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Slashback: Switchover, EULA, Perspectives 240

Posted by timothy from the ticklish-huntress dept.
Slashback. Updates and second thoughts tonight (below) on Borland's restrictive EULA, now much improved; another ueber-patch for MSIE; happy trails on the long ride from mediaone to aatbi; and how BSD suddenly topped Linux on the desktop.

It's the little things. Time for another cumulative patch for IE, it seems. (Mozilla may have its share of security problems, but at least there's a new build broken in unique and exciting ways more frequently :)). Logica writes with a snippet from this ZDNet article, which reads: "Microsoft released a collection of software fixes Monday to plug six security problems in its Internet Explorer browser, including one that could be exploited to take over a victim's computer."

"Users are urged to download the latest patch."

What happened to the tar-and-feather clause? djmurdoch writes "Back in January, Borland promised to come up with new EULAs without some objectionable terms. They've just posted the new EULAs. Gone are the anti-competitive product clause, the right to audit, and the requirement to give up a jury trial. They still have required registration, and you can't use a 2nd hand copy. They've added a requirement that it be licensed to one named user; you need extra licenses to share a copy. Not perfect, but a big improvement."

Keep in the loop as consolidation continues. craig writes: "AT&T Broadband has now posted instructions for their cable modem users to change their e-mail addresses from @mediaone.net to @attbi.com. The instructions have been posted here. The instructions seem to work, and my upgrade has been smooth.

The instructions have been posted on the web, but it looks like they have not been e-mailed to current AT&T Broadband subscribers. It is probably a good idea to follow these instructions before they are mailed to the masses, because chances are, this is migration is going to keep AT&T Broadband customer support very busy. The old @mediaone.net addresses will stop working on March 15, as was mentioned in this previous posting on Slashdot."

And although it's been said many times, many ways ... LiquidPC writes: "Apple's Ernest Prabhakar is reporting that BSD is now 3 times as popular on the desktop as Linux, largely thanks to MacOSX, of course. He also commented that Microsoft now has Office running on a Berkeley UNIX."
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Slashback: Switchover, EULA, Perspectives More

Slashback: Switchover, EULA, Perspectives

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  • Remember the good old days when turbo pascal EULA said "treat our software as you would a book"?

    I used to like Borland.

    • Yes, I remember those days. Now they make you buy new versions of JBuilder just to get the bugs patched. (Fortunately, there are some good alternatives.)
      • On the contrary... 1) a visit to JB Patches [borland.com], will show an entire list of patches, the more recent ones being 'comprehensive' (i.e. across the product, not just highly focused). 2) they offer free downloads of their Ent. Trial (30 day trial?) by which you can see what bugs there are, before laying down your cash. Also available is the free Personal edn, which has no time out. No, it doesn't have the full 'enterprise' feature set. No, its license does not allow it to be used for.... is it "commercial development"? But it also allows for 'try before you buy'. 3) sure their s/w has bugs. sure they charge for subsequent upgrades, where there are both bug fixes and new features. But this was largely true 'back in the good ole days', which you are longing for. It is also true of other 'for profit' companies. 4) Yes, I lament w/ you the loss of the earlier book-type license models. It is your second sentence that I think is not only unfair, but also untrue. However, I also agree w/ your 3rd sentence, so I guess we're in 66% agreement. :-) Competition is good. Let the market place decide. But let it decide based on a true understanding of the facts.
        • Actually, you seem to be 100% in agreement with the original poster, and 100% in disagreement with the person who replied.

          The original poster only lamented the loss of the book-license, and that he used to like Borland; he didn't say anything about charging for patches, that was the replier.
    • OCR it and stick it up on a cheapie mIRC FServe?

      :)
      --joshua
  • Then they have the code, and it'll be an eazy port job. :)
    • no, it is the other way around. MS got a Berkeley UNIX and have somehow gotten the bloat that is Office to run on it.

      it did not say that the Berkeley Group had gotten MS Office to run on a UNIX.

  • MSIE patch (Score:4, Informative)

    by Osty ( 16825 ) on Thursday February 14, 2002 @08:10PM (#3011107)

    This patch was mentioned in the recent MSN Messenger "virus" story. Just to recap, the "virus" was no virus at all, but just an exploitation of the old (as in, known since December) document.open bug in MSIE. This was fixed with Monday's patch [microsoft.com]. Everybody using IE should have installed this already, but those who haven't should do so [microsoft.com] now.

    • Just an FYI, you must install the patch [microsoft.com] separately; if you try Windows Update [microsoft.com] you'll be greeted with the usual message that you need no critical updates (at least, that should be the ususal message you get when you go there :-)

      In other words, M$ don't consider this a critical update! Morons.

      • You're misunderstanding the purpose of Windows Update. It's purpose is to preserve the breeding ground for worms. It really gets to be fun when Windows Update starts removing the security patches. ;-)
      • I just downloaded this from WindowsUpdate. It wasn't working last night, but it is now.

        dave
  • Isn't this more of adding contracts after the sale?

    I think the only valid condition is to remove clauses, or grant further rights, or not to persue breaches of existing conditions.

    But then, I am not a lawyer.

    • What? "breeching" a contract for a new and better contract?

      I often wonder about these EULAs... most apps do not give the user easy access to the agreement once it is accepted. As an example, here is the licensing agreement for IE, that I had to search for under help:

      "Supplemental End User License Agreement for Microsoft Software Your use of Microsoft products is governed by the terms of the End User License Agreement (EULA), as well as by copyright law. The EULA is the contract regarding your use of the licensed product, and it grants you certain rights to use Microsoft software on your computer. To View the EULA for Internet Explorer If you are using Windows NT or Windows 98, you can view the EULA by double-clicking license.txt in the directory where you installed Internet Explorer. The default location for installing Internet Explorer is C:/Program Files/Internet Explorer. If you are using Windows Millennium Edition, Windows 2000, see Windows Help for more information about the EULA. Note If you are not sure where to find the EULA for Internet Explorer, you can search for license.txt, and then open the version of license.txt in the directory where you installed Internet Explorer. For more information about searching in Windows, see Windows Help. "

      Now a text file isn't exactly the most secure way to store a "legal document."

      The actual license of this "free" browser are, of course, more than mildly amusing.

      It is also amusing how these EULAs usually refer to the "rights" of the user.... well these rights are generally the RIGHT TO USE THE PRODUCT! Imagine selling shoes that way...
  • In next week's news:

    Time for another cumulative patch for IE, this time covering 6 security holes found during the last week, including this one [slashdot.org]. Using that is like having "Come and get me, 'leet script kiddies" stamped on your forehead.

  • Misleading BSD Article (Score:4, Interesting)

    by clump ( 60191 ) on Thursday February 14, 2002 @08:15PM (#3011132)
    If *BSD were to take over the desktop that would be wonderful. However, Apple employees telling a conference that thier OSX is number one so *BSD is number one is misleading. True that you can get Darwin under the APSL, but the version that is so popular on the desktop is only available for cold hard cash.

    Apple uses good code in MacOS X but it seems telling people *BSD is #1 is an attempt to keep the developer community busy working on Darwin so Apple remains the true victor.

    So whats the progress of the Sorenson codec on non-OSX UNIX? How about Aqua themes? How is Apple helping me again?
    • So whats the progress of the Sorenson codec on non-OSX UNIX? How about Aqua themes? How is Apple helping me again?

      Boohoo

      If you want the Soreson codec then find someone to pony up the cold hard cash to license it. The developers put a lot of work into it and decided this is how they want it to go. That they didn't give it away - well hell that's their right. Apple saw it, liked it, ponied up the money to license it. No guns or extortion were involved.

      On the other hand QuickTime is pretty much free to use and doesn't depend on the Sorenson codec, works with lots of codecs.

      For that matter why aren't you bleating about MS and their licensed formats? Or Real?

      Codecs are hard to build, require LOTS of work and yes those folks are loathe to give it away. Sorry - not everything is free and we don't live in a socialist economy.

      As to Apple and it's Aqua theme - again they spent a lot of work developing their trade dress and yes have a right to defend it. Sorry it's soo nice, got develop your own look and quit trying to rip off others.

      So how's Apple "helping" you? By giving away lots of their stuff. Not all of it - tough. If you disagree send me your car keys or is all property theft in your world?

      Soo tired of the gimme-gimme-gimme whiners.

      • I could not have said it any better myself, not that I could anyways. The point is well taken.

        If you want something for nothing, get FreeBSD. If you want somethging for money, get OS 10. That is what Apple did, they wanted Unix for nothing, so they took BSD code and forked.

        Now if only we could train the hords of OS 10 users to not depend on the gui, we admins would be in good shape.

      • Re:Misleading BSD Article (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        "For that matter why aren't you bleating about MS and their licensed formats?"

        Because somebody figured out how to load x86 WMP codecs in Linux.

        As soon as someone does the same for QuickTime, they'll shut up, because it's not really about the licence or the technology, it's about white middle-class boys being oppressed by not being able to watch advertisements for the latest outerspace or elf movie on every computer on the planet.
      • Sorry - not everything is free and we don't live in a socialist economy.

        Actually, we do. Ever heard of wellfare? Taxes? Roads built by the government? The US economic system is socialist, however, not to the extent that it is in Europe. We don't live in a communist economy, however.
        • socialists don't get to pick/vote on who is in that government.
          • Neither do Americans. If we did Harry Browne [harrybrowne.com] would be in office. The fact that we have a 20-40% federal income tax, along with all of the state taxes proves that we dont have a say in anything, our votes just go into a big circular file at the end of an election. The electoral college process is completely screwed up, congress is a mess (that is the real problem, not the president), and the lobby system is out of control. If the U.S. was a computer and the government was the operating system, my professional opinion would be to format and start over from scratch with something that actually works right instead of this you scratch my back while I stab yours piece of crap system that we have now. Thomas Jefferson is rolling over in his grave, and Abraham Lincoln started it all. No, I'm not bitter.
          • Socialism is an economy, not a system of governemnt. Socialism and Democracy aren't necessarily incompatible.

            Free as in market?
            or
            Free as in Republic?

            That's the important difference.
        • Ever heard of wellfare? Taxes? Roads built by the government?

          I do wish people would get a basic grasp of socialism before they talk about it.

          Welfare, taxation, and public works all predate both socialism and capitalism by millennia. You could find them all in ancient Rome.

          Socialism is an economic system in which resources (capital) are controled by those who use them to do the work, as opposed to a government-appointed minority of owners, aka "capitalists". It comes in both statist and libertarian flavors.

          It has nothing to do with welfare (socialists would argue that it's a band-aid solution for a problem in need of complete revolution), taxation (which has been a feature of every government in history), or public works (likewise).

        • Take some polisci courses and come back and re-read what you just wrote...we pay taxes because our government DOES build roads and provide welfare for the poorest of the poor (ideally, at least). Would you rather have to be billed by another utility company for road usage? Have police be owned/run by the road company! That'd make them much less corrupt. Oh, and I bet the fees would be very fair for those roads...

          Our system has holes, and it's very easy to whip out complaints and arguments against. But take a look at a few pics of russia under communist rule and then look at what we have.

          Oh, and just for your betterment (or knowledge, whichever way you prefer to take it) Soviet Russia was between Socialism and Capitalism; you seem to imply that socialism is the one in the middle.
          • Christ. I wasn't complaining about our socialist reality. It was a statement of fact. I like having roads. There's no need to assume that anyone who mentions socialism is using it in a negative way.
            • =D Sorry...First chance I've had to regurgitate some info from a class I'm taking. The way I read it, you were slamming our free-market economy and wrongly comparing it with socialism. And you're right, socialism is great. IN THEORY. But IN THEORY, communism works. hmmm...that example doesn't work in that sense very well, does it.

              I like having roads too.
              • Well, capitalism only works on paper as well. The fact is, proven again and again by thousands of years of human civilization, our planned governments and economies do not work. They all work on paper, but do not in real life. This is because they only work if the same silly assumptions that are down on paper are present in the real world implementation, which never happens.

                We don't have a completely free-market economy, so I really couldn't slam it.
    • Apple has no control over Sorenson. QuickTime would be on Linux by now it Apple owned Sorenson.

      Apple worked hard and spent a lot of their money in the development of that interface. If it was opensource and put together by people not paid by Apple then I would say yes, spread it around.

      We must urge companies to open up, but we must not try to force them or criticize them if they don't move as fast or as far as we want. They should want to come to our side.
    • Any mutually beneficial 'win-win' situation involves the exchange of value.

      So how are you helping Apple again?

      Apple helped me, for sure.

      I have a kickass laptop, a BSD based OS, good networking functionality, wireless networking, movie, photo, and music applications, good access to BSD and GNU tools, a good developer environment, a pleasant user environment, AppleWorks, Quicktime, DivX, Aqua, Quartz, Sorenson, free email, free online disk space, free webpage, and hopefully RSN, MPEG4, SMB print capability, SMB network browsing, and kickass power management features.

    • Re:Misleading BSD Article (Score:5, Insightful)

      by 90XDoubleSide ( 522791 ) <ninetyxdoublesid ... minus herbivore> on Thursday February 14, 2002 @08:29PM (#3011202)
      So whats the progress of the Sorenson codec on non-OSX UNIX?

      This is just me, but you'd probably have more sucess complaining to Sorenson [sorenson.com] about that, if you think you can convince them that 1)There are enough content creators on Linux that they will sell enough copies of Sorenson Video 3 Pro to recoup their porting costs or 2)Content creators feel that there are enough content consumers on Linux that they feel support for the platform is important. You could just try to get Apple to fully implement QuickTime on Linux, if you think you can convince them of #2 above.

      How about Aqua themes?

      Why the hell do you feel that you have the right to Apple's art? Source code is one thing, pixmaps are another thing entirely. If someone copied art that my design team had spent many long hours designing, I would go after them a lot harder than Apple did.

      How is Apple helping me again?

      By employing dozens of programmers who work on open source code, perhaps? By building and open source steaming media server that you can run on your favorite OS? By having, "one of the biggest gcc compiler design teams in the world" and giving all that code back?

      • Porting Costs?
        This is a compression/decompression codec.
        all that is required is to read in bits,
        transform them, and read them out.
        ... you don't HAVE any porting
        ( assuming you keep it for x86 )

        please, if you want to argue, make sense.
        • Porting Costs? This is a compression/decompression codec. all that is required is to read in bits, transform them, and read them out. ... you don't HAVE any porting ( assuming you keep it for x86 ) please, if you want to argue, make sense.

          I said, "1)There are enough content creators on Linux that they will sell enough copies of Sorenson Video 3 Pro to recoup their porting costs." Sorenson Video 3 Pro is a $499 program, very different from the decoder and basic encoder incuded with QuickTime, which have been on OS X from the start; although SV3P works as a plug-in, it would definitely need a lot of porting work to get it to work on Linux; they haven't even got it ported to OS X yet!

          Please, if you want to argue, read the post fully, and check the links if you need to.

        • Yeah, it's not like there's any difference in how the most primitive integers are stored in different architectures/file formats.
          Oh, wait...

      • Sorenson (Score:3, Informative)

        by Watts Martin ( 3616 )

        No, talking to Sorenson won't help. A few years back I asked about whether they'd be interested in making a BeOS version of their codec--since BeOS handles such things at the OS level, any media application would immediately have it available for their use. (This was back before Be's infamous focus shift and when they were getting a lot of positive attention in the A/V marketplace.) A Sorenson rep wrote back and said that they couldn't do that, because the codec is exclusively licensed to Apple for use in QuickTime--I was explicitly told the only way to get it on BeOS was to get Apple to port QuickTime to BeOS. Not the QuickTime file format, which a lot of other programs support, but actual QuickTime the program.

        I like Apple (sometimes), but I don't really expect them to do much in the way of directly supporting Linux. The only commercial, closed-source app I could imagine them porting to a free Unix would be WebObjects, and I wouldn't be surprised if they ported it to FreeBSD before Linux.

        Linux will get benefits from Apple, as you observed, if the Free Software Foundation deigns to accept the work Apple is doing on GCC. Having "one of the biggest GCC compiler design teams in the world and giving all that code back" doesn't mean the FSF is actually going to use it. I hope political considerations won't be an issue, but even without those they tend to be notoriously picky.

    • I don't get your premise, here. You're saying that MacOS X being the most popular Unix on the desktop doesn't mean that BSD is? Given your statement regarding the APSL, it seems that you require an operating system to be released under an OSF-approved license for it to qualify as BSD. This is far from the reality. If I've misunderstood what you mean, I apologize; however, your sentence structure is such that understanding comes with some difficulty to those of us who correctly parse English. ;-D

    • Re:Misleading BSD Article (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Graff ( 532189 ) on Thursday February 14, 2002 @09:37PM (#3011545)
      How is Apple helping me again?
      Hmm, OK let's see. First of all Apple is helping to foster the interest in programming unix-like systems. With its use of BSD in a commercial system, there can't help but be a percentage of its former mostly-GUI customers that will get interested in programming for unix and open-source. More programmers for open source is a good thing for sure.

      Then there's Apple's open-sourcing of Darwin [apple.com]. Yeah you don't get the GUI, but at least they are contributing to open source and allowing you to use their core operating system with whatever GUI you want by way of the many open source GUIs out there.

      We also have Quicktime Streaming Server [apple.com], a completely free and open multimedia server that lets you stream video and audio in most open formats out there. No server tax what so ever, what a joy!

      Apple also is championing several efforts to keep fees and licensing issues from affecting the "little guys". They are trying to influence the developing MPEG-4 license so that there will be no streaming fees and they have even taken the stance that they will not release software which uses the MPEG-4 format until the fees have been removed. They also have taken a stance that any patents which are involved with W3C standards should be free of charge for use in the standards instead of requiring royalties, see this article [com.com] for more information.

      Finally, having Apple out there definitely helps innovation. With a company like Apple breaking ground and popularizing technology in areas such as PDAs, USB, Firewire, LCD displays, removal of dead-weight legacy equipment, and even computer form factors, they are helping to drive the industry forward. Lets face it, while Linux is a damn fine operating system it would have a tough time facing down the Microsoft bear alone. All of the alternatives will take their tiny bites out of the giant and together they will work toward keeping the monopolies from gaining total control.

      Sure Apple is in it for the money. I think that is true of everyone, not just big corporations. I don't see many people volunteering 100% of their time and not trying to make a buck here or there. On a scale from mega-greedy to handing out bushels of money, I think that Apple falls safely in the middle. They make good, solid products, they seem to put some of their souls into their work, and they make some money off it. Sounds like a decent trade-off to me, and far more than we can say about many corporations out there.

  • MS Office only kinda sorta under Unix (Score:5, Insightful)

    by maggard ( 5579 ) <michael@michaelmaggard.com> on Thursday February 14, 2002 @08:15PM (#3011134) Homepage Journal
    "Apple's Ernest Prabhakar is reporting that BSD is now 3 times as popular [slashdot.org] on the desktop as Linux, largely thanks to MacOSX, of course. He also commented that Microsoft now has Office running on a Berkeley UNIX."
    Well, only very sorta.

    MS Office X runs with Apple's Carbon [slashdot.org] compatibility layer (even though it's no longer able to run on MacOS 8 or 9.) This isn't the same as running on Apple's Cocoa [slashdot.org] Nextstep-based libraries and not at all like running on raw Unix.

    So yeah, it's running on Unix, however pretty much entirely within a proprietary Apple compatibility library that is MacOS X specific and itself unlikely and probably unable to be ported to other Unix flavors.

    Great for MacOS X folks, not very relevant to the rest of the Unix world.

    • "Great for MacOS X folks, not very relevant to the rest of the Unix world. "

      Actually it matters quite a bit to the Unix world. Every Unix has differenent API's. Carbon is just another API.
      This is no different then saying Oracle on Linux matters to only Linux users. It doesn't . Because it presents you with options. Microsoft X on Mac OS X is a hand above the Windows version. Entourage is essentially Outlook with NNTP, POP, and IMAP built into it. Instead of having to use gateways on the Exchange server.

      You want a Unix on the desktop , you got it. Mac OS X may not be perfect, but it is a huge step in the right direction (95% open source is better then 0% open source.)
      • 95% open? Maybe 25%. The biggest part of what makes OS X is not Darwin, but all the stuff that sits on top of it - mostly the Objective-C libraries and the GUI and all its trappings. I don't know about their ObjC stuff, but Quartz is assuredly not, and I'm pretty sure Carbon is not either. I don't think that Cocoa is either - OpenStep, upon which Cocoa is based, isn't as "open" as the name might imply. Also, many of the more interesting device drivers are closed source.
        • There is GNUstep, the (incomplete but always improving) free software implementation of OpenStep . . . run it on top of Darwin, and you're about 75% of the way to having a free version of OS X. (Admittedly, the total lack of Carbon means that 75% translates to about 0% of Mac apps...)
    • How is this different than saying:
      "StarOffice run's on Sun's Java compatibility layer. This isn't the same as running on Microsoft's Windows Win32-based libraries and not at all like running on raw DOS.

      So yeah, it's running on DOS, however pretty much entirely within a proprietary Microsoft-Java compatibility library that is Windows specific and itself unlikely and probably unable to be ported to other Windows flavors."

      Well, that analogy breaks in that Java exists on other Windows flavors :)
    • Great for MacOS X folks, not very relevant to the rest of the Unix world.
      Well, if you want to talk about why Office will never run on Linux, I think Cocoa's proprietary nature is hardly the biggest reason :-)

      From a practical point of view, this really is relevant to the rest of the Unix world. Many many Linux users have dual-boot systems. That may be because they want to run certain games, use certain peripherals, or be able to deal with Word files. Now that Office runs on mosX, some of these people will be able to start running dual-boot mosX-Linux rather than Windows-Linux. They will then have the advantage of being able to use a consistent Unix environment for everything they do.

      Consider this: by running dual-boot Windows-Linux, people are helping sustain the Windows monopoly. By running dual-boot mosX-Linus, they're helping to attack it. I think that is relevant to the rest of the Unix world.

      People focus too much on running Linux. The way to lure people towards open source is to show them that there are good apps. If a person starts by running a mixture of opsn source and proprietary software, well, big deal. That person has still learned the power of free information.

      And finally, maybe the Linux world should ask why mosX is more successful on the desktop than Linux, and try to learn something from that.

    • For funzees, watch someone trying to use Word when they actually care what the stuff looks like. Outlook's HTML editing gets pretty demented too.
      • For funzees, watch someone trying to use Word when they actually care what the stuff looks like.

        you mean spending 10 minutes hitting every permutation of backspace, space and enter, trying to trick word's auto-make-things-look-right into doing what they actually want?

        cuz if you dont, thats fun too.

  • Their info is at http://www.cox.com/info/ My conversion went off without a hitch, and the pretty little box they sent the stuff in has become a favorite toy of my neice. (it looks like a little house. Meanwhile, my @home still works
  • The problem with BSD is that many products that are actually BSD-based don't directly acknowledge that.

    Many web-caches, firewalls, embedded systems for machine tools, routers... are BSD based, instead of linux based for instance, since the BSD-license is much more corporate-friendly.

    But the end result is that no one really notices how widely deployed BSD really is, since it remains hidden by the same persons that sell BSD products, therefore weakning the creative environment witch originated the system.

    That's how you really see the advantages of a license like the GPL, forcing others to contribute to the environment in a positive way, instead of being merely predators, and generally getting more steam into the project, instead of simply grabbing others efforts.

    Well, just my 2 (euro)cents :-)

    • Actually the number of BSD based network appliances is decreasing and the number of Linux based appliances is increasing.

      Basically the older the company, the more likely it is that they run BSD under the covers. Newer companies are choosing Linux.

      I haven't asked why, but that's the trend I've seen.

  • BSD is now 3 times more popular for me (Score:5, Interesting)

    by b_pretender ( 105284 ) on Thursday February 14, 2002 @08:21PM (#3011158)
    I've been a Linux Zealot/Diehard since switching from my PowerMac 7100 to a Intel machine back in 1996 (I even installed Linux on that PowerMac). The problems with the Mac was the Operating system.

    Until one month ago when my powerbook G4 arrived. Now I have XFree86, Gimp, Gnumeric, Octave, Gcc, Xemacs... all my favorites running in BSD. I'll probably install Linux just for the heck of it, but IMHO there's not too much reason to do it. Darwin/XFree86 is absolutely perfect when it comes to development of your own projects. This is because you don't have to worry about some company that owns the libraries and interfaces from changing things and screwing up your code or ruining your knowledge. Since the Darwin/Xfree combo is completely opensourced, I have faith in my fellow progammers that they will continue to support the combo despite Profits or Marketshare.

    Anyways, True transparent terminals are pretty cool. So is IPhoto/ITunes. Each recognized my Digital Camera or MP3 player respectively and each has a great intuitive interface. Having a legal DVD player is also a plus.

    I guess if there is a point to this post (not much of one), it's that using Darwin/Xfree is using GPL software. The Aqua interface and kewl G4 processor are bonuses. That's why OS X will continue to impress Linux users.

    • It has been at least a week, or maybe more since I h ave fired up Mandrake. It is pitiful next to Darwin/XFree. I still love Linux and have nothing but respect for the OS movement, but OSX kicks it.

      GIMP takes a couple seconds to launch, Much faster than Photoshop. It is so cool to be able to use PS, Colorit, and Gimp on the same screen.

      I was given Virtual PC and XP, but I don't need it. Why infest a perfectly good Computer with that crap from Redmond?

      I no longer even check to see if my pages look right on IE. I don't care if my pages work with any MS product. I won't even allow IE on my drive.
    • Having a legal DVD player is also a plus.

      To each his own, my parents used to tell me.


      (Actually, I'll gladly take a Powerbook over a PC laptop. The reason I quit buying Apples back in, what, '97, was the operating system slowly turning into shite and the proprietary hardware. Now that the PC world is becoming increasingly proprietary with it's hardware, like the HP modem/soundcard, or winfrisbees^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hmodems...I just might be going back to the Apple fambly. I'm sure I'm not alone here)

    • >Having a legal DVD player is also a plus.

      So having a player set on its region after 5 plays on a particular region is cool?

      Used MacOSX much more than you realize (ain't gonna tell you where or how) I do like it alot, but prefer KDE 2x because I can customize it much more (to be fair Linux is really having more impact on the Intel architecture, we know who owns that desktop area). This may not be the best thing for total newbies who could get lost and end up changing things and not know how to get back, plus would they install Linux? Doubt it...

      PPC hardware is cool, RISC processors do make a difference in speed and I do like them a lot. I like Apple a lot too (its a fun culture too) and hope they can continue to hire Open Source people and continue to release more apps.

      Here is something to check out:

      opensource.apple.com

      Two things that I don't like hearing from the Apple camp, as a long time Linux user and Open Source advocate:

      "FreeBSD is on 3 times as many desktops as Linux"

      Been discussed before, or:

      "We're targeting Linux users..."

      Don't like the word targeting, give me a decent OS that I can do all sorts of cool things on and I'll be using your system too. Notice I said too, I'd set up 3 boot partitions: 1 with MacOSX 1 with OS9 and one with Linux. That way I could totally change desktops when I feel like it, not be stuck with one. Currently do something similer with a dual boot between windows and Linux, with the Linux partition having Ximian Gnome and the latest stable KDE. Love this combo. Then to have MacOSX would be a dream too.

      Any, enough from me...

      StarTux
  • Hell, it is usually at least a half hour on the phone to get through to a human (or at least beyond menus and hold). Then they direct you online for support, especially if you can't connect.


    Their support and service is bad. They had a DHCP server fail, it took them 5 days to get it up and runnning. Having to register the MAC address of the NICs is a pain and not needed.

  • Office on *BSD (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Dr_LHA ( 30754 ) on Thursday February 14, 2002 @08:34PM (#3011228) Homepage
    Given that Darwin runs on Intel, why don't they port the rest of MacOSX and see how eager MS are to port Office to that platform? :-)

  • AT&T Email Change (Score:2, Informative)

    by slugfro ( 533652 )
    The post is a little misleading in that not all AT&T broadband customers have the @mediaone.net email address. I was an AT&T broadband customer on the @home network and my email has been @attbi.com since the whole network changeover fiasco was resolved (a little over a month ago).
    • I represent a company that sends exciting offers by email to millions of people a day. I'll make sure that all lucky recipients on my lists with addresses ending with @mediaone as well as @home are updated so that they can continue to recieve our exciting offers and announcements at their new addresses.

  • Where's the proof? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Aknaton ( 528294 )
    I want to see proof that MS has Office running on Berkley Unix. They can't simply "move" it to BSD because BSD doesn't have the needed carbon libraries to run such an application.

    Still, if it were true, I could see MS porting Office to BSD before it ported to Linux, since MS doesn't like the GPL.

  • "The Macintosh has always been very fascist, but we're now starting to embrace the diversity of BSD. We'd love you to bring your X11 application to Mac OS X."

    I bet you do. How about bringing some of your MAC OS programs to my GNU OS?!?!

  • The biggest news? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Lally Singh ( 3427 ) on Thursday February 14, 2002 @08:56PM (#3011335) Journal
    What, no update on CmdrTaco's engagement?
  • Fans of the minimalist online comic Triangle and Robert [mediaone.net] will need to be aware of this, as it's hosted on a mediaone.net account. Patrick will inform his readers of the new URL when he knows it, but you'll need to pay attention to the index page before it happens or you'll wind up with an outdated bookmark and no clue as to where to look.

  • How does the BSD community feel about that? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Nelson ( 1275 ) on Thursday February 14, 2002 @09:04PM (#3011374)
    I mean, do they really consider Mach and Lites to be BSD? Or is it just good to hear BSD in the press?
    • OSX (Darwin to be more exact) is as much BSD as 'Linux' (distribution wise I guess) is GNU. Whether thats alot or very little I'm unsure of.

      One things for sure, the vast majority of the sourcecode to Darwin is of BSD origin. But what percentage of Darwin makes up OSX?
    • Well, Darwin does have a "real" BSD kernel on top of a Mach microkernel. I think it's rather pointless, running a full *NIX kernel on top of Mach - it's not a "true" microkernel arrangement, since it's just a minor rewrite to make the BSD kernel run as a Mach server.

  • Wild Speculation (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SubtleNuance ( 184325 ) on Thursday February 14, 2002 @09:10PM (#3011404) Journal
    reporting that BSD is now 3 times as popular on the desktop as Linux, largely thanks to MacOSX, of course.

    Apple is alive through the good graces of MS. If MS wanted, they could have killed Apple years ago. With their investment ontop of the 'deal' they have over MSExplorer and MSOffice - Apple is alive today ONLY because MS and Apple worked out a non-competition arrangment. This provided MS with a the 'image' of having competition.

    Fastforward to Corel. Corel decides GNU/Linux is the right place for them to go, they build Corel Linux OS, port Draw && Corel Office (via tonnes of work on Wine). Corel gets in a pinch... and BAM, MS makes a deal with them to work on .NET. Corel quickly exits the Linux biz. Now that Corel was sinking, why didnt MS let them die, god knows there was never nay love lost between them - why did MS suddenly want to be partners?

    A) They can now also control/stear/prop-up Corel as proof of 'competition'

    B) They de-ligitimize GNU/Linux by removing Corel's support.

    Now, here's the kicker - how are these two things relevant/related??? Well, I personally feel Apple's adoption of BSD is a 'poison pill', encouraged and supported by MS, against GNU/Linux.

    You see, with Apple boxes with a relatively Open UNIX (via FreeBSD) MS is effectively capable of stearing users - who WANT A FREE UN*X -- to Apple. MS even supports Explorer and Office on OSX.

    Apple adopts FreeBSD because

    A) they cant compete w/ GNU/Linux, *BSD or MSWin

    B) It makes a strong alternative to GNU/Linux

    C) it supports Apple/MS hegemony.

    Flight of Fancy? Maybe - but I am really tired of MS swooping in and making sweet deals w/ their former competitiors in order to

    A) prop up corpses for the US DoJ

    B) further entrench MS Office and MS Win by screwing with the natural course of competition/innovation*.

    *eww, i feel all dirty after having used that word now - i mean real innovation, not the chomsky-1984-doublespeak that has loaded the word with propaganda.

    • don't say those secrets out loud, people in the industry might notice!!
    • Just a few things. $150 mil "investment" was crap. It was pocket change to MS and to Apple. the more important thing was the Office for 5 year deal, but if you run the numbers Office for the Mac makes MS a LOT of money.
      Apple adopts FreeBSD because
      * A) they cant compete w/ GNU/Linux, *BSD or MSWin
      * B) It makes a strong alternative to GNU/Linux
      * C) it supports Apple/MS hegemony.
      All of this is crap
      Apple picked BSD because it was in OpenSTEP/NeXTSTEP and that's what OS X is. There is no conspriacy here, well except for the Corel thing, that's fishy, but smart on the part of MS, but I think it will kill Corel in the end.

    • Re:Wild Speculation (Score:4, Insightful)

      by banky ( 9941 ) <gregg@neur[ ]shing.com ['oba' in gap]> on Thursday February 14, 2002 @10:39PM (#3011780) Homepage Journal
      >Well, I personally feel Apple's adoption of BSD is a 'poison pill', encouraged and supported by MS, against GNU/Linux.

      There are 2 problems with this. First, OSX is NeXT. It was BSD Unix back before anyone cared. It was BSD before Gates began the jihad. It was BSD when BSD wasn't cool.

      Second, implementing Carbon on OSX is a lot like programming for MacOS9. That's the whole point of the library. Sure, you can write in Carbon and have it only run on OSX - for example, the OSX Finder is a Carbon but OSX-Only app. MS is sticking with as much non-Unix tech as possible. This is also because of the time and effort to retrain the Mac Business Unit.
    • There is no love lost between them, a non-competition agreement is illegal anyhow...But ever since Jobs came back on Apple have been able to stand on their own two feet and will perhaps get stronger.

      There still is a strong wintel alliance, why would they upset this? Apple is purely RISC and will remain so, they won't port OSX across to the x86 platform ever. In fact wanna run x86 hardware? Use Linux, with the new KDE 3 its gonna rock, those guys deserve a medal at the very least.

      One thing I wish though, I wish Apple had a more open Open Source panel, just like HP have. Would be nice to see Apple at Linuxworld and perhaps even have Steve give a speech there someday.

      StarTux
      PS Like in another post, I like OSX it is very nice, but I prefer linux personnally. All about choice and its darn nice to have it!

      StarTux

    • Re:Wild Speculation (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Ionizor ( 175949 )

      I don't know if you ever used Corel's Software but it sucked. All of it. I never had a version that didn't.

      I had Corel Photopaint crash on me when I hit File=>New. It divided by zero. WTF? Of all the retarted errors you could possibly fail to trap that has to be the worst. What kind of programmer divides without checking it the program is dividing by zero?

      My boss was having problems with Wordperfect 8 trying to get the formatting to work correctly. I eventually had to rewrite his default template to get his document to apply the formatting correctly.

      At least M$ Office works mostly.

    • For what it's worth... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by isaac ( 2852 )
      Microsoft is in the business of making Mac software because it is profitable. Having Apple around to keep the DOJ away is nice, but Microsoft wouldn't stick around if they weren't making cash off of Mac users - but they are. A greater percentage of total Mac users buy (as in pay for) MS Office than do PC users (and Office is Microsoft's real cash cow), generating revenue disproportionate to platform market share.

      If making MS Office for Mac ceases to be profitable, I do not doubt for an instant that Microsoft will cease to develop it. I don't really expect that to happen for a long time, though.

      -Isaac

    • No conspiracy theory is required to explain Corel (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 15, 2002 @03:35AM (#3012551)
      How does that quote go again? "Never ascribe to malice that which is caused by greed and ignorance." -- Cal Keegan

      Corel has been "in a pinch" for years, certainly long before anyone in Corel considered the idea of using Linux (remember the Java fiasco?). The enormously huge fall in Corel stock value came months after the enormously huge inflation in Corel stock value--remember it went from $3.50 to $60 (CDN) in just one year for _no good reason at all_, so it's hardly surprising that it came crashing down again.

      Aside from stock market capitalization, Corel had no significant revenue from anything Linux--certainly nothing close to the millions they were spending on it. If you spend money without earning revenue, and only earn enough income from selling worthless stock to pay for deficit financing...sooner or later, you'll run out of money. Hard. The insider-trading allegations against Mike currently in front of the OSC are probably just one of many securities-related irregularities waiting to become public knowledge.

      Interestingly enough, Corel did produce some actually interesting and profitable products--and quietly sold off those products to other companies. It's like Mike enjoys the challenge of running unprofitable businesses with poor business plans or something...

      When Corel was doing the GNU/Linux thing, only two groups of people in the company bought into the idea of "open source" or "free as in speech": one group of people were engineers hired after the decision to do the KDE/Linux (*) thing, and the other group of people I can count on one hand. Except for Mike, all of those people were engineers, QA people, new hires, or bottom-level managers--none people with any real corporate decision-making authority.

      * Yes, KDE/Linux...after all, everyone knows KDE is better than GNOME, so why not purge out as many GNU packages as we can while we're at it? Even gcc was targeted at one point, but due to political reasons the alternative never materialized, so gcc was kept.

      The general attitude in the company toward Linux was that Linux was either 1) a fad that would find its niche and go away, like Java; 2) a fad that would just go away; 3) possibly a small but important market, like the Mac--but nobody wants to touch it until it becomes a whole lot more like Windows. Understandably this view was held by many of the senior developers on Corel's Windows products, but a number of key Corel Linux people felt that way too.

      With one notable exception, the Corel executives had no intention of producing products with any kind of open-source license--some just couldn't grasp the concept of "free as in speech", much less find motivation for actually doing it. They could understand "free as in beer" well enough to use it as a marketing technique, but could not fathom why other people would use "free as in beer" for non-marketing purposes.

      Put another way: they seemed to think that open-source people craved attention. These guys really thought they were doing the KDE and Debian people a favor by distributing millions of copies of ancient versions of their free code linked to Corel's non-free code written by inexperienced, fresh-from-Windows, where's-my-Visual-Studio-For-Linux? developers, and they were genuinely surprised each and every time when their license terms ended up being flamebait on Slashdot or gnu-misc-discuss or debian-legal.

      They were genuinely disappointed when millions of Linux users failed to immediately make the switch from Red Hat to Corel after the release. They were also disappointed when their lawyers told them that the GPL was "ambiguous"--they were hoping for something more concrete, like "inapplicable" or "unenforceable", not something that could put the company on the losing end of a precedent-setting lawsuit.

      At the end, four things happened: the stock crashed, Mike left the company, all the Linux people with any marketable skills left the company, and Derek's first action as new CEO was to declare that Microsoft .NET was the One Runtime To Bind Them All, and Corel was auditioning for the role of Isengard. It's hard to tell which caused what, as they all happened within weeks of each other.

      Everyone had their personal agendas planned out months in advance anyway. If it wasn't for Mike, the Corel .NET announcement could have come out a year earlier. Derek has roughly the same opinion about .NET as Miguel de Icaza, except where open-source/free-software licensing is concerned.

  • Hurray for the FreeBSD License! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PhotoGuy ( 189467 ) on Thursday February 14, 2002 @10:20PM (#3011702) Homepage
    He also commented that Microsoft now has Office running on a Berkeley UNIX
    I find the whole Mac OSX thing being based upon BSD, to be extremely exciting. And having office running on a BSD-based OS is a major event in our industry.

    It would not have happened, if it were not for Microsoft having to follow up and provide Office for the latest mainstream Apple OS. It proves a lot of things: that there is no inherent reason for Microsoft's applications not to run on Unix-based platforms, which has implications for those looking at anti-trust remedies, and such.

    And note that even though Linux has wider acceptance than FreeBSD, and far more application support, device support, and so on, this did not happen for Linux first, and it might never happen. This is solely because of the commercializability allowed by the BSD license. GPL'd OS's are far less likely to be embraced by a major player like Apple.

    There's a lot of interesting debate between GPL and BSD licensing. I'm a much bigger fan of BSD/X-Windows, etc., licensing, as commercial outcroppings of these are often more interesting, solid and, well, commercial-grade than purely non-commercial products.

    And I think this is one of the great examples of where such truly free, and not the forced-freedom of the GPL, achieves a measurable positive result for the industry.

    (I think a better overall solution for the industry would be for monopolistic entities to be required to fully open, publish, and standardize the data, interchange, and communication formats and protocols. We have limit choices on what roads to use, but because the specifications are standardized and open, we have a choice of cars to use. I think the government should force proven monopolistic entities to open *all* their interfaces.)

    But, in the world of Enron and MS Campaign contributions, and a populace that in general doesn't care (current company, largely excluded :-), I don't much have faith in the government to clean this up. So good commercial pressures like this from Apple are a welcome alternative for positive effects.

    -me
    • MS as supported commersal (sp) UNIX's for quite some time (MSIE, Outlook & Media Player have been on solaris for a long time), and Office has been on MacOS also for a lonnng time, I really don't see how this is a glorous moment for any OpenSource License.
      It's just MS support other _commersal_ OSes.

      mlk
    • When Apple begins to pressure its developers to move on from Carbon to Cocoa and MS Office vX.3 comes out in about 3-5 years as a cocoa app, A linux system running gnustep should have a realistic shot at running the application.

      DB
    • I am not sure if laws forcing companies to behave in a certain way (release all their interfaces) are a good idea. Laws directed at only monopolies like MicroSoft might work but only solves the problem for the monopolies. A solution I would prefer is that the government have a purchasing requirement that all interfaces used by any software and hardware they purchase be open and specified. Companies are then free to close their interfaces as long as they don't want to sell anything to the government.

  • This is just too ironic (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Arandir ( 19206 ) on Thursday February 14, 2002 @11:52PM (#3012034) Homepage Journal
    All you guys saying we have to call a certain operating system by the name "GNU/Linux" just because major portions of it come from GNU, are now saying MacOSX is not BSD.

    Well screw that! MacOSX has more BSD code than Redhat has GNU code. Make up your minds how you're going to name on OS. You can't have it both ways.
    • > MacOSX has more BSD code than Redhat has GNU code.

      I would be very surpised if that was true. All the proprietary Apple API's and GUI applications tend to be much fatter than the lean and mean BSD code.

      In contrast, Red Hat's GUI layer is Gnome, a GNU project.

      In fact, I suspect MacOSX has more GNU code than BSD code, if you include the development tools, allthough both are dwarfed by the Apple proprietary code.

  • Not the first time for M$ on Unix... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SuperJ ( 125753 ) on Friday February 15, 2002 @02:02AM (#3012383) Homepage
    Some people may remember one of AT&T's entries into the PC market, way back in 1985, the AT&T UnixPC [taronga.com]. Now you could run System V Unix on your home PC, not just on your VAX at work. It even had a windowing interface. (Side note: AT&T also operated something called The STORE, not much of a store really, more like a server you could dial into and download programs for the UnixPC, often with source)


    Anyway, AT&T ended up selling 8.5 of these things and they're somewhat of a collector's item nowadays. Microsoft however, did release Microsoft Word for the UnixPC, yup, that's right, Microsoft Word for System V Unix.


    Yeah, so that was 1985. It shouldn't be too hard to port it now. Word couldn't have changed *that* much, right? I mean it's not like Microsoft's products have gotten bloated...*tries to keep a straight face*

  • The instructions have been posted on the web, but it looks like they have not been e-mailed to current AT&T Broadband subscribers.

    Just yesterday (the 14th) I received a letter from AT&T discussing the whole changeover. What was changing, why, and what to expect. It was clear, concise, and accurate. Thankfully, they didn't email this to me as I don't use my AT&T email account. Then again, maybe they did.

    The instructions on how to change your various settings for your email/web/whatever clients may or may not be accurate - I didn't read them.

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