being a trade secret.
The person who signed the NDA has two legal problems: He acted against a legally binding contract, and he illegally disclosed a trade secret. The blogger has one legal problem: He illegally disclosed a trade secret.
'' Somebody explain to me why, once the Majority of Mac's are Intel based a windows developer would port their app over to OS X if you could run the windows version of the app at native speeds on the same screen as OS X? ''
In order to increase the percentage of customers among the users.
I can guarantee that the amount of Windows software bought by Macintosh owners will be very, very close to zero. Windows-only games will be _used_ on Macs using Bootcamp to a certain degree, but they will not be _sold_.
You haven't thought this through.
HDCP generates a cipher bitstream. The cipher depends on the key in the graphics card, the key in the receiver, and a random seed. The graphics card outputs (content xor cipher). If you can record the encrypted output stream, and then convince the graphics card to send a black screen to the monitor, encrypted using the same random seed (and the keys are the same because you use the same graphics card and monitor), then you can know record (black xor cipher).
(content xor cipher) xor (black xor cipher) = content xor black = content.
'' I'll pay $60 for RAM from crucial and Apple will charge $150 for the same one. ''
That's interesting. I just checked out what memory for the 1.83 GHz Core Duo iMac costs. At the Apple Store, you pay $300 for an upgrade from 512 MB to 2 GB. At Crucial, the 1 GB chip costs $158, so you pay $316 for 2 GB and you can keep a 512 MB chip as a spare.
Are we checking different web sites, are you living in an alternative universe, or are you just making your numbers up?
'' It probably doesn't help much that Photoshop is Carbon either. Not to mention they've got lots of Altivec code. ''
Carbon doesn't hurt either. Carbon works just as fine on Intel Macs as it does on PowerPC Macs.
And Altivec code doesn't hurt either. Whatever Altivec code Adobe has, they should have SSE2 or SSE3 code for Pentium doing exactly the same things. This is not their first x86 version of Photoshop, you know.
'' It is not the fist time. Back in the 16 bit times you could install MacOS (V.3 ??) on Atari computers. And if you owned an set of original Apple ROM there was nothing Apple could do. They whined but they could not do a thing. At least not here in Germany. ''
Oh yes, I remember that one. The company producing the software shipped it with a nice license that stopped their customers for example from disassembling and modifying the software in any way. And then it came with a list of instructions how to modify your applications so that they would actually run on MacOS on an Atari computer. What a bunch of hypocrites.
But now, since you started it, please point us to a place where I can buy a legal copy of MacOS X for Intel computers (without one of those rather expensive dongles called MacMini, iMac and MacBook Pro)
'' Also interestingly: What happens if MS refuse to pay? I can't imagine there being much chance of them refusing, but would the EU have powers to strongarm MS's bank to pay up on behalf of Microsoft? ''
Of course they do.
And if there is no money in the bank, they can take away Microsoft's office furniture, they can order Microsoft customers to make any payments to the EU instead of Microsoft and so on.
If they can't get the money that way, then Microsoft in Europe gets closed down.
'' EU wants to play hardball? If they're smart, Microsoft could REALLY play this off to their advantage, making themselves look like a victim and getting the EU to back down.
Stop selling products in Europe.
Deny tech support to companies/users in Europe.
Buy advertising stating why they're pulling out of the market. ''
And what do you think would be the reaction?
Day one: Panic.
Day fourteen: Dell signs a contract with Apple to ship all Dell computers in Europe with MacOS X pre-installed.
Day twentyone: All other major PC companies follow.
Six months later: Microsoft is forgotten.
'' Then why not just release a paperback version first with 40% higher price tag and once early adopters have wasted their money, decrease the price to "normal". Is there any reason the publisher should use 10% valuable item for the first release? If the audience is ready to buy an overpriced product, they will do it anyway regardless of were it a paperback or a hardcover. ''
Of course they wouldn't. With the hardcover book, you pay more money, but there is a perceived higher value. The customer knows that the producer does this to maximise profit, but they also get higher value.
If the publisher only produced the paperback at initial higher price, customers would just feel ripped off and boycott that product. There is a thin line between maximising profit and ripoff. If your customers think you crossed that line, you're in trouble.
'' Here is the problem. You run linux and your software is an asset used to help run your company. Who owns it? Does Linus own the kernel? What about the distro owner? How about the 250 people who contributed to the kernel? ''
That is really very simple. Your company can just make a statement like: "In our company, we are using 500 copies of Linux and 500 copies of OpenOffice. Both Linux and OpenOffice are owned by their respective copyright holders; we are using this software under the GPL license. We are also using 500 copies of Windows XP and Microsoft Office which are both owned by Microsoft; we are allowed to do this because we paid Microsoft lots of money for the licenses. "
If in reality you only paid for 100 licenses of Windows XP and Microsoft Office and someone finds out, then you are not only in trouble with Microsoft, but also with SOX. And should you be violating the terms of the GPL license in such a way that you are not allowed to use Linux and OpenOffice (and I am not quite sure at the moment how you would do that), then you are also in trouble with SOX.
'' Minis come with the laptop 2.5 inch hard disks. Disk I/O is one of the major bottlenecks for powerbooks and minis. If they were to include a 3.5 inch 7500+ rpm disk "simultaneous" reads and writes would be much improved. 5400 may be enough to simply record. But it's not enough to record and watch at the same time. ''
Bullshit. My Digifusion box records two channels and plays back a third channel simultaneously, with a 5400 RPM harddisk that has been selected for lowest possible power consumption, and a 150 MHz processor. Each channel is just 500 KB per second. Even standard DV is just 3.6 MByte per second, that is absolutely nothing for a 5400 RPM harddisk.
''Looks like they still have some bugs to work out, as the PowerBook G4 still outperforms the MacBook in some of the benchmarks.''
Absolutely. The XBench guys have to work out some serious bugs in their so-called "benchmark".
The Intel versions get lower marks in the user interface tests because XBench tries to redraw some buttons as fast as possible, and the Mac very reasonably flatly refuses to do it faster than the screen refresh rate.
>> Well, as I read the GPL, if said government agency creates a GPLed tool and distributes it internally, then they must also make the source available internally; I see no exceptions allowing you to not provide source to employees on demand. I also see no exceptions allowing you to require that said receiving employees do not distribute the code outside of the agency.
You haven't thought this through.
If you are an employee at a government agency, or an employee at any company, and some Open Source software gets installed on your computer, then that software may be "distributed", but it is most definitely NOT distributed to YOU!. You as an employee have no rights whatsoever; the government agency or company has rights. And since the government agency in this case already _has_ the source code, and by installing the software on your computer it has gained the right to get that source code from itself, nothing has actually happened.
Now you may think that as an employee you would have the right to make a copy of that GPL'd software and take it home. You don't. Unless your company gives you permission, you are not allowed to copy software from work, even if the copyright holder allows you to do so. It is not your right to decide whether copies should be made. Think about it: If you, as an employee, made a copy of GPL'd software that your company has written without permission, and as a result, the company would have to publish source code that they didn't want to publish, then YOU are responsible for the resulting damages.
'' Blocking images on emil is an unreasonable step that shouldn't be required. ''
It is absolutely unavoidable for privacy reasons. If your mail reader loads an image from an email, the server holding that image gets a request from your machine. If spam is designed at least half intelligently, then that request will somehow identify your email address. So the server holding the picture will actually know that someone opened a spam email, which verifies your email address as correct, so you will get more spam in the future.
The MacOS X "Mail" program has a "Load Images" button if there are any unloaded images in your email, so you can decide. But if you don't load the images, no spammer can know that your email was read.
'' Sadly, there's almost no FPU hardware to speak of: 32-bit single precision floats in hardware; 64-bit double precision floats are [somehow?] implemented in software and bring the chip to its knees. ''
Don't believe everything you read on Wikipedia.
"Almost no FPU hardware to speak of": Each cell processor can issue four fused multiply-adds each cycle, and there are seven cells per chip, that is 28 madds or 56 fops per cycle. Not bad.
Double precision is not implemented in software. Maximum two fused multiply-adds (one instruction working on two vector elements) can be issued every 7 cycles, with 14 cycles latency. Doesn't sound much, but that means it is very easy to get absolutely close to peak performance, no matter how many other operations you have to do between floating point operations; you only need to have two independent operations to cover latency, and you can issue six non-fp instructions between any two fp instructions to do the legwork. Multiply by seven, take the higher clockrate, add in the PowerPC processor that can do some more work, and you beat a G5 easily on most problems.
'' I disagree. allofmp3 is legal in Russia, importing appears to be legal, and the RIAA does receive money from allofmp3 sales. ''
As far as I know, the RIAA was _offered_ money from allofmp3 sales, but refused to accept it. Accepting money would mean accepting that it is legal.
The last sentence of the article: "And..... let the Appleheaded fan boys flame comments begin.....5, 4, 3, 2, 1... now."
That's the definition of flamebait, isn't it?
'' They would NEVER threaten that ban - in fact, I'd say microsoft threatening to totally withdraw product sales and support from europe would be more a threat to european interests than microsofts. ''
That's what you think. If Microsoft disappeared from the face of the earth forever, there would be about two weeks of panic. After two weeks, Dell would ship half of its computers with Linux, and the other half with MacOS X (can you imagine how quick they would have a deal with Apple? ). After six months, Microsoft would be forgotten.
'' Wrong. They don't sell copies. The only way to get osx-x86 is to buy an intel mac. ''
So the only ones who could run MacOS X on a non-Macintosh machine both without copyright infringement and _reasonably_, would be people who buy a quad core super duper AMD machine, and a MacMini Intel (when it is released in a few months), remove MacOS X from the MacMini, put the MacMini away, and get MacOS X running on the AMD machine. (I can't tell whether this would violate any license agreements and whether such agreements are enforcable, but it wouldn't be a copyright infringement).
Doing the same with an iMac and a $499 Dull box would be exactly as legal, but completely unreasonable.
'' The G4 and G5 are nicer chips than Intel chips. I like 'em better. But they just can't compete with Intel's fabs. If Intel got the rights to put out G5s I'd prefer one of those (thought it will never happen). ''
Actually, if Intel got the rights to the G4, and attached the memory subsystem from Pentium or Pentium M, and put four of them on a chip which should be quite easy, considering the relatively small number of transistors, and moved it to a decent clockspeed, that would be one hell of a chip.
'' The trading standards officers regularly visit these places to look for counterfeit products. In the past, if music CD's or film DVD's are being sold, they would be confiscated immediately. Now, since a trader has started selling legally distributable software, the trading standards officers will have to examine each CD in order to read the software license agreement. ''
Not necessarily. All he has to do is ask the seller whether any of the goods the officer wants to confiscate is actually legal. If he says no, confiscate. Only if he says yes, things get more interesting. And if you have a copy of Firefox in the middle of hundred illegal copies of other software, maybe you wouldn't want to press the matter, because instead of getting just the illegal software confiscated, you are likely to end up in court.
'' Goodness me, I'll admit I don't know that much about the workings of OS X but I'm shocked to hear that meta data stored in a file is trusted in this fashion. ''
No, that is no problem at all. The problem is that two applications (Safari and Finder) used different code to decide whether this is a script or not. Safari thought it was a JPEG file. That would have been no problem at all if the Finder had agreed and had asked Photoshop to open that JPEG file. The problem was that the Finder looked at the same file with the same metadata and came to a different conclusion, believing that the same file was a shell script.
'' Mac OS X users can protect themselves simply by removing the check mark from the "Open safe files after downloading" option in Safari's preferences under the General tab. I have tested this and it works. This is quite a nasty little exploit so I suggest making the change ASAP. ''
The problem is not the "Open safe files after downloading" option. The problem is that someone used the wrong definition of "safe file".
Unsafe files are (for example): Executable files (that is files that the operating system will run as executable if you doubleclick), and shell scripts (files that the operating system will pass to the Terminal application for execution if you doubleclick). But Safari used a different definition: Executable files, and files that contain a pattern that is typical, but not required, for script files.
If both places used the same code to determine that something is an executable or shell script, there would be no danger. Either Safari would have detected that this is a shell script and therefore dangerous, or the Finder would have _failed_ to detect that this is shell script, and therefore would have _failed_ to open it.
'' Just like when the first iMac came out and PC makers released clones, you can find LCDs with embedded PCs.
Here's one from Sony. I know it's $2,000, but it looks like it's a lot more than the iMac as features go. ''
I took one look, and I know now why Sony is in trouble.