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.