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First Phone Out of Microsoft-Nokia -- and It's an Android
An anonymous reader writes BBC reports that the first phone resulting from the Microsoft-Nokia merger has been announced: the Nokia X2. And foiling everybody's ability to guess what OS it would run on, the answer is Android. But this being Microsoft, do expect some embrace-and-extend — the user interface is similar to the Windows phone. And it is being offered as a way to hook users into its cloud-based services, several of which come pre-installed as apps. Is this the first Linux product being offered by Microsoft? Can we upgrade Microsoft's social rating from CCC to CCC+?
Use the best tool for the job.
Buying an android phone from Microsoft? Isn't that a little like buying a firearm from the Brady Campaign?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
But does it run Android? It would be interesting to run a custom mod on this.
I can remember just a couple of months ago, when Microsoft hosted a tournament for Killer Instinct on the Xbox One. There was a bit of an uproar from the competitors and from the various streaming websites covering the event because Microsoft banned non-Windows phones at the competition venue (and, of course, gave out Windows phones to all of the competitors so they could have product placement on the streaming sites). As far as I know, that ban was never lifted and the tournament went on that way.
The idea that MS would then turn around and release an Android phone after pushing their Windows phones that hard seems like a complete turnaround.
Is this something from Marxist dictionary, comrades?
Nearly, but try the next volume to the left on your shelf, the Marketing dictionary.
Actually, it's been mentioned here once or twice.
my, your, his/her/its, our, your, their
I'm, you're, he's/she's/it's, we're, you're, they're
Microsoft's social rating is somewhere between "Nuke From Orbit" and "Kill With Fire", at this point any upgrades are really just choosing how far away from the building you are when you rid the world of a virulent plague. Personally I would just as soon remain far away. Even Amazon can release an android phone... and at least they're somewhat honest about why they're doing it.
I wouldn't say MS is a "major" kernel contributor. They've submitted a number of patches so that their Hyper-V VM so that Linux servers can run Windows in VM. But even with contributions they ranked in 2012 as #17. I don't see them actually contributing anything more than that.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Let's see: Slashdot posters legitimate duties
* Stay on topic
* Don't talk shit
How's our poster doing on those? Not so hot? Well, they're trying to do other things, let's see how they're doing on those- they must be doing them well if they're ignoring their legitimate duties, right?
* Provide factual commentary
* Engage in discussion
* Educate other posters about the article topic
Oh, you mean he sucks at all those, too!?
Hmm...
Contrary to what the summary says, I'm pretty sure when you install unix your social rating goes down, not up.
that Microsoft bought Xenix in the 80s, and rewrote all their code in C at that time for portability to any platform, any OS.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Contrary to what the summary says, I'm pretty sure when you install unix your social rating goes down, not up.
That's why I stick to Plan 9 ... oh wait!
Is it because Windows is to slow on the low end hardware that they need to offer an Android phone?
The phone don't have access to Play store, so it can't be due to the many Android Apps they are doing it.
Have they never heard of the Nokia Lumia Windows Phone? That was the actual first one. Saying it was released pre-merger so it had nothing to do with Microsoft when it's a Windows phone is pretty stupid and inaccurate.
With all the evidence out there of bad things Microsoft repeatedly do to their own customers over the years, it boggles my mind how anyone still trusts anything Microsoft does now enough to even buy a Microsoft product.
I personally would never do so or even trust any Microsoft product with any personal data.
Their standard strategy is actually to create something that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike the best tool for the job.
I fully expect that Microsoft's contribution to the Android ecosystem will end up like Ebola's contribution to human society.
Hopefully the carnage will remain confined to few localities and not spread significantly.
Coming soon to Visual Sudio: Visual Dalvik!
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
You get more from Microsoft and it is free !!!
"the user interface is similar to the Windows phone. And it is being offered as a way to hook users into its cloud-based services"
Can we upgrade Microsoft's social rating from CCC to CCC+?
For the benefit of those, such as myself, who did not get the reference, CCC is a low bond credit rating.
Also, a couple of things to keep in mind here about the history of MS corporate strategy. First, MS has a record of adopting (e. g. Kerberos) or imposing (e.g. OpenXML) open standards for the purpose of corrupting or abusing those standards. A record of unscrupulous behavior breeds distrust and it would be reasonable to suspect that MS could have something similar on mind for the Android platform. Good summary of the Kerberos episode here:
Secondly, and more innocuously, someone at MS might have wised up and realized that profits from their Android patent licensing would be better than losses from another round of failed MS OS phone investment.
and their goal is to make money. Given the lack of popularity of Microsoft's mobile platform, it makes far more sense to ship Android devices with their products layered on top than it does to ship a fully Microsoft phone that will likely have limited uptake.
According to the most recent contributions, MS doesn't even show up. So MS only contributed enough to Linux to make sure that their product would work. I still don't consider that a major contribution.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
... but Microsoft had to use lots of FSF tools such as ... gcc. When they have their own compiler toolchains.
That must had to smell like defeat.
EGA is the name of the game in the Android. Embrace & Get Assimilated.
All your bases are now belong to us.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
This phone isn't running true Android, it's a port of Android, but using Xenix as the base OS.
For those of you on Slashdot who are not old farts like myself, google "Xenix" to find out what it is. It's part of Microsoft's "Embrace and Extend" policy to use something they own to create a whole new version of an existing popular phone/tablet OS....
And if anyone believe what I'm saying, even for a second, you need to find a BBS for the less naive....
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Microsoft has a long and interesting Linux/FOSS history.
I remember in the late 90s, Microsoft actually released a Front Page Server Extensions module for Apache on Linux, so people using FP could publish sites to Linux servers.
During the early 2000s, MS shipped a bunch of GPL'd stuff via the Interix/SFU product.
Currently, System Center (enterprise management tool) can also monitor and manage Linux machines along side windows (and Mac) machines.
As noted elsewhere, Microsoft has made Linux a 1st class scenario for Hyper-V on-premise and Azure hosted uses.
Microsoft has opened some its internal projects to the external community, with acceptable licenses, and Microsoft has also contributed to existing FOSS projects where it has made sense. Internally, "should we use existing FOSS" or "should we open source this?" are questions that are coming up now where in the past, they never did, and asking them would get you some funny looks.
In the future, you're going to see Microsoft doing a better job of meeting customers in mixed/heterogenous settings. We've got a new CEO that has provided this guidance to the entire company. The market changes have certainly become too large to ignore, but the bottom line is that we're adapting.
On the business side, getting some of a customer's business is better than getting none of their business.
As always, we partner with everybody and we compete against everybody. For example, I sit in a building where most of the developers here work on Microsoft's own ERP products, yet I worked on features that let Visual Studio talk to SAP.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
This device was developed by Nokia long before the buyout and is ready to go to market, the Nokia name still moves lots of product in the key market for this device: India. Get them hooked, in two years Windows phone OS will displace this temporary line (it's already started with the 8.1 hardware spec, which effectively permits any Android-capable hardware to run Windows Phone, on-screen buttons, no camera button etc...) Most consumers won't even know they're changing OS. Microsoft would be stupid to ditch this.
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "we have a protractor"
Back i n 2k7 when Microsoft bought Aquantive they sold AdManager as a Linux, solaris and windows application for 2 years before the shut down the AdManager services.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
AFAIK, Microsoft makes more money off patents they own on Android than they make from Windows Phone. Now they are just implementing on their Android business B-)
Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
I worked on features that let Visual Studio talk to SAP.
Well, that explains the rest of your post.
Stick Men
Clearly, this was a phone that was developed and ready before the merger, probably already in production. Microsoft is deciding that rather than dump whatever inventory was produced, they'll sell it. Smart move. It would be more telling if they released another Android phone in six to nine months.
Not exactly Linux, but Microsoft has Xenix in the late 1970s.
The military still had them during this century. Not many, but they were still in use.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
I remember seeing the gcc compiler on an MSDN disk just before the "open source is a cancer" marketing thing happened from MS.
Wish I had mod points. You made my day :-)
GPL3 can take away your patents. It doesn't say anything about software patents specifically. Which makes sense, because as any software engineer or systems engineer knows, there's really no such thing as a software patent.
There are patents on mechanisms. Some of those mechanisms could be implemented via software. In fact, most them could be. Most of them could also be implemented with wood, steel, or plastic. Whether you make it from wood, from plastic, or from electrons, it's essentially the same machine, in many cases.
Then of course there are also bogus patents, which don't describe a mechanism at all.
There's language that can apply to patents in GPLv2. IANAL, and I haven't heard of case law on this, but I'd consult a lawyer before contributing patents to a GPLed project.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I'm curious what language you're thinking of.
Certainly if you contribute anything which implements your patent to ANY public project, that could be construed as implied permission for people to use the whatever you contributed. That really has little to do with GPL, though.
GPLv3 affects patents that have nothing whatsoever to do with any contribution you make, if you mirror the project on Github or similar.
#17 for the year 2012. MS made some contributions that year so that Linux would work with their Hyper-V VM. That's my point. Overall MS has contributed very little code compared to Red Hat over the lifetime of Linux.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
That's an interesting reading of it, and I can see how one might figure that the wording IMPLIES they'd prefer that. I can also see that if you have a patent LICENSE, restrictions placed on you by the license do not excuse you from the GPL.
What it says is that if you CAN'T distribute under the GPL without violating the patent license, you shouldn't violate the patent license by distributing anyway. However, if you OWN the patent, that paragraph doesn't apply - I COULD grant a patent license, I just choose not to.
Of course the big difference is GPL2 just doesn't give you permission to violate a patent license - GPL3 effectively revokes your patents, even patents that have nothing to do with any code you contributed.