Completely agree. A lot of companies buy Red Hat Enterprise for their servers and workstations outright (it is probably the most well-known Linux) and I think soon enough (and what frightens Red Hat) is that these companies may find their own 'support personnel' and use something completely free like Ubuntu or even Fedora Core (based on Red Hat).
What? Windows 7 M1 was leaked and given to reviewers/testers whom confirmed that it was after-all based upon Vista or Server 2008's code. It requires Vista SP1 to install (at least the current version), and the DVD is 2.9 GB. It is nothing but another crap pile of 20+ years old code. That is not to say old code is bad, but in this case, it is.
Now, maybe in the future Windows will be BSD-based, but for the moment Windows 7 looks like it is heavily Vista-based, especially since it requires Vista SP1 installed as a prerequisite.
Both nVidia and ATI have profit motive. By standardising the hardware, you are essentially giving away specifications (at least some). ATI may be giving away specifications, but I still have not seen the 3D specifications yet (they say they are coming). This may force nVidia into at least thinking about releasing specifications, but I am not sure that they would.
Having standards for this would be great, especially in the way a card implements instruction sets like OpenGL. If you have a standard, it seems like everyone would want to meet that standard and nothing more. There is no motivation to exceed it. And if it is exceeded, will those specifications be released? If so, then the company has just done extra work for nothing monetary in return.
It is (I guess) unfortunate at times, but you have to be making money no matter who you are. Your motive has to be profit most of the time, in the current economy.
Completely agree. The only stable driver is still 8.40.2 (for me with an Radeon Xpress 200M), and it sucks completely. No compositing with 3d simultaneously. I have a computer with a GeForce 6100 and it can do compositing and 3D simultaneously just fine with the proprietary driver.
Developers should not criticise nVidia so much as ATI/AMD. At least nVidia gives a crap about the quality of their module, even if it is proprietary. Why? Because many companies use Maya in Linux (often rendering farms) and therefore have nVidia cards (especially Quadro's).
I see motive, and it involves a few things. Microsoft, because they want to push DirectX/Windows, the computer manufacturers refusing anything other than Windows to be installed. Show that ATI cards run like crap on Linux, and people assume Linux is crap. This is a big problem. Developers should criticise ATI way more, not nVidia. For nVidia it goes the other way: show that nVidia cards work great in Linux (even though a proprietary module), and graphics developers (Pixar for example) want Linux boxes.
Other than that, maybe we need a community-funded hardware project to make a video card and future models (with standards to follow) that supports all that the current cards support (yes, this is expensive). EVERYONE who cares (the true GNU fans) will buy the end result, which will most probably cost more than a regular nVidia or AMD card, but it will be worth it. A card that has no limitations other than the limitations of the hardware itself. Neither nVidia nor AMD give us this with their proprietary drivers.
I think the one thing all of those who are trying to "save" XP or otherwise hinder Vista are doing is sending a very strong message to MS to never again let us get used to an OS. Expect them to keep the life cycle short and sweet from now on.
Then also expect MS to have less customers in the future.
People who seemingly cannot get off Windows no matter what, not even move to OS X. I use Linux 90% of the time; I support Windows as a technician (one of my jobs). I can barely stand Windows any more, especially now with Vista. I recommend people things like OpenOffice, LaTeX (MikTeX on Windows), Firefox, Thunderbird, aMule (rather than eMule), FrostWire (rather than LimeWire), and why? Because these apps run on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. I try to explain the benefits of not being stuck on Windows. They may still be using Windows, but at least the day Windows loses dominance and/or the person simply wants to try something new (i.e Linux), their files will be readable on those OS's.
People need to stop thinking XP is going to last forever for one thing and they need to either completely switch to another OS or at least use applications that use open formats on Windows. Even preferences can be transferred from one OS to another for Thunderbird, Firefox, OpenOffice, aMule, and so many more (just have to be placed in the right folder). I am glad on Windows for my 'real work' I use applications that run on Linux and Windows.
Let's start with open formats. The two reasons people want XP to last forever: 1) They use applications that only run on Windows (and also think Wine cannot possibly match) and closed source formats (that includes.docx!) and 2) Vista really is not a huge improvement over XP.
While these changes will increase our engineering agility, they will not impact the user experience or reduce application or hardware compatibility.
I guess it is not a bad idea if hardware drivers for Vista work with Windows 7 (much like 2K and XP drivers are nearly interchangeable), but the fact that they are going to STILL try to keep backward compatibility with applications 20+ years old is simply ridiculous. Great, they have come out early and stated that software (again 20+ years old) will still be compatible (an early announcement is good). The fact that people will take this idea to heart and think things like 'Oh I can run QuickBooks 1.0 on Windows 7 still!' and then do it and it might actually work is also ridiculous. Microsoft should instead focus on a secure OS rather than backward compatibility and figure out that later, and IMO screw running applications that are from before the year 2000 natively. The ABIs that run Windows 3.1 apps on all OS's above it are probably just waiting for people to find vulnerabilities and then take advantage. When Microsoft fixes these things, often compatibility is limited afterwards, so Microsoft certainly avoids this. It is a stupid thought that people think: 'I want to run X 1.0 from 1991 on any Windows'. Microsoft needs to come out, years before the OS comes out, and say this thought is absurd and that they refuse to support running of applications (of some year or before) natively. By the time Windows 7 comes out, we should already have all the virtualisation we need to run those old applications in a secure fashion (virtual machine has no raw access to host at all). Microsoft should just implement it, but for some reason they will not. They are influenced by the businesses who buy Windows (volume licences mostly), but they still need to keep their integrity for the public relation's sake. It is simply risky for PR, among other things (security of everyone, not just businesses, who uses Windows), to keep on with the backward compatibility in this fashion.
I thought one of the major goals of the OLPC project was to promote usage of free software. As for now, I would say the best choice is a Linux-derived operating system (kernel has the best hardware support as far I know). If Microsoft is a choice, fine, but I seriously think the Windows market share is shrinking every day. It seems like everyone and their relative wants a Mac lately after Vista has come out.
Regardless, I really think OLPC has lost its focus and I have so much less respect for allowing a totally closed operating system to be a choice for the computers. If they allow FreeBSD, Syllable, and other free open source operating systems, that is fine. They may not have necessarily have everything they need for children to learn from, but they are free and open source.
Linux and whatever distro is the best choice. How many 'edutainment' applications are on Windows by default? 0! Everyone knows Windows is hardly useful on a default install: a file manager, calculator, Soliatire (a few other card games), a really horrible browser, and a really horrible media player. Does Microsoft promote open source development? No! They have 'Express' editions of Visual Studio, but that is exactly it. They are 'Express' editions. They are begging for people to stick with Windows when they do things like this. And now they have.NET claiming it is the way of the future, mainly because C# is easier to learn than C or C++ (in my experience).
This is not the way to go for OLPC. It is terrible that governments have these choices: promote free software, development, learning, and social contribution; or spend a little more money for an OS that is nearly useless by default, and the people who use it will be locked in once they are settled with whatever software they find to use. Most likely the software they choose to use on Windows will have spyware, and they will use IE (do you think Microsoft will promote another browser?!) and get adware/spyware/crappy toolbars. I cannot wait to have even more infested Windows computers connected on-line, which could do damage (this is precisely the reason why IE7 got non-WGA'd by Microsoft: security). Luckily I'm on Linux 90% of the time.
A machine made of hardware that comes directly off the list of compatible hardware from the OSx86 Wiki is supposed to be impressive?
Also, I think it's all fun and all to run Mac OS X natively on non-Apple computers and I have done it many times. But we all know it's hell to update and often requires getting a new 'hacked' ISO.
If they really do go forward, they will get sued if they market it as a Mac clone. But it looks to me, again, like a machine made of hardware that was found to be 100% compatible with OS X from the lists on the Wiki. They have not made their own version of the TPM in all Macs that actually start OS X, nor have they used any Apple EFI firmware. There's their defence, and Apple can only say that they marketed and are promoting piracy (violation of EULA). I am not sure which is worst nor who will win in such a case.
Apple will definitely win the case where someone makes a true Mac clone, using the Apple EFI firmware, and making a TPM that does what the real Apple TPM does, allowing store-bought copies of OS X to be installed. I would gladly buy one of these computers if they are cheap (while they last).
BIOS? I saw the original video and it used the Darwin boot loader which is what the hacked ISO's use to load OS X. All Mac's use EFI, and the reason why the Psystar box does not is because of no open compatibility layer between BIOS booting and EFI (like Apple's Boot Camp), beyond the fact that EFI is probably more expensive to get motherboards of. Psystar did not do anything illegal if they sell these machines simply stating that they could potentially run OS X in my opinion.
The true better one that may happen though is the one that comes out with a TPM device that has the same functionality as the TPM device in a real Mac, allowing a store-bought copy of OS X to be installed. That will be something else (for once), and Apple will sue for sure, but I'd like to see the results of that lawsuit, especially if the reverse-engineering of the TPM device is done via the Wall method (with proof), rather than straight memory dumps and etc.
In short, the only obstacles to building a true clone are the TPM, true EFI booting, and the worst, sanction from Apple (which will probably not happen any time soon). All Apple has to do is licence the TPM hardware (or disable OS X from using it) and sanction clones, but again, not happening.
I guess I find it funny too, but I thought Slashdot was meant to push out stories other places would not, with some moderation. And if I were final decision moderator, this story would not be posted.
Hackintoshes apparently are Slashdot-worthy now. Ridiculous.
As with relation to this post, 90% of the work is done with the hacked ISO of Leopard you get off where you want (Google is your friend) by people like Zephyroth. He might have done a little hacking, but I do not care really. This is not ground-breaking. The Psystar article was more ground-breaking because if Psystar exists it is a company trying to market 'clone Macs' without sanction from Apple. I bravely say, anyone (who knows about osx86 and only even has a decent amount of skill of playing with OS's) could achieve what was done in this article.
That's exactly what I was thinking. Hackintosh was the first thought. If this company exists and people are dumb enough to buy one, haha at them.
Also, Psystar (again if they exist) better have some good damn lawyers because there is no way Apple is going to not sue them. They already threatened osx86 Project with litigation; now that a company is trying to make money Apple will certainly sue and take them out.
Apple is no longer interested in clones. Clones means less money (in the long run) to Apple I guess. I would disagree.
And yes, maintaining a Hackintosh is a pain at times if you really want to be fully up-to-date. There are billions of hacks and everything to get it going. I was using my laptop as a hackintosh for like a week and it was interesting but no Quartz and all meant it was going to be a limited experience anyway. Today it would work and I even ran Leopard (hacked version of course) natively just to try it, but my problem with OS X is simple: not enough free (freeware and FOSS) programs. And also, as with Linux DE's, there is a lot of missing functionality that Windows just has. Handling RAR's in Mac is about the same in Linux, you use unrar or rar in a terminal. I don't mind this, but it gets annoying. A lot of file formats are simply not as easily usable on anything but Windows (namely, MDF/MDS, GI, all kinds of disc formats; some compression formats; etc etc). Consider that I have to use UltraISO in Wine to convert formats to ISO (a usable format in Linux). cdemu died, it's totally unmaintained and requires changes to the code to compile (the kernel functions it uses are deprecated) and even then it is not a replacement for mounting an ISO with mount. Believe it or not, and I love Linux (using Firefox on Gentoo to type this), Linux is missing so much. I could easily say the same for OS X.
Have you seen/dealt with the Xbox 360 SDK? Just curious to see if you are pulling information out of the blue. Secondly, Xbox 360 is PowerPC based and whilst cross-development is possible probably, they probably just serial cable or even USB these days the executable code to their dev machines. Perhaps the SDK runs on Windows (I'm sure it does), but it may indeed be a lot more work to get the PC version going than you think, and that especially includes the fact that ATI and Nvidia DX implementations are slightly different, supporting those, supporting all these different PC configurations, testing A LOT, and all that. Even so, I have found all of their PC ports to be buggy at times, and they never make enhancements to the PC versions either (like better graphics, we all know GTA 3 could have looked 3 or more times better on PC than PS2).
However, I think that the people who own the terminals are well-within their rights to run a keylogger/clicklogger to see who did what. If they damage the machine, they should pay the cost in my opinion. Usually at public terminals you put in your credit card first, that is where the repair cost should go if you break the machine. Dispute all you want, but if I owned a machine I would be trying to make money, and I do not appreciate people 'breaking into' the machine with whatever method they want to try. Yes, I would definitely run a keylogger but not for password 'farming', just to be able to find the perpetrator who breaks whatever with the machine (any serious damage that takes time to fix). Anyone who knowingly runs a keylogger on their terminal to collect passwords and uses them to hack accounts (especially bank accounts, etc) should be charged with identity theft. This is something I would NOT use the keylogger for.
Yeah, I completely agree. This is the stupidest ask I have ever seen on Slashdot. How entirely immature. I hope he fails college and drops out, because he's an idiot for coming on Slashdot and asking "What is my first day of lab going to be like?"
You are completely right in saying this does not belong.
But I guess I will answer the question. YOU WILL FIND OUT WHEN YOU GET THERE, MORON!
Think about it. If before, the site was JPEGs or PNGs, people could just save those to their computer and do whatever they want from then on (I like this). As flash, people have the choices of screen-shot'ing the animation and saving it, decompiling the SWF (I guess) for the original images, or not saving them at all. Perhaps the company is worried that people can steal the images easier when they are in a format like JPEG. Flash is not so easy, in the sense that it is much more tedious to save a screen shot because you save the screen shot, then you crop it, and all that. Not even everyone knows how to do that.
I seriously think part of the reason for the new design is anti-piracy in some way.
I run GIMP in KDE and use KDE's specific window settings to force GIMP toolbars to one position by default, and to make them stay on top always. I still kind of wish they kept at least those two windows or however many you make, all in one task (meaning it shows as one task on the task bar but shows all related windows except the working window when clicked upon).
Because "OS-agnostic applications" != "web apps". An OS-agnostic application might be a Java bytecode program that runs in a JVM, with no web browser or server involved. On the other hand, a web app might be coded with ActiveX controls which mean it'll only run on IE on a Windows box.
I agree an OS-agnostic application might be a Java bytecode programme but also I think it is things like Firefox (which runs on almost every OS natively), Pidgin IM, OpenOffice, etc. All these have been ported to all of the major OS's. I know I certainly use Firefox on Linux and Windows, and get nearly the same results on both OS's (as far as when I do design). I use OpenOffice on both as well, and it's great that I can simply copy prefs from one OS to the other; same for Pidgin. There are a whole host of applications that used to be Linux-only that are now being ported to Windows (a lot of it thanks to the GTK+ port to Windows). And the gnuwin32 project has made lots of progress (I use these tools (commands like cp, dd, wget, etc) on Windows all the time rather than the regular 'DOS' tools (copy, del; they all suck). I even bring most of these apps with me on a flash drive to run on any PC with my preferences. I think people see the benefit of having a programme that can be run on nearly any OS, and being able to get almost the exact same results on all of them.
It is utterly unbelievable that some people want to use 20 year old software natively and expect it to work flawlessly on the latest OS from Microsoft. I have seen it before. One guy I did work for was using some 'appraisal' software designed for Windows 3.1 on Windows XP. Yes, it worked fine, but I call that luck, just as the other day I ran the old DOS 'Price of Persia' on XP with no compatibility modes on. I also call that luck. I do not think Microsoft needs these things built into the operating system in the current form. The code base seriously needs some major branching (akin to keeping the working code base and copying all the code to a new tree style to separate key components from each other). Beyond that, for example, there are already multiple version DLLs (MSVCRT for example) (just like backward-compatibility.so files on *nix distros). If I had to redesign Windows from scratch in this fashion, I would first separate all code that is not considered 'modern' into a separate section. This would be the stable branch of the code. And the other code can be put into a compatibility section, and when compiled, the compatibility and modern executables cannot 'mingle', unlike today, where even a Win16 application could potentially do damage. Virtualisation is nice, and I think it works great for many things, but Microsoft still needs many pieces to be native for the time being. The only way to solve this problem is to separate old code from the new and never let the executables touch each other (separate registry might be involved as well). Unfortunately with Windows there might even be a need to have several versions of a 'version' of a DLL for ultimate compatibility, the last stable Windows 95 version, the last stable Windows 98 (FE and SE) version, 2000's version, and so forth. Windows' base code will require code obviously to be able to run these and recognise the differences but this will not be as bad as mixing up everything as they are doing now. It is a disaster (I saw the Windows 2000 source code and it was not very organised).
Slashdot Mirror
Completely agree. A lot of companies buy Red Hat Enterprise for their servers and workstations outright (it is probably the most well-known Linux) and I think soon enough (and what frightens Red Hat) is that these companies may find their own 'support personnel' and use something completely free like Ubuntu or even Fedora Core (based on Red Hat).
I think Windows 7 is BSD based.
What? Windows 7 M1 was leaked and given to reviewers/testers whom confirmed that it was after-all based upon Vista or Server 2008's code. It requires Vista SP1 to install (at least the current version), and the DVD is 2.9 GB. It is nothing but another crap pile of 20+ years old code. That is not to say old code is bad, but in this case, it is.
Now, maybe in the future Windows will be BSD-based, but for the moment Windows 7 looks like it is heavily Vista-based, especially since it requires Vista SP1 installed as a prerequisite.
See the review.
and .2600 for hackers
Both nVidia and ATI have profit motive. By standardising the hardware, you are essentially giving away specifications (at least some). ATI may be giving away specifications, but I still have not seen the 3D specifications yet (they say they are coming). This may force nVidia into at least thinking about releasing specifications, but I am not sure that they would.
Having standards for this would be great, especially in the way a card implements instruction sets like OpenGL. If you have a standard, it seems like everyone would want to meet that standard and nothing more. There is no motivation to exceed it. And if it is exceeded, will those specifications be released? If so, then the company has just done extra work for nothing monetary in return.
It is (I guess) unfortunate at times, but you have to be making money no matter who you are. Your motive has to be profit most of the time, in the current economy.
Completely agree. The only stable driver is still 8.40.2 (for me with an Radeon Xpress 200M), and it sucks completely. No compositing with 3d simultaneously. I have a computer with a GeForce 6100 and it can do compositing and 3D simultaneously just fine with the proprietary driver.
Developers should not criticise nVidia so much as ATI/AMD. At least nVidia gives a crap about the quality of their module, even if it is proprietary. Why? Because many companies use Maya in Linux (often rendering farms) and therefore have nVidia cards (especially Quadro's).
I see motive, and it involves a few things. Microsoft, because they want to push DirectX/Windows, the computer manufacturers refusing anything other than Windows to be installed. Show that ATI cards run like crap on Linux, and people assume Linux is crap. This is a big problem. Developers should criticise ATI way more, not nVidia. For nVidia it goes the other way: show that nVidia cards work great in Linux (even though a proprietary module), and graphics developers (Pixar for example) want Linux boxes.
Other than that, maybe we need a community-funded hardware project to make a video card and future models (with standards to follow) that supports all that the current cards support (yes, this is expensive). EVERYONE who cares (the true GNU fans) will buy the end result, which will most probably cost more than a regular nVidia or AMD card, but it will be worth it. A card that has no limitations other than the limitations of the hardware itself. Neither nVidia nor AMD give us this with their proprietary drivers.
Then also expect MS to have less customers in the future.
People who seemingly cannot get off Windows no matter what, not even move to OS X. I use Linux 90% of the time; I support Windows as a technician (one of my jobs). I can barely stand Windows any more, especially now with Vista. I recommend people things like OpenOffice, LaTeX (MikTeX on Windows), Firefox, Thunderbird, aMule (rather than eMule), FrostWire (rather than LimeWire), and why? Because these apps run on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. I try to explain the benefits of not being stuck on Windows. They may still be using Windows, but at least the day Windows loses dominance and/or the person simply wants to try something new (i.e Linux), their files will be readable on those OS's.
.docx!) and 2) Vista really is not a huge improvement over XP.
People need to stop thinking XP is going to last forever for one thing and they need to either completely switch to another OS or at least use applications that use open formats on Windows. Even preferences can be transferred from one OS to another for Thunderbird, Firefox, OpenOffice, aMule, and so many more (just have to be placed in the right folder). I am glad on Windows for my 'real work' I use applications that run on Linux and Windows.
Let's start with open formats. The two reasons people want XP to last forever: 1) They use applications that only run on Windows (and also think Wine cannot possibly match) and closed source formats (that includes
Also, he's forgetting the fact that it wasn't until about service pack 2 of Windows 2000 that it was way reliable and stable.
While these changes will increase our engineering agility, they will not impact the user experience or reduce application or hardware compatibility.
I guess it is not a bad idea if hardware drivers for Vista work with Windows 7 (much like 2K and XP drivers are nearly interchangeable), but the fact that they are going to STILL try to keep backward compatibility with applications 20+ years old is simply ridiculous. Great, they have come out early and stated that software (again 20+ years old) will still be compatible (an early announcement is good). The fact that people will take this idea to heart and think things like 'Oh I can run QuickBooks 1.0 on Windows 7 still!' and then do it and it might actually work is also ridiculous. Microsoft should instead focus on a secure OS rather than backward compatibility and figure out that later, and IMO screw running applications that are from before the year 2000 natively. The ABIs that run Windows 3.1 apps on all OS's above it are probably just waiting for people to find vulnerabilities and then take advantage. When Microsoft fixes these things, often compatibility is limited afterwards, so Microsoft certainly avoids this. It is a stupid thought that people think: 'I want to run X 1.0 from 1991 on any Windows'. Microsoft needs to come out, years before the OS comes out, and say this thought is absurd and that they refuse to support running of applications (of some year or before) natively. By the time Windows 7 comes out, we should already have all the virtualisation we need to run those old applications in a secure fashion (virtual machine has no raw access to host at all). Microsoft should just implement it, but for some reason they will not. They are influenced by the businesses who buy Windows (volume licences mostly), but they still need to keep their integrity for the public relation's sake. It is simply risky for PR, among other things (security of everyone, not just businesses, who uses Windows), to keep on with the backward compatibility in this fashion.
I thought one of the major goals of the OLPC project was to promote usage of free software. As for now, I would say the best choice is a Linux-derived operating system (kernel has the best hardware support as far I know). If Microsoft is a choice, fine, but I seriously think the Windows market share is shrinking every day. It seems like everyone and their relative wants a Mac lately after Vista has come out.
.NET claiming it is the way of the future, mainly because C# is easier to learn than C or C++ (in my experience).
Regardless, I really think OLPC has lost its focus and I have so much less respect for allowing a totally closed operating system to be a choice for the computers. If they allow FreeBSD, Syllable, and other free open source operating systems, that is fine. They may not have necessarily have everything they need for children to learn from, but they are free and open source.
Linux and whatever distro is the best choice. How many 'edutainment' applications are on Windows by default? 0! Everyone knows Windows is hardly useful on a default install: a file manager, calculator, Soliatire (a few other card games), a really horrible browser, and a really horrible media player. Does Microsoft promote open source development? No! They have 'Express' editions of Visual Studio, but that is exactly it. They are 'Express' editions. They are begging for people to stick with Windows when they do things like this. And now they have
This is not the way to go for OLPC. It is terrible that governments have these choices: promote free software, development, learning, and social contribution; or spend a little more money for an OS that is nearly useless by default, and the people who use it will be locked in once they are settled with whatever software they find to use. Most likely the software they choose to use on Windows will have spyware, and they will use IE (do you think Microsoft will promote another browser?!) and get adware/spyware/crappy toolbars. I cannot wait to have even more infested Windows computers connected on-line, which could do damage (this is precisely the reason why IE7 got non-WGA'd by Microsoft: security). Luckily I'm on Linux 90% of the time.
Agreed, twm burns my eyes!
will end up on Wikileaks! I will wait patiently.
A machine made of hardware that comes directly off the list of compatible hardware from the OSx86 Wiki is supposed to be impressive?
Also, I think it's all fun and all to run Mac OS X natively on non-Apple computers and I have done it many times. But we all know it's hell to update and often requires getting a new 'hacked' ISO.
If they really do go forward, they will get sued if they market it as a Mac clone. But it looks to me, again, like a machine made of hardware that was found to be 100% compatible with OS X from the lists on the Wiki. They have not made their own version of the TPM in all Macs that actually start OS X, nor have they used any Apple EFI firmware. There's their defence, and Apple can only say that they marketed and are promoting piracy (violation of EULA). I am not sure which is worst nor who will win in such a case.
Apple will definitely win the case where someone makes a true Mac clone, using the Apple EFI firmware, and making a TPM that does what the real Apple TPM does, allowing store-bought copies of OS X to be installed. I would gladly buy one of these computers if they are cheap (while they last).
BIOS? I saw the original video and it used the Darwin boot loader which is what the hacked ISO's use to load OS X. All Mac's use EFI, and the reason why the Psystar box does not is because of no open compatibility layer between BIOS booting and EFI (like Apple's Boot Camp), beyond the fact that EFI is probably more expensive to get motherboards of. Psystar did not do anything illegal if they sell these machines simply stating that they could potentially run OS X in my opinion.
The true better one that may happen though is the one that comes out with a TPM device that has the same functionality as the TPM device in a real Mac, allowing a store-bought copy of OS X to be installed. That will be something else (for once), and Apple will sue for sure, but I'd like to see the results of that lawsuit, especially if the reverse-engineering of the TPM device is done via the Wall method (with proof), rather than straight memory dumps and etc.
In short, the only obstacles to building a true clone are the TPM, true EFI booting, and the worst, sanction from Apple (which will probably not happen any time soon). All Apple has to do is licence the TPM hardware (or disable OS X from using it) and sanction clones, but again, not happening.
I'm not surprised at all. It just sucks that people think proprietary formats are fine. :/
I guess I find it funny too, but I thought Slashdot was meant to push out stories other places would not, with some moderation. And if I were final decision moderator, this story would not be posted.
Hackintoshes apparently are Slashdot-worthy now. Ridiculous.
As with relation to this post, 90% of the work is done with the hacked ISO of Leopard you get off where you want (Google is your friend) by people like Zephyroth. He might have done a little hacking, but I do not care really. This is not ground-breaking. The Psystar article was more ground-breaking because if Psystar exists it is a company trying to market 'clone Macs' without sanction from Apple. I bravely say, anyone (who knows about osx86 and only even has a decent amount of skill of playing with OS's) could achieve what was done in this article.
That's exactly what I was thinking. Hackintosh was the first thought. If this company exists and people are dumb enough to buy one, haha at them.
Also, Psystar (again if they exist) better have some good damn lawyers because there is no way Apple is going to not sue them. They already threatened osx86 Project with litigation; now that a company is trying to make money Apple will certainly sue and take them out.
Apple is no longer interested in clones. Clones means less money (in the long run) to Apple I guess. I would disagree.
And yes, maintaining a Hackintosh is a pain at times if you really want to be fully up-to-date. There are billions of hacks and everything to get it going. I was using my laptop as a hackintosh for like a week and it was interesting but no Quartz and all meant it was going to be a limited experience anyway. Today it would work and I even ran Leopard (hacked version of course) natively just to try it, but my problem with OS X is simple: not enough free (freeware and FOSS) programs. And also, as with Linux DE's, there is a lot of missing functionality that Windows just has. Handling RAR's in Mac is about the same in Linux, you use unrar or rar in a terminal. I don't mind this, but it gets annoying. A lot of file formats are simply not as easily usable on anything but Windows (namely, MDF/MDS, GI, all kinds of disc formats; some compression formats; etc etc). Consider that I have to use UltraISO in Wine to convert formats to ISO (a usable format in Linux). cdemu died, it's totally unmaintained and requires changes to the code to compile (the kernel functions it uses are deprecated) and even then it is not a replacement for mounting an ISO with mount. Believe it or not, and I love Linux (using Firefox on Gentoo to type this), Linux is missing so much. I could easily say the same for OS X.
Have you seen/dealt with the Xbox 360 SDK? Just curious to see if you are pulling information out of the blue. Secondly, Xbox 360 is PowerPC based and whilst cross-development is possible probably, they probably just serial cable or even USB these days the executable code to their dev machines. Perhaps the SDK runs on Windows (I'm sure it does), but it may indeed be a lot more work to get the PC version going than you think, and that especially includes the fact that ATI and Nvidia DX implementations are slightly different, supporting those, supporting all these different PC configurations, testing A LOT, and all that. Even so, I have found all of their PC ports to be buggy at times, and they never make enhancements to the PC versions either (like better graphics, we all know GTA 3 could have looked 3 or more times better on PC than PS2).
However, I think that the people who own the terminals are well-within their rights to run a keylogger/clicklogger to see who did what. If they damage the machine, they should pay the cost in my opinion. Usually at public terminals you put in your credit card first, that is where the repair cost should go if you break the machine. Dispute all you want, but if I owned a machine I would be trying to make money, and I do not appreciate people 'breaking into' the machine with whatever method they want to try. Yes, I would definitely run a keylogger but not for password 'farming', just to be able to find the perpetrator who breaks whatever with the machine (any serious damage that takes time to fix). Anyone who knowingly runs a keylogger on their terminal to collect passwords and uses them to hack accounts (especially bank accounts, etc) should be charged with identity theft. This is something I would NOT use the keylogger for.
Yeah, I completely agree. This is the stupidest ask I have ever seen on Slashdot. How entirely immature. I hope he fails college and drops out, because he's an idiot for coming on Slashdot and asking "What is my first day of lab going to be like?"
You are completely right in saying this does not belong.
But I guess I will answer the question. YOU WILL FIND OUT WHEN YOU GET THERE, MORON!
Think about it. If before, the site was JPEGs or PNGs, people could just save those to their computer and do whatever they want from then on (I like this). As flash, people have the choices of screen-shot'ing the animation and saving it, decompiling the SWF (I guess) for the original images, or not saving them at all. Perhaps the company is worried that people can steal the images easier when they are in a format like JPEG. Flash is not so easy, in the sense that it is much more tedious to save a screen shot because you save the screen shot, then you crop it, and all that. Not even everyone knows how to do that.
I seriously think part of the reason for the new design is anti-piracy in some way.
I run GIMP in KDE and use KDE's specific window settings to force GIMP toolbars to one position by default, and to make them stay on top always. I still kind of wish they kept at least those two windows or however many you make, all in one task (meaning it shows as one task on the task bar but shows all related windows except the working window when clicked upon).
I agree an OS-agnostic application might be a Java bytecode programme but also I think it is things like Firefox (which runs on almost every OS natively), Pidgin IM, OpenOffice, etc. All these have been ported to all of the major OS's. I know I certainly use Firefox on Linux and Windows, and get nearly the same results on both OS's (as far as when I do design). I use OpenOffice on both as well, and it's great that I can simply copy prefs from one OS to the other; same for Pidgin. There are a whole host of applications that used to be Linux-only that are now being ported to Windows (a lot of it thanks to the GTK+ port to Windows). And the gnuwin32 project has made lots of progress (I use these tools (commands like cp, dd, wget, etc) on Windows all the time rather than the regular 'DOS' tools (copy, del; they all suck). I even bring most of these apps with me on a flash drive to run on any PC with my preferences. I think people see the benefit of having a programme that can be run on nearly any OS, and being able to get almost the exact same results on all of them.
It is utterly unbelievable that some people want to use 20 year old software natively and expect it to work flawlessly on the latest OS from Microsoft. I have seen it before. One guy I did work for was using some 'appraisal' software designed for Windows 3.1 on Windows XP. Yes, it worked fine, but I call that luck, just as the other day I ran the old DOS 'Price of Persia' on XP with no compatibility modes on. I also call that luck. I do not think Microsoft needs these things built into the operating system in the current form. The code base seriously needs some major branching (akin to keeping the working code base and copying all the code to a new tree style to separate key components from each other). Beyond that, for example, there are already multiple version DLLs (MSVCRT for example) (just like backward-compatibility .so files on *nix distros). If I had to redesign Windows from scratch in this fashion, I would first separate all code that is not considered 'modern' into a separate section. This would be the stable branch of the code. And the other code can be put into a compatibility section, and when compiled, the compatibility and modern executables cannot 'mingle', unlike today, where even a Win16 application could potentially do damage. Virtualisation is nice, and I think it works great for many things, but Microsoft still needs many pieces to be native for the time being. The only way to solve this problem is to separate old code from the new and never let the executables touch each other (separate registry might be involved as well). Unfortunately with Windows there might even be a need to have several versions of a 'version' of a DLL for ultimate compatibility, the last stable Windows 95 version, the last stable Windows 98 (FE and SE) version, 2000's version, and so forth. Windows' base code will require code obviously to be able to run these and recognise the differences but this will not be as bad as mixing up everything as they are doing now. It is a disaster (I saw the Windows 2000 source code and it was not very organised).