Apple isn’t better then Microsoft, as Linux users may think

by Zef Hemel

aent:

I’m sitting here reading Slashdot, and actually reading some of the comments. The Linux users seem to love Apple, including many who clearly have never even used one in their life. And the number one reason they like Apple, is that they have the false impression that Apple actually is supporting Linux!

Apple is probably one of the companies who supports Linux the least and is doing the worst for Linux. Infact, one of Apple’s biggest targets is infact Linux users to switch them over. Apple is willing to take from the Linux community (KHTML for example), but not give back. Because of the license that KHTML was released under, they were forced to give the changes back, but they clearly didn’t want to. To prove that they didn’t, they waited months and months to submit the patch set back to the KHTML developers until it was useless, as it was for an old version, and violated the GNU GPL for some time. Apple has setup webpages encouraging educational organizations to switch from Linux and supports Microsoft Windows more then it supports Linux.

Apple has gone and released QuickTime and now iTunes for Windows, and now calls it cross platform. The iPod is “for Mac and Windows” and Apple commonly refers to Windows as a PC. Apple has not released ANY software for Linux, with a couple small exceptions on server daemons for the clients which they do not support on Linux. Apple doesn’t even recognize that Linux exists beyond its anti-Linux advertising campaigns and the work it has taken from it. I just find it weird that the Linux folks are so pro-Apple because they use our stuff even though Apple is just doing that, and is very anti-Linux.

After reading several comments at Slashdot, I must say I have come to the following conclusion: Apple is worse then Microsoft, they take from you then shove you into the ground and support the competitors who have given basically nothing (for free) to them more then they support you.

Eclipse 3.0 M8

by Zef Hemel

I haven’t had much time to check out if new Eclipse releases were available but today I saw 3.0 Milestone 8 is out (last one I checked out was M6), some nice stuff in there.

Read release notes of M8 or of M7.

Download it from Eclipse.org.

PHP adoption

by Zef Hemel

Joey deVilla:

Over the past 5 years, PHP adoption has climbed at a steady and impressive rate. According to Security Space’s February 2004 audit of Apache modules in use, PHP ranked number one, with over 5.2 million modules (53.18% of all machines surveyed) installed on servers that they were able to count. This number is almost double that of the next runner up (OpenSSL, at 2.7 million installations).

Study: File-Sharing No Threat to Music Sales

by Zef Hemel

Yahoo:

Internet music piracy has no negative effect on legitimate music sales, according to a study released today by two university researchers that contradicts the music industry’s assertion that the illegal downloading of music online is taking a big bite out of its bottom line.

Songs that were heavily downloaded showed no measurable drop in sales, the researchers found after tracking sales of 680 albums over the course of 17 weeks in the second half of 2002. Matching that data with activity on the OpenNap file-sharing network, they concluded that file sharing actually increases CD sales for hot albums that sell more than 600,000 copies. For every 150 downloads of a song from those albums, sales increase by a copy, the researchers found.

Extensible C#

by Zef Hemel

ResolveCorp has developed an enhanced version of the C# language. It adds features like automatic pre-condition checking, analysis of useless assignments, code obfuscation and some other features.

Website - Powerpoint presentation

.NET Languages

by Zef Hemel

Jason Bock’s list of .NET languages:

While I realize that Microsoft has a web page that lists compilers for other .NET languages, it’s getting out of date. Furthermore, I’ve spent a fair amount of time doing R & D on .NET languages, so I want to keep current on any new compilers. This page is meant to be a reference of the available compilers along with any pertinent information. If you know of a compiler that I missed, please let me know and I’ll try to get it up ASAP. Note that this page may go through some UI reorganization in the future if the list gets too big.

As a disclaimer, no vendor has asked me and/or paid me to put this up on their site. This is primarily for my benefit. If you represent any of the products and you think that my descriptions of the products (which were pretty much lifted right from their web sites) are invalid in any way, please let me know and I will correct them. By the way, if any of the vendors want to send me a copy of their products, I’d be more than happy to evaluate them!

Site updates

by Zef Hemel

Alright, thanks to 0zone, I now have a design that works in Mozilla, Opera and IE and still validates. Thank you 0zone!

Also, I got rid of the Wiki I had setup. Wikis are nice, but not ideal for a one-person site as mine is. I put back the articles in the Articles section.

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