The next major milestone though, right after "X Achieves 100% compatibility in nightly builds" is "X releases version X of browser to the masses/into the wild, capable of passing Acid3 test". I think the next major milestone right after the release to the masses will be "Browser X gets pwned by hackers exploiting all the hurriedly written code with specially crafted and fuzzed CSS3 files.".
Bad form to reply to myself, but just wanted to add that this reminds me of the days of Netscape in which features were adding in a slapdash manner and with hardly any design or planning, which lead of the extreme bloat and memory leaks which the Firefox developers are still trying to get rid of to this very day(have you checked out Firefox's source code? Believe me, it's not pretty). I bet IE's code was as bad or worse because of the browser wars and was riddled with tons of security vulnerabilities which seem to have lessened only over the past few years. KHTML and Opera on the other hand seem to have developed and maintained a lean codebase(Opera had a total rewrite for version 7 IIRC).
The problem with races is that the teams do almost anything just to cross the finish line faster. The speed at which the browsers seem to be gaining acid3 compatibility is frankly worrying me. Any developer worth his salt knows that browsers are huge and complex applications and every change must be discussed, designed and implemented properly as to not impact something else and be modular, be properly commented and be clean and well written code.
Also, Acid3 is just about the corner cases, and might not reflect the full standard completely. So a browser can pass the test and still suck at implementing standards, though passing the test is good step. It's just that the high speed of the compatibility improvements for ACID3 in almost all the mainstream browsers screams of hackathon coding sessions to get those few points a day till 100 so that there can be a marketing and PR blitz rather than properly planned programming. I think there is a very good chance of the code containing hacks and workarounds and also tons of security loopholes because of the insane speed at which features are being thrown into the code.
I think there is a very good chance of the new code containing hacks and workarounds and also tons of security loopholes because of the insane speed at which 'features' are being thrown into the code just to make headlines. Being a programmer, I am sure that non-trivial portions of the code will have to be rewritten later. Haste makes waste.
Analogous to that, where's iTunes/Quicktime for Linux? Can't they atleast license the binary codecs in a package so that they can be legally used in mplayer, vlc etc.?
You're ignoring the quite significant number of people who wouldn't buy a Mac unless there's Office for it. They would instead get a Windows machine AND get Office anyway.
Doesn't this raise a security issue too? Isn't Bonjour installed by default along with Safari? Won't this install disguised as an update needlessly expose people's machines to yet another possibility of being exploited.
Also, IE under Vista runs under a sandbox, so a exploit in IE can't do any real damage. Safari has none of this protection. If Safari forces itself as the browser, all of the user's files are in danger from any security holes in Safari(and there have been a lot of them recently).
Let's see. Apple Software Update popped up a window and said new software is availible, would you like to install it. I clicked quit and it went away. How is this forcing software on me or anyone?
Because it does the same things every damn week and is close to nagware.
The new software is disguised as an update. For me it was the other way around compared to the others. I had Safari beta installed on day one when it came out for Windows and had QuickTime(I absolutely hate that abomination of iTunes). Shortly after, Safari had a security update(remember the slew of security holes found in beta Safari?). Since it said software update, and had QuickTime also in the list(didn't notice the +iTunes), I clicked install and got iTunes.
Later I realized it and uninstalled it. And ever since then, EVERY friday evening, I am forced to uncheck the box for iTunes EVERY damn time if wanted only Safari to update or hit Quit. Extremely annoying and underhanded to slip new software under 'Software update' and mixed in with a list of real security updates to software I chose to install.
"Not supported" means, to the enterprise world, not doable. What about the millions of Gentoo, Debian, CentOS, Ubuntu, FreeBSD etc. servers out there running about 60% of all websites? Are all of them hobby sites with full on-call technical support from the distributions or OSS developers ?
Stop letting off hot air on the dumbass article. See installing fedora core 8 on hyper-v . Even Ubuntu server is being used by people on HyperV. SUSE is supported in the sense of calling up MS's support desk and talking to them about it. But Linux distributions work just fine. This is just MS's way of telling people that they're on their own if they try other distributions(this is usually true for Linux servers anyway).
Misinformed blogger makes a flamebait article that reads like ex-lover's childish rant complete with doomsday threats and with a inflammatory headline, the 'editor' doesn't do any editorial work and the hundreds of misguided comments below will just bash on MS and earn insightful, informative and interesting mod points. Also, this will be repeated in the comments in other articles as the gospel truth because most people don't even RTFA, forget about actually seeing if there is a grain of truth in it. In other words, just another day on Slashdot.
If you really want to know about Hyper V, go here .
Shitty article with a misleading headline posted on Slashdot about Microsoft? I'M SHOCKED.
I've been running Ubuntu Server using Hyper-V since 2008 came out without any problems. Didn't a Microsoft representative come and strap that computer outside into the snow? I think that's what the headline is talking about and it happened to the guy who wrote it.
The "article" appeared to be more of a comment than news. You must be new here. The article was not posted because of content but because of the headline(which basically implies that Suse Enterprise Linux is not Linux, WTF?). Microsoft says in their pitch that Hyper-V supports Linux, and a random bloggers says they don't, at all. Both are wrong in their own way:(
Hyper-V is not a full fledged cpu/hardware emulator like VMWare and is more of a hypervisor which needs support from the client operating system (like Xen which they have a licencing deal with). This is because there are some hardware x86 instructions which conflict each other when run on two operating systems at the same time. So, there actually needs to be some client side code that needs to plug into the Linux kernel code. Right now, I guess only Novell has it in as they are MS's partner.
There could be several licensing problems with third party patents and licenses before releasing it as GPL. Or, it might not have been released now because Hyper-V has already been delayed a lot and the team must be in a hurry to push out the beta instead of testing it against every distribution of Linux in the wild.
Last of all, the headline. Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP1 isn't Linux? The headline should've said only SUSE Linux Enterprise Server was supported. Instead, we have a inflammatory headline designed to rake in the hits from angry visitors. And it worked.
The DMCA "...criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, even when there is no infringement of copyright itself." [Wikipedia]
There is a special exemption for unlocking the phone to use with a different carrier but jailbreaking would be illegal under a interpretation of the DMCA(note DMCA takedown notices and laws affecting xbox modders). But, anyway, except for people posting stuff on forums, will ANY commercial entity release software that relies on the jailbreaking of the iphone? If they do that, they will immediately get sued by apple.
So, yeah - the iPhone does not officially support the hacker/tinkerer ethic - so fucking what? Unofficially supporting it is good enough for me. Legally banning something is very different from unofficially supporting it.
You can choose not to buy it. A lot of devices are like that, consoles are a very popular example. If you don't like the limitations of the system, that's fine, don't buy it. So we should sit around passively and contribute to the consolization of the mobile computing platform which sucks for both developers and users? I think not. Or else all you will have to choose from will be closed systems(just like consoles these days).
Why is it that 99% of the developer reaction I've seen has been enthusiastically positive, and yet the spin here is so negative? Because people here are (legitimately) concerned about the consolization of yet another computing platform, the mobile PC.
When the competitive landscape in the cellphone world changes and the carriers just become dumb pipes, Apple will be the first to drop stupid restrictions, since their interests will be completely aligned with users: they make their money on hardware, not software. Right, because they give away OS X upgrades and would be willing to give up 30% of the application software revenues? Who are you kidding? Also how does it matter to AT&T if Apple forcibly charges 30% or 0%? Won't AT&T be actually happy with a 0% Apple cut because it will spurn development and increase uptake of the phones?
And why does every discussion like this devolve into AAPL=MSFT? Apple are winning here because they have good products, not because they are kneecapping their competitors to try to maintain a monopoly for mediocre products. Actually if Apple wins, it will be WORSE than MSFT. Let me quote my own slashdot post here:
Triple dipping into the jar might hurt Apple?
Apple makes money on
a) The hardware - some pretty sweet margins
b) A nice cut (~15 to 25%) on the montly fees 3) A 30% cut on all software sold (except of course the free apps)
Contrast this to a Windows mobile phone. Microsoft gets paid a fixed license amount on each device sold and makes nothing on the hardware, the monthly fee, and any software sold to run on their OS. This helps companies compete on hardware, apps etc. I think Apple is gonna miss out on small companies(where the most innovation lies) which cannot afford the 30% overhead for their software sales. Also Apple being the gatekeeper of the software will hurt apps(even free ones) that try to fundamentally interact with the hardware in a non-approved Apple way. The iPhone is aimed at the casual consumers, most of whom don't read long forum threads dedicated to jailbreaking it.
As of now, this looks like a rerun of the 80s microcomputer war and we all know how that turned out to be. It's all about 'Developers, Developers and Developers'. Microsoft gets that and ships excellent development tools with no restrictions at all. Right now, Windows Mobile phones may suck, but heavy competition between handset manufacturers is going to make them better and Windows Mobile OS(look at 6.1 and upcoming 7.0) is heading towards being 'good enough'(like DOS and Windows 3.11). Already we see devices like the Sony Xperia (video ad) [youtube.com] coming out which will give Apple a run for their money. Remember what IBM, Dell, Gateway, HP, Compaq did to Apple back in the 80s? Will Sony, Samsung, Nokia be their equivalent in this round?
I think Apple is missing the bandwagon again in their spirit to make money immediately and are killing the gold egg laying goose for their short term benefit.
An Apple world is one in which there will be no handset manufacturers like Nokia, Sony, Samsung, Motorola etc. left to compete. They will make the software, the OS and will take a 30% cut of the software. Imagine MS setting up a one stop download shop and making Windows apps run ONLY through it. Imagine them taking 30% of the revenues(before expenses, advertizing costs and taxes) of Adobe, EA, AutoCAD, TurboTax and the zillion other PC developers.
Imagine a computing world without Dell, HP, Compaq, Asus, Sony etc. Doesn't sound so good now does it? Would Windows software have taken off like it did if this was the case? Once Apple does it, it's all okay?
We, as developers and consumers, lost the gaming consoles round unless you one does illegal hacking and modding. Lets not let it happen to the mobile computing platform.
This is exactly like the anti-net-neutrality argument of, if Comcast and Verizon do it, just switch to a different ISP which won't. The 'consolization' of next-gen phones needs to be stopped.
It could be like all other cell phones and not allow you to put anything on it. Drinking koolaid much? A wide array of phones, including Windows Mobile phones allow you put everything on them. Windows Mobile itself has more than 5000 software titles available for it with none of the BS restrictions or 30% revenue 'sharing'.
Just goes to show that you were talking out of your ass all the while, and trying to karmawhore the groupthink rather than have anything concrete to contribute to the discussion. And you have no references or evidence for your claims of "75% of the DRM problems were true" and similar types of inane bs.
I think you missed my point totally. Linux drivers sucked back then, but now they've been optimized. Vista has a completely new driver model. The drivers may mature over time to back to XP/Linux levels as the nvidia driver writers learn about Vista kernel nuances.
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Bad form to reply to myself, but just wanted to add that this reminds me of the days of Netscape in which features were adding in a slapdash manner and with hardly any design or planning, which lead of the extreme bloat and memory leaks which the Firefox developers are still trying to get rid of to this very day(have you checked out Firefox's source code? Believe me, it's not pretty). I bet IE's code was as bad or worse because of the browser wars and was riddled with tons of security vulnerabilities which seem to have lessened only over the past few years. KHTML and Opera on the other hand seem to have developed and maintained a lean codebase(Opera had a total rewrite for version 7 IIRC).
The problem with races is that the teams do almost anything just to cross the finish line faster. The speed at which the browsers seem to be gaining acid3 compatibility is frankly worrying me. Any developer worth his salt knows that browsers are huge and complex applications and every change must be discussed, designed and implemented properly as to not impact something else and be modular, be properly commented and be clean and well written code.
Also, Acid3 is just about the corner cases, and might not reflect the full standard completely. So a browser can pass the test and still suck at implementing standards, though passing the test is good step. It's just that the high speed of the compatibility improvements for ACID3 in almost all the mainstream browsers screams of hackathon coding sessions to get those few points a day till 100 so that there can be a marketing and PR blitz rather than properly planned programming. I think there is a very good chance of the code containing hacks and workarounds and also tons of security loopholes because of the insane speed at which features are being thrown into the code.
I think there is a very good chance of the new code containing hacks and workarounds and also tons of security loopholes because of the insane speed at which 'features' are being thrown into the code just to make headlines. Being a programmer, I am sure that non-trivial portions of the code will have to be rewritten later. Haste makes waste.
Analogous to that, where's iTunes/Quicktime for Linux? Can't they atleast license the binary codecs in a package so that they can be legally used in mplayer, vlc etc.?
You're ignoring the quite significant number of people who wouldn't buy a Mac unless there's Office for it. They would instead get a Windows machine AND get Office anyway.
So if the user unchecks Safari, then iTunes completely breaks. Right? If it doesn't, why offer Safari disguised as a iTunes update?
You're wrong. Details here .
Now that we have that inflammatory title out of the way, lets look at . And no, the pictures are not fake, I saw them in the keynote video at Apple.com a while ago when Safari beta for Windows was announced. I think this is what Mozilla is worried about.
Also, IE under Vista runs under a sandbox, so a exploit in IE can't do any real damage. Safari has none of this protection. If Safari forces itself as the browser, all of the user's files are in danger from any security holes in Safari(and there have been a lot of them recently).
Because it does the same things every damn week and is close to nagware.
The new software is disguised as an update. For me it was the other way around compared to the others. I had Safari beta installed on day one when it came out for Windows and had QuickTime(I absolutely hate that abomination of iTunes). Shortly after, Safari had a security update(remember the slew of security holes found in beta Safari?). Since it said software update, and had QuickTime also in the list(didn't notice the +iTunes), I clicked install and got iTunes.
Later I realized it and uninstalled it. And ever since then, EVERY friday evening, I am forced to uncheck the box for iTunes EVERY damn time if wanted only Safari to update or hit Quit. Extremely annoying and underhanded to slip new software under 'Software update' and mixed in with a list of real security updates to software I chose to install.
It's worse. Some OEMs complained to the DoJ about Vista trying to stop them from 'customizing' the user experience on first boot. Read here.
Stop letting off hot air on the dumbass article. See installing fedora core 8 on hyper-v . Even Ubuntu server is being used by people on HyperV. SUSE is supported in the sense of calling up MS's support desk and talking to them about it. But Linux distributions work just fine. This is just MS's way of telling people that they're on their own if they try other distributions(this is usually true for Linux servers anyway).
Misinformed blogger makes a flamebait article that reads like ex-lover's childish rant complete with doomsday threats and with a inflammatory headline, the 'editor' doesn't do any editorial work and the hundreds of misguided comments below will just bash on MS and earn insightful, informative and interesting mod points. Also, this will be repeated in the comments in other articles as the gospel truth because most people don't even RTFA, forget about actually seeing if there is a grain of truth in it. In other words, just another day on Slashdot.
If you really want to know about Hyper V, go here .
Hyper-V is not a full fledged cpu/hardware emulator like VMWare and is more of a hypervisor which needs support from the client operating system (like Xen which they have a licencing deal with). This is because there are some hardware x86 instructions which conflict each other when run on two operating systems at the same time. So, there actually needs to be some client side code that needs to plug into the Linux kernel code. Right now, I guess only Novell has it in as they are MS's partner.
There could be several licensing problems with third party patents and licenses before releasing it as GPL. Or, it might not have been released now because Hyper-V has already been delayed a lot and the team must be in a hurry to push out the beta instead of testing it against every distribution of Linux in the wild.
Last of all, the headline. Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP1 isn't Linux? The headline should've said only SUSE Linux Enterprise Server was supported. Instead, we have a inflammatory headline designed to rake in the hits from angry visitors. And it worked.
There is a special exemption for unlocking the phone to use with a different carrier but jailbreaking would be illegal under a interpretation of the DMCA(note DMCA takedown notices and laws affecting xbox modders). But, anyway, except for people posting stuff on forums, will ANY commercial entity release software that relies on the jailbreaking of the iphone? If they do that, they will immediately get sued by apple.
a) The hardware - some pretty sweet margins
b) A nice cut (~15 to 25%) on the montly fees 3) A 30% cut on all software sold (except of course the free apps)
Contrast this to a Windows mobile phone. Microsoft gets paid a fixed license amount on each device sold and makes nothing on the hardware, the monthly fee, and any software sold to run on their OS. This helps companies compete on hardware, apps etc. I think Apple is gonna miss out on small companies(where the most innovation lies) which cannot afford the 30% overhead for their software sales. Also Apple being the gatekeeper of the software will hurt apps(even free ones) that try to fundamentally interact with the hardware in a non-approved Apple way. The iPhone is aimed at the casual consumers, most of whom don't read long forum threads dedicated to jailbreaking it.
As of now, this looks like a rerun of the 80s microcomputer war and we all know how that turned out to be. It's all about 'Developers, Developers and Developers'. Microsoft gets that and ships excellent development tools with no restrictions at all. Right now, Windows Mobile phones may suck, but heavy competition between handset manufacturers is going to make them better and Windows Mobile OS(look at 6.1 and upcoming 7.0) is heading towards being 'good enough'(like DOS and Windows 3.11). Already we see devices like the Sony Xperia (video ad) [youtube.com] coming out which will give Apple a run for their money. Remember what IBM, Dell, Gateway, HP, Compaq did to Apple back in the 80s? Will Sony, Samsung, Nokia be their equivalent in this round? I think Apple is missing the bandwagon again in their spirit to make money immediately and are killing the gold egg laying goose for their short term benefit.
An Apple world is one in which there will be no handset manufacturers like Nokia, Sony, Samsung, Motorola etc. left to compete. They will make the software, the OS and will take a 30% cut of the software. Imagine MS setting up a one stop download shop and making Windows apps run ONLY through it. Imagine them taking 30% of the revenues(before expenses, advertizing costs and taxes) of Adobe, EA, AutoCAD, TurboTax and the zillion other PC developers.Imagine a computing world without Dell, HP, Compaq, Asus, Sony etc. Doesn't sound so good now does it? Would Windows software have taken off like it did if this was the case? Once Apple does it, it's all okay?
We, as developers and consumers, lost the gaming consoles round unless you one does illegal hacking and modding. Lets not let it happen to the mobile computing platform.
This is exactly like the anti-net-neutrality argument of, if Comcast and Verizon do it, just switch to a different ISP which won't. The 'consolization' of next-gen phones needs to be stopped.
The funny part here is that Windows Mobile phones are quite open and run almost any software you can write for them.
Just goes to show that you were talking out of your ass all the while, and trying to karmawhore the groupthink rather than have anything concrete to contribute to the discussion. And you have no references or evidence for your claims of "75% of the DRM problems were true" and similar types of inane bs.
I think you missed my point totally. Linux drivers sucked back then, but now they've been optimized. Vista has a completely new driver model. The drivers may mature over time to back to XP/Linux levels as the nvidia driver writers learn about Vista kernel nuances.