Okay, I'll admit that the article is very high in troll content but, as someone who has spent plenty of money on Apple products over the last 6 years, let me add that I'm getting more and more disgusted with their behaviour and I won't buy anything else from them for the foreseeable future.
That said, let me add more reasons to strongly dislike (if not boycott, let alone hate) Apple:
Paul Venezia is not wondering why more folks aren't using FreeBSD on the desktop: on the first page he tells us about the uptime of his server (which runs FreeBSD) and whatever he has to say about other uses of FreeBSD is on page two -- and quoted in full in the summary. In other words, he's not making a strong case in favor of FreeBSD on the desktop, except for a generic reference to "performance and stability" which, let's be honest, could be said just about any recent OS.
That said, my desktop of choice is FreeBSD and not because I dislike Linux, but because I like FreeBSD better and, assuming you have the right hardware, it makes for a more than viable desktop. And no, I don't think that hardware support is as limited as it used to be: for instance my little ZOTAC HD-AD01 is fully supported (video, audio, wired and wireless network all work with a plain FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE).
Anyway, since Paul Venezia also mentions virtualization, I'll go ahead and leave with a shameless plug about VirtualBSD which, as the name implies, offers a virtualized (but desktop oriented) FreeBSD that can be used with VMware or, after a few tweaks, VirtualBox.
Oh, and version 9.0 will be out as soon as FreeBSD 9.0 is ready!;-)
Only because (shocking, I know) there is nothing distinctive enough in Apple's design.
There's plenty distinctive about the iPhone's design.
Not according to this judge -- and that's what really matters.
It looks like Apple's problem is that its actual "community design" registration needed to be a bit more specific, and has come over as an attempt to "patent" a black slab.
Samsung gets away with copying the distinctive look of the iPhone* to an extent that most other smartphone vendors have managed to avoid.
Only because (shocking, I know) there is nothing distinctive enough in Apple's design. From OS News:
Regarding the design related stuff - the Community Designs - of the iPad, the judge threw it all out, citing loads of prior art (like the Compaq TC1x00). In addition, the judge stated that only the front of the device shows some resemblance, while everything else is entirely different. The Kinght Ridder is also cited as relevant prior art - the judge threw out Apple's defense that the product never made it to market. To round it out, the judge also mentioned 'form-follows-function' several times. Most interesting note: the judge specifically mentions that by having such a minimalist design, the iPad basically makes itself less viable for design protection.
Okay, the difference is not that big and, for some people, there are still plenty of reasons to prefer Apple's offerings, but I would not say that price is one of them.
As I see it, if we concentrate on the software rather than the hardware, the model that springs to mind is SaaS.
Of course Google is not going to ask for money as such, and I expect the markup on the official netbooks for Chrome OS will be microscopic, but an ever increasing audience for targeted advertising is still worth a lot of money.
Anyway, I wrote a lot more about it here -- in case anyone cares...
As most of these things rely on messing with system files or the registry, I should say that most threats could be avoided altogether by simply not running as admin all the time.
RT.
"All Web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite Web technologies," the company said.
Depends on your definition of "automatically". From what I hear, there is this little prerequisite called "internet access".
Maybe I'm wrong, but I've noticed that Google doesn't mention cloud computing once in the press release, so what if the applications could also be hosted locally?
Think about it: if you run a web server and an SQL server on your computer, web applications don't really need an internet connection -- and of course the moment you move the back-end online, the very same application can be used "on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux" (as per the same press release).
"While the proprietary solution was deemed to be slightly more cost-effective over the full period, the strategic advantage of being free to take its own IT decisions led the city council to decide in favour of the migration to GNU/Linux."
and also from the same:
"The Microsoft solution would have made it necessary to introduce an Active Directory system, which would have meant a strong lock-in and would have caused significant follow-up costs.
As a shareholder, this is a great move. If this saves MS money, it puts more money in my pocket.
Maybe calling yourself a shareholder makes you feel all warm inside, but unless you own gazillions of shares you still have no say whatsoever in the way the company is run -- not to mention the fact that with a dividend of $0.13/share, it'd make for a piss poor investment.
Come to think of it, the only way for you to really make money with Microsoft is to sell your shares or, in other words, NOT to be shareholder.
FreeBSD works in VirtualBox 2.1.2 and later. Earlier versions had a bug which prevented FreeBSD from working correctly.
That's why VirtualBSD mentions VMware Player (or better) explicitly and only places hints about VirtualBox in/boot/loader.conf and/etc/X11/ReadmeVirtualBox.txt (you may also want to run/usr/local/bin/vmware-uninstall-tools.pl as you won't need them any longer).
As I see it, the only problem is that there is no free (as in beer) VMware Player for OS X as the only option is VMware Fusion -- and I don't know if Parallels can run VMware appliances, but that one ain't free either.
It is almost more difficult to find wrong hardware for FreeBSD.
True, as long as you run it as a server and don't need fancy graphics, audio, and whatnot -- and does a fine job at that. But try it on a modern, off the shelf PC, notebook or netbook and you won't be so lucky. I mean, even a onboard NIC might be problematic!
That said, this is clearly not FreeBSD's fault (as vendors seldom release source code or specifications and stick to binary drivers for select Linux distributions at best) but the result doesn't change: it's a very daunting task to get any kind of modern desktop oriented FreeBSD (that's not their goal either, but I digress).
Suspicious phone conversations on Skype could be targeted for tapping
Am I missing something here? How can you know a phone call is "suspicious" if you're not tapping it already? The mind boggles...
I don't need a filename -- just give me the document based upon some quantifiable characteristic about the document, such as keywords, format, or even the visual layout.
Maybe a long shot and not quite what you have in mind, but I think that Spotlight is close enough -- and it's fast too. So fast, in fact, that's also my application launcher of choice.
A popular way of distributing software - especially for people to try it out - is as a complete Linux distribution disk image that you can run with the VMWare Player.
Speaking of which, and yes this is a shameless plug, just recently I've prepared a desktop ready FreeBSD 7.1 RELEASE based on the Xfce 4 Desktop Environment. Okay, it's not Linux, but comes with Firefox 3, Thunderbird 2, OpenOffice.org 3, VLC, Pidgin, Xchat, Gimp, etc. installed an ready for use. It's available via torrent -- in case anyone cares!;-)
Why is censorship of illegal material bad? If the material is illegal, why shouldn't it be censored?
Who decides what is and what's not illegal? For some things the distinction is obviously quite clear and would be easy to have some general consensus but, once you have a bit of legislation (and technology) in place, you have a system that is ripe for abuse -- just think about what they're doing with the DMCA, for instance.
Does this mean we can write apps to stream video from a camera phone or use a VOIP app?
There would be nothing new to this, especially considering apps have been written since the very beginning just about everywhere else: from ad hoc applications specific to a certain model, to more general ones, the so called MIDlets, written J2ME (plus vendor's extensions).
All things considered he says, it's OK except for the OS.
I think the OS is good enough for (what I imagine is) the intended audience.
Granted, the desktop is a bit too green and maybe too much Google oriented but, let's face it, anyone who's been using computers at least a little as heard of Google and the gazillion services on offer, so it doesn't take very long to figure out what those icons at the bottom of the screen are supposed to do.
Also, in addition to the typical "OS on a cheap computer for mail and stuff" scenario, I think gOS might be quite useful in internet cafes: most of the applications needed by the average user are there, and there's very little to maintain -- or break.
judges have granted the requests without even requiring the government to demonstrate probable cause that a crime is taking place or that the inquiry will yield evidence of a crime
Of course is for our own protection but, as discussed in the Skype thread, once you have the technology in place and when you start granting too much power without any real oversight, who's to prevent them to abuse both technology and power?
Slashdot Mirror
Pushing of proprietary standards
Hilarious. You are aware of the fact that they favored pushing HTML5 instead of the proprietary stuff like Flash.
No, Apple is pushing its own version of HTML5 and, as a matter of fact, Apple is using patents to undermine the development of Web standards and block their finalization.
RT.
Okay, I'll admit that the article is very high in troll content but, as someone who has spent plenty of money on Apple products over the last 6 years, let me add that I'm getting more and more disgusted with their behaviour and I won't buy anything else from them for the foreseeable future.
That said, let me add more reasons to strongly dislike (if not boycott, let alone hate) Apple :
All apps on the Mac App Store will be required to run in the so-called App Sandbox
Apple sues but loses design lawsuit against Spanish tablet maker (producing a tablet nothing like the iPad)
Apple is using patents to undermine the development of Web standards and block their finalization
Apple has given valuable patents to a patent troll (which is using them to sue top technology companies)
And, last but not least, I don't know whether to laugh or cringe about this one:
Apple threatens 20-seat restaurant that sells only drinks, sandwiches and desserts because it's called AppleADay
RT.
Paul Venezia is not wondering why more folks aren't using FreeBSD on the desktop: on the first page he tells us about the uptime of his server (which runs FreeBSD) and whatever he has to say about other uses of FreeBSD is on page two -- and quoted in full in the summary. In other words, he's not making a strong case in favor of FreeBSD on the desktop, except for a generic reference to "performance and stability" which, let's be honest, could be said just about any recent OS.
That said, my desktop of choice is FreeBSD and not because I dislike Linux, but because I like FreeBSD better and, assuming you have the right hardware, it makes for a more than viable desktop. And no, I don't think that hardware support is as limited as it used to be: for instance my little ZOTAC HD-AD01 is fully supported (video, audio, wired and wireless network all work with a plain FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE).
Anyway, since Paul Venezia also mentions virtualization, I'll go ahead and leave with a shameless plug about VirtualBSD which, as the name implies, offers a virtualized (but desktop oriented) FreeBSD that can be used with VMware or, after a few tweaks, VirtualBox.
Oh, and version 9.0 will be out as soon as FreeBSD 9.0 is ready! ;-)
RT.
Only because (shocking, I know) there is nothing distinctive enough in Apple's design.
There's plenty distinctive about the iPhone's design.
Not according to this judge -- and that's what really matters.
It looks like Apple's problem is that its actual "community design" registration needed to be a bit more specific, and has come over as an attempt to "patent" a black slab.
Not a small problem, is it? ;-)
RT.
Samsung gets away with copying the distinctive look of the iPhone* to an extent that most other smartphone vendors have managed to avoid.
Only because (shocking, I know) there is nothing distinctive enough in Apple's design. From OS News:
Regarding the design related stuff - the Community Designs - of the iPad, the judge threw it all out, citing loads of prior art (like the Compaq TC1x00). In addition, the judge stated that only the front of the device shows some resemblance, while everything else is entirely different. The Kinght Ridder is also cited as relevant prior art - the judge threw out Apple's defense that the product never made it to market. To round it out, the judge also mentioned 'form-follows-function' several times. Most interesting note: the judge specifically mentions that by having such a minimalist design, the iPad basically makes itself less viable for design protection.
RT.
it seems that most of what they are doing is related to trying to keep a truly secure, cheat-free economy in Diablo III.
What's the point of a cheat free economy on a single player game? Because of the auction house? You pay with real money, no?
RT.
If "Apple can't compete on price", why are iPads the same or lower price than "competing" tablets?
Not entirely true. Here's a sample of current european prices for the most popular tablets:
Samsung Galaxy Tab 10", WiFi + 3G, 16 GB: 549.00 Eur
iPad 2, Wi-Fi + 3G, 16 GB: 599.00
Motorola Xoom, WiFi only, 32 GB: 465.00 Eur
Asus Eee Pad Transformer, WiFi only, 32 GB: 499.00 Eur
HP TouchPad, WiFi Only, 32 GB: 579.00 Eur
iPad 2, WiFi only, 32 GB: 579.00 Eur
Motorola Xoom, WFi + 3G, 32 GB: 579.00 Eur
iPad 2, Wi-Fi + 3G, 32 GB: 699.00 Eur
Okay, the difference is not that big and, for some people, there are still plenty of reasons to prefer Apple's offerings, but I would not say that price is one of them.
RT.
This is the infamous network appliance made real.
As I see it, if we concentrate on the software rather than the hardware, the model that springs to mind is SaaS.
Of course Google is not going to ask for money as such, and I expect the markup on the official netbooks for Chrome OS will be microscopic, but an ever increasing audience for targeted advertising is still worth a lot of money.
Anyway, I wrote a lot more about it here -- in case anyone cares...
RT.
As most of these things rely on messing with system files or the registry, I should say that most threats could be avoided altogether by simply not running as admin all the time.
RT.
"All Web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite Web technologies," the company said.
Depends on your definition of "automatically". From what I hear, there is this little prerequisite called "internet access".
Maybe I'm wrong, but I've noticed that Google doesn't mention cloud computing once in the press release, so what if the applications could also be hosted locally?
Think about it: if you run a web server and an SQL server on your computer, web applications don't really need an internet connection -- and of course the moment you move the back-end online, the very same application can be used "on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux" (as per the same press release).
RT.
Wasn't this suppose to save money?
Not really. From the article:
"While the proprietary solution was deemed to be slightly more cost-effective over the full period, the strategic advantage of being free to take its own IT decisions led the city council to decide in favour of the migration to GNU/Linux. "
and also from the same:
"The Microsoft solution would have made it necessary to introduce an Active Directory system, which would have meant a strong lock-in and would have caused significant follow-up costs.
RT
As a shareholder, this is a great move. If this saves MS money, it puts more money in my pocket.
Maybe calling yourself a shareholder makes you feel all warm inside, but unless you own gazillions of shares you still have no say whatsoever in the way the company is run -- not to mention the fact that with a dividend of $0.13/share, it'd make for a piss poor investment.
Come to think of it, the only way for you to really make money with Microsoft is to sell your shares or, in other words, NOT to be shareholder.
RT.
Sorry, couldn't resist... ;-)
Reece
Anyway, here goes:
Username: virtualbsd
Password: virtualbsd
root: root4u
Reece
FreeBSD works in VirtualBox 2.1.2 and later. Earlier versions had a bug which prevented FreeBSD from working correctly.
That's why VirtualBSD mentions VMware Player (or better) explicitly and only places hints about VirtualBox in /boot/loader.conf and /etc/X11/ReadmeVirtualBox.txt (you may also want to run /usr/local/bin/vmware-uninstall-tools.pl as you won't need them any longer).
As I see it, the only problem is that there is no free (as in beer) VMware Player for OS X as the only option is VMware Fusion -- and I don't know if Parallels can run VMware appliances, but that one ain't free either.
Reece
It is almost more difficult to find wrong hardware for FreeBSD.
True, as long as you run it as a server and don't need fancy graphics, audio, and whatnot -- and does a fine job at that. But try it on a modern, off the shelf PC, notebook or netbook and you won't be so lucky. I mean, even a onboard NIC might be problematic!
That said, this is clearly not FreeBSD's fault (as vendors seldom release source code or specifications and stick to binary drivers for select Linux distributions at best) but the result doesn't change: it's a very daunting task to get any kind of modern desktop oriented FreeBSD (that's not their goal either, but I digress).
Reece
Yes, it's yet another buzzword, but its use has become fairly common. Good case in point: VMware's Virtual Appliance Marketplace ;-)
Reece
Suspicious phone conversations on Skype could be targeted for tapping
Am I missing something here? How can you know a phone call is "suspicious" if you're not tapping it already? The mind boggles...
I don't need a filename -- just give me the document based upon some quantifiable characteristic about the document, such as keywords, format, or even the visual layout.
Maybe a long shot and not quite what you have in mind, but I think that Spotlight is close enough -- and it's fast too. So fast, in fact, that's also my application launcher of choice.
Reece
FWIW, I see 4 at the moment and I've seen up to 10 (small fry, I know). Give it some time! ;-)
A popular way of distributing software - especially for people to try it out - is as a complete Linux distribution disk image that you can run with the VMWare Player.
Speaking of which, and yes this is a shameless plug, just recently I've prepared a desktop ready FreeBSD 7.1 RELEASE based on the Xfce 4 Desktop Environment. Okay, it's not Linux, but comes with Firefox 3, Thunderbird 2, OpenOffice.org 3, VLC, Pidgin, Xchat, Gimp, etc. installed an ready for use. It's available via torrent -- in case anyone cares! ;-)
Why is censorship of illegal material bad? If the material is illegal, why shouldn't it be censored?
Who decides what is and what's not illegal? For some things the distinction is obviously quite clear and would be easy to have some general consensus but, once you have a bit of legislation (and technology) in place, you have a system that is ripe for abuse -- just think about what they're doing with the DMCA, for instance.
RT
--
Your Bookmarks. Anywhere. Anytime.
Granted, the desktop is a bit too green and maybe too much Google oriented but, let's face it, anyone who's been using computers at least a little as heard of Google and the gazillion services on offer, so it doesn't take very long to figure out what those icons at the bottom of the screen are supposed to do.
Also, in addition to the typical "OS on a cheap computer for mail and stuff" scenario, I think gOS might be quite useful in internet cafes: most of the applications needed by the average user are there, and there's very little to maintain -- or break.
RT
--
Your Bookmarks. Anywhere. Anytime.
RT
--
Your Bookmarks. Anywhere. Anytime.