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  • Metrogirl

    Pirate Bay Sunk

    By Metrogirl, in OSx86,

    Today "The Pirate Bay", the torrent site for which there has been a whole timber-shivering treasure-chest-full of euphemisms in these pages, was raided by Swedish police and the entire server farm carted away in trucks, along with the arrest of two of the operators.
     
    The Pirate Bay had long enjoyed a relative immunity from prosecution under Swedish law due to the inability of legislation to prove that hosting links and not illegal software per se was actually a contravention of statute. However it appears that management of the torrent swarm was finally considered enough to cause the action on the grounds that the servers were 'Assisting Breach of Copyright Law'. It will be a tough fight for prosecutors; the legality of indirect linking has never been tested in Swedish law and there is no concept of torrent mechanism, swarm management or the relevant protocol in existing legislation.
     
    The entertainment industry is already crowing about this 'victory for the paying public'. A spokesman is alleged to have said that the police investigation will take considerable time, and the servers will not be released until the case is closed. Without their servers, piratebay.org will effectively be unable to continue, but their ISP has allowed them to retain a news page with scant details and links to more information on Slyck, Slashdot and other news sites. In related action, police also took servers hosting Piratbyran, a public information site which has been supporting the argument for legality of torrent hosting in Sweden.
     
    The most worrying aspect of this appears to be that the Swedish police themselves could not say whether a crime had been committed or not; they appear to have the power to seize computers to establish whether a crime exists. In many jurisdictions, such action would be unthinkable. If a warrant can be issued without clear evidence of an identified transgression, the future looks bleak indeed.
     
    More detail is on Slyck.
  • sHARD>>
    A joke, a mistake, or a sign of things to come? Engadget is reporting that Dell has now added an 'Apple OS X' OS option to many of their machines' driver download pages. While Dell has previously expressed interest in OS X on their machines, the actions of Steve Jobs indicate such a move is unlikely. Shifting us futher into hoax territory, we find that all of the downloads present for 'OS X' aren't actually compatable with the operating system. Dell currently offers OS X drivers for their printers, and in all likelyhood they have simply made a mistake while making site adjustments. But we can dream, can't we?
  • Swad

    Free .mac-style storage

    By Swad, in OSx86,

    You remember back in the day when everything on the Internet was free (circa 1994-1998)? My local library offered free internet and email access through telnet – it was glorious. Ah, Web 0.9.23.6 Beta.
     
    These days we’ve got the so-called Web 2.0 which is supposed to relive those days with tons of more free stuff, along with gradients sprinkled everywhere and HUGE buttons thrown in.
     
    So, in my eternal quest for free stuff, I ran across this "hack" for OS X and immediately fell in love. You can now use box.net (very Web 2.0) just like you use .mac… except box.net gives you a gig of space for free and more space if you invite friends to sign up (with a link like the one I just used... although this post isn't about me getting invitations). All you have to do is sign up, set up a DAV on your Mac, give it your login name (for the secure connection) and you're ready to go. UneasySilence has some screenshots.
     
    You can access all your files online, share them with friends, and there’s even a Windows based client for cross-OS sharing. I signed up yesterday and have been very impressed so far... and the price is certainly right.
     
    Gotta love free stuff. Especially when it’s storage space!
     
    Edit: If you're going to sign up, use one of the invitation links further down in the thread so that others (that need it) can get upgraded to 5 GB. Feel free to post your own code once signed up.
  • sHARD>>
    We've recently recieved word that CrossOver Office for Intel Macs has hit alpha 1, and has been made availible for limited public testing. It comes as a standard OS X package, and, while it requires X11, it appears that CodeWeavers is working to eliminate this dependency. After installation, users simply click on a Windows .exe file to launch it. CrossOver Office has a sort of start menu which resembles it's Windows counter-part, allowing users to easily launch installed Windows software. Reportedly, CrossOver Office will also support the creation of a Macintosh application wrapper of sorts. This allows for Windows programs to appear in your standard Applications window. While games aren't working well yet, it seems that Office applications are fairly functional. Half-Life 2 also appears to be a development support priority. Rounding it out, cut and paste sharing, as well as Windows applications on the dock, appear to work. While this software is still alpha and obviously experiences it's share of crashes and kernel panics, this strong feature list is very promising. More details as we have them...
  • Swad

    Final Cut Pro on a MacBook

    By Swad, in OSx86,

    Steve: Man, those new MacBooks are bitchin' just like their older bros.

    You: Yeah, I'm down with the magnetic latch and the pimp new keyboard. But what about that ghetto integrated graphics, Steve?

    Steve: I'm right there wit-cha, man. Did you know that the MacBook (screw dat "power" namin' {censored}) can run Final Cut Pro?

    You: Fo shizzle?

    Steve: True. Now you can do pro video editing without forking over a lot of bling.

    You: 'ait.

    Steve: Peace.

    As it turns out, the MacBook can run Final Cut Pro. One site put it to the test to see how it would fare:

    When I first got ahold of a MacBook Pro last month, I was shocked by its capability to beat out desktop G5 systems consistently. But I was doubly shocked to see such dramatic results from the newer and lower-end 2.0 GHz MacBook as well. After all, this is not just a notebook competing with a fairly current desktop system, but a consumer-level notebook at that.

    Normally you don't even think about running benchmarks of professional-level creative software on a laptop against desktops, and certainly not a laptop targeted toward consumers. But in the vast majority of tests, the MacBook beat out the desktop system and certainly proved itself competition for all but the highest-end (G5 Quad) Mac systems on the market today.

    Again, like the MacBook Pro, the 2.0 GHz 13-inch MacBook proves a thoroughly viable machine for users of Final Cut Studio.
  • Swad
    Several interesting things coming down the developer pipeline lately. Think Secret lets us know that Apple is seeding 10.4.7 to developers. From the article:


    The Intel build of the new update is marked build 8J2111, and includes about 60 documented improvements -- and a few known issues, as well. In a note to developers, Apple recommended that they focus their testing efforts on Aperture, iChat, Safari, Mail, and synchronization.
     
    The Intel version of the update is available for developers as a 213MB download. The PowerPC version is only 144MB in size.
     
    Apple publicly released the last update, Version 10.4.6, in early April.
    Also, Apple wants developers to update to the latest version of Xcode, released yesterday: version 2.3. The update includes “stability and performance improvements to the Xcode IDE, build system, and Code Sense. It is recommended that all Xcode users install this update.”
     
    Enjoy.
  • Swad

    A sign of things to come

    By Swad, in OSx86,

    Every day it seems we get one step closer to seamless interaction between Windows and OS X (and hopefully not the spyware and adware).
     
    Don’t miss this impressive video of an Intel iMac running Windows through Parallels. The interesting part is the use of two monitors – one for Windows and one for OS X.
     
    Tired of a non-universal Photoshop? Don’t worry. One day very soon (possibly as soon as Leopard) you can just move the mouse over to the fully-native, full speed Windows environment and drag and drop your files wherever you’d like.
     
    That day is fast approaching. Anyone else a little excited/scared?
  • sHARD>>
    OSNews is reporting that Apple representative Ernest Prabhakar (of Open Source & Open Standards) has denied the official closing of the Darwin x86 kernel source. Says Mr. Prabhakar: "We continue to release all the Darwin sources for our PowerPC systems, and so far have released all the non-kernel Darwin sources for Intel. Nothing has been announced, so [Tom Yager] (and everyone else) certainly has the right to speculate. But please don't confuse 'speculation' with 'fact'." Tom Yager recently wrote an article about the "closing" of kernel sources due to piracy. View the original post.
  • Swad

    Decisions, Decisions

    By Swad, in OSx86,

    This is an interesting time to be a potential Mac buyer. On the one hand, you've got these nice new MacBooks and MacBook Pros which are quite fast but also have some technical problems like whines, heat, etc... things that I really don't think I should have to deal with. (I was actually just interviewed on the subject by PC World! How cool is that?) One the other hand, you've got some exciting new things just around the corner.
     
    While I really want to get one of the new portables, I think I'm going to wait around until Merom comes out later this year. Why? Well, first I think that Merom - Intel's upcoming 64bit chip - will be a little more future proof than the current MB selection. There's a great article from Tom's Hardware regarding the leap that Merom could be from current processors. From the article:


    Yesterday, we also mentioned that Intel expects Merom to gain 20% more performance compared to Core Duo; Conroe promises performance increases of 40% over Pentium D 950 while decreasing power consumption by the same amount; and Woodcrest is forecasted to achieve an 80% jump in speed coupled with a 35% drop in power over today's dual-core Xeon DP 2.8 GHz. "Merom is the best processor we have ever built," summed up Pat Gelsinger, who runs Intel's digital enterprise group. Gelsinger added that Merom will be the most power-efficient processor on the market, and will give Intel a "very strong position" - strong enough, in fact, that Intel no longer feels the need to develop an integrated memory controller for Merom at this time.
    Those are some pretty big claims, but other benchmarks (here and here) seem to justify the position that Merom will be a significant step up from Core Duo. I know that there's always the danger of waiting a few months for that "next great thing" that's just around the corner. I hope that's not what I'm doing in this case.
     
    I'm also planning to wait for a few of the quality control problems to be fix. The new MacBook seems to have many of these beat - probably due to their construction being handled by a different manufacturer - but reports are still cropping up about the whine (and it's a little early to tell). I plan on using this laptop for at least 3-4 years, so I want to make sure that Apple's Intel growing pains get worked out before I snatch one up. I don't want to buy an adolescent notebook - I was awkard enough at that stage...
     
    What say you? Are you waiting for Merom or Conroe or are you perfectly content with the current offerings?
  • Swad
    Porn: Creative activity (writing or pictures or films etc.) of no literary or artistic value other than to stimulate sexual desire

    I'd say this fits the bill. Follow the link for all the unpacking and taking-apart thrills you can handle.
     
    Macbook...
     

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