Apple will use ZFS in Leopard

Apple keeps on the way of innovation. I just read that they will use ZFS as primary files ystem in the next version of OsX. This is an interesting news because ZFS is a very interesting file system.

Unfortunately free software community won't have any support to ZFS because of the license incompatibility between GPL and CDDL. PIty, it has nice features.

One of the most interesting one is the native support to snapshots. This helps creating wonderful backup strategies as those implemented in project such Time Machine.

I hope that ext4 will integrate the work made in ext3cow project.

ODF bills have failed right now

As reported here, almost all the attempts to mandate the use of ODF in public administrations in the U.S. have failed. Only Massachusetts and (very partially) Minnesota require the use of open format.

Despite the pressure of IBM and the ODF Alliance, all the bills have been rejected. It's a pity. In Europe, it seems a little better: France, Norway, Belgium and Denmark, national governments are planning to switch to open formats.

I think that the existence of closed formats is what really stops many from using free software. The concept is easy enough, even for politicians: do whatever you want with your computer, but let me do what I want with mine. Without free formats this is not possible.

Next time you receive some MS word attachments in your mail, send it back to whom sent to you asking for a free document :-).

I wonder why...

... if Microsoft can do something like this or this, sells things like this.

Apple uses LED displays... what's missing now?

Yesterday Apple upgraded the macbook pro series. The upgrade concerns the amount of memory, the processors and the display.

In my opinion the display is the most interesting upgrade.

The amount of memory is not interesting at all: it's just marketing and common upgrading; there's no innovation in adding some memory.

The processor is the new Santa Rosa by Intel. Nice, but not a revolution as it was the Centrino technology.

The new display is very nice. A new technology that has lots of advantages: it saves power, it is more eco-compatible, it is brighter, faster and more uniform illumination. I really think that LED is the next-generation for displays.

So, nice work, but what's still missing?

• Flash-memory based hard disks. Hard disks are the weakest link of the chain. They are slow, it's easy to break them if you are moving, they use lot of power. If we replace common hard disks with flash-memories, we can overcome all this problems and I suspect that suspend/resume and hibernation would be even more powerful
• Loooonnnngggeeer battery-life. Laptops are fine as they are. They are enough powerful, but the battery doesn't last enough. I know it's a very hard problem to solve, but in order to have a very nomadic computing we need to improve the battery life dramatically. We may also think to implement some energy scavenging ideas into our device.
  
• Connections. We need to be as connected as possible. Using any medium. Like wired networks, wi-fi networks, mobile phones, wi-max, whatever. And everything should work seamlessly with the highest transparency for the user. Ideally the user should not be aware that the network medium changes and it should continue to work. All the dirty work must be delegated to the system.
• Be eco-compatible. Use recycled and recyclable materials.
• Open standards. For anything. For example, the docking station should be standard, so that one can plug any laptop in any docking station.
  

EyeOs

EyeOs 1.0 has been released. For those who don't know EyeOs is a web-based operating system. I tried it quite often in the last months and I've to say that it's not bad. Not at all.

The look and feel is nice, clean and simple. It doesn't have many applications right now, but it seems more a prototype than a finished product. Unfortunately the built-in web browser doesn't support any webapp right now. It doesn't matter too much: in order to use EyeOs, you must have a browser (say Firefox), and you can use the same browser to use the webapps you like. I know it's not too nice to have a whole operating system that can manage windows and using something external to manage your browser.

For the future, I'd like to see some support to AJAX built into the EyeOs browser.

It seems to me that in Italy, site's accessibility is not the goal

Yesterday I saw an adv on the national tv, here in Italia. They were advertising their new web site, so this morning I checked out the new site. It's awful. From the point of view of accessibility is awful. After the horrible experiment of italia.it, I hoped that they had learned their lesson, but I was wrong.

1. First of all it opens a pop-up with ads. It is quite unfair, because Italian people pays for the national tv, so I would expect at least no ads pop-up.
2. Second it uses massively flash technologies. I don't think flash is the most usable technology for many reasons: it is not free, it is not available anywhere, it is not designed for d-people, you can hardly cut and paste from flash stuffs, ...
   I agree that sometimes flash can be used to bring some interactiveness that is not available through standard html or javascript, but in this site it is only used for a menu with highlighted entries. This is unacceptable!
3. Neither the html parts are standard. Check out this...
4. They use real media for their streaming.

It's a pity because they are losing a chance to build a nice project. If I were them, I would have taken different decisions:

1. Use free codecs for streaming
2. Use only plain html: you can do wonderful sites with html and css, if you are able.
3. Use podcasts, and use them well. One single podcast for each single program.
4. Use youtube, google video, democracyplayer and whatever to distribute your contents.
5. License everything as CC
   

2010 according to Apple... in 1988

In 1988 Apple released this video showing their vision on the future.

Well, they were quite , don't you think?

I'd like to know their vision about 2030, now.