Haiku OS!

I have been following Haiku off and on since about Alpha 1 release back in September 2009. Now as of this past June, Haiku has reached a new milestone, Alpha 3! But before we get into all the juicy details of Haiku, we first need to understand it's background and history.



Back in the mid to late 90's, there was a company named Be Inc. which produced a computer called the Be Box. This Be Box ran an Operating System developed at Be Inc. called Be OS. Be OS was and still is today considered by many one of the most advanced Operating Systems in existance. Be OS had features that no other OS had at the time or since. Be OS was a pervasive multithreading, Preemptive-Multitasking, Symmetric Multiprocessing OS with protected memory for user and system processes!



Be Inc. and Be OS enjoyed a small but loyal fanbase, many of whom are still loyal today! But the future of the Be OS was in jeapordy when Be Inc. went out of business. Since the Be OS was proprietary, it's users had no upgrade path, nor could they fork it. All seened lost when some loyal Be OS users decided to reimplement all of Be OS back in 2001. They wanted the new Be OS clone to be binary and source code compatible with Be OS 5.0. In this way they could continue using the native Be OS programs unmodified, without a recompile(if the source code was available). The Be OS clone was named OpenBeOS.



OpenBeOS had some trouble though! It used the name "BeOS" which was owned at the time by Palm Inc. The new project was facing a lawsuit if they did not change the name, they did. OpenBeOS was renamed to Haiku in 2004. One may ask why the name Haiku! What is a Haiku? Haiku is a form of Japanese 3 line poetry. The old BeOS used Haiku as their error messages! Sure beats cryptic messages by a long shot!



Haiku did not see a first Alpha release until 2009, followed by Alpha 2 in 2010 and Alpha 3 in June 2011. Now I will show some screenshots of my Haiku install. Please note, the background image was changed from the default which is blue with the Haiku logo.



This image is of the Haiku Desktop.







Next is a image of Web Positive (browser) file manager, About Haiku, and the menu























For some reason the last vertical inch or two of the screen did not get captured!



In case you were wondering, Haiku is licensed under the MIT license. While not copyleft, it is a GPL compatible Free Software license! What makes me drool when I boot Haiku is that it is far from being completed, but even still it is awesome and useable! One of my favorate features of a plethora of cool features in Haiku is the ability to see and change the priority of threads! Apart from the GUI which itself is different, yet familiar; Haiku looks and feels unique, simple, and easy(except for the lack of some features in Alpha 3 release). For more information about Haiku visit the following sites.



www.haiku-os.org

www.haiku-files.org

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku_OS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_OS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_Inc

Sony Vs. Hotz continued

I have been following the court case for the last few months since my last post. What I have read leaves me very concerned and angry! Just today I read a post about the Hotz case on wired.com. "Magistrate Joseph Spero in San Francisco granted Sony the right to acquire the internet IP addresses of anybody who had visited Hotz’s website from January of 2009 onward" This means that Sony will know exactly who has visited Hotz's website and possibly who to sue for using the PS3 hack! "Sony has also won subpoenas for data from YouTube and Google, as well as Twitter account data linked to Hotz, who goes by the handle GeoHot." This also means all content about the hack will be conveniently erased from the aforementioned sites.

"Respected for his iPhone hacks and now the PlayStation 3 jailbreak, the 21-year-old New Jersey man is accused of breaching the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and other laws after his website published an encryption key and software tools that allow PlayStation 'owners' to gain 'complete control' of their consoles from the firmware on up. Hotz has complied with a court order and removed the hack." (emphasis added) This paragraph made me sick! Why can't a "owner" of a PS3 gain "complete control" of their consoles? If they own it, they should have the right to do with it as they wish. It seems as if Sony believes they retain all ownership rights to their devices even after it has been bought by the consumer.

"The DMCA prohibits the trafficking of so-called “circumvention devices” designed to crack copy-protection 'schemes'." Yes, it is a scheme all-right! An evil one at that. "The law, however, does not require Sony to prove that Hotz received payment for the hack, which was designed to allow PlayStation 3 owners the ability to run home-brewed software or alternative operating systems like Linux." If I had a PS3, I would want to install Linux on it! To completely remove the PS3 firmware and all PS3 software. But since this lawsuit has come up, I will not get a chance to tinker with my own property! No wait, it is Sony's property, my bad.:(

Please consider the following. Suppose you were (by accident of course) watching pornography, and all of a sudden a message popped up! "The manufacturer does not allow pornography to be processed with this graphics card!" You would be confused and irate at the arrogance of the manufacturer to impose it's will on you! You would say "I own this card, and I should have the right to view any content I want!" And for the most part you do, except for the little problem of "Digital Rights Management" I like to call it "Digital Restrictions Management". But this is a subject for another post.

The real problem is Sony is not alone! Many if not most electronics manufacturers have the same view! What would happen if someone created a hack that allowed the installation of homebrew software on the X-box? Would Microsoft stand up for the property rights of the people who bought the hacked X-box? I doubt it. To me, this court case will decide if the people who bought the PS3 are the owners or if Sony is! This is not a security issue, it is a property rights issue! Everyone should be concerned and watchful regarding this issue of electronic property rights! If the courts can take that away, then watch out!

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/03/playstation-hacker-paypal/

Sony Vs. Hotz lawsuit!

I have known for a while now that Sony has prevented people from running GNU/Linux or any other "untrusted" software. About a week ago, I watched a video on the net about a group of hackers who had managed to install GNU/Linux on the PS3. As I understand it, every program is digitally signed by Sony using private keys to verify that the program is authorized. What the group of hackers did was to find a way to use these keys to digitally sign "unauthorized" software, including GNU/Linux. What this means is with this hack, users of PS3's can run GNU/Linux on their systems again! Just a few years ago, users of the PS3 could install GNU/Linux on their system in a hyper-visor mode, like a virtual machine. When Sony released a firmware update back in 2007 I think, this feature was disabled! This angered many in the GNU/Linux and hacker community.

Sony is using the "Digital Millennium Copyright Act" and the "Computer Fraud and Abuse Act" as the basis for the lawsuit. According to Sony, users do not have the right to modify their own property! A more frightening idea is that Sony actually believes that they retain ownership rights of their products, even after it has been sold! This is the ideology that Sony is portraying in this lawsuit!

If Sony wins the lawsuit, they would be setting the precedent that any and all hardware manufacturers can and should control the usage of their product and that they retain all legal ownership of their products! This should not be! The users of the product should retain any and all ownership rights to the product they bought. This idea of companies retaining control and ownership of their products is similar in many ways to "imminent domain", both being wrong and immoral!

Lets imagine for a minute that Hewlett Packard decided to sue people for installing any other Operating System than Microsoft Windows! Or say they decided to sue people for installing Open Office/Libre Office instead of Microsoft Office! Would we sit on our hands and do nothing while HP attempts to destroy user freedoms and property rights? I would hope not. I would hope that thousands of disgruntled users would be protesting at HP headquarters! Why not do the same to Sony? Maybe it is because many people do not see the Playstation 3 as a computer, but just a game console, a gadget. Regardless the reason, people should be demanding the right to use their device, which they own, and do with it what they will!

The problem is the hackers are not rich, and can not afford to hire lawyers like Sony can! So already, they are at a disadvantage. Our legal system is flawed, so flawed in fact if you have enough money, you can pay your way out of prison with good expensive lawyers! Someone needs to set up a legal defense fund for these people, to make sure they at least have a good defense team. Now there may be many of you who believe I have gone nuts for wanting to defend criminals! Who said they were criminals?

There is a misconception out there started mostly by the media, and proprietary software companies that hackers are bad people. Truth be told, hackers are responsible for the computer revolution, the Internet, and most all technological advances. Hackers are people who are talented at making something do it wasn't originally designed to do, kind of like making the PS3 run GNU/Linux! Crackers are people who break into computers and computer networks either for the pleasure or for money. Crackers are in a totally different class than hackers for the reason that they have different reasons and goals. Hackers do what they do for the community at large, while crackers do what they do for personal gain! Hackers usually hack for the benefit of all. they love finding out how something works and make it do different. This is O.K. if they own the device in question. And if they hack another's device, it is at the request and consent of the owner.

That is all I want to say about this matter at this time, I may write another post as the lawsuit progresses. Stay Free!

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/01/sony-v-hotz-sony-sends-dangerous-message