Posts by Adam Williamson 1

FSF launches Windows 7 anti-upgrade letter campaign

@oliver jones

Picking out two problems you happen to have experienced at random does not a convincing argument make, unless you're seriously suggesting I couldn't pull out two random problems I've ever experienced with Windows (here's a hint: I can).

Not seen that problem with DHCP / static IPs, ever. And I've used enough static IPs in my time. Yellow Dog's a pretty obscure choice for anything but a PPC system, why were you running it?

External displays - this was a problem on most hardware for quite a long time. On hardware that supports RandR 1.2 (Intel and ATI chips for the last couple of years, basically) it's a lot nicer now. NVIDIA is trickier because of NVIDIA; their proprietary driver doesn't use RandR (though you can probably set up the configuration you want quite well from nvidia-settings, if you use the proprietary driver) and they haven't made open source driver development particularly easy. However, nouveau, which is standard on Fedora already and will be standard on other distros soonish, does do RandR 1.2 and supports multiple displays pretty well (I'm typing this on the right hand monitor of my two 20" monitors, being driven by nouveau in Fedora).

The other wrinkle is that projectors tend to be very bad at properly reporting their capabilities to the system; many don't provide proper EDID information, which leaves no standard way for the driver to know what resolutions they're actually capable of. As long as your projector isn't broken like this, though, it should work fine.

Again - just pulling problems out of a hat is not a great argument until the alternative you're proposing has no problems. Of course Linux has problems. So does Windows. That's why most of the readers of this site have jobs, after all; if operating systems just worked, they'd all be unemployed...

One more funny thing

One more thing that's funny in this thread - all the people saying Linux 'isn't ready for primetime' or 'is just for hobbyists'. Here's a clue: almost every company in the Fortune 500 already runs Linux (we - Red Hat - have contracts with the majority of them). It really is worth getting a small fraction of a clue before dragging out the bats, guys.

Also, the guy who says he uses Windows XP because he wants his computer to just work. I got a good laugh out of that one. I've never met a computer _yet_ that 'just works'. Not running Linux, not running Windows, not running OS X. They're all a gigantic pain in the ass.

geoffrey summerhayes:

You may like to take a little browse of:

http://www.redhat.com/support/process/

http://www.redhat.com/consulting/

http://www.redhat.com/support/policy/soc/tam/

http://www.novell.com/linux/services_support.html

http://www.ubuntu.com/support/services

what's that sound? The Entertainer playing over a tinny, van-mounted speaker? It must be...the clue van! Mum! Mum! Can I have a clue? please? Pleeaaase?

deegee

"This is so totally stupid I just can't fathom it."

That applies remarkably accurately to your post.

""... Linux doesn't tie you into the Microsoft treadmill because the raw code is openly available so that you or third parties can keep systems going and not rely on one company."

Yeah, and I know lots of IT people who have nothing but free time to modify/compile custom code all of the time. :-/"

Um. Note the 'or third parties' bit. The point is that releasing software under a free license makes it much harder for the publisher to do nasty stuff like forcing vendor lock-in on you, or intentionally breaking interoperability with third party software.

It's hard to argue sanely with this point. Or are you really saying that it's just as easy to switch from Windows to Red Hat as it is to switch from Red Hat to SUSE? Or OpenBSD? _Really_? I don't think you're going to win that argument. Unless you can, you're going to have to concede the FSF's point. It's much easier for a closed-source vendor to screw you over than a free software vendor. I find it hilarious that someone above is talking about how hard it is to switch away from 'Excel macros, .NET code, and ActiveX controls' - and thinking that _contradicts_ the FSF's point...

Also, taking advantage of the freedom of code doesn't mean you have to maintain the whole thing yourself. Frequently you can fix a little problem in an app, or even just tailor it better to your use, with a single tiny change. With proprietary software, there's no way you can _make_ that change.

@crazy operations guy

Clearly, you are indeed crazy.

"The others in my shop also love the comment that they keep using about how "the code is freely available so anyone can modify it and support it". I don't think they get the point that NO ONE CARES"

This is clearly not true.

"none of the Operations or support people are programmers"

you don't have to be a programmer for open source / free software to prove directly valuable to you.

"the Devs in the department work with the philosophy that "I just worked several hundred hours designing, coding and testing this application, why the hell should I just give it away?""

Sigh.

"The primary reason I avoid Linux-based OSes is the almost cult-like following."

Right, because when you install the operating system, the cult-like following comes attached. Er, wait...no it doesn't. If you want to care about the cult-like following, you can, whether you run Linux or not. Ditto if you _don't_ want to care. Companies which use Linux to any significant extent are not getting their support from rabidlinuxfanbois.com, they get it from Red Hat, or Novell. (disclaimer: I work for Red Hat.)

"People like the FSF"

It's not like the FSF is particularly attached to Linux. They're still trying to write their own kernel, remember. And Linus hardly agrees with the FSF's ideological views.

499/500?

"The group's sent letters to 499 of the top Fortune 500 organizations, warning that a move to Windows 7 will increase their dependence on Microsoft and encouraging the use of GNU/Linux on PCs instead. The missing letter recipient was Microsoft."

So, er...presumably they sent one to Red Hat too?

I've got to find out who got that letter and ask them what they're going to do about it =)

Nokia launches laptop

@Ian Michael Gumby

They're already close to release on the N900, which is exactly an N810 with a phone in it. Look it up. Given that Nokia has their own very good mobile Linux platform - Maemo, which is what's on the N810 and its predecessors - I don't know why you'd think they'd release something using Android.

Prof develops football-match scheduling software

stiles:

"How does the prof think they used to schedule football matches before computers?"

I dunno, dartboard method?

Martha Lane-Fox: No broadband, no citizenship

Sigh

Another typical Orlowski - nearly very good, but with a silly throwaway comment. Sorting recycling is 'pointless'? So, it'd be a _good_ thing all around if we all just stuck easily-and-usefully-recyclable things like paper, glass and organic food matter in the landfill with the stuff that it's impossible or pointless to recycle? *why*? Not everything supported by tree-huggers is a bad idea just because they happen to like it, Andrew.

Apple blueprints warranty Big Brother

Not very new

Er, hate to point out the obvious, but a technology enabling one to determine if the casing has been opened has been available for several years now, the venerable 'sticker with WARRANTY VOID IF SEAL BROKEN printed on it'. Shouldn't this diatribe be levelled at all dastardly sticker-brokers, not just Apple?

(In fact I mean that entirely unironically. I hate those fucking stickers.)

Sony's Windows 7 virtualization switch-off (partly) reversed

Er...

Why not just ship a frickin' BIOS update? Sheesh.

(Linux users who want to use KVM would appreciate this, too. Mind you, I'm about the only idiot left running Linux on a Sony these days, it seems.)

Adobe tries to rub out LibDem airbrush claims

steve roper

No-one is saying anything about art. It's about extending the regulation of advertising, which is already heavily regulated - it's hardly an area of extensive artistic freedoms.

chris c: there's a fundamental difference there. Changing your appearance in all those ways _changes your real appearance_. If you get a complicated hairdo...your hair actually looks like that.

Touching up a photograph creates an appearance that _never really existed_, and that's an entirely different thing. I'm not necessarily on either side of this argument, but there's an obvious flaw in your reasoning.

Been there, read that

If you want to take a short cut right to the end of this debate, read Ted Chiang's short story "Liking What You See: A Documentary", from the collection "Stories of Your Life and Others". The entire thing's worth reading, but this one in particular was 20 years ahead of this discussion, seven years ago :)

Twitter goes titsup

correction

"The motives (much less the perpetrators) behind the assault remain unclear."

More terrible Reg journalism. This sentence makes no sense as written. The word 'perpetrators' should be replaced with 'bloody heroes'. :)

Palm slams Apple, hoodwinks iTunes

@Simon Banyard

Legally speaking, in most jurisdictions (including the U.S. and E.U.), a monopoly is not defined as the single seller in a market. Otherwise Microsoft would never have been declared a monopoly; there are other sellers of operating systems, office suites, and web browsers. Being the single seller may be the definition in pure economics terms, but pure economics is much like pure math - it has very little to do with the real world. :) Any country with antitrust laws defines monopoly rather more loosely than 'sole seller in a market', and it's the legal definition we're concerned with here.

There's nothing illegal about having a monopoly, no. _Abusing_ a monopoly (which term also has a precise legal definition) is illegal. That's how Microsoft was prosecuted. I already said there's nothing wrong with Apple's monopoly on hardware music players. At issue is how they've abused that monopoly to artificially improve their standing in the _software_ music player market, in order to disadvantage other producers of both hardware _and_ software music players.

And, uh, fanboy? I don't own anything made by Palm or Apple. My phone's from HTC.

B 9

Your assertion that Apple don't work specifically to prevent iPods from working with third party applications is simply incorrect. Ask the developers of libgpod. Here's a blog post:

http://mdeslaur.blogspot.com/2009/07/goodbye-apple.html

Here's a juicy quotation:

"Then, in August 2007, they added a new hash to the database to block non-iTunes software. This was quicky reverse-engineered and support was added to gtkpod once again.

In November 2008, they changed the hash again. This time, Apple used code-obfuscation software on iTunes in an effort to complicate reverse-engineering a second time. When a wiki was put up to start documenting the new hash, Apple sent a takedown notice."

Your suggestion that iPod and iTunes just 'grew together' is silly. iTunes would be nowhere near as popular as it is without the iPod. The iPod is the major factor, dwarfing others by miles, in iTunes' popularity.

Ian Davies

There's no solid logical connection between your second paragraph and your third. You correctly identify two of the problematic behaviours for which Microsoft was pursued (there were others), but then inexplicably ignore one of them entirely - the interoperability issue - in your third paragraph, because it wouldn't suit your argument.

You're just circling back to the initial, pathetic argument that Palm 'couldn't be arsed'. As I said, that just doesn't pass the smell test. You honestly think Palm sat around and thought 'yeah, we'll bet the entire future of the company on this Pre / WebOS thing and spend kajillions of dollars and almost all our time and effort on it, but we won't spare a couple of new hires for two weeks to write a basic media sync tool'? Please. The point is that if they just wrote their own media sync tool, they'd be at an inevitable comparative disadvantage to Apple, because of how Apple has artificially created a locked-in ecosystem between the popular iPod / iPhone hardware and the propped-up iTunes software. If Apple hadn't done that, Palm could write their own software (or, more likely, use whatever sensible third-party players had emerged as the market leaders) and be in a perfectly fine position. Because of Apple's artificially distorting behaviour, they can't. It's got nothing to do with whether they could be 'arsed'. I've already written about this at length, yet you seem perfectly happy to ignore it entirely.

@Ian Davis

Yes, iTunes came out before the iPod. And what a massive fricking success it was!

...oh, wait. It wasn't. To a rough approximation, no-one used it.

Notice I said Apple had an artifically created monopoly in SOFTWARE music players. Their monopoly in hardware music players is not artificially created - people buy iPods qua iPods, either because they think they're really good, or just because they're popular. That's fine, Apple doesn't do much to artificially maintain that monopoly.

The same is not true of software music players. Most people use iTunes not because they chose it over other music software based on its (real or imagined) merits, but because they have to use it to talk to their iPod. Note, again, the important point that Apple doesn't just actively work to stop iTunes working with other hardware players - they actively work to stop the iPod working with other software music players. If you buy an iPod (or iPhone), you're locked into iTunes.

Because Apple has parlayed its hardware player dominance into software player dominance, we're left with a dysfunctional music player 'marketplace' (on Windows and Mac) which results in large numbers of people being forced to use iTunes, not because they particularly like it, but because Apple makes sure nothing else will work with their iPod. Hence anyone trying to compete with iTunes is stuck on an unfair playing field - they can't make their application sync directly with an iPod or iPhone, so it's more or less doomed to niche status.

Yes, other apps can talk to iTunes via an interface it provides, but the whole point is that's nothing like parity with iTunes. It's the poor man's option. When iTunes is obligatory (you can't talk to the iPod directly, you can only talk to iTunes) but the other software is optional, which one looks like a pain in the ass to the user? Hint: it's not iTunes (although if people stopped to think about it, it should be). As I said, no-one thinks of the Blackberry as a top-tier music device, do they?

Finally, please stop trying to pretend there's some incredibly special secret sauce to the extremely simple business of synchronizing a music library with a hardware player. It's ridiculously simple. Again, look at a non-dysfunctional system to see how it should work. Rhythmbox, Amarok or Banshee on Linux can all synchronize a music library with just about any portable player (even some iPods, where Apple hasn't yet successfully managed to lock them out), as seamlessly as iTunes works with iPods. It's really not that fricking difficult. Most music players are just mass storage devices anyway. Many that aren't use MTP, which is a decent protocol with a good common Linux implementation (libmtp). For the oddballs like the iPod that don't, other libraries have been written. Then there's a trivial bit of HAL which identifies devices as music players (based on their USB IDs) and defines what formats they can support and what directory the music files have to go in. Then the players have simple code that converts files to the appropriate format (as provided by HAL) and copies them onto the appropriate place on the device, either directly for mass storage devices or using the appropriate helper library for MTP devices or oddballs, and updates the player's database if appropriate (helper libraries do this too). It's really bloody simple, and it works great with any player whose manufacturer isn't actively trying to lock third-party software out of their devices.

This is how it ought to be on Windows and OS X, but because of Apple's artifically-created software player monopoly, it isn't. That's the problem here.

Sean

""Apple have the market share with itunes and the ipod. therefore locking out competitors has now become anti-competitive."

Er, no they don't. Most people out there do NOT own an iPod. Contrary to the Guardianistas and other media luvvies attempts to convince you otherwise, digital music downloads are nowhere near close to traditional CD sales."

There's a rather gigantic logical flaw in your argument, which is that Palm doesn't sell music on CD.

Having a monopoly in a market is defined as having the vast majority of customers *in that market*, not having a vast majority of the _entire world population_ as your customers. From that standpoint, no-one has a monopoly. Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly on desktop operating systems, as most people don't own a desktop operating system...

Idiots

Wow, there's some massive stupidity going on in these comments.

Stupid argument #1: Palm just wants to use 'Apple's hard work'. yeah, because writing a mediocre music library app is just SO much hard work. Out of all the zillions that were undoubtedly spent developing the Pre, Palm couldn't spare a few dimes to write a music sync tool. Yeah, right, pull the other one. If Palm wouldn't be at a disadvantage in that situation, that's just what they'd do. The problem is that Apple has abused its dominance in the _hardware_ music player market (iPods) to create an effective monopoly in the _software_ music player market. In simple terms, lots and lots of people - including lots and lots of the Pre's potential customer base - use iPods, and hence use iTunes (since Apple do their damnedest to stop the iPod working with any other application, to preserve this monopoly situation). If these people have to use a different application to synchronize their music with a Pre, the Pre is at a clear disadvantage compared to the iPod - which is a comparison lots of customers are going to have to make. Because of Apple's artificially created dominance of the software music player domain with iTunes, the Pre has to work with iTunes or it's at a clear disadvantage compared to devices that do. (Who thinks of Blackberries as good multimedia devices? Anyone? Bueller?)

Stupid argument #2: "Vendor ID fields are for the use of the vendor so I really don't see how this protest makes any sense. In this case, recognition of an iPod is to allow iTunes to automatically synchronize with it and not with some other random USB device that one happens to plug-in. I suppose it could query all devices of a certain class for an iTunes userid and password but this activity is properly done at a higher level.......... Barring that, Apple would have to start registering and testing with other devices. Apparently Palm wants this done on someone else's dime to protect their bottom line?"

Wow, that's just wrong on every level. The whole point is that Palm initially shipped the Pre set up such that it worked fine with iTunes without _having_ to fake any USB IDs. Then Apple shipped an iTunes update which specifically identifies the Pre - using its correct USB ID - and refuses to work with it, despite the fact it would work fine if Apple didn't specifically prevent it from working. The iTunes doesn't 'recognize iPods', exactly. It recognizes Pres, expressly in order to artificially prevent them from working. No-one is asking Apple to 'test' iTunes with non-Apple hardware, just not to artificially prevent it from working where it otherwise would.

It's fairly easy to see what the situation _ought_ to be. If you look at a place where there's a remotely functional market for music player software - on Linux - you'd quickly note that all the applications (whose authors aren't busy trying to prop up their artificially created monopolies) make significant efforts to work with as _many_ hardware players as possible. The ludicrous situation of a dominant software music player which works as hard as possible _not_ to work with most hardware devices can only come about when you have someone abusing their market position. As others have pointed out, if Microsoft had done this, the world would be down on them like a ton of bricks. But Apple can do no wrong, apparently.

Apple ends Palm Pre's iTunes charade

@Jonas Taylor

"I'm not one for Palm piggy-backing on Apple's success"

See, that's the thing. It isn't. As other commenters after you pointed out, the problem is that Apple is abusing an effective monopoly here, in exactly the same way it has loudly (and correctly) decried Microsoft for doing in the past.

iTunes has become the dominant desktop music player - certainly the dominant app for transferring-music-from-PC-to-portable-player - not because it's inherently really good at either of those functions, but because its use is heavily encouraged by the iPod, which is the dominant music player. And Apple - as this story clearly demonstrates - actively works to make it as difficult as possible for anyone else to interoperate with iTunes. That's not at all different from Microsoft actively working to make it as difficult as possible for others to interoperate with Windows.

If you look at very iTunes-like applications in a less distorted context, every one of them works as hard as possible to work with as _many_ types of player as possible. Look at the Linux audio players - Rhythmbox, Banshee, AmaroK et al. They all try as hard as they can to work with iPods, Zunes, Sony players, and every yum-cha no-name mass transfer player that comes out of China. Yet Apple, keep to keep its little exclusive ecosystem safe as long as it can, pushes in exactly the opposite direction, working hard to bar compatibility with any non-Apple player. That just ain't cricket. Palm isn't doing this to take advantage of Apple's success, only to try and circumvent Apple's little monopoly play.

Masked passwords must go

@JSP

"How often is someone looking over your shoulder as you type?"

As several people have pointed out, the lack of prevalence of this practice is highly likely to have something to do with the fact that password blanking has been used for over thirty years. By your logic, we may as well not bother with highly sophisticated measures against bank thefts, because no-one robs banks any more anyway (...because of the highly sophisticated measures against bank thefts...)

"How often are they malicious?"

According to good security practice; always, potentially. If we magically knew who was 'malicious' and who wasn't, security would get a hell of a lot easier in a hurry.

"How easy is it for them to even read the screen at that distance?"

I can read a normal sized screen pretty well from across the room.

"And will they be able to remember the arcane string of symbols that is your securely chosen password?"

Oh, right, because we all know everyone chooses terribly secure passwords. And besides, every character they remember is an order of magnitude of possibilities they don't have to bother with when brute-forcing.

"And what is to stop them just watching what you type?"

it's much harder (especially with fast typists) and can't be photographed. And for me, the answer is 'the fact that I cut-and-paste my password in from a secure password storage application, of course'.

"There are far easier ways for bad guys to harvest large numbers of passwords rather than wandering round offices looking over peoples shoulders and taking notes."

Right, because all bad guys can be conveniently lumped into a single group who act in the exact same way from the same motives. Presumably they wear black masks with cut-out eye holes and carry bags with SWAG written on them, too.

Above comments have given numerious plausible scenarios for shoulder-surfing 'attacks', many from personal experience.

Olympus shows off lens-swapping 'Pen' camera

@Tony Hoyle

If you did just a little bit of research (aka Google) you'd understand, but here, let me save you the trouble...

it uses the micro four-thirds system, which allows it to have more or less SLR-quality optics (lenses and sensor) in a compact-size body. That's a bloody big deal. It comes with a few trade-offs, which Steven noted (though I think Olympus have said the AF speed will improve in the release firmware, previews have been with a pre-release firmware build), but it's still very nice. I'm getting one as soon as they're out. Been after something like this for years.