Apple vs open source software

A lot of people think Apple supports open source software. Sorry, all of you are full of shit.

Apple is probably one of the companies most against open source software, because of the way they work. They not only are against open source software, they take advantage of it. Apple has violated the GPL in the past, and would love to continue to do so, and Apple is just as bad every other company which violates the GPL and just sticks GPL code in there applications. What does Apple do?

Well, first they start out by looking around the open source market to try and find a base for there software. Lets take KHTML for example. KHTML was freely available under the GPL, and Apple decided to take them. Apple then acts like they made the rendering engine, and during the development of the browser they don't honor the GPL, not until they release it and the patches they develop for it are so old they are worthless will they make them available back to the authors of KHTML as the GPL requires. They aren't doing this willingly, they are doing them forcefully. In order to ensure that even if they do imlpement all of the patches the rendering engine will be worse then the one they took from them, they do all of there new development in a middle level layer which is designed to be incompatible with KHTML so that the work can't be used in it.

Next what Apple does is they try to find Linux users, try to convince them that they're easier to use by feeding them BS and they aren't Microsoft, so some people unfortunately fall for it. But a lot of very highly skilled developers still don't switch to it, so what they then do is recruit them to work for them, and get them to sign a contract which disallows them to work at all on any open source software. Wow, Apple, every time I find out more about what you do, the more clear it is that you really, really hate Linux and open source software, and just want to exploit it. At least Microsoft doesn't exploit the actual source code of open source software, even if they steal ideas and claim them there own sometimes... Apple does both.

Different kind of post: politics

The following is a true story.

This year, as some of you may know, I am president of two clubs. However, the politics behind them is an interesting story. For the computer club, I decided I would try out democracy. I received the majority of the votes and became President. All members now to refer to me as Mr. President.

I thought it was too much hassle to use the same technique on another club, so I used the hostile takeover technique. This process involves removing the elected officials from power in the time where the power is changing. Our military takeover involving aent warriors was very successful, and while there are still occasional revolts organized by previously elected officials who have not yet been captured by our organization. We feel that leadership under me would be superior for all those involved and will continue to fight and find those who want to revolt against my leadership. We want the best for the people, which is of course my being President.

The following has been a true story. I assume no responsiblity for the content of this story.

Floppy drives

I don't get it. Why are floppy drives so evil that they can't be on computers? And then PS/2 mice, oh, those are so important. "USB mice are pointless, you should always use the convertor and plug it into the PS/2 slot." People seem to hate legacy items that are visible, but then love them when they aren't. Floppy drives rock, and PS/2 mice/keyboards suck.

Currently, floppy drives are the only removable medium found on most machines that is cheap, quick, and easy. They're bootable from every machine, readable, writable, and so on. People say to go get USB thumb drives, but they are much more expensive, and not all computers have plugs located conviently in the front to use them, and a lot of them don't fit in the front plugs anyways because of the poor designs of cases, being in an indent so you can't push it in. Going to the back of the computer really isn't easier then putting a floppy disk in the front. DVD/CD-RWs would be a good replacement, if the vendors of this hardware would hurry up and implement Mount Rainer (nicknamed Easy Write) support to all the drives. Without that, writing CD-RWs just isn't good compared to floppies. You can add files, delete files, and so on. Packet writing is a workaround for that, but the hardware needs to drive it, and not require third party software to control the writing to the CD. Once 95+% have this, then I agree, floppy drives will be useless and rewritable CDs will be the way to go, but until then, keep floppy drives in your computer. No other technology is mature enough to replace it.

PS/2 ports, however, should be removed from computers, and a USB -> PS/2 convertor should be made for the legacy devices. USB is superior to PS/2 in every way, is a smaller plug, and removing the controller and plugs will leave room for more USB plugs on the motherboard. There is no advantage to using PS/2, but tons of advantages to USB. Search google for those, plenty of people already list the advantages of USB mice over PS/2 mice.

Lizards

An army of lizards has come into my house since the two hurricanes and killed all the ants. No more ant problem. Now a lizard problem. I prefer this problem as they are harmless, bigger so you know where they are, and so on, I think I'll let them stay. They really seem to like watching me take showers and go to the bathroom.

I stayed at school very late today, just got home. Trying to finish sorting out the stuff I needed to do for FBLA and the all exciting Computer Club. My first action as president of computer club will be to rename it. I'm trying to decide what still, so please post comments here on your ideas. ;)

Anyways, onto my normal rambling.

Today, I must fight against one of those old ancient sayings. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Every time I see that, hear it, and so on I want to SCREAM!!! If it ain't broke and there is still a way to fix it to make it better, then please, FIX IT! I know some people claim IE isn't broken with its lack of support for standards, but FIX IT Microsoft, it would be a good thing to fix what supposedly isn't broken by people who don't understand the internet. (By the way, I guess its time to do my usual plug for Mozilla Firefox. Its easier to use, faster, makes web developer's lives easier, and gives you many more features which you'll love. If you think IE isn't broken, use Mozilla Firefox and your web browser will end up fixed anyways.)

One of the weak points of Gnome (and KDE and every other desktop environment for Linux, and pretty much OS X for that matter, haven't been able to find an easy way to do it well either) is LAN file sharing. Actually, its been easy to get files that are shared and just got even easier with ZeroConfig/DNS Based Service Directory/Rendevous/whatever else its called (I like ZeroConfig the best and think Rendevous is the worst since Rendevous is the name of an implementation, so I'll be using that). The problem is more of sharing files on an OS X or Linux box to other computers. CIFS (formerly SMB) unfortunately has kind of become the de facto standard for doing this. I think its a horrible however as its really not good at advertising the shares on the network. Hopefully a ZeroConfig based one will be able to replace it (maybe NFS can get ZeroConfig support?). In any case, the problem still remains that its hard to share files. In Mac OS X, the easiest way to share files is to "Allow Remote Windows logins". Not only does that really pose a security risk, it also means you share everything a user has access to (unless I'm missing something). Thats a horrible implemenation. The option should rather be "Allow this username & password to be used for file sharing login." (or something like that, I was gonna put CIFS, or SMB, or Windows in that message, but CIFS and SMB are too techincal and Windows is inaccurate, plus it really should be for all methods of file sharing.) Well, finally, gnome seems like its going to add support for ZeroConfig file sharing using WebDAV. I've never used WebDAV before and don't know much about it, so one of these days I'll take a look. Probably in 6 months when the next Gnome release is out supporting these features. Right click, properties, and then in the sharing tab, you'll only have three options, make it very simple: - Do not share this folder. - Read only sharing. - Read and write sharing. Windows isn't exactly hard to setup file sharing either, but it isn't quite as simple as that and the CIFS protocol has a lot of issues with that. I can't wait to have this... finally, file sharing done right.

Next thing I'll discuss is Jabber support. I was losing hope for it growing at all anymore. Nobody really seems to care about it unfortunately. But Apple just announced that its adding support for it in the next version of iChat, so maybe that will give it a nice usage boost. It should at least be in front of Yahoo soon. I don't expect it to overtake AIM or MSN anytime soon, even though its superior, but Microsoft unfortunately has too much control of the market getting its usage for MSN up and AIM was the original successful one at it. They already have the people and its hard to move that many people over when the protocols are not compatible with each other. I'm often asked why Jabber is better, and the reason is because the protocol is opened. This means that any program, such as a website, can use the instant messenging protocol freely to provide you with instant alerts. For example, if Jabber support was integrated into Invision Power Board, I would be able to subscribe to the announcements forum on their corporate forums for example, and set it to notify me via Jabber. Then when a new release is out and they post in that announcements forum, I would instantly be notified of it. Email isn't instant and is often lost. IM is instant and I think at some point will overtake email entirely. Jabber supports offline messages and such so it really can, and I hope it does.

IBM also announced that they were going to open source their speech recoginiton software. It'd be nice to see what is done for that under Linux, as that market has pretty much been empty thus far. Hopefully this means that it will get much better as well, since the entire open source community will get to work on it and think of better ways to recognize voice. Anyways, thats it for today. Remember to post comments (especially about ideas for the name)!

I decided to revive this blog since apparently blogging is in again... gonna talk about a lot of stuff in this post as its the first one in a very long time, and I like to hear myself talk...

I figured I should have a place to just blab on about stuff I think is cool and why Linux is better then Windows and the problems with both of the operating systems.

There are so many great efforts right now that are in development and [very close to] completed.
But, if I had to choose one problem with the Gnome desktop, it would be the lack of support for decent CD burning support, and I think the development effort is going in the wrong direction for it unfortunately. Other operating systems tend to use the approach of making a big suite for burning CDs and stuff. The Gnome approach is of course to attempt to simplify it, so what they apparently are trying to do with Coaster is make a little suite. IMO, thats the problem. Its still a suite! I personally am getting tired of suites of software. A couple months ago, I definetly wouldn't have said this, as all the good stuff I used was part of a suite. I used the Mozilla suite, the mail part, the browser, and so on, and loved the integration between the applications. Same with OpenOffice, and so on. But I have come to realize that making it a suite isn't really a necessity to making it well integrates. I now use Mozilla Firefox and definetly appreciate it more then the Mozilla suite, and found that Mozilla's mail part really isn't the best option available, but rather Evolution. Being able to mix the parts without having the rest of the suite and integration options that are compatible beyond the suite's programs. I now use AbiWord and Gnumeric rather then OpenOffice's respective programs, but I use the rest of the suite's programs as they are still the best available for Linux. Had they not been part of the suite, I wouldn't have to waste space and extra menu entries (I don't like deleting stuff out of the menu so I know its on my computer, thats why my menus are so big, though organized thanks to Gnome's HIG) and compile time and such.
Yeah, now that I got a mile off topic, I'm going to jump back on topic... I don't like the idea of Coaster. I really don't see the need for software to burn CDs. It should be an option of the softwares you always use with these files. If I want to burn data files to a CD (and make them multisession and whatever) I should use what I always use to manage my data, my file manager (so basically I'm saying nautilus needs multisession support). If I want to burn an audio CD, I should open my media player (rhythmbox) and be able to select the songs I want by dragging them to a "Burn to CD" playlist and then selecting "Burn" and then it should give me a nice dialog box asking me if I want to burn it as an Audio CD or the raw files to the disk... and so on... What coaster SHOULD be is a very simple application that allows me to perform two tasks which basically just don't fit into the other categories (actually, maybe even one). Copy CD and Burn CD image to CD. Copy CD doesn't even really need to exist, I should be able to DnD a CD-ROM drive to the CD-R in Nautilus IMO, but I guess that feature would be hard to advertise and for newbies to figure out, so it should exist as an option in Coaster. Selecting files in Coaster, selecting the type of CD, and so on shouldn't be part of it. It should be kept simple and integrated into the other programs. libcoaster is a good idea, but I gotta complain about it as well. My complaint? Its about this screenshot of what it places in desktop preferences: http://www.coaster-burn.org/libcoaster/libcoaster.png
How the hell is this a desktop preference? What this dialog looks like to me, and should be, is a Copy CD dialog, it should be all of coaster. Optical Reader Device should have an extra option in the drop down menu "CD image" which pops up a file chooser to select an ISO/whatever other format image, and then it should have a Burn button. Coaster would be done and we'd have a truly nice CD burning application with no bloat and very well integrated into the desktop. I believe there are patches for Rhythmbox to burn CDs in the development version, and Nautilus just needs multisession support and support for burning CDs in Gnome would surpass every other OS IMO! Oh, another annoyance about Rhythmbox, why the hell can't it play Audio CDs anymore? In old screenshots it had the capabilitiy but its not there anymore! Thats a CRUCIAL option for a music player... I'm confused on why I need to open Totem MOVIE PLAYER rather then Rhythmbox MUSIC PLAYER. And Rhythmbox NEEDS queues (and to make a big dent in their todo list, stuff like album covers would be nice as well), and that would be nice in Totem as well.

Speaking of integration, today I read about Galago, a fd.o initiative to have global presense notification. The idea behind it is great, and I really hope that it gets adapted soon in all the Linux distributions. Other operating systems don't have this currently integrated either and really aren't even working on it, so it would be nice to get this integrated first, and with some really cool features. I read about ideas for detection if the user is there, such as detecting if their bluetooth cell phone is in range... really cool ideas, I hope this develops and gets out soon!

Also I must say that HAL and DBUS is the best thing to happen to Linux in a long time IMO... finally, the less flexibile utilities like ifplugd are being replaced by very flexible and logical utilities like NetworkManager... Connecting to wireless networks and the network connections that it uses are now logical. Wired stuff should be preferred over wireless and there should be a preference of wireless networks like it has, and integrate with the desktop. NetworkManager should definetly get network connection management on par with windows, if not surpassing it.

I can't wait for Gnome 2.8 to be released as stable (one more day ^_^) as I really think gnome-volume-manager is an amazing addition to the desktop, a very important one, and we get cool stuff like extra eye candy now thanks to the new Xorg (and a new mozilla firefox is coming out this week, hopefully, so this should be a great week), which is great. As always, I like to complain about everything though, and this is a common and well known complaint about it. The gnome-volume-manager configuration dialog is overly complex. I think it should look more like this (all the command fields are gone, they should use the default applications, I know this is being done for the next version, and yay for wonderful text mockups)
Removable storage
[ ] Mount removable drives when hot plugged
[ ] Mount removable media when inserted
[ ] Open file browser when removable media is inserted
Audio CDs
Perform action when audio CD is inserted: [Drop down menu: Do nothing, Play audio CD, Rip audio CD]
DVD
[ ] Play DVD Videos when inserted
Blank CDs
Perform action when blank CD is inserted:
This is a tough one because the user's intention of what they want to do with the blank CD
[Drop down menu: Open CD copier, Open File browser to blank CD, Open Music player to burn playlist, etc]
Digital Camera
[ ] Import digital photo albums when connected

It would be nice if it would expand beyond just removable storage, although I understand its currently beyond the scope of it, I think that should be changed. <_<
When a digital camera is plugged in and not a removable storage medium, PTP for example, it should still honor my request of importing digital photos. It could also be better then competing operating systems with other removable devices, such as when I plug in my scanner (or turn it on or whatever), I most likely will want to scan something, so the scanning software should open. And gnome needs better scanning software (xsane is powerful and all and not exactly hard to use, but I just don't like it, not simple and gnome enough, I'm going to try to make my own scanning software for gnome my next project if I ever have time, but knowing me I won't finish the project so I'm going to try to contribute to another project... I was looking at eventuality today and I might want to try to get involved in that, I'll see...)

The upcoming search technologies look nice, I can't wait for Beagle's completion, and Dashboard, they both look like great projects, and it looks like the desktop will definetly be getting a lot better integration. I'm glad that they are going to obsolete the sound servers (arts and esd and so on) in favor of gstreamer which can send the sound to wherever or whatever, such as my hardware to mix it or the Media Application Server which integrates into X very well, and that libgnomeprint/kprint are going to die in favor of xprint, and so on...
Anyways, thats my ranting for now...

TV Tuner and Tomcat Updates

I took an old ATI TV Wonder VE card I had lying around and put it in my computer... now I have... black and white TV thats one channel off... was like $30ish dollars so I guess you get what you pay for...

I also updated to Tomcat 5 preparing for some future JSP/Servlet project...