NiftyTelnet supports SSH on Mac?! I've been waiting for ssh support in a Mac client for quite some time, so I was initially quite excited to hear you say that...
However, I checked out the NiftyTelnet home page and they don't mention SSH support anywhere. I downloaded it and the application didn't have any SSH options either. Perhaps you are speaking of the Kerberos authentication support?
I'm looking for end to end encryption, so if I'm wrong about this, please let me know!
I agree completely. The DNS system is the gateway between human use of the internet and the machines that make it go. Without that translation layer the whole thing becomes immensely less usefull: can you imagine a Nike commercial telling you to check out their web site at 207.87.10.243 ?!. Most people have a hard enough time remebering phone numbers...
Once upon a time, long before Microsoft knew there was an internet, the DNS system worked quite well to allow us to telnet, gopher, ftp and telnet our way around the world. With the explosion (exploitation?) of the World Wide Web, the same system that supported us so well before is truly showing its limitations and nothing has pointed this out quite as clearly as the recent privatization of the TLDs. I almost threw up the first time I registered a domain for a client and got a page from Network Solutions that said 'would you also like to register the.org and.net for that domain?'.
Throw into the mix all the legal issues involving domain name disputes and such and the whole system becomes a raging mess! For a service that is so critical to the very usefullness of the internet in general, chaos in the system is a terrible thing! Personally, I felt that InterNIC (as funded by the NSF and such) worked quite well as a non-profit, government sanctioned orginization - no fuss, no muss. Since the transition, things have been a bit... less friendly.
Granted, I would expect a few hiccups with such a massive change of paradigms, but I still think the problem will remain. What needs to be done is something truly different. How about coming up with a better system completely? Perhaps one built on the 'private' mentality from the ground up - perhaps a truly distributed system with a level playing field. I don't know what it'd be, but clearly, the system we have is showing stress fractures around the seams...
Barring such a radical departure from the current mechanisms, I'd have to agree that things worked smoother with a 'public' organization in charge. This, however, brings up the same old arguments related to global politics: which orginization in which country?
None of these issues are anywere near cut and dry. None of this is going to be easy. But I think that we as a community need to head off this nastiness I see coming as soon as possible. Without reliable DNS mechanisms, we all lose - including Network Solutions...
Who the hell cares how long the warranty is: they very rarely break! I've got every mac I've ever owned (Except for the little IIsi I used for a 'project' and consequently 'broke':) since 1984 sitting on a little network running TCP through a linux box providing NAT services. They may have short warranties, but I've only had to cash in on a service repair once - and that was for a monitor with a known manufacturing defect (they replaced the whole thing - twice. It's good to know the local service folk;)
Now, I have seen drives fail - but c'mon: who really cares about that? Apple usually sticks to fairly high quality drives (nevermind the recent switch to IDE - that's a different issue). But you probably paid more for that drive in the original manufacturing cost than it would cost you to upgrade to a drive 8 times the capacity and 32 times as fast...
Addendum: Yes, even my little Mac Plus can do email and telnet (using a localtalk router running on a 6100). I've been toying with the idea of setting up my old Apple IIe (which also still works just fine) as a dumb terminal, but getting any software onto one of those stupid old Apple formatted 5.25 floppies is a real bitch... So many useless hacks, so little time.
I don't think anyone has commented on the final section of this essay yet, so I'd like to bring it up.
Think of what might happen if we started storing source code as structured data.
We're all working in algorithms - essentially, pure ideas. If there were some way to boil your ideas into some universal language (structured data) then you've hit on that ideal: Truly Reusable Code.
I recall reading The Glass Bead Game recently and ended up thinking along these same lines then - perhaps this is where it starts? Its all about abstraction, after all... Go far enough and it all fits under the same umbrella.
Well, with electronic devices becoming more and more disposable (see This one two articles down), who cares about the software they run.
I can see it now:
Toaster burn down the kitchen?
Refrigerator froze your cat?
Coffee machine spitting fire again?
Well, throw that old misbehaving device into that landfill over there and pick up New Device v2.0! Now with %20 less catastrophies!
Seriously, the lifespan of all of these little do-hickeys is becoming shorter and shorter - causing more and more of them to end up in a big trash heap. Somehow, this doesn't seem very intelligent - yet, there's this little voice whispering in my ear Don't worry, we'll just dig a bigger hole. I think it's the Taco Bell dog...
I disagree - the Web was designed to be a hyperlinked multimedia delivery system. That doesn't mean that it is a multi-service delivery system. Essentially, it's a resource request mechanism: you ask for a resource, the server gives it up. What the requesting client does with it is completely up to implementation. The idea of standards provides a consistant representation of what the client should do with that resource.
SMTP/POP/IMAP/NNTP were designed to provide completely different types of services. These types of transactions are not request/response based, but instead are dialog based (ie, LIST/UIDL/GET[[UIDL/GET]...] for POP3). The underlying mechanisms are completely different paradigms, therefore they should use different tools.
This is not to say that each of these services couldn't be properly delivered through the web, but that should be handled on the server side and the web interface would only be a representation of whats really going on. Sites like Hotmail and such provide email using an actual web interface - and it works fine with the standalone browser because it's request/response based.
In all, I'm basically begging the rest of the world to wake up to what the unix world realized a long time ago: 'do one thing and do it well - then connect the tools'. I've seen some great ideas in this area (OpenDoc comes to mind - great idea, absolutely shitty follow-through) end up pushed aside by the raging bloatware juggernaut. If this keeps up, there eventually won't be any applications - just 'systems'...
Ahhhh... Remember the days when a Web Browser was used for browsing the web rather than handling every aspect of the internet experience? If I recall, the stability of Netscape started seriously slipping when it started doing mail/news/development. Well, the first couple of iterations of Java and JavaScript were a little flakey, but hey, you'd expect that from new features.
I've found that Navigator Standalone runs much more stably on my Mac than any version of IE. The only thing I can see in IE that I like more than Navigator is dynamic rendering of pages (man, I HATE waiting for these nested comments wrapped in one huge table to load on/.) - not really that much though...
If only Netscape(AOL) would focus on making Web Browsers rather than slapping a shoddy email client (I already have one that works well), a crummy newsreader (got one of those too, thanks) and a composer (that's what text editors are for - ok, I'm a purist;) into the works. All it seems to accomplish is increase the complexity of the project and suck valuable resources away from the real goal of a Web Browser: Browsing the web!
This would be a huge boon to those of us trying to truly break free of the commercial unices. I've had to put together quotes for enterprise quality database solutions before and there have always been a couple of hurdles to get past when considering an Intel/linux based system.
PostgreSQL works wonderfully with large data sets, but lacks the ability to do hot restores. I'm eagerly awaiting that one... Now that it does a much better job with concurrant locks, that's my only real hesitation at this point.
SMP has come a long way in a short time with linux, but is still a bit lacking. This makes it difficult to settle on Intel hardware - sometimes, you just need Raw Horsepower. I'd like to get there without having to buckle down and buy a Sun or HP box. I'm not worried about this one - things are coming along quite nicely...
Now, my last concern was journaling filesystems - and it looks like it's coming at long last! I was excited when the initial announcement was made, but now that the code is out (and Alan is even considering merging into the stable branch!), I'm all gushy inside! Let's hear it for our team!
I've watched this whole linux thing start out as a 'hobby OS' and develop through adolescence into what is becoming a damned serious contender with the big boys. Sure, they're baby steps at the moment, but at this pace, they add up right quick. God, I love this industry - never know what's gunna happen next. Who knows - maybe the government will sue Microsoft for anti-trust violations next. Oh... right...
You don't even have to do anything to make the Palm Pilot work - there's an application called PalmRemote that'll record any IR input and play it back on demand.
The cool thing about this is that you can have up to 14 different 'remotes' to choose from - and you get to build them the way you want by simply drawing 'buttons' on the screen. Additionally, you can assign 'macros' to buttons that trigger multiple actions. Sadly, it's not free or open source - but $20 is a far cry from $300 (and it doesn't run wince).
Ever since I saw this, I've been wanting to head down to Circuit City and learn all of the remotes down there and then... head down to the local sports bar and keep hitting the 'all TVs to the cartoon network' button. Muhahaha. The bonus here is that you'd look like you were working:)
Apple doesn't own the Sorensen codecs at all. In fact, I recall them paying out the nose to have them included in QT4... If you want the codecs, you've gotta talk to the Sorensen folk directly.
I don't think the problem lies within the subject matter at all - but rather in the details the moviemaker is willing to bring up. Take, for example, two movies with tech themes (and, to make it easy, they both have Bill - er Ted - er Keanu Reeves in them)...
Johnny Mnemonic Interesting idea for a flick. Pleanty of action, plot moved along nicely, killing, sex, death, etc... The problem here was that they tried to get too specific with the details. I can hold 6 Gigabytes (or whatever) in my head. They could've gotten away with this if they hadn't stuck an absurdly small value on it. Sure, it was 4 years ago - but even then, that wasn't that much storage. For a story set in the 'future', this was simply annonying.
The list goes on (it's been since 95 since I saw it, and I'll be damned if I ever see it again), but the point here is that if they had just stayed away from the details, the whole thing would have worked. Hell, make up some unit of storage and don't worry about being realistic - but if you want to use real-world references, then for shit's sake hire a consultant and ask them what'll work...
The Matrix This flick was every bit as technical as Johnny Mnemonic, but didn't make the mistake of trying to actually tie it to any real technical specifics. They took their concept directly from the industry, but rather than straight dumb it down, they actually translated it and filtered it for the general public (and added some kick-ass kung-fu in the process).
In effect, The Matrix comes across as a much more technical movie. But in reality, almost none of the actual specifics of the 'reality' in the movie are mentioned - just enough to get the point through to the viewer.
In my mind, this is how hollywood should approach the field. Sure, you want it to be realistic - sure you want it to be entertaining... But why do they think that the only way to accomplish such a task is to spit out gory details that will only server to confuse the uninitiated and piss off the initiated? There are better ways to pull it off...
Sure, it wasn't medicine on live people - and it was the late '70s, but it was pretty damned accurate. Well, at least I remember it being accurate - it's been quite a while...
Now if a recent Mac OS has support built in that's another matter... anyone?
There has been OS level support for Speech Recognition with the Mac OS since '95. Sure, it was a seperate componant that didn't install by accident with the default system, but it has always been available.
The only application that takes advantage of the feature, however, is implemented by Apple with Speakable Items. Essentially, all you can do out of the box is tie Apple Events (or AppleScripts) to spoken phrases. In reality, this is hardly useful - consider an office full of cubicles with everyone telling their computers to quit application - close window - open netscape - shutdown... well you get the point.
But - the point is: it's been on the OS level from the start...
I should also point out that since the Macintosh, Apple really hasn't had any significant innovations.
Perhaps they didn't invent it, but Speech Recognition has been around on the Mac since around 1995. Granted they haven't done much with it (at least not until the forthcoming Mac OS 9), but the thechnology has been there ripe for the picking for some time.
I find it amazing that nobody decided to take advantage of this and develop continuous speech recognition software for the Mac - rather, folk like Dragon et al are working doubly hard to implement it from scratch on other platforms.
To top it off, it really proves the point to see that Little Billy is drooling in the interview about one of the 'up and coming' technologies He is working on - Speech Recognition!
Slashdot Mirror
NiftyTelnet supports SSH on Mac?! I've been waiting for ssh support in a Mac client for quite some time, so I was initially quite excited to hear you say that...
However, I checked out the NiftyTelnet home page and they don't mention SSH support anywhere. I downloaded it and the application didn't have any SSH options either. Perhaps you are speaking of the Kerberos authentication support?
I'm looking for end to end encryption, so if I'm wrong about this, please let me know!
I got this one after several (I'm not even going to tell you how many) reloads:
Can Revolutionary MP3s Stop Online Minimum Wage?
For some reason, I laughed quite a bit and even woke up a roommate... Now that's gotta be worth something :)
I agree completely. The DNS system is the gateway between human use of the internet and the machines that make it go. Without that translation layer the whole thing becomes immensely less usefull: can you imagine a Nike commercial telling you to check out their web site at 207.87.10.243 ?!. Most people have a hard enough time remebering phone numbers...
Once upon a time, long before Microsoft knew there was an internet, the DNS system worked quite well to allow us to telnet, gopher, ftp and telnet our way around the world. With the explosion (exploitation?) of the World Wide Web, the same system that supported us so well before is truly showing its limitations and nothing has pointed this out quite as clearly as the recent privatization of the TLDs. I almost threw up the first time I registered a domain for a client and got a page from Network Solutions that said 'would you also like to register the .org and .net for that domain?'.
Throw into the mix all the legal issues involving domain name disputes and such and the whole system becomes a raging mess! For a service that is so critical to the very usefullness of the internet in general, chaos in the system is a terrible thing! Personally, I felt that InterNIC (as funded by the NSF and such) worked quite well as a non-profit, government sanctioned orginization - no fuss, no muss. Since the transition, things have been a bit... less friendly.
Granted, I would expect a few hiccups with such a massive change of paradigms, but I still think the problem will remain. What needs to be done is something truly different. How about coming up with a better system completely? Perhaps one built on the 'private' mentality from the ground up - perhaps a truly distributed system with a level playing field. I don't know what it'd be, but clearly, the system we have is showing stress fractures around the seams...
Barring such a radical departure from the current mechanisms, I'd have to agree that things worked smoother with a 'public' organization in charge. This, however, brings up the same old arguments related to global politics: which orginization in which country?
None of these issues are anywere near cut and dry. None of this is going to be easy. But I think that we as a community need to head off this nastiness I see coming as soon as possible. Without reliable DNS mechanisms, we all lose - including Network Solutions...
Who the hell cares how long the warranty is: they very rarely break! I've got every mac I've ever owned (Except for the little IIsi I used for a 'project' and consequently 'broke'
Now, I have seen drives fail - but c'mon: who really cares about that? Apple usually sticks to fairly high quality drives (nevermind the recent switch to IDE - that's a different issue). But you probably paid more for that drive in the original manufacturing cost than it would cost you to upgrade to a drive 8 times the capacity and 32 times as fast...
Addendum: Yes, even my little Mac Plus can do email and telnet (using a localtalk router running on a 6100). I've been toying with the idea of setting up my old Apple IIe (which also still works just fine) as a dumb terminal, but getting any software onto one of those stupid old Apple formatted 5.25 floppies is a real bitch... So many useless hacks, so little time.
I don't think anyone has commented on the final section of this essay yet, so I'd like to bring it up. We're all working in algorithms - essentially, pure ideas. If there were some way to boil your ideas into some universal language (structured data) then you've hit on that ideal: Truly Reusable Code.
I recall reading The Glass Bead Game recently and ended up thinking along these same lines then - perhaps this is where it starts? Its all about abstraction, after all... Go far enough and it all fits under the same umbrella.
Well, with electronic devices becoming more and more disposable (see This one two articles down), who cares about the software they run.
I can see it now:
- Toaster burn down the kitchen?
- Refrigerator froze your cat?
- Coffee machine spitting fire again?
Well, throw that old misbehaving device into that landfill over there and pick up New Device v2.0! Now with %20 less catastrophies!Seriously, the lifespan of all of these little do-hickeys is becoming shorter and shorter - causing more and more of them to end up in a big trash heap. Somehow, this doesn't seem very intelligent - yet, there's this little voice whispering in my ear Don't worry, we'll just dig a bigger hole. I think it's the Taco Bell dog...
I disagree - the Web was designed to be a hyperlinked multimedia delivery system. That doesn't mean that it is a multi-service delivery system. Essentially, it's a resource request mechanism: you ask for a resource, the server gives it up. What the requesting client does with it is completely up to implementation. The idea of standards provides a consistant representation of what the client should do with that resource.
SMTP/POP/IMAP/NNTP were designed to provide completely different types of services. These types of transactions are not request/response based, but instead are dialog based (ie, LIST/UIDL/GET[[UIDL/GET]...] for POP3). The underlying mechanisms are completely different paradigms, therefore they should use different tools.
This is not to say that each of these services couldn't be properly delivered through the web, but that should be handled on the server side and the web interface would only be a representation of whats really going on. Sites like Hotmail and such provide email using an actual web interface - and it works fine with the standalone browser because it's request/response based.
In all, I'm basically begging the rest of the world to wake up to what the unix world realized a long time ago: 'do one thing and do it well - then connect the tools'. I've seen some great ideas in this area (OpenDoc comes to mind - great idea, absolutely shitty follow-through) end up pushed aside by the raging bloatware juggernaut. If this keeps up, there eventually won't be any applications - just 'systems'...
Ahhhh... Remember the days when a Web Browser was used for browsing the web rather than handling every aspect of the internet experience? If I recall, the stability of Netscape started seriously slipping when it started doing mail/news/development. Well, the first couple of iterations of Java and JavaScript were a little flakey, but hey, you'd expect that from new features.
I've found that Navigator Standalone runs much more stably on my Mac than any version of IE. The only thing I can see in IE that I like more than Navigator is dynamic rendering of pages (man, I HATE waiting for these nested comments wrapped in one huge table to load on /.) - not really that much though...
If only Netscape(AOL) would focus on making Web Browsers rather than slapping a shoddy email client (I already have one that works well), a crummy newsreader (got one of those too, thanks) and a composer (that's what text editors are for - ok, I'm a purist ;) into the works. All it seems to accomplish is increase the complexity of the project and suck valuable resources away from the real goal of a Web Browser: Browsing the web!
This would be a huge boon to those of us trying to truly break free of the commercial unices. I've had to put together quotes for enterprise quality database solutions before and there have always been a couple of hurdles to get past when considering an Intel/linux based system.
PostgreSQL works wonderfully with large data sets, but lacks the ability to do hot restores. I'm eagerly awaiting that one... Now that it does a much better job with concurrant locks, that's my only real hesitation at this point.
SMP has come a long way in a short time with linux, but is still a bit lacking. This makes it difficult to settle on Intel hardware - sometimes, you just need Raw Horsepower. I'd like to get there without having to buckle down and buy a Sun or HP box. I'm not worried about this one - things are coming along quite nicely...
Now, my last concern was journaling filesystems - and it looks like it's coming at long last! I was excited when the initial announcement was made, but now that the code is out (and Alan is even considering merging into the stable branch!), I'm all gushy inside! Let's hear it for our team!
I've watched this whole linux thing start out as a 'hobby OS' and develop through adolescence into what is becoming a damned serious contender with the big boys. Sure, they're baby steps at the moment, but at this pace, they add up right quick. God, I love this industry - never know what's gunna happen next. Who knows - maybe the government will sue Microsoft for anti-trust violations next. Oh... right...
You don't even have to do anything to make the Palm Pilot work - there's an application called PalmRemote that'll record any IR input and play it back on demand.
The cool thing about this is that you can have up to 14 different 'remotes' to choose from - and you get to build them the way you want by simply drawing 'buttons' on the screen. Additionally, you can assign 'macros' to buttons that trigger multiple actions. Sadly, it's not free or open source - but $20 is a far cry from $300 (and it doesn't run wince).
Ever since I saw this, I've been wanting to head down to Circuit City and learn all of the remotes down there and then... head down to the local sports bar and keep hitting the 'all TVs to the cartoon network' button. Muhahaha. The bonus here is that you'd look like you were working :)
Apple doesn't own the Sorensen codecs at all. In fact, I recall them paying out the nose to have them included in QT4... If you want the codecs, you've gotta talk to the Sorensen folk directly.
I don't think the problem lies within the subject matter at all - but rather in the details the moviemaker is willing to bring up. Take, for example, two movies with tech themes (and, to make it easy, they both have Bill - er Ted - er Keanu Reeves in them)...
Johnny Mnemonic
Interesting idea for a flick. Pleanty of action, plot moved along nicely, killing, sex, death, etc... The problem here was that they tried to get too specific with the details. I can hold 6 Gigabytes (or whatever) in my head. They could've gotten away with this if they hadn't stuck an absurdly small value on it. Sure, it was 4 years ago - but even then, that wasn't that much storage. For a story set in the 'future', this was simply annonying.
The list goes on (it's been since 95 since I saw it, and I'll be damned if I ever see it again), but the point here is that if they had just stayed away from the details, the whole thing would have worked. Hell, make up some unit of storage and don't worry about being realistic - but if you want to use real-world references, then for shit's sake hire a consultant and ask them what'll work...
The Matrix
This flick was every bit as technical as Johnny Mnemonic, but didn't make the mistake of trying to actually tie it to any real technical specifics. They took their concept directly from the industry, but rather than straight dumb it down, they actually translated it and filtered it for the general public (and added some kick-ass kung-fu in the process).
In effect, The Matrix comes across as a much more technical movie. But in reality, almost none of the actual specifics of the 'reality' in the movie are mentioned - just enough to get the point through to the viewer.
In my mind, this is how hollywood should approach the field. Sure, you want it to be realistic - sure you want it to be entertaining... But why do they think that the only way to accomplish such a task is to spit out gory details that will only server to confuse the uninitiated and piss off the initiated? There are better ways to pull it off...
Don't forget Quincy!
Sure, it wasn't medicine on live people - and it was the late '70s, but it was pretty damned accurate. Well, at least I remember it being accurate - it's been quite a while...
The Quincy Examiner - god, isn't the internet spiffy?!
There has been OS level support for Speech Recognition with the Mac OS since '95. Sure, it was a seperate componant that didn't install by accident with the default system, but it has always been available.
The only application that takes advantage of the feature, however, is implemented by Apple with Speakable Items. Essentially, all you can do out of the box is tie Apple Events (or AppleScripts) to spoken phrases. In reality, this is hardly useful - consider an office full of cubicles with everyone telling their computers to quit application - close window - open netscape - shutdown... well you get the point.
But - the point is: it's been on the OS level from the start...
Perhaps they didn't invent it, but Speech Recognition has been around on the Mac since around 1995. Granted they haven't done much with it (at least not until the forthcoming Mac OS 9), but the thechnology has been there ripe for the picking for some time.
I find it amazing that nobody decided to take advantage of this and develop continuous speech recognition software for the Mac - rather, folk like Dragon et al are working doubly hard to implement it from scratch on other platforms.
To top it off, it really proves the point to see that Little Billy is drooling in the interview about one of the 'up and coming' technologies He is working on - Speech Recognition!
Deja Vu?