Cogs can think.

And so Apple decided to turn up the heat under satisfied PowerPC owners by (most likely) dropping support for 800Mhz and lower PowerPC G4 Macs from Leopard. For me, this sucks major balls.

I have a PowerMac G4 Cube, with a 450Mhz PowerPC G4 with 1Mb L2 cache, 768MB of pc133 SDRAM, and an nVIDIA GeForce 2MX with 32MB of video RAM. It has a nice 128GB hard drive, AirPort Extreme, and of course a DVD drive. It’s a completely silent machine, and serves me extremely well as my main machine. It runs the latest OSX just fine (except for Flash). I can do a lot of stuff simultaneously, and therefore, am perfectly happy with the system’s performance.

And, lest we forget, it’s the best-looking computer man has ever conceived, and is a great fit for my living room.

Apple’s reasons for this decision are clear: financial gains. By cutting off a whole bunch of G4 owners, they will force them to upgrade to Intel Macs if they wish to continue to run the latest and greatest. On top of that, this cut off is completely arbitrary - I have received many reports from Leopard testers that Leopard ran just fine on machines similar to mine, including the new fancy effects. So, it’s obvious Apple wants to please their stockholders - which is fine by me, but that doesn’t make it nicer to its customers. Once again Apple is showing that it is not a single bit better than every other company out there - Apple is just like Microsoft. Make no mistake about it.

I wish Apple would go about this the same way as Microsoft: set minimum specifications, but let customers decide *shock gasp horror* for themselves if they are willing to run the OS slightly slower than His Steveness intends. Give us customers the freedom to do whatever the fcuk we deem acceptable. I have run Vista on machines way below the minimum specifications, and I could get acceptable performance out of them, simply because Microsoft allows me, as a customer, to have the freedom to actually try it.

Anyway, as OSNews’ managing editor, I find that I ought to always run the latest and greatest (software-wise), in order to make informed decisions as to what news items to publish, and to have good knowledge on what’s available on the market - knowledge I need for writing informed editorials and reviews. Apple is making that impossible for me.

You see, despite claims to the contrary, OSNews ain’t making any of us money. All our ad money goes to hosting, and whatever’s left goes to David to give us the odd present here and there. Oh, and of course, the company DB9 we all drive. So, in other words, I ain’t rich. I simply cannot afford to spend a 1099 1199 EUR on a new iMac (no, I don’t want a Mini, I don’t like it, it’s ugly, and it’s a toy, and in The Netherlands, way overpriced), just because His Steveness wants me to.

I’m genuinely pissed off about this one.

This is Amarok 1.4.x, the current tree.

On OSNews, for the past few days, some discussions have centered around Amarok being ‘the best music player hands down’. I beg to differ, and based on this main window’s screenshot alone, I can point to various major flaws in this application that will prevent me from ever using it. Please note that these are just my personal concerns (that’s why they call it a personal weblog, boys and girls), and they do not reflect the opinions of my employer.

In the top left corner of the window, you see the Music/Lyrics/Artist tabs. This indicates that this row (yes, even modern graphical user interfaces can be divided up into textual rows) is a tab bar. Great, but, then, why are there file/navigation buttons on the same row, only a few pixels east?

The reason for this is clear: the Amarok developers are trying to cram so much information into the main window, they were forced to split the window up in two sections: a contextual section (left) and the actual section that matters to this kind of application, the playlist/buttons (right). You could argue that the play/pause/stop/etc. buttons in the right section ought to be on top (seeing they are the most vital buttons for a music player) but alas, I’ll let that one pass.

Let’s focus on the left section. The Amarok developers were so hell bent on cramming as much information as possible into this limited space, that they were not only forced to add a vertical scrollbar (and sometimes, a horizontal one too), but also not one, not two, but three (!) tabs.

The above leads to this ridiculous situation where you have two completely different types of sections crammed into one window, where rows switch their function (tab to button), simply because they wanted to cram way too much (pointless, in my book) information into a single window. The end result is that the actual part that matters (playlist, play/pause/stop/etc. buttons) is now demoted to that side of a window that receives the least focus (the right side). On top of that, as said (can’t let it pass by, I’m sorry), the most important buttons (play/pause/stop/etc.) are now rendered somewhere at the bottom right, far away from the focal area of a window (which is the top-left).

The ever-growing hunger for more functionality and information forced the Amarok developers to take even more drastic measures. The left section of the main window needed to function not only as a three-tabbed contextual tab (read that aloud five times if the ridiculousness doesn’t sink in immediately), but also as a devices tab. And a Magnatune tab. And a collection tab. And a files tab. And a playlists tab.

And in order to cram all that information and functionality into one single window, they did what makes Amarok, to this very day, the most ridiculous application ever written, UI wise: vertically text labeled tabs, with normal horizontally oriented icons. This is wrong on so many different levels, it’s just not funny any more. Whoever thought of that brilliant idea ought to never be allowed to “design” a graphical user interface, ever again.

Amarok is not the only audio player that suffers from functionality and information creep. Windows Media Player, iTunes, they all suck major balls because they all try to present their users with so much goddamn pointless information it almost makes my head spin. Every part of Amarok except for the parts that matter are just screaming “Look at me! Over here! I got boobs!”.

That’s why I refuse to take anyone seriously who says “Amarok is just about the cleanest as it gets UI wise”.

Some… Interesting responses to the big QNX news and interview today.

I have been called ‘unethical’ for saying “QNX is opening up its source code”. A reader on OSNews claims that with that, I am “redefining” the meaning of open source - and that’s what he calls unethical. Ridiculous, of course. The code is open. You can look at it. Compile it. Change it. Alter it. For personal use. You can keep those changes for yourself. You can share those changes with the QNX community. You just can’t sell those changes - you can’t exploit your work commercially. In order to do that, you need to pay royalties to QNX.

Which makes total sense.

Unlike other companies such as IBM and Sun, QSS is actually quite a small company. The only stream of revenue the company has is its operating system and the services it provides. Compare this to a big shot like Sun, who does not only sell a boatload of software and services, but also has an extremely important hardware business. Sun can afford to be ‘more’ open source than QNX simply because to Sun, Solaris is financially actually fairly irrelevant. It’s by far not their greatest source of income.

QSS (QNX Software Systems) has done the right thing by their hybrid software model. They allow everyone to look at the code, download it, compile it, change it, share it with their peers or keep it to themselves, heck, they can even make a distribution and put that online - they are just not allowed to sell it. Which is logical, because else the ‘altered’ QNX versions would directly compete with QSS, and seeing those altered versions would leech for 99% off QSS’s hard work, they would be infinitely cheaper (if not free).

On top of that, by choosing this model, they made sure that their biggest competitors (VxWorks, Microsoft, and commercial Linux ‘embedders’) are forced into a ‘Τάνταλος torture‘ - they can look at it all they want, but they cannot use it for their own good.

I’m sure a healthy community can be built around QNX. I sure hope it can, in any case.

My dream operating system would have BeOS’ kernel, responsiveness, and soul. Mac OS X’ attention to detail and polishedness. Windows’ industry support. Linux’ price tag. VMS’ stability. OpenBSD’s security. My nightmare operating system would have the Linux kernel. Windows’ attention to detail and polishedness. SkyOS’ industry support. Vista’s pricetag. Windows 98’s stability. BeOS’ security.

Just saying.

Sometimes, when I post an opinion on OSNews, I get very little in the form of support in the comments. When I then defend myself and my position, people often say: look, Thom, nobody here supports you! Doesn’t that say something?

Well, in all honesty, it doesn’t. The people that comment are a vocal minority; most of our readers don’t comment at all. On top of that, there are people out there who’s opinion really does matter to me (in these computer related issues). I won’t mention any names. A few regulars on OSNews are part of the group, as well.

The rest? I honestly don’t care. I do and say what I think is right, and no matter how many people disagree with me, if they can’t come up with decent argumentation, I won’t budge.

My Nokia 8800 just died. Well, its internal speaker just died, meaning I am forced to use the speakerphone function to talk to people. And trust me, that really defeats the purpose of a mobile phone. And it looks completely ridiculous.

Anyway, no problem, I thought. The Nokia 8800 is a premium phone (as in, a shiny exterior and crap interior), so I have very decent Nokia warranty; 24 months, no questions asked.

That is, if you have the receipt. And despite the fact that my obsessive-compulsive mind forces me into keeping every goddamn receipt - I have receipts pre-dating the first coming of Christ for god’s sake (two beer at the Bethlehem Inn) - but no, the receipt for one of the most expensive items in my household… No receipt. I have the Fed Ex shipping notes, the invoice documents from Dutch Customs (it’s from the US), but no Nokia 8800 receipt. Sometimes I wonder, is all this obsessive categorising and cleaning actually worth it?

And then I look at my kitchen cabinets and feel all proud.

I would like to coin a new term.

The Dvorak defence.

When someone writes a story for his website or even personal weblog which is critical of either Apple of GNU/FSF/Linux, zealots of these two camps will immediately claim you are only expressing that critique to gain hits and ad money. No matter how good your integrity is, no matter if you get paid for your work or not (at OSNews, we don’t get paid a dime), the Dvorak defence always works. The Dvorak defence allows the zealots to draw attention away from the actual issues at hand, and instead discredit the author. It’s the perfect defence for zealots.

It is called the Dvorak defence because Dvorak actually really only criticises Apple for hits - he admitted to it.

I fcuking hate idiots like Dvorak. They are ruining it for us serious folk on the net.

So, DistroWatch replied to my moral rant about their policies towards Elive.

Thanatermesis has never asked DistroWatch not to post direct download links to the stable Elive CD images. I am in regular contact with the Elive developer and I’ve just checked all his recent emails (just to be sure), but I couldn’t find a single one (let alone “numerous requests”) where he would ask me not to post these links. So either he is lying to Mr Holwerda, or Mr Holwerda is lying in his blog.

Those are Thanatermesis’ words - “many times”, he wrote.

In six years of its existence, DistroWatch has never hosted any ISO images of any distribution, including Elive. Again, somebody is making things up.

Again, Thanatermesis’ words. I am assuming that “he uploaded it himself” does not necessarily have to mean to distrowatch.com/pub/incoming/, but any server.

Is it disrespectful of DistroWatch to provide direct download links to the Elive CD images? Yes, absolutely - and I agree with Mr Holwerda on this point. However, I don’t believe it is any more disrespectful than twisting the meaning of the word “donation” or providing non-existent links to a slow download server which, oops, is down and has been down for weeks. I have no problem with the Elive developer wanting to make money out of his hard work, but then he should be straightforward about it and go commercial, instead of playing these ridiculous “you must donate” and “feel guilty if I starve to death” games. Or he should come up with a better way of distributing his work than “hiding” it in randomly named “dot” directories on public FTP servers.

Look, I don’t agree with such a compulsory donation scheme either, and I would much rather see a voluntary donation scheme, but that is not a sound reason to be disrespectful and discourteous to another developer’s choice. It’s his god-given right to supply his users with his software in a way he deems necessary. You may not like that, but that is no reason to disrespect a developer who works really hard on his project in his free time, and post links to his work on fast servers - despite the fact that you are not legally prohibited to do so.

since Mr Holwerda portrays DistroWatch as a backstabbing organisation with little respect for other people’s work…

That’s a bit drama queenish of you. I am just saying that what you are doing with Elive is an ungentlemanlike thing to do, and I just pointed it out to you. You could have just added a “my take” or whatever to the newsitem, stating that you find it unacceptable of Thanatermesis to uphold such a donation scheme.

…while picturing OSNews as a moral-high-ground holding bastion of purity and innocence, here is a question to the author of the blog post: DistroWatch has donated close to US$14,000 to open source software projects over the last three years. How about OSNews, Mr Holwerda?

As a proper journalistic outlet [1], OSNews does not take sides by donating money to anything. We are an independent news outlet, and as such, we do not take donations, nor give them to anyone. We want to maintain our unbiasedness, and donations (either to or from OSNews) do not fit into that. So, even if we did give/receive donations, we would not talk about it.

Personally, I am not the type to scream my personal donations off the rooftops. I contribute to my free software project of choice in the best way I can, and on top of that, do the community a service by working hours and hours a day, unpaid (I don’t get a penny for my work on OSNews), on a website that provides that community with publicity. My donation habits are strictly personal, and not anyone’s business.

Apart from that, even if you donated tenhundredmillionbillion Dollars to the free software world, that does not give you the right to disrespect individual developers. No matter how many lives a doctor has saved, it does not give him the moral right to kill someone.

Morality is not for sale, Distrowatch.

[1] OSNews is a voluntary effort, and our editors and webmaster do not get paid in any way for the work we do. In other words, the word “proper” in this context is relative. I’m honest in that.

Sometimes, I really wonder whatever the hell happened to courtesy and gentlemanship.

The (bascially a) one man project Elive, a Debian-based installable live CD which uses Enlightenment 0.16 and 0.17 as its desktop environment, has just released version 1.0 of their project. Since nobody pays Samuel ‘Thanatermesis’ F. Baggen to work on Elive, he gives his users two options when they want to download stable Elive releases: a slow, free server, or a fast server for which you have to donate any amount of money (USD 1, 2, or whatever you want) to get access to. This way, the one-man project gets a few bucks to fund Elive.

Of course, this world is filled with idiots without any form of respect, so you soon get people who post the stable .iso’s somewhere else, so others can enjoy a free fast download. This in itself is of course extremely lame, but hey, I don’t think there’s anything legally you could do to stop this - the license permits redistribution.

On OSNews, I wrote an item about the Elive 1.0 release. In the comments, a user posted direct download links to a fast server hosting the Elive 1.0 releases, which, of course, while not illegal, is still not very gentleman-like. So I emailed Thanatermesis, asking him if he wanted the links removed - you know, out of courtesy and respect. He said he would like that, so Eugenia and I removed the direct download links.

However, Distrowatch posts a direct download link on its frontpage announcement of Elive 1.0. Thanatermesis explained to me that despite numerous emails and request to, like, not do that, Distrowatch continues to do so. In fact, when Thanatermesis moved the stable .iso somewhere else, Distrowatch just hosted the .iso themselves, in spite of the fact that they know about the mild donation request.

Shame on you, Distrowatch, this is a very lame thing to do. I will be sure to not link to any Distrowatch story until this situation is resolved. For whatever that’s worth.

Warning: rant ahead.

I don’t give a rat’s ass what all the anti-MS idiots say. Surface is a truly innovative product, and I applaud Microsoft for it. They had the guts, back in 2001, to devote money and manpower to this idea, and now, 6 years later, it is paying off. Surface looks great, opens up a whole slew of possibilities, and, as far as I can see it, is truly a Pandora’s box of opportunities. I’ve seen use cases flash before my eyes like every other minute of the past two days.

Surface is just one of those things the OSS community will never come up with. Let’s face it; Linux, BSD, most of the other OSS projects, they are all followers. They are in it to regurgitate what companies like Apple and Microsoft serve them. The OSS community is supposed to be so great, right? Then why is it that they never seem to be able to come with something truly new, something groundbreaking, something that will make people all around the world go: “wow…!” I showed Surface to some of my computer-illetrate friends, and they were baffled. They all saw new use cases in front of them… Just like I did.

Fact remains, as much as I like the OSS world (I try to use the OSS equiv. when it is at least as good as or better than the closed-source counterparts), they are followers, not trendsetters. So, sure, there is enough to bash Microsoft and Apple about, but at least they have the guts to come up with truly new ideas.

In 2010, we’ll see a marginally different, poor rip-off of Surface. The joy of waiting.