It may surprise you to learn that many programmers at Apple -- including key members of the Cocoa team, the Carbon team, and the IOKit team -- worked on Copland. Difference between Copland and Mac OS X? Executive management. Define a goal and stick to it. Q.E.D.
No, that's not the main difference. The main difference is that for Copland, they tried to design and implement the OS themselves, while for OS X, they started off with designs and code developed elsewhere (Berkeley, CMU, Stepstone, Xerox, GNU, among others) and are making only incremental changes.
In fact, a non-trivial amount of code and concepts from Copland is recycled in Mac OS X
You say that as if it were obvious that that's a good thing. In fact, I think that, despite some improvements and generally good release engineering, overall, the OS X design is already deteriorating.
The idiot here is Yates; and, you are right: he will probably not respond to avoid making this more of an embarrassment than it already is.
But the KOffice team has to get the facts out. MA really does need to know that KOffice is an independent codebase. MA should also know that the argument made by Yates is based on faulty data and weigh his arguments accordingly.
You forget Apple, they reinvented themselves more than once AND always have managed to be the frontrunner of computer innovation...
According to their marketing and PR departments, anyway.
That ultimately gave us osX, the ultimate in plug-in philosophy, from the kernel to the GUI.
Apple didn't give us OS X. The kernel came from CMU (an open source project), and NeXT and Apple spent the last 20 years making it less modular. The GUI software architecture came from NeXT, borrowed heavily from Smalltalk, and is client-server, like X11, only not as well architected or as efficient.
In fact, Apple's own systems programming staff screwed up so badly that Apple had to go out and buy a new operating system; all their attempts to develop a next generation Macintosh OS in-house failed.
Microsoft has one goal, and they are amazingly focused on it: make profit. For a cool extra few billions, wouldn't you "admit" that your software development processes were bad 18 months ago but are now much better?
So, the part of this message is "our development processes have improved, we have rewritten Windows, it's amazingly bug-free now, and it's completely new". Of course, those claims are ridiculous: nobody turns around an organization the size of Microsoft in 18 months, or rewrites Windows in that time.
There is a kernel of truth to this story: they probably are trying to improve their development processes. But the rest is marketing spin, designed to convince you to shell out bucks for an operating system release that gives you almost nothing new.
It is a lot more confusing to the full-time Mac users to see a "Windows button" in a web page
Apple has had half a dozen different button styles over the last ten years (including what you call "Windows buttons"), and right now, they still have at least three in Aqua applications alone, not even counting the OS9 compatibility stuff. And from observing complete novices working with Mac, I can assure you that they are not confused by it either. The only people this sort of thing bothers is people to whom Macintosh is some kind of ego thing.
So, first people in academia do this. Then, there are several shareware applications, some using bar code readers, some using cell phone cameras. Then a company like ScoutPal figures it out. And finally, Bezos sees it and patents it.
Well, let them waste their money: that patent is worthless. It's a testament to technological incompetence at Amazon. It is also something that will become a generic features of cell phones anyway.
Yes, the patent would be a pain to defeat against in court if it ever came to that. But the prior art is clear; in fact, it's better than one-click: one-click was so trivial that nobody had bothered writing it up academically, but this application has been published multiple times.
I hope I'll be able to turn it off; I really don't want Aqua buttons inside web pages. It would get really confusing if web sites start looking different on OS X and on other platforms.
The best feature for me is the new automatic nightly version system using Firefox's update system. No more manually downloading, unraring, and changing folder names... just a few clicks and I'm done. A very big plus, for nightly users.
That may be good for nightly testers, but it's a horrible idea for regular users. Something as important as the web browser should be consistent with all the other installed software on the system; randomly updating it just because a new version is out is not a good idea.
I am sick and tired of every application including its own update system. They all have different user interfaces, they don't handle dependencies correctly (e.g., Firefox may upgrade its own extensions, but not the download manager that they depend on), and they make random connections all over the Internet.
When will Windows and Macintosh get decent package and dependency management so that developers don't have to put this functionality into applications anymore, and that we don't have to put up with the security risks of many different update systems anymore?
Developers are attending special courses on Dtrace and they love it I think the benefits will be remarkable.
And where are those benefits supposed to come from? Well-tuned applications already run close to what the hardware is capable of. Doing that isn't rocket science.
Whilst migrating some things to RHEL is leaving a lot of stuff on Solaris (currently 10000+ systems).
For the people who say Sun isn't real about open source, they should realize this is a differentiating technology,
And that's why Sun and Solaris have been such smashing successes recently?
Face it, most people would not know how to use DTrace if their life depended on it. That leaves the few who do. Many of those don't have a choice in platforms, so it's academic. And many of the performance problems gurus encounter and can fix are blatantly obvious anyway. And even if DTrace may be a little better, it's not like other operating systems don't have similar tools already. So, you are left with a tiny group of people who can possibly solve a few, rare obscure problems slightly faster with DTrace than with other tools, provided they spend time learning it. That's not much of a differentiator.
In fact, the same is true for most of the stuff Sun and even Microsoft have been working on in order to "improve" their operating systems and justify new releases: they just don't matter.
There is a huge disaster recovery effort going on and they need to have things working as soon as possible. If it requires IE
Yes, that's the question: why does it "require" IE? Putting together a web site in general doesn't require IE. Putting together complex web applications doesn't require IE. In fact, it doesn't require IE at all, FEMA's staff is simply ill-prepared and incapable of producing a web site that doesn't require IE.
I'm surprised this is even an issue for anyone.
The issue is not what they should do in the short term. Obviously, if they are incapable of fixing this (which they seem to be), it's not going to get fixed right now.
But their inability to fix things in the short term doesn't make the issue disappear. Just like any other aspect of disaster recovery, if someone is incapable of doing their job during the disaster, you go back afterwards and look at the causes and take appropriate action.
This particular screwup may (and probably should) eventually result in a reprimand or dismissal.
If you've ever tried programming javascript for client side error checking of complex forms, you know that standards are very non-existant in the internet world.
Even if you are incapable of figuring out how to do cross-platform forms validation in JavaScript, there is a very simple choice: don't do forms validation in JavaScript at all, do it server-side.
It's near impossible to cater a web app to every single flavor of every browser for every OS.
Maybe you should go back to flipping hamburgers.
let's hope the ruling gets reversed
on
Microsoft Sues EU
·
· Score: 1
The European Union screwed up: forcing Microsoft to publish protocols to only proprietary vendors is just about the worst outcome possible. Furthermore, source code for portions of the system is nearly useless.
Microsoft should instead be forced to publish openly and without restrictions specifications (but not source code) for all communications protocols and file formats used by their software, with steep penalties if their software fails to comply with those protocols and formats.
Reasonable response times ( up to, say, 3 months) before disclosure should be allowed
What does "should" mean? As in "if you are nice, you give them 3 months"? Or as in "if you don't give them 3 months, they'll sue your pants off"?
The longer a known security issue exists, in secret, the more likely it is that someone else has found it - and that puts everyone at risk.
Given the likely relative number of smart teenagers and Russian mafia hackers compared to the number of US security researchers, simple statistics tells you that most security holes are going to be identified by the "bad guys" long before the "good guys".
Failure to let me know what risks I face should be seen as the problem. I need to know.
No, what puts you at risk is that you purchased software from a software vendor that is apparently incapable of making secure software and isn't accepting responsibility for their security problems.
The could just save themselves a lot of trouble and instead go to Antartica or some rocky desolate island on earth and start the solar system economy from there.
In different words, so far, there is little evidence that there are economically exploitable, useful resources on Mars.
The two groups who are responsible for security problems are software vendors and companies that buy buggy software and use them for critical data. Those are the primary parties at fault when security problems cause loss of money or life. Unfortunately, both of those groups are increasingly successful at trying to blame other people and creating legal obligations for other people.
What we really need is a market driven solution. If MegaBank discloses 200000 customer records to criminals due to a security bug in their Loses XP operating system, then they should be responsible for all the identity theft-related expenses that that causes their customers, plus statutory damages (say, $1000/customer) for distress and inconvenience for their customers. If they do that sort of thing too often, they'll go out of business. That kind of financial risk will force them to demand guarantees from the creator of the Loses XP operating system, which will force that company to finally get a handle on security or go out of business themselves and be replaced by companies that understand security. And if it turns out that it simply isn't possible to do something securely with software, well then only the non-computerized companies will survive in the market.
So, what's the "responsible" way of disclosing security bugs? Any way you feel like it, as far as I'm concerned. The security problem in someone else's software is not your responsibility in any way, shape, or form.
So we're going to freely share it with everyone we agree with.
We live in a free country. Does that mean you can do whatever you like? Is it permissible for you to steal, rape, or murder? No, it is not: even in a free country, you are restricted in what you can do--because that's the only way to guarantee a common level of freedom to everybody.
It's the same with free software: it gives a set of well-specified freedoms to everybody, instead of letting a few individuals and organizations get away with murder while everybody else suffers under them.
This marks the end of any relevance the GPL has. I wonder what will replace it?
The article is just part of MSNBC FUD against open source and free software, with no credible sources. Geez, people like you are so easy to manipulate.
Works great for Microsoft, Sun, and Apple, too: they have made a big business out of taking BSD-licensed software, altering it to make it incompatible, and then trying to replace existing, open standards with it. For some kinds of software, the BSD license is good; for a lot of software, it is a bad idea.
Slashdot Mirror
It may surprise you to learn that many programmers at Apple -- including key members of the Cocoa team, the Carbon team, and the IOKit team -- worked on Copland. Difference between Copland and Mac OS X? Executive management. Define a goal and stick to it. Q.E.D.
No, that's not the main difference. The main difference is that for Copland, they tried to design and implement the OS themselves, while for OS X, they started off with designs and code developed elsewhere (Berkeley, CMU, Stepstone, Xerox, GNU, among others) and are making only incremental changes.
In fact, a non-trivial amount of code and concepts from Copland is recycled in Mac OS X
You say that as if it were obvious that that's a good thing. In fact, I think that, despite some improvements and generally good release engineering, overall, the OS X design is already deteriorating.
The idiot here is Yates; and, you are right: he will probably not respond to avoid making this more of an embarrassment than it already is.
But the KOffice team has to get the facts out. MA really does need to know that KOffice is an independent codebase. MA should also know that the argument made by Yates is based on faulty data and weigh his arguments accordingly.
Too bad for Sun that most of them are not written in Java and don't run on Sun hardware.
You forget Apple, they reinvented themselves more than once AND always have managed to be the frontrunner of computer innovation...
According to their marketing and PR departments, anyway.
That ultimately gave us osX, the ultimate in plug-in philosophy, from the kernel to the GUI.
Apple didn't give us OS X. The kernel came from CMU (an open source project), and NeXT and Apple spent the last 20 years making it less modular. The GUI software architecture came from NeXT, borrowed heavily from Smalltalk, and is client-server, like X11, only not as well architected or as efficient.
In fact, Apple's own systems programming staff screwed up so badly that Apple had to go out and buy a new operating system; all their attempts to develop a next generation Macintosh OS in-house failed.
Microsoft has one goal, and they are amazingly focused on it: make profit. For a cool extra few billions, wouldn't you "admit" that your software development processes were bad 18 months ago but are now much better?
So, the part of this message is "our development processes have improved, we have rewritten Windows, it's amazingly bug-free now, and it's completely new". Of course, those claims are ridiculous: nobody turns around an organization the size of Microsoft in 18 months, or rewrites Windows in that time.
There is a kernel of truth to this story: they probably are trying to improve their development processes. But the rest is marketing spin, designed to convince you to shell out bucks for an operating system release that gives you almost nothing new.
It's a cool idea; too bad Amazon didn't come up with it, and too bad it flopped the last few times people tried it.
It is a lot more confusing to the full-time Mac users to see a "Windows button" in a web page
Apple has had half a dozen different button styles over the last ten years (including what you call "Windows buttons"), and right now, they still have at least three in Aqua applications alone, not even counting the OS9 compatibility stuff. And from observing complete novices working with Mac, I can assure you that they are not confused by it either. The only people this sort of thing bothers is people to whom Macintosh is some kind of ego thing.
So, first people in academia do this. Then, there are several shareware applications, some using bar code readers, some using cell phone cameras. Then a company like ScoutPal figures it out. And finally, Bezos sees it and patents it.
Well, let them waste their money: that patent is worthless. It's a testament to technological incompetence at Amazon. It is also something that will become a generic features of cell phones anyway.
Yes, the patent would be a pain to defeat against in court if it ever came to that. But the prior art is clear; in fact, it's better than one-click: one-click was so trivial that nobody had bothered writing it up academically, but this application has been published multiple times.
I hope I'll be able to turn it off; I really don't want Aqua buttons inside web pages. It would get really confusing if web sites start looking different on OS X and on other platforms.
The best feature for me is the new automatic nightly version system using Firefox's update system. No more manually downloading, unraring, and changing folder names... just a few clicks and I'm done. A very big plus, for nightly users.
That may be good for nightly testers, but it's a horrible idea for regular users. Something as important as the web browser should be consistent with all the other installed software on the system; randomly updating it just because a new version is out is not a good idea.
including a new automatic update system
I am sick and tired of every application including its own update system. They all have different user interfaces, they don't handle dependencies correctly (e.g., Firefox may upgrade its own extensions, but not the download manager that they depend on), and they make random connections all over the Internet.
When will Windows and Macintosh get decent package and dependency management so that developers don't have to put this functionality into applications anymore, and that we don't have to put up with the security risks of many different update systems anymore?
Developers are attending special courses on Dtrace and they love it I think the benefits will be remarkable.
And where are those benefits supposed to come from? Well-tuned applications already run close to what the hardware is capable of. Doing that isn't rocket science.
Whilst migrating some things to RHEL is leaving a lot of stuff on Solaris (currently 10000+ systems).
I pity you.
The brain may still be evolving, but the direction it's evolving in depends not on available mutations, but on selection.
Welcome to the future of the human race.
For the people who say Sun isn't real about open source, they should realize this is a differentiating technology,
And that's why Sun and Solaris have been such smashing successes recently?
Face it, most people would not know how to use DTrace if their life depended on it. That leaves the few who do. Many of those don't have a choice in platforms, so it's academic. And many of the performance problems gurus encounter and can fix are blatantly obvious anyway. And even if DTrace may be a little better, it's not like other operating systems don't have similar tools already. So, you are left with a tiny group of people who can possibly solve a few, rare obscure problems slightly faster with DTrace than with other tools, provided they spend time learning it. That's not much of a differentiator.
In fact, the same is true for most of the stuff Sun and even Microsoft have been working on in order to "improve" their operating systems and justify new releases: they just don't matter.
There is a huge disaster recovery effort going on and they need to have things working as soon as possible. If it requires IE
Yes, that's the question: why does it "require" IE? Putting together a web site in general doesn't require IE. Putting together complex web applications doesn't require IE. In fact, it doesn't require IE at all, FEMA's staff is simply ill-prepared and incapable of producing a web site that doesn't require IE.
I'm surprised this is even an issue for anyone.
The issue is not what they should do in the short term. Obviously, if they are incapable of fixing this (which they seem to be), it's not going to get fixed right now.
But their inability to fix things in the short term doesn't make the issue disappear. Just like any other aspect of disaster recovery, if someone is incapable of doing their job during the disaster, you go back afterwards and look at the causes and take appropriate action.
This particular screwup may (and probably should) eventually result in a reprimand or dismissal.
If you've ever tried programming javascript for client side error checking of complex forms, you know that standards are very non-existant in the internet world.
Even if you are incapable of figuring out how to do cross-platform forms validation in JavaScript, there is a very simple choice: don't do forms validation in JavaScript at all, do it server-side.
It's near impossible to cater a web app to every single flavor of every browser for every OS.
Maybe you should go back to flipping hamburgers.
The European Union screwed up: forcing Microsoft to publish protocols to only proprietary vendors is just about the worst outcome possible. Furthermore, source code for portions of the system is nearly useless.
Microsoft should instead be forced to publish openly and without restrictions specifications (but not source code) for all communications protocols and file formats used by their software, with steep penalties if their software fails to comply with those protocols and formats.
Reasonable response times ( up to, say, 3 months) before disclosure should be allowed
What does "should" mean? As in "if you are nice, you give them 3 months"? Or as in "if you don't give them 3 months, they'll sue your pants off"?
The longer a known security issue exists, in secret, the more likely it is that someone else has found it - and that puts everyone at risk.
Given the likely relative number of smart teenagers and Russian mafia hackers compared to the number of US security researchers, simple statistics tells you that most security holes are going to be identified by the "bad guys" long before the "good guys".
Failure to let me know what risks I face should be seen as the problem. I need to know.
No, what puts you at risk is that you purchased software from a software vendor that is apparently incapable of making secure software and isn't accepting responsibility for their security problems.
Is that hot volcanic mag-mah under your mountain range, or are you just happy to see me?
The could just save themselves a lot of trouble and instead go to Antartica or some rocky desolate island on earth and start the solar system economy from there.
In different words, so far, there is little evidence that there are economically exploitable, useful resources on Mars.
The two groups who are responsible for security problems are software vendors and companies that buy buggy software and use them for critical data. Those are the primary parties at fault when security problems cause loss of money or life. Unfortunately, both of those groups are increasingly successful at trying to blame other people and creating legal obligations for other people.
What we really need is a market driven solution. If MegaBank discloses 200000 customer records to criminals due to a security bug in their Loses XP operating system, then they should be responsible for all the identity theft-related expenses that that causes their customers, plus statutory damages (say, $1000/customer) for distress and inconvenience for their customers. If they do that sort of thing too often, they'll go out of business. That kind of financial risk will force them to demand guarantees from the creator of the Loses XP operating system, which will force that company to finally get a handle on security or go out of business themselves and be replaced by companies that understand security. And if it turns out that it simply isn't possible to do something securely with software, well then only the non-computerized companies will survive in the market.
So, what's the "responsible" way of disclosing security bugs? Any way you feel like it, as far as I'm concerned. The security problem in someone else's software is not your responsibility in any way, shape, or form.
The SI unit for 'tiny-byte' is "tB", not "TB".
However, the idea that you can't use GPL software at all if you patent software or use DRM, well, that's nuts.
Yes, it is also MSNBC FUD rather than fact (see the other posts).
Perhaps you should read and think about the news a little more critically before jumping to conclusions.
So we're going to freely share it with everyone we agree with.
We live in a free country. Does that mean you can do whatever you like? Is it permissible for you to steal, rape, or murder? No, it is not: even in a free country, you are restricted in what you can do--because that's the only way to guarantee a common level of freedom to everybody.
It's the same with free software: it gives a set of well-specified freedoms to everybody, instead of letting a few individuals and organizations get away with murder while everybody else suffers under them.
This marks the end of any relevance the GPL has. I wonder what will replace it?
The article is just part of MSNBC FUD against open source and free software, with no credible sources. Geez, people like you are so easy to manipulate.
Works great for Microsoft, Sun, and Apple, too: they have made a big business out of taking BSD-licensed software, altering it to make it incompatible, and then trying to replace existing, open standards with it. For some kinds of software, the BSD license is good; for a lot of software, it is a bad idea.