It started looking a little suspicious from this point onwards: "Apple has to keep putting disclaimers on their software to not use it for critical applications" as if they were the only software manufacturer covering their asses this way.
Then it was confirmed. A lot of ranting about MacOS X based on pure speculation rather than knowledge. "Mac OS 8.6 and earlier are not even supported in emulation, leading me to wonder how compatible the "classic" mode even is." Why not test it instead of ranting? It might have been worth considering that the classic environment was developed to run MacOS 8.6 originally. It was 8.6 which shipped with the first version of the BlueBox (in MacOS X Server). Without even having tested the OS he then claims "Poor backward compatibility for old apps".
As for obsolesence, we see a lot more old macs in use here than PCs. Why? Because they do what they are supposed to well, with essentially the same OS and software that was on them when they were new. Not everyone 'buy' this upgrade whenever possible philosophy.
What I'm really trying to say, is they are both getting there. Mac has a 20 year history, and Windows has like a 15-year history... obviously the developers of those systems developed standards that evolved over the years. KDE And GNOME are both quickly catching up.
I think you are missing the obvious, even though MacOS has had a lot longer time to evolve, the core of the UI has changed very little in those 20 years. MasOS had HI guidelines from before it was released, and they were more developed than anything that exists for any Linux UIs today!
While new HI guidlines can jump forward quickly by borrowing from existing ones, there is the remaining hurdle of getting to the point of a universally accepted core, so that the debate can be shifted to the details.
I think we are way past the point pretending that:
a) Bit-for-bit copying of DVDs is trivial. It isn't, as you would need specialised hardware to do so. A standard DVD-ROM drive can not deliver a true bit image of a DVD to the computer.
b) DeCSS is not a copying tool. In practice (as opposed to intent), alternative platform players based on DeCSS are a lot more elusive than the slew of programs out there built for 'ripping' DVDs and converting them to lower footprint copies in formats such as VCD and dvix. The sad fact is that DeCSS had been far more efficiently employed for copying than anything else.
c) That this was the only way of getting a player written for Linux. There is nothing stopping anyone from writing DVD playing software for any platform they want. Yes, there is a licencing fee, and obligations to go with it, but there is no platform bias in this. It is a purely financial issue.
So can we please stop distoring the issues and have an honest debate?
Apple's site was swamped since before this story made it onto slashdot, so to call it an instance of the/. effect is a bit of a stretch. Every mac news site on the planet has been tracking the announcement live, so when the presentation was over everyone stormed on to the apple site from those. Slashdot is just one of the many.
Actually, it is far more sensible than a case-sensitive file-system. Humans are not case-sensitive, and file-system are generally part of the HI, so why should it be. As long as you also have support for long file-names, case-sensitivity doesn't even give any significant advantages on the non-human dimension.
I think this story points out the real problem with Linux games without actually making the point: there is no significant native game development for the platform. Its all basically about porting games already developed for Windows, or clones of existing games. How can it be that a community which such a depth of talent can't inspire something orginal? Compare it to the Macintosh, which although dramatically reduced, still throws up an original game or two. What gives? What happened to all that creative energy that went into 'open' game environments like MUDs before they became glorified chat-rooms? I would have thought the Linux ethos would have picked up on it and moved it on, but frankly it all seems pretty stale now.
Don't panic, all ARM processors are low-power in 'PC/handheld' terms, this just happens to be even lower again.
A lot of people seem to think the Crusoe is fabulously conservative in terms of power consumption, but the ARM family is even less power hungry, so in PDA/mobile device terms the ARM has a definite advantage.
It's one thing to spread FUD, but to spread trivially refutable FUD, and link to the article that refutes it...?
I'm glad you put a question mark at the end of that. In terms of system security it makes a trivial amount of difference how or where the backdoor is implemented if the result is root privileges for the intruder.
'Incompetence is the problem'? When someone puts a deliberate backdoor in their perl-based CGI suite, its not due to incompetence or sloppy code (although the specifics of its implementation may well be), but flawed judgement or intentions.
What you guys need is a data protection act for the protection of privacy. A decent one would make this sort of scheme much harder to setup, and easier to police. Yes, there are flaws in such laws, but they are glitches in comparison to the overall goal. Its a interesting historical irony while it is the Americans who have been most concerned with individual rights in the face of goverment actions, it is elsewhere that people have realised that the same rights also need protection from predatory corporations. Doubly-ironic is the fact that it is the latter who possess the resources to abuse personal information in new and creative ways.
What matters is not the cost of the most expensive setup, but the cheapest one 'cause once you have a basic box you can populate it with standard component memory and drives as you see fit.
The only working knowledge you need to clarify this is that which it takes to operate a web-browser. From the 1394 trade association's web site:
"History of the IEEE 1394 Standard
The 1394 digital link standard was conceived in 1986 by technologists at Apple Computer, who chose the trademark 'FireWire', in reference to its speeds of operation. The first specification for this link was completed in 1987. It was adopted in 1995 as the IEEE 1394 standard. "
So much for your thoughts. BTW. The 4-wire connector was designed by Sony as an alternative to the 6-wire one.
Firewire wasn't designed for networking computers, but I guess you could argue it was designed for networking peripherals. I can see the following reasons why someone would propose it over ethernet for home networking where distances and devices are limited:
No hub is needed, making the network much easier to set up and more dynamic. Self-configuring/bus mastering High and guarrantied bandwidth for devices that are likely to take advantage of it (DV) Interfaces directly with consumer peripherals (with FireWire ports). Peripherals are equal 'citizens' to CPUs rather subservient to them
I think this last point in particular is a key point about FireWire in general that people often miss: devices can talk to each other over FireWire without the presence of a computer, which is why it is so attractive to manufacturers of consumer electronics who can use it for their own purposes and not simply to hook the device to a computer.
"Stephen Fear's" (sic)? I'm sorry, but is there something about electronic publishing which prohibits proof-reading? This movie was made by Stephen Frears (I'll leave it to the reader to figure out where to place the apostrophe when needed).
The fallacy with all these subliminal messages claims is that the framerates of ordinary film and video are not high enough to produce the claimed effect. Even a single frame replacement in 24 or 30 per second would be obvious to a normal observer.
While this might be relatively new to computer companies, designers have been seeking protection for their work since long before computers even existed. The news here is not protection of design but the fact that computer manufacturers have started to care about the appearance of their products in the first place.
Aside: Why are people having such a problem understanding the term copyright? The Berne Convention guarranties copyright to a work in the act of producing it; you don't need to do anything to have a copyright to your own work, and you can't copyright someone elses work without them granting it to you. The only question that might concern you is how to prove you created the work, but there is no specific requirment to how you do this.
Copyright is inherent in the creation of a work; you don't need to take action to possess it. ie. nobody can copyright your work unless you grant them that right. Patents are different of course.
I'm sorry, 1W descibed as 'incredible' power consumption betrays a serious lack of perspective. The ARM7TDMI consumes 0.6mW per MHz on average (note the 'milli') and these usually run at 66Mhz! That's less than 39mW for a typical processor. 1W means squat until we see the performance figures for this thing. I don't see it making great waves in the mobile device sector unless the power consumption is drastically cut. And what's this about hardware x86 emulation? Have we been tricked by the pre-release chatter? Everyone was talking about this thing being software driven on the emulations side. For now established RISC-based processors don't seem to be challenged.
Slashdot Mirror
It started looking a little suspicious from this point onwards: "Apple has to keep putting disclaimers on their software to not use it for critical applications" as if they were the only software manufacturer covering their asses this way.
Then it was confirmed. A lot of ranting about MacOS X based on pure speculation rather than knowledge. "Mac OS 8.6 and earlier are not even supported in emulation, leading me to wonder how compatible the "classic" mode even is." Why not test it instead of ranting? It might have been worth considering that the classic environment was developed to run MacOS 8.6 originally. It was 8.6 which shipped with the first version of the BlueBox (in MacOS X Server). Without even having tested the OS he then claims "Poor backward compatibility for old apps".
As for obsolesence, we see a lot more old macs in use here than PCs. Why? Because they do what they are supposed to well, with essentially the same OS and software that was on them when they were new. Not everyone 'buy' this upgrade whenever possible philosophy.
Your original iMac will be able to run MacOS X very reasonably. Why do you think it wouldn't?
I'm sorry, but that's just wrong. Apple has open sourced the microkernel for MacOS X with Darwin. Check out http://publicsource.apple.com
I think you are missing the obvious, even though MacOS has had a lot longer time to evolve, the core of the UI has changed very little in those 20 years. MasOS had HI guidelines from before it was released, and they were more developed than anything that exists for any Linux UIs today!
While new HI guidlines can jump forward quickly by borrowing from existing ones, there is the remaining hurdle of getting to the point of a universally accepted core, so that the debate can be shifted to the details.
a) Bit-for-bit copying of DVDs is trivial. It isn't, as you would need specialised hardware to do so. A standard DVD-ROM drive can not deliver a true bit image of a DVD to the computer.
b) DeCSS is not a copying tool. In practice (as opposed to intent), alternative platform players based on DeCSS are a lot more elusive than the slew of programs out there built for 'ripping' DVDs and converting them to lower footprint copies in formats such as VCD and dvix. The sad fact is that DeCSS had been far more efficiently employed for copying than anything else.
c) That this was the only way of getting a player written for Linux. There is nothing stopping anyone from writing DVD playing software for any platform they want. Yes, there is a licencing fee, and obligations to go with it, but there is no platform bias in this. It is a purely financial issue.
So can we please stop distoring the issues and have an honest debate?
Apple's site was swamped since before this story made it onto slashdot, so to call it an instance of the /. effect is a bit of a stretch. Every mac news site on the planet has been tracking the announcement live, so when the presentation was over everyone stormed on to the apple site from those. Slashdot is just one of the many.
Actually, it is far more sensible than a case-sensitive file-system. Humans are not case-sensitive, and file-system are generally part of the HI, so why should it be. As long as you also have support for long file-names, case-sensitivity doesn't even give any significant advantages on the non-human dimension.
I think this story points out the real problem with Linux games without actually making the point: there is no significant native game development for the platform. Its all basically about porting games already developed for Windows, or clones of existing games. How can it be that a community which such a depth of talent can't inspire something orginal? Compare it to the Macintosh, which although dramatically reduced, still throws up an original game or two. What gives? What happened to all that creative energy that went into 'open' game environments like MUDs before they became glorified chat-rooms? I would have thought the Linux ethos would have picked up on it and moved it on, but frankly it all seems pretty stale now.
Most of them are animations with basic interactivity done in Macromind Director I suspect.
In the context of personal computers, and actual practice, I think this is reasonably fair statement.
A lot of people seem to think the Crusoe is fabulously conservative in terms of power consumption, but the ARM family is even less power hungry, so in PDA/mobile device terms the ARM has a definite advantage.
'Incompetence is the problem'? When someone puts a deliberate backdoor in their perl-based CGI suite, its not due to incompetence or sloppy code (although the specifics of its implementation may well be), but flawed judgement or intentions.
This has already proven to be untrue in the case of Perl at least, as noted in this article in theRegister
Open Source makes it harder to remain undetected, but making too much of a deal out of this fact can engender complacency.
What you guys need is a data protection act for the protection of privacy. A decent one would make this sort of scheme much harder to setup, and easier to police. Yes, there are flaws in such laws, but they are glitches in comparison to the overall goal. Its a interesting historical irony while it is the Americans who have been most concerned with individual rights in the face of goverment actions, it is elsewhere that people have realised that the same rights also need protection from predatory corporations. Doubly-ironic is the fact that it is the latter who possess the resources to abuse personal information in new and creative ways.
What matters is not the cost of the most expensive setup, but the cheapest one 'cause once you have a basic box you can populate it with standard component memory and drives as you see fit.
"History of the IEEE 1394 Standard
The 1394 digital link standard was conceived in 1986 by technologists at Apple Computer, who chose the trademark 'FireWire', in reference to its speeds of operation. The first specification for this link was completed in 1987. It was adopted in 1995 as the IEEE 1394 standard. "
So much for your thoughts. BTW. The 4-wire connector was designed by Sony as an alternative to the 6-wire one.
No hub is needed, making the network much easier to set up and more dynamic.
Self-configuring/bus mastering
High and guarrantied bandwidth for devices that are likely to take advantage of it (DV)
Interfaces directly with consumer peripherals (with FireWire ports).
Peripherals are equal 'citizens' to CPUs rather subservient to them
I think this last point in particular is a key point about FireWire in general that people often miss: devices can talk to each other over FireWire without the presence of a computer, which is why it is so attractive to manufacturers of consumer electronics who can use it for their own purposes and not simply to hook the device to a computer.
"Stephen Fear's" (sic)? I'm sorry, but is there something about electronic publishing which prohibits proof-reading? This movie was made by Stephen Frears (I'll leave it to the reader to figure out where to place the apostrophe when needed).
No. The viewing threshold is probably somewhere between 75 and 100Hz AFAIK.
The fallacy with all these subliminal messages claims is that the framerates of ordinary film and video are not high enough to produce the claimed effect. Even a single frame replacement in 24 or 30 per second would be obvious to a normal observer.
While this might be relatively new to computer companies, designers have been seeking protection for their work since long before computers even existed. The news here is not protection of design but the fact that computer manufacturers have started to care about the appearance of their products in the first place.
Aside: Why are people having such a problem understanding the term copyright? The Berne Convention guarranties copyright to a work in the act of producing it; you don't need to do anything to have a copyright to your own work, and you can't copyright someone elses work without them granting it to you. The only question that might concern you is how to prove you created the work, but there is no specific requirment to how you do this.
Copyright is inherent in the creation of a work; you don't need to take action to possess it. ie. nobody can copyright your work unless you grant them that right. Patents are different of course.
What is the problem with pressing apple-tab to cycle through applications?
I'm sorry, 1W descibed as 'incredible' power consumption betrays a serious lack of perspective. The ARM7TDMI consumes 0.6mW per MHz on average (note the 'milli') and these usually run at 66Mhz! That's less than 39mW for a typical processor. 1W means squat until we see the performance figures for this thing. I don't see it making great waves in the mobile device sector unless the power consumption is drastically cut. And what's this about hardware x86 emulation? Have we been tricked by the pre-release chatter? Everyone was talking about this thing being software driven on the emulations side. For now established RISC-based processors don't seem to be challenged.