Whether you like it or not, de facto standards do exist and do work as standards.
Frozen or not..
Python is definitely not frozen. It is growing and evolving, with an active community headed by a guy who is called the "Benevolent Dictator for Life" (the title is a joke but actually pretty accurate). ObjectiveC is not frozen either; it is pretty much owned by Apple at this point.
A standardization body, will not be subject to sudden ideas of it's maker.
WebM is frozen. Just like H.264 is also frozen. There are no "sudden ideas" for either of these two.
So, in summary:
0) de facto standards can work as well as standards that came out of standards organizations
1) it is possible for things like Python and ObjectiveC to grow and evolve and improve without an official standards organization
2) standards organizations are completely irrelevant to both H.264 and WebM because they are frozen standards
I think I'm done explaining this. If you don't get it yet, you aren't going to. If you are a troll just seeing how much of my time you can waste, congratulations on your success.
You seem to be missing my point. There are de facto standards and they work. It is not necessary to have a standards organization define something.
For example, what standards organization governs the Python language? None; the Python community and Guido van Rossum make the decisions, and their decisions define the standard for the language. Would Python be better somehow if ISO were in charge of it? I think not.
Why do you care whether a standards board wrote the WebM standard? It's frozen now, and all anyone needs to know is how to write a decoder for it, or an encoder. Just as all anyone needs to know about H.264 is how to write an encoder or a decoder. It's the same situation; they are both frozen specs.
Why use anything different that is not a standard allready.
Because you can use WebM for free, without asking permission. To use H.264 you need the permission of MPEG LA, which may or may not involve licensing fees but always involves getting their permission (or at least following their rules; many uses are currently permitted without fee and for those uses you just need to obey their rules). And they can change the rules or the fees at any time until the patents run out.
Debian GNU/Linux, for example, cannot ship H.264 support, because of the legal issues. Debian can ship WebM, and does. That is a pretty big reason to choose WebM. And what do you have to put up against it? "Don't use it because the standard wasn't developed by a standards body?" Why do you even care?
the keyboards at the time Rogue (and vi) came out didn't _have_ cursor keys
Not quite true. At the time of Rogue and vi, you would use a "dumb terminal" to connect to a multi-user ("time-sharing") computer. Most dumb terminals had arrow keys; the most popular dumb terminal of all time, the VT100, certainly did.
But there was a common terminal, the ADM-3A, that did not have arrow keys. As others have noted here, it did have little arrows drawn on the H, J, K, and L keys, respectively left, down, up, and right; you were expected to use Ctrl+H to go left, Ctrl+J to go down, and so on. vi and Rogue permitted you to juse use the bare keys (the H key instead of Ctrl+H to go left, and so on).
vi was specifically designed to be usable on any dumb terminal. The ADM-3A didn't have any function keys, but other terminals did; so in vi you could bind macros to function keys, and you could invoke the macros using "#1" (a two-character sequence, '#' and then '1') for function key F1, and so on. But if you were on a terminal that had function keys, you could just use them.
First of all WebM is no standard, what standardizations committee governs it.
I didn't say it was a standard that came out of a standards body. Not all standards do.
IP networking was first documented in 1974. Over the next few years it came into wide use as a standard, and computers and equipment using IP networking were able to talk to each other. But it wasn't formally standardized until 1981. By your definition of a standard, IP networking wasn't "a standard" until 1981, right? Yet curiously, it still worked before 1981.
Between 1974 and 1981, IP networking was a de facto standard. Perhaps in your mind that isn't any kind of standard at all, but I assure you that computers were able to talk to each other.
Likewise, I can watch a WebM video in my web browser, and neither the video nor the web browser care whether or not a formal standards body wrote a bunch of documents describing the format.
It is a legitimate complaint to say that WebM needs better specification documents, or more specifically, VP8 needs better specs. (I believe that both the Matroska container format and the Vorbis audio coder are well-documented.) Right now, the standard for VP8 is basically "if the VP8 decoder can decode it, it's legal VP8, and by the way here is the code for the VP8 decoder".
But to say that the specification documents need to be improved is not the same thing as saying that WebM isn't any kind of a standard. As I said, my web browser plays WebM videos just fine. If I download them, my media player plays them just fine too.
A standard doesn't need to be from a formal standards body to be useful. It doesn't even need to have a good specification document. It just needs to work well, and WebM works well as a standard.
we users should shun WebM as long as it's not governed by a third-party standardization organizations
Why?
H.264 is a frozen standard. If you want to implement it, you have to conform to that standard.
WebM is a frozen standard. If you want to implement it, you have to conform to that standard.
How is the one any better or worse than the other?
Why should we care what the history of development of the standard was? Both are frozen.
But only one standard requires that the user buy a patent license, and that standard is not WebM. So if you don't want to pay royalties, or if you want to be able to distribute free software that is not encumbered by patents, WebM is the clear choice.
Step 4: Profit (cmon, this is the one time this meme is appropriate, Google want to make a profit from YouTube).
The profit comes from selling ads.
The WebM thing is just a way for Google to control their costs, without losing control of their business.
They could encode everything in MPEG1 H.261 and not have to worry about patents; but then the files would be huge and they would have their net connections totally saturated with all the extra bits. That would be stupid.
They could encode everything in MPEG4 H.264, and then once their whole business was committed, the MPEG Licensing Authority could raise the royalties to crazy levels, and Google would have absolutely no choice but to just pay up. That would be stupid.
By using WebM, which is not as good as H.264 but is not too much horribly worse, Google gets reasonable file sizes, reasonable network traffic, and can predict exactly how much in royalties the will need to pay in the future (i.e., zero).
WebM is a purely defensive move, to keep costs down. So, yeah, profit, because profit is revenues minus costs. But Google isn't trying to extract money out of WebM.
My prediction is that H.264 will continue to have its users; it is still the best video coder out there (where "best" means highest visual quality per encoded bit; or, to put it another way, smallest output file for a given quality level). But WebM means that the MPEG Licensing Authority will be less able to extract large amounts of money out of the video community. (They hate that.)
Before you post a comment about how the antitrust authorities would never permit Google to buy all the music industry, read TFA or at least this extract:
Of course, the anti-trust authorities around the world would definitely have something to say about this, so it might be necessary to tweak the idea a little.
How about if a consortium of leading Internet companies - Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Baidu, Amazon etc. - jointly bought the entire music industry, and promised to license its content to anyone on a non-discriminatory basis?
Oh, one more thing: to really compete with PhotoShop, Gimp would need professional color calibration features. But there seem to be IP issues, and incorporating them into GIMP would be problematic. Again, I am not an expert on these issues. But as I understand it, high bit depths are planned for GIMP, but Pantone color features are not.
And they cheated and used pre-made 2x4s, pre-made plywood sheets, and I'll bet those lazy jerks used power tools instead of hand-made brass tools. Why did those kids even bother! It's not authentic.
Or, perhaps you didn't mean to criticize the school kids; maybe you meant to criticize Slashdot for using the term "life-sized". Well, here's a pro tip for you: people will often use inexact language. I'm pretty sure that in this context, "life-sized" means "much bigger than a little model, so big that actual people can fit inside it" rather than "a 1:1 scale model based on the most meticulous research available". If you think this is bad, try reading a news story discussing radiation levels at the Fukushima reactors.
P.S. To the high school students who worked on this project: my hat is off to you. That is seriously cool, and it is real. It's easy for people to talk about things, but it's much more impressive to actually make things.
The GIMP guys are working towards support for 16 bits per channel. I was hoping to learn about the progress toward that, but I didn't see it discussed here; mostly people were griping about UI.
As I understand it, the GIMP core engine has 8 bits per channel pretty much hard-wired into it and it would be a pain to fix that. Instead, the GIMP guys have been working on a new engine called GEGL, and this was designed from the ground up to handle higher bit depths and to allow non-destructive editing. I believe GIMP 2.8 is the target for full GEGL integration. GIMP 2.7.x has GEGL partly integrated (used in some filters).
Meanwhile, if you need something like GIMP that supports high bit depth right now, take a look at CinePaint, a fork of GIMP hacked to support 16 bits per plane; it has been used for post-processing in movies. According to Wikipedia, it has fallen out of use because GIMP can do anything it can do; but that seems wrong to me, because GIMP doesn't have 16 bit per plane support yet.
I was really hoping that people who know about this stuff would post about it here.
They are proposing a new language, with new syntax, requiring new libraries... that runs on the JVM.
Since Oracle owns the JVM and is trying to find ways to extract money from it, a new language that requires the JVM seems pointless.
If you just want better syntax, why not use one of the existing JVM languages such as Scala?
If you are pioneering a completely new language, why not pioneer a new virtual machine, and lawyer up and make sure Oracle doesn't have any grounds to sue you?
Death threats against Democrats are given the "aw, shucks" treatment.
References, please. When did this happen? Who specifically said it was "aw, shucks" for a Democrat to receive death threats?
Because I remember the news media spending weekschiding Republicans and Tea Party members for an "extreme tone", while the same news media was much less interested in actual death threats made against Republicans.
It was big news that Sarah Palin's campaign used marks to indicate cities on a map, and the news media endlessly discussed how serious it is that Sarah Palin used words like "target" and "reload" when talking about election plans. It wasn't news at all that Democrat ads have used bullseyes, or even put a crosshairs with reticle over a Republican. That crosshairs looks like a rifle scope to me.
I remember that it was big news when a Republican shouted "You lie!" at President Obama, but it was not big news when a Wisconsin Democrat shouted "You're f***king dead!" at a Wisconsin Republican. (Nobody thinks it was a sincere threat of murder, but it still seems like a poor example of the more civil "new tone" talked about in recent months.)
Are you telling me that the same news media that was all over the Republican "extreme tone" downplayed actual death threats against Democrats?
Citation needed.
Disclaimer: I am neither a Republican nor a Democrat; I am a minarchist libertarian. I am not a fan of extremist rhetoric on either side, I am not a fan of death threats, and I am not a fan of double standards.
The limits of my C# knowledge stand revealed. I do not know very much about this stuff, at all.
Are you saying that Mono is fundamentally broken, because this feature is essential to Mono? Would it be possible to rewrite Mono to not use this feature, if Microsoft ever started asserting this patent?
And, while I am not a patent lawyer, isn't it generally true that the more specific the patent, the easier it is to work around the patent?
Also, this patent expires in 2021, so it must have been filed in 2001, which is after C# and.NET were introduced. Thus, while I am not an expert in this stuff, I think this cannot by itself destroy Mono as a platform.
Or, would you say that this patented technique is firmly embedded in current practice and in practice not possible to remove?
In any event, I thank you for providing a specific example, the first I have seen in the years I have been reading about C# and Mono.
As I understand it, here is the chief complaint that people have about Mono: Microsoft could have some sort of patents that could apply to Mono; and Microsoft could in the future use these patents to do something bad.
I have never seen any specific examples given, it's just a general "there could be some patents" argument. In fact, I believe the theory is that these could be "submarine" patents, not known now but lurking invisibly.
Here's a specific example. This is a long essay about this very issue. What is the danger if we use Mono? "[C#] was developed inside Microsoft, so it's likely they have many patents to cover different aspects of its implementation." Got that? "it's likely" Microsoft has "many patents". Citation needed.
This is the 21st Century, and patents are not only public, there are patent search engines. Where are the specific examples?
The situation is even crazier due to the passage of time. Microsoft introduced.NET in the year 2000. It is now the year 2011. Patents in the USA today have a term of 20 years. Presumably these submarine patents were not filed the same year as.NET was introduced; that would be far too obvious... they were probably filed a year or two ahead of time. So presumably these patents have a maximum life of under 9 years, and probably under 7 years.
In the past 11 or 12 years, nobody has noticed these deadly patents, lurking. But wait: these could be true "submarine" patents, where the patent was filed but not granted yet, and Microsoft is using sleazy tricks to extend the filing period and delay granting the patents. This implies that the patent must have been filed before 1995, when the US patent system was changed (patent term went from "17 years after patent granted" to "20 years after patent filed", specifically to fix the problem of submarine patents). Thus, a true "submarine" patent would have to have been kept going via sleazy tricks for over 16 years now, and nobody has noticed it yet.
So, if I understand correctly, we shouldn't use Mono because it could be a trap. Microsoft could have patents nobody has noticed for a dozen years that will expire within the next nine years that could apply to Mono. Or else they could have pending patent applications that have been pending for over 16 years without anybody noticing; those would apply for 17 years after the patent grant finally occurs in the future.
And if the above turns out to be true, and you wrote a program in C#, what would Microsoft's remedy be? Would you be forced to pay them huge sums of money? Would you be forced to give ownership of your source code to Microsoft? Not likely, and anybody who claims it is likely needs to provide legal precedents showing such a remedy in a similar case. No, the only realistic remedy would be that you would have to choose between buying some sort of licensed version of Mono (to comply with the patent licensing terms), or stop using Mono.
And the obvious exit strategy is to rewrite your C# app in Java. That would be a pain, granted, but hardly the end of the world.
And that is even assuming that Microsoft was successful in asserting these hidden patents. After offering C# up as a free standard, and not taking any action for a dozen years, to suddenly assert hidden patents would leave Microsoft wide open to the "unclean hands" legal doctrine. It's hard for me to imagine Microsoft prevailing in this.
And nobody has yet proposed a motive why Microsoft should do this. How does Microsoft gain by backstabbing the C# community? In the near term they could gain some patent licensing fees, but in the long term they would be alienating people they have been trying to woo. How likely is this, really?
So, in conclusion: because of this nebulously scary potential situation with possible unknown Microsoft patents, Mono and C# are
Read this Ars review of the Xoom and tell me if it's something you really want to own.
Okay. I read it, and: The Xoom is something I really want to own.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: if you want the best, most polished tablet with the smoothest user experience, buy Apple. If you resent the iron grip of Apple over what you can do with your tablet, buy Android.
I'm a geek who resents Apple's iron grip, so I want Android. I realize that the Xoom is essentially unfinished, but the work is happening to add the missing features that the Ars review mentioned. For example, Flash works on my Xoom now; that's one down.
Give Android 3.0 another year of refinement, some better tablet apps, and some better hardware and it'll be truly comparable to the iPad.
I agree. And power users will favor the Android tablets over the iPad. Android tablets have a real file system, for example.
P.S. To the Apple fans reading this: note that I did not ever even once say that the vast majority of customers want the same thing I want. So, please don't accuse me of saying that, thanks. Indeed, I'll claim the opposite: most people don't care about the issues that matter most to me.
Thanks for the link to the "scripting layer for Android" stuff. One of the reasons I wanted a Xoom instead of an iPad is specifically to get Python.
It looks like a Bash shell is one of the interpreters you can install in SL4A. Do you get a complete set of command-line tools to go with it, or just something like BusyBox?
I know I'm weird, but I want Bash and vim running on my Xoom. (I have a Bluetooth keyboard, and it will work very well for vim. I'll just use the "map" and "map!" commands to bind the back-tick key to work as the Escape key and I'll be all set. If all else fails I can type Ctrl+[ for Escape.) I guess I should get some sort of Python IDE for Android, but nothing beats vim for getting lots of editing work done quickly.
What impresses me the most about Google is that they, as a company, have consistently taken actions that demonstrate long-term thinking. They will try things that have no short-term profit, just because in the long run they might either make a profit or defend the company's interests.
From the beginning, Google has helped Firefox out financially; more recently, Google made its own web browser. Why? Because it wasn't in Google's best interest for Microsoft to have any kind of leverage over the Internet, or in particular over which search engine is the default on computers. Remember how much market share Internet Explorer used to have? Displacing it once seemed hopeless, but Google went for it.
Google has poured resources into Android and continues to give it away. Why? Because it wasn't in Google's best interest for Apple to have leverage over the cell phone market, or in particular over which search engine is the default on cell phones.
Google spent about $100 million to buy On2, and then gave away the intellectual property they had bought. Why? Because the FSF wrote an open letter... nah, just messing with you to see if you are paying attention. Because, in the long run, Google's YouTube needs a suitable video format. If YouTube's business utterly depends on patented technology such as H.264, Google will have no choice but to comply with any and all demands from the licensing authority. Google is willing to not only spend the $100 million, but to pay more people to keep working on WebM (doing things like free reference designs for hardware decoders). Google doesn't ever expect to make money on WebM; it's purely a defensive move, to control long-term costs in the future. (Well, also, Google has lots of geeks like us who want to help keep web standards open.)
Heck, go all the way back to the early days of Google. They took the time to write a complete vertically integrated software stack, one which allowed them to get reliable performance out of dirt-cheap off-the-shelf hardware. The reason Sun was printing money during the Internet boom was that everybody who wanted a web server would buy an expensive, reliable Sun box to run it on; not Google, they used the High Availability stuff on Linux, and the elegant Google MapReduce, to weld together masses of cheap motherboards into a powerful and reliable server operation.
Remember the news stories about Google buying up the "dark fiber"? Google bought a bunch of optical fiber with no immediate use. Long-term thinking: "the stuff is cheap now; we have the money now; someday we'll have a use for this."
Google has a lot of other products and features, but for the most part those are just fun sidelines. When you are as big as Google, you can afford to do some side projects just for the heck of it, and all the better if they actually turn a profit.
Except for the sense that if you tried to make and sell your own IBM compatible PC you had to copy the BIOS
Are you saying that a platform isn't "open" unless third party clones of the hardware are available? I find that a very odd definition. You already saw my own definition: a platform is "open" if you are able to develop hardware or software for it without needing permission, and the information you need to do that development is available.
I agree that no third-party clones were intended to be permitted by IBM. I disagree that this means the IBM PC wasn't an open platform.
For an example of a closed platform, consider a game console, where you aren't allowed to distribute software for it without getting permission and approval from the company controlling the console, and paying royalties.
As I said, I don't think the IBM PC would have been a huge success had it not been open. If IBM were pre-approving apps, they would have refused to approve any word processors (might compete with their line of dedicated word processor machines), which would probably have been enough right there to sharply limit the success!
But I'll agree that there are degrees of being open, and that after the clones started to appear, the PC was even more open than before.
Eh? I'm not arguing that nobody was allowed to write software for IBM PCs or that the BIOS, I'm saying that nobody was able to make 100% IBM compatible PCs until elaborate "clean room" development was used to get around IBM's copyright on the BIOS.
You confused me with your comments about "any sort of remotely modern user interface, color, animation etc. required access to the IBM BIOS". Software always had access to the BIOS. Lack of a modern UI was not due to lack of access to the BIOS.
Of course I agree that IBM always meant for any PC-compatible computers to be sold by IBM. No need to drag UI into that discussion.
The only thing licensing would have been guaranteed to do was to reduce the amount of money they could charge for a Mac by eating in to their existing customer base.
Well, I can't prove anything; we will never know for sure. But I think they could have hugely grown their customer base. Customers were willing to pay serious money for a Mac in those days. A Motorola CPU and support chips might have cost more than an x86 in those days, but I doubt it was enough more to be a real deal-breaker. Apple was making margins of 50% on each machine, and people were paying it; had Apple licensed out the system software, they would for sure have made less per machine, but I think they could have hugely grown the install base, and become the new corporate standard for GUIs. Instead of businesses transitioning away from DOS apps and to Windows apps in the early 90's, businesses would have transitioned away from DOS apps and to Mac apps in the late 80's.
I believe that Apple milking their customers for 50% margins was a great short-term strategy but a terrible long-term strategy. Once Windows stopped sucking so hard, businesses adopted it, and Apple nearly went out of business. Had Apple gone for the Microsoft model of making less money per computer but making it on a huge number of computers, Apple could have had Microsoft-like growth numbers in the 90's instead of getting into trouble as they actually did.
Certainly now Apple is making good money with its boutique computers and walled garden. At this point, it is clear that Apple shouldn't try the Microsoft model.
But I can't prove anything and I'm not infallible. I could be completely wrong about everything.
Windows never took over the industry - it inherited it from DOS, and had to wait a long, long time for the old bastard to die.
Now you are just being silly. Of course Windows took over the industry: business computers stopped being sold with DOS, and started being sold with Windows. (In the early days it was really DOS+Windows, of course.)
Apple lost their initial lead because the Apple 3 was a complete lemon, not because of their business model!
I agree completely.
What everybody seems to conveniently forget is that The IBM PC was a closed, proprietary system
Nope, sorry, disagree. The IBM PC was open in every reasonable sense of the word: you didn't need permission from IBM to develop for it or distribute apps for it, and IBM didn't try to claim royalties on your apps for it; IBM fully published all specs, including circuit diagrams and I seem to recall they even offered a listing of the BIOS (I could be wrong on that last one, but that was back in the days when the Apple II line offered a source listing). Likewise, you didn't need permission to make plug-in cards for the original ISA bus of the original PC.
IBM didn't give away the BIOS, and IBM figured nobody could make a competing computer without copying the BIOS, but that doesn't make it a closed platform.
With "MicroChannel Architecture" IBM shifted to a bus spec that used IBM patented technology, and you could no longer make plug-in cards without licensing IBM's patents. That was an attempt to start to close the platform. Didn't work, though.
(I think it basically meant that if you paid IBM lots of money they'd let you build plug-in cards)
That was MicroChannel. The original was open.
software compatibility was restricted to command-line programs with character I/O.
Sorry, no. Character I/O was standard for several reasons: 0) the PC was really slow, and character-based apps were faster; 1) the graphics hardware wasn't standard; and 2) the graphics hardware sucked.
Some PCs were shipped with "monochrome" graphics, and didn't have a graphics mode. A third party sold a card called "Hercules" or something like that that offered high-resolution (for the time) monochrome graphics. IBM's own "CGA" adapter offered really poor color graphics, but most PCs didn't have that.
And DOS didn't do graphics. DOS apps that did graphics had to manage their own "drivers" for the various hardware options. Standard GUIs? Forget it, not until Windows standardized the market.
Any sort of remotely modern user interface, color, animation etc. required access to the IBM BIOS which was very much strictly (c) (r) IBM and only available on a kosher IBM PC.
Sorry, this point is just wrong. The IBM PC had a BIOS, and you were allowed to use it; you were supposed to use it, you were supposed to do nothing but use it. But the BIOS just provided simple services like reading from disk, writing to disk, drawing characters on the screen (and it did that so slowly that most apps didn't even use it, but wrote directly to the hardware).
In the wild-and-wooly DOS days, each new app had its own new user interface. Again, not until Windows took over did UI standards converge on anything modern.
Of course, the only reason people wanted those clones was that IBM's huge captive corporate market had already turned the proprietary IBM PC, warts and all, into the "industry standard" system with a huge software/hardware base.
I agree with this point. But I think that an essential reason for the success of the IBM PC was because it was an open platform. Had it been locked-down, it wouldn't have been the smash hit it turned into.
By the way, I think most observers of the history would agree that even IBM was surprised by the success of the PC. It wasn't expected to be that big of a deal as it turned out to be.
[Microsoft was] a software company who managed to license their software to a near-monopoly holder just as the corporate PC market went exponential. Nice work if you can get it - but I don't think its available.
I agree completely. However, you do have to give Microsoft some credit: they weren't riding any coat-tails with Windows, and with apps like Word and Excel. It helped that they had this huge money from DOS to keep them growing
Of course you do choose to exclude yourself from the marketplace that includes more than 90% of the paid mobile apps sold in the past year:)
That might bother me, if there were any apps that I care about that are not available for Android. So far, the Android Marketplace seems to have everything I want.
Also, if you choose to get an iPad, you are letting Apple veto entire categories of apps for you. Specifically, I want Python on my tablet; and Apple's rules forbid ever having Python on an iPad. (It is an interpreter; Apple forbids all interpreters and emulators.)
So from my point of view, availability of the software I want is exactly the reason I would rather have a Xoom than an iPad 2. It is ironic that you tried to raise this as a negative.
Burning down the theatre would be a bit much, though.
I was going to say "vote with your dollars" but in this case it's really "vote with your lack of dollars".
If this project massively loses money, George Lucas will give up on the idea. But that is what it would take. A slight loss? He'll go ahead with the others.
I think a lot of people might actually go to see this, unfortunately. But I predict a rapid fall-off in the numbers; it will have poor word-of-mouth. Once the initial curious people have seen it, the numbers will plummet. I don't know if they will plummet fast enough to put a stake through the heart of the idea, though.
You know, even proper 3D movies have their drawbacks. Trying to hack a 2D movie into 3D will have all those drawbacks and won't even have the benefit of actually being 3D. This will be fail upon fail.
The Motorola Xoom weighs the same as a 3G iPad, has a great screen, is really fast, has an 8 hour battery life, and is running a pretty much stock Android 3.0. The iPad 2 is a bit lighter, has a bit more battery life, and has a somewhat more polished user experience; but I would say that the Xoom is a perfectly credible option.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab is small, thin, and light; it has a 7" screen instead of a 10.1" screen, but at 380 grams it is much lighter than even an iPad 2. It is running an older build of Android, but when I played with one it seemed okay. The Galaxy Tab has a docking port connector (I think it's PDMI) that includes a USB host port. I haven't spent much time with the Galaxy Tab but I think it is another credible option, especially if you want the lightest possible tablet.
It's no longer a slam-dunk that you have to buy in on the Apple ecosystem to get a good tablet. There are Android alternatives, and those alternatives will only continue to get better over time.
steveha
Re:Your needs/desires aren't everyone's needs/desi
on
Hands On With Apple IPad 2
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· Score: 4, Informative
I have a Motorola Xoom on my desk right now as I type this.
Your long list of silliness about the "Zoom" includes: silly things that imply complexity, "25 pounds", USB port, "three 9-volt batteries".
In order:
The UI is a bit more busy than an iPad, with more little options, but I haven't found it at all hard to use.
According to specs, it is 730 grams, which is exactly the same as an iPad with 3G. Note that the second generation iPad 2 is listed as 600 grams; presumably that is not including the 3G option but it is still a win for Apple. On the other hand, an M16 rifle weighs about 8 pounds, so your innuendo is that the Xoom probably weighs three times as much as the Apple product; clearly false.
Yes, the Xoom has a USB port. That is a good feature and I like it. The iPad has a USB port, but only if you put a special dongle on the special Apple connector. But I guess your point was that it would be silly for a rifle to have a USB port. In that case, please list the actual features of the Xoom that are silly. You might, for example, mock the Xoom for having a barometer; but it adds no significant weight or cost, and it will be very useful for certain applications, and I don't see how you could claim it makes the Xoom harder to use, so perhaps it's not that silly after all.
As for batteries, the Xoom has built-in sealed battery pack, just like the iPad. The iPad claimed battery life is 9 hours for the 3G model; the Xoom claimed battery life is 8 hours, with a faster processor. The iPad 2 claims to have 9 or 10 hour battery life.
I think the actual specs show that the Xoom is not quite as slick as an iPad but it is in the ballpark, and I personally do not want to shackle myself to Apple's ecosystem. If you want a device that gives you the most freedom, then the Xoom is a worthy option. If you want the slickest device currently made, then get an iPad 2.
This cardboard box would have no RF shielding at all, unless ASUS spent a lot of money to build in a Faraday cage or something, which I highly doubt.
How much radio frequency noise does a modern PC generate? Does it interfere with any common devices such as an FM radio or an HDTV running off an antenna? (We don't have analog TV to worry about anymore, at least.)
Does anyone other than amateur radio enthusiasts care about this? Do even the amateur radio guys care?
Does the FCC still require certification of new PCs to not leak RF noise? Does the FCC not care about PC cases with a big clear window, or would they like to ban those and they can't somehow?
Slashdot Mirror
And why phyton isn't that popular either, what if it got standardized.
Python is One of the Most Popular Programming Languages
Python is #7 on the TIOBE rankings:
http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html
#6 is ObjectiveC, which also has no official standard from any standards organization.
Whether you like it or not, de facto standards do exist and do work as standards.
Frozen or not..
Python is definitely not frozen. It is growing and evolving, with an active community headed by a guy who is called the "Benevolent Dictator for Life" (the title is a joke but actually pretty accurate). ObjectiveC is not frozen either; it is pretty much owned by Apple at this point.
A standardization body, will not be subject to sudden ideas of it's maker.
WebM is frozen . Just like H.264 is also frozen . There are no "sudden ideas" for either of these two.
So, in summary:
0) de facto standards can work as well as standards that came out of standards organizations
1) it is possible for things like Python and ObjectiveC to grow and evolve and improve without an official standards organization
2) standards organizations are completely irrelevant to both H.264 and WebM because they are frozen standards
I think I'm done explaining this. If you don't get it yet, you aren't going to. If you are a troll just seeing how much of my time you can waste, congratulations on your success.
steveha
You seem to be missing my point. There are de facto standards and they work. It is not necessary to have a standards organization define something.
For example, what standards organization governs the Python language? None; the Python community and Guido van Rossum make the decisions, and their decisions define the standard for the language. Would Python be better somehow if ISO were in charge of it? I think not.
Why do you care whether a standards board wrote the WebM standard? It's frozen now, and all anyone needs to know is how to write a decoder for it, or an encoder. Just as all anyone needs to know about H.264 is how to write an encoder or a decoder. It's the same situation; they are both frozen specs.
Why use anything different that is not a standard allready.
Because you can use WebM for free, without asking permission. To use H.264 you need the permission of MPEG LA, which may or may not involve licensing fees but always involves getting their permission (or at least following their rules; many uses are currently permitted without fee and for those uses you just need to obey their rules). And they can change the rules or the fees at any time until the patents run out.
Debian GNU/Linux, for example, cannot ship H.264 support, because of the legal issues. Debian can ship WebM, and does. That is a pretty big reason to choose WebM. And what do you have to put up against it? "Don't use it because the standard wasn't developed by a standards body?" Why do you even care?
steveha
the keyboards at the time Rogue (and vi) came out didn't _have_ cursor keys
Not quite true. At the time of Rogue and vi, you would use a "dumb terminal" to connect to a multi-user ("time-sharing") computer. Most dumb terminals had arrow keys; the most popular dumb terminal of all time, the VT100, certainly did.
But there was a common terminal, the ADM-3A, that did not have arrow keys. As others have noted here, it did have little arrows drawn on the H, J, K, and L keys, respectively left, down, up, and right; you were expected to use Ctrl+H to go left, Ctrl+J to go down, and so on. vi and Rogue permitted you to juse use the bare keys (the H key instead of Ctrl+H to go left, and so on).
vi was specifically designed to be usable on any dumb terminal. The ADM-3A didn't have any function keys, but other terminals did; so in vi you could bind macros to function keys, and you could invoke the macros using "#1" (a two-character sequence, '#' and then '1') for function key F1, and so on. But if you were on a terminal that had function keys, you could just use them.
steveha
First of all WebM is no standard, what standardizations committee governs it.
I didn't say it was a standard that came out of a standards body. Not all standards do.
IP networking was first documented in 1974. Over the next few years it came into wide use as a standard, and computers and equipment using IP networking were able to talk to each other. But it wasn't formally standardized until 1981. By your definition of a standard, IP networking wasn't "a standard" until 1981, right? Yet curiously, it still worked before 1981.
Between 1974 and 1981, IP networking was a de facto standard. Perhaps in your mind that isn't any kind of standard at all, but I assure you that computers were able to talk to each other.
Likewise, I can watch a WebM video in my web browser, and neither the video nor the web browser care whether or not a formal standards body wrote a bunch of documents describing the format.
It is a legitimate complaint to say that WebM needs better specification documents, or more specifically, VP8 needs better specs. (I believe that both the Matroska container format and the Vorbis audio coder are well-documented.) Right now, the standard for VP8 is basically "if the VP8 decoder can decode it, it's legal VP8, and by the way here is the code for the VP8 decoder".
But to say that the specification documents need to be improved is not the same thing as saying that WebM isn't any kind of a standard. As I said, my web browser plays WebM videos just fine. If I download them, my media player plays them just fine too.
A standard doesn't need to be from a formal standards body to be useful. It doesn't even need to have a good specification document. It just needs to work well, and WebM works well as a standard.
steveha
we users should shun WebM as long as it's not governed by a third-party standardization organizations
Why?
H.264 is a frozen standard. If you want to implement it, you have to conform to that standard.
WebM is a frozen standard. If you want to implement it, you have to conform to that standard.
How is the one any better or worse than the other?
Why should we care what the history of development of the standard was? Both are frozen.
But only one standard requires that the user buy a patent license, and that standard is not WebM. So if you don't want to pay royalties, or if you want to be able to distribute free software that is not encumbered by patents, WebM is the clear choice.
steveha
Step 4: Profit (cmon, this is the one time this meme is appropriate, Google want to make a profit from YouTube).
The profit comes from selling ads.
The WebM thing is just a way for Google to control their costs, without losing control of their business.
They could encode everything in MPEG1 H.261 and not have to worry about patents; but then the files would be huge and they would have their net connections totally saturated with all the extra bits. That would be stupid.
They could encode everything in MPEG4 H.264, and then once their whole business was committed, the MPEG Licensing Authority could raise the royalties to crazy levels, and Google would have absolutely no choice but to just pay up. That would be stupid.
By using WebM, which is not as good as H.264 but is not too much horribly worse, Google gets reasonable file sizes, reasonable network traffic, and can predict exactly how much in royalties the will need to pay in the future (i.e., zero).
WebM is a purely defensive move, to keep costs down. So, yeah, profit, because profit is revenues minus costs. But Google isn't trying to extract money out of WebM.
My prediction is that H.264 will continue to have its users; it is still the best video coder out there (where "best" means highest visual quality per encoded bit; or, to put it another way, smallest output file for a given quality level). But WebM means that the MPEG Licensing Authority will be less able to extract large amounts of money out of the video community. (They hate that.)
steveha
Before you post a comment about how the antitrust authorities would never permit Google to buy all the music industry, read TFA or at least this extract:
steveha
Oh, one more thing: to really compete with PhotoShop, Gimp would need professional color calibration features. But there seem to be IP issues, and incorporating them into GIMP would be problematic. Again, I am not an expert on these issues. But as I understand it, high bit depths are planned for GIMP, but Pantone color features are not.
http://www.linux.com/archive/feed/49236
steveha
This horse only holds 12 people.
And they cheated and used pre-made 2x4s, pre-made plywood sheets, and I'll bet those lazy jerks used power tools instead of hand-made brass tools. Why did those kids even bother! It's not authentic.
Or, perhaps you didn't mean to criticize the school kids; maybe you meant to criticize Slashdot for using the term "life-sized". Well, here's a pro tip for you: people will often use inexact language. I'm pretty sure that in this context, "life-sized" means "much bigger than a little model, so big that actual people can fit inside it" rather than "a 1:1 scale model based on the most meticulous research available". If you think this is bad, try reading a news story discussing radiation levels at the Fukushima reactors.
P.S. To the high school students who worked on this project: my hat is off to you. That is seriously cool, and it is real. It's easy for people to talk about things, but it's much more impressive to actually make things.
steveha
The GIMP guys are working towards support for 16 bits per channel. I was hoping to learn about the progress toward that, but I didn't see it discussed here; mostly people were griping about UI.
As I understand it, the GIMP core engine has 8 bits per channel pretty much hard-wired into it and it would be a pain to fix that. Instead, the GIMP guys have been working on a new engine called GEGL, and this was designed from the ground up to handle higher bit depths and to allow non-destructive editing. I believe GIMP 2.8 is the target for full GEGL integration. GIMP 2.7.x has GEGL partly integrated (used in some filters).
Meanwhile, if you need something like GIMP that supports high bit depth right now, take a look at CinePaint, a fork of GIMP hacked to support 16 bits per plane; it has been used for post-processing in movies. According to Wikipedia, it has fallen out of use because GIMP can do anything it can do; but that seems wrong to me, because GIMP doesn't have 16 bit per plane support yet.
I was really hoping that people who know about this stuff would post about it here.
P.S. It's from 2007, but here is an article about HDR photo editing on Linux. http://lwn.net/Articles/225652/
steveha
They are proposing a new language, with new syntax, requiring new libraries... that runs on the JVM.
Since Oracle owns the JVM and is trying to find ways to extract money from it, a new language that requires the JVM seems pointless.
If you just want better syntax, why not use one of the existing JVM languages such as Scala?
If you are pioneering a completely new language, why not pioneer a new virtual machine, and lawyer up and make sure Oracle doesn't have any grounds to sue you?
steveha
Am I the only one who read, "Cylon"?
You are not the only one. My first thought was, "I hope they hire Tricia Helfer to advertise this."
steveha
Death threats against Democrats are given the "aw, shucks" treatment.
References, please. When did this happen? Who specifically said it was "aw, shucks" for a Democrat to receive death threats?
Because I remember the news media spending weeks chiding Republicans and Tea Party members for an "extreme tone", while the same news media was much less interested in actual death threats made against Republicans.
It was big news that Sarah Palin's campaign used marks to indicate cities on a map, and the news media endlessly discussed how serious it is that Sarah Palin used words like "target" and "reload" when talking about election plans. It wasn't news at all that Democrat ads have used bullseyes, or even put a crosshairs with reticle over a Republican. That crosshairs looks like a rifle scope to me.
I remember that it was big news when a Republican shouted "You lie!" at President Obama, but it was not big news when a Wisconsin Democrat shouted "You're f***king dead!" at a Wisconsin Republican. (Nobody thinks it was a sincere threat of murder, but it still seems like a poor example of the more civil "new tone" talked about in recent months.)
Are you telling me that the same news media that was all over the Republican "extreme tone" downplayed actual death threats against Democrats?
Citation needed.
Disclaimer: I am neither a Republican nor a Democrat; I am a minarchist libertarian. I am not a fan of extremist rhetoric on either side, I am not a fan of death threats, and I am not a fan of double standards.
steveha
The limits of my C# knowledge stand revealed. I do not know very much about this stuff, at all.
Are you saying that Mono is fundamentally broken, because this feature is essential to Mono? Would it be possible to rewrite Mono to not use this feature, if Microsoft ever started asserting this patent?
And, while I am not a patent lawyer, isn't it generally true that the more specific the patent, the easier it is to work around the patent?
Also, this patent expires in 2021, so it must have been filed in 2001, which is after C# and .NET were introduced. Thus, while I am not an expert in this stuff, I think this cannot by itself destroy Mono as a platform.
Or, would you say that this patented technique is firmly embedded in current practice and in practice not possible to remove?
In any event, I thank you for providing a specific example, the first I have seen in the years I have been reading about C# and Mono.
steveha
As I understand it, here is the chief complaint that people have about Mono: Microsoft could have some sort of patents that could apply to Mono; and Microsoft could in the future use these patents to do something bad.
I have never seen any specific examples given, it's just a general "there could be some patents" argument. In fact, I believe the theory is that these could be "submarine" patents, not known now but lurking invisibly.
Here's a specific example. This is a long essay about this very issue. What is the danger if we use Mono? "[C#] was developed inside Microsoft, so it's likely they have many patents to cover different aspects of its implementation." Got that? "it's likely" Microsoft has "many patents". Citation needed.
This is the 21st Century, and patents are not only public, there are patent search engines. Where are the specific examples?
The situation is even crazier due to the passage of time. Microsoft introduced .NET in the year 2000. It is now the year 2011. Patents in the USA today have a term of 20 years. Presumably these submarine patents were not filed the same year as .NET was introduced; that would be far too obvious... they were probably filed a year or two ahead of time. So presumably these patents have a maximum life of under 9 years, and probably under 7 years.
In the past 11 or 12 years, nobody has noticed these deadly patents, lurking. But wait: these could be true "submarine" patents, where the patent was filed but not granted yet, and Microsoft is using sleazy tricks to extend the filing period and delay granting the patents. This implies that the patent must have been filed before 1995, when the US patent system was changed (patent term went from "17 years after patent granted" to "20 years after patent filed", specifically to fix the problem of submarine patents). Thus, a true "submarine" patent would have to have been kept going via sleazy tricks for over 16 years now, and nobody has noticed it yet.
So, if I understand correctly, we shouldn't use Mono because it could be a trap. Microsoft could have patents nobody has noticed for a dozen years that will expire within the next nine years that could apply to Mono. Or else they could have pending patent applications that have been pending for over 16 years without anybody noticing; those would apply for 17 years after the patent grant finally occurs in the future.
And if the above turns out to be true, and you wrote a program in C#, what would Microsoft's remedy be? Would you be forced to pay them huge sums of money? Would you be forced to give ownership of your source code to Microsoft? Not likely, and anybody who claims it is likely needs to provide legal precedents showing such a remedy in a similar case. No, the only realistic remedy would be that you would have to choose between buying some sort of licensed version of Mono (to comply with the patent licensing terms), or stop using Mono.
And the obvious exit strategy is to rewrite your C# app in Java. That would be a pain, granted, but hardly the end of the world.
And that is even assuming that Microsoft was successful in asserting these hidden patents. After offering C# up as a free standard, and not taking any action for a dozen years, to suddenly assert hidden patents would leave Microsoft wide open to the "unclean hands" legal doctrine. It's hard for me to imagine Microsoft prevailing in this.
And nobody has yet proposed a motive why Microsoft should do this. How does Microsoft gain by backstabbing the C# community? In the near term they could gain some patent licensing fees, but in the long term they would be alienating people they have been trying to woo. How likely is this, really?
So, in conclusion: because of this nebulously scary potential situation with possible unknown Microsoft patents, Mono and C# are
Read this Ars review of the Xoom and tell me if it's something you really want to own.
Okay. I read it, and: The Xoom is something I really want to own.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: if you want the best, most polished tablet with the smoothest user experience, buy Apple. If you resent the iron grip of Apple over what you can do with your tablet, buy Android.
I'm a geek who resents Apple's iron grip, so I want Android. I realize that the Xoom is essentially unfinished, but the work is happening to add the missing features that the Ars review mentioned. For example, Flash works on my Xoom now; that's one down.
Give Android 3.0 another year of refinement, some better tablet apps, and some better hardware and it'll be truly comparable to the iPad.
I agree. And power users will favor the Android tablets over the iPad. Android tablets have a real file system, for example.
P.S. To the Apple fans reading this: note that I did not ever even once say that the vast majority of customers want the same thing I want. So, please don't accuse me of saying that, thanks. Indeed, I'll claim the opposite: most people don't care about the issues that matter most to me.
steveha
Thanks for the link to the "scripting layer for Android" stuff. One of the reasons I wanted a Xoom instead of an iPad is specifically to get Python.
It looks like a Bash shell is one of the interpreters you can install in SL4A. Do you get a complete set of command-line tools to go with it, or just something like BusyBox?
I know I'm weird, but I want Bash and vim running on my Xoom. (I have a Bluetooth keyboard, and it will work very well for vim. I'll just use the "map" and "map!" commands to bind the back-tick key to work as the Escape key and I'll be all set. If all else fails I can type Ctrl+[ for Escape.) I guess I should get some sort of Python IDE for Android, but nothing beats vim for getting lots of editing work done quickly.
steveha
What impresses me the most about Google is that they, as a company, have consistently taken actions that demonstrate long-term thinking. They will try things that have no short-term profit, just because in the long run they might either make a profit or defend the company's interests.
From the beginning, Google has helped Firefox out financially; more recently, Google made its own web browser. Why? Because it wasn't in Google's best interest for Microsoft to have any kind of leverage over the Internet, or in particular over which search engine is the default on computers. Remember how much market share Internet Explorer used to have? Displacing it once seemed hopeless, but Google went for it.
Google has poured resources into Android and continues to give it away. Why? Because it wasn't in Google's best interest for Apple to have leverage over the cell phone market, or in particular over which search engine is the default on cell phones.
Google spent about $100 million to buy On2, and then gave away the intellectual property they had bought. Why? Because the FSF wrote an open letter... nah, just messing with you to see if you are paying attention. Because, in the long run, Google's YouTube needs a suitable video format. If YouTube's business utterly depends on patented technology such as H.264, Google will have no choice but to comply with any and all demands from the licensing authority. Google is willing to not only spend the $100 million, but to pay more people to keep working on WebM (doing things like free reference designs for hardware decoders). Google doesn't ever expect to make money on WebM; it's purely a defensive move, to control long-term costs in the future. (Well, also, Google has lots of geeks like us who want to help keep web standards open.)
Heck, go all the way back to the early days of Google. They took the time to write a complete vertically integrated software stack, one which allowed them to get reliable performance out of dirt-cheap off-the-shelf hardware. The reason Sun was printing money during the Internet boom was that everybody who wanted a web server would buy an expensive, reliable Sun box to run it on; not Google, they used the High Availability stuff on Linux, and the elegant Google MapReduce, to weld together masses of cheap motherboards into a powerful and reliable server operation.
Remember the news stories about Google buying up the "dark fiber"? Google bought a bunch of optical fiber with no immediate use. Long-term thinking: "the stuff is cheap now; we have the money now; someday we'll have a use for this."
Google has a lot of other products and features, but for the most part those are just fun sidelines. When you are as big as Google, you can afford to do some side projects just for the heck of it, and all the better if they actually turn a profit.
steveha
Except for the sense that if you tried to make and sell your own IBM compatible PC you had to copy the BIOS
Are you saying that a platform isn't "open" unless third party clones of the hardware are available? I find that a very odd definition. You already saw my own definition: a platform is "open" if you are able to develop hardware or software for it without needing permission, and the information you need to do that development is available.
I agree that no third-party clones were intended to be permitted by IBM. I disagree that this means the IBM PC wasn't an open platform.
For an example of a closed platform, consider a game console, where you aren't allowed to distribute software for it without getting permission and approval from the company controlling the console, and paying royalties.
As I said, I don't think the IBM PC would have been a huge success had it not been open. If IBM were pre-approving apps, they would have refused to approve any word processors (might compete with their line of dedicated word processor machines), which would probably have been enough right there to sharply limit the success!
But I'll agree that there are degrees of being open, and that after the clones started to appear, the PC was even more open than before.
Eh? I'm not arguing that nobody was allowed to write software for IBM PCs or that the BIOS, I'm saying that nobody was able to make 100% IBM compatible PCs until elaborate "clean room" development was used to get around IBM's copyright on the BIOS.
You confused me with your comments about "any sort of remotely modern user interface, color, animation etc. required access to the IBM BIOS". Software always had access to the BIOS. Lack of a modern UI was not due to lack of access to the BIOS.
Of course I agree that IBM always meant for any PC-compatible computers to be sold by IBM. No need to drag UI into that discussion.
The only thing licensing would have been guaranteed to do was to reduce the amount of money they could charge for a Mac by eating in to their existing customer base.
Well, I can't prove anything; we will never know for sure. But I think they could have hugely grown their customer base. Customers were willing to pay serious money for a Mac in those days. A Motorola CPU and support chips might have cost more than an x86 in those days, but I doubt it was enough more to be a real deal-breaker. Apple was making margins of 50% on each machine, and people were paying it; had Apple licensed out the system software, they would for sure have made less per machine, but I think they could have hugely grown the install base, and become the new corporate standard for GUIs. Instead of businesses transitioning away from DOS apps and to Windows apps in the early 90's, businesses would have transitioned away from DOS apps and to Mac apps in the late 80's.
I believe that Apple milking their customers for 50% margins was a great short-term strategy but a terrible long-term strategy. Once Windows stopped sucking so hard, businesses adopted it, and Apple nearly went out of business. Had Apple gone for the Microsoft model of making less money per computer but making it on a huge number of computers, Apple could have had Microsoft-like growth numbers in the 90's instead of getting into trouble as they actually did.
Certainly now Apple is making good money with its boutique computers and walled garden. At this point, it is clear that Apple shouldn't try the Microsoft model.
But I can't prove anything and I'm not infallible. I could be completely wrong about everything.
Windows never took over the industry - it inherited it from DOS, and had to wait a long, long time for the old bastard to die.
Now you are just being silly. Of course Windows took over the industry: business computers stopped being sold with DOS, and started being sold with Windows. (In the early days it was really DOS+Windows, of course.)
Ther
Apple lost their initial lead because the Apple 3 was a complete lemon, not because of their business model!
I agree completely.
What everybody seems to conveniently forget is that The IBM PC was a closed, proprietary system
Nope, sorry, disagree. The IBM PC was open in every reasonable sense of the word: you didn't need permission from IBM to develop for it or distribute apps for it, and IBM didn't try to claim royalties on your apps for it; IBM fully published all specs, including circuit diagrams and I seem to recall they even offered a listing of the BIOS (I could be wrong on that last one, but that was back in the days when the Apple II line offered a source listing). Likewise, you didn't need permission to make plug-in cards for the original ISA bus of the original PC.
IBM didn't give away the BIOS, and IBM figured nobody could make a competing computer without copying the BIOS, but that doesn't make it a closed platform.
With "MicroChannel Architecture" IBM shifted to a bus spec that used IBM patented technology, and you could no longer make plug-in cards without licensing IBM's patents. That was an attempt to start to close the platform. Didn't work, though.
(I think it basically meant that if you paid IBM lots of money they'd let you build plug-in cards)
That was MicroChannel. The original was open.
software compatibility was restricted to command-line programs with character I/O.
Sorry, no. Character I/O was standard for several reasons: 0) the PC was really slow, and character-based apps were faster; 1) the graphics hardware wasn't standard; and 2) the graphics hardware sucked.
Some PCs were shipped with "monochrome" graphics, and didn't have a graphics mode. A third party sold a card called "Hercules" or something like that that offered high-resolution (for the time) monochrome graphics. IBM's own "CGA" adapter offered really poor color graphics, but most PCs didn't have that.
And DOS didn't do graphics. DOS apps that did graphics had to manage their own "drivers" for the various hardware options. Standard GUIs? Forget it, not until Windows standardized the market.
Any sort of remotely modern user interface, color, animation etc. required access to the IBM BIOS which was very much strictly (c) (r) IBM and only available on a kosher IBM PC.
Sorry, this point is just wrong. The IBM PC had a BIOS, and you were allowed to use it; you were supposed to use it, you were supposed to do nothing but use it. But the BIOS just provided simple services like reading from disk, writing to disk, drawing characters on the screen (and it did that so slowly that most apps didn't even use it, but wrote directly to the hardware).
In the wild-and-wooly DOS days, each new app had its own new user interface. Again, not until Windows took over did UI standards converge on anything modern.
Of course, the only reason people wanted those clones was that IBM's huge captive corporate market had already turned the proprietary IBM PC, warts and all, into the "industry standard" system with a huge software/hardware base.
I agree with this point. But I think that an essential reason for the success of the IBM PC was because it was an open platform. Had it been locked-down, it wouldn't have been the smash hit it turned into.
By the way, I think most observers of the history would agree that even IBM was surprised by the success of the PC. It wasn't expected to be that big of a deal as it turned out to be.
[Microsoft was] a software company who managed to license their software to a near-monopoly holder just as the corporate PC market went exponential. Nice work if you can get it - but I don't think its available.
I agree completely. However, you do have to give Microsoft some credit: they weren't riding any coat-tails with Windows, and with apps like Word and Excel. It helped that they had this huge money from DOS to keep them growing
Of course you do choose to exclude yourself from the marketplace that includes more than 90% of the paid mobile apps sold in the past year :)
That might bother me, if there were any apps that I care about that are not available for Android. So far, the Android Marketplace seems to have everything I want.
Also, if you choose to get an iPad, you are letting Apple veto entire categories of apps for you. Specifically, I want Python on my tablet; and Apple's rules forbid ever having Python on an iPad. (It is an interpreter; Apple forbids all interpreters and emulators.)
So from my point of view, availability of the software I want is exactly the reason I would rather have a Xoom than an iPad 2. It is ironic that you tried to raise this as a negative.
steveha
Just don't go. Tell your friends: don't go.
Burning down the theatre would be a bit much, though.
I was going to say "vote with your dollars" but in this case it's really "vote with your lack of dollars".
If this project massively loses money, George Lucas will give up on the idea. But that is what it would take. A slight loss? He'll go ahead with the others.
I think a lot of people might actually go to see this, unfortunately. But I predict a rapid fall-off in the numbers; it will have poor word-of-mouth. Once the initial curious people have seen it, the numbers will plummet. I don't know if they will plummet fast enough to put a stake through the heart of the idea, though.
You know, even proper 3D movies have their drawbacks. Trying to hack a 2D movie into 3D will have all those drawbacks and won't even have the benefit of actually being 3D. This will be fail upon fail.
steveha
I suggest you get a good Android tablet then.
The Motorola Xoom weighs the same as a 3G iPad, has a great screen, is really fast, has an 8 hour battery life, and is running a pretty much stock Android 3.0. The iPad 2 is a bit lighter, has a bit more battery life, and has a somewhat more polished user experience; but I would say that the Xoom is a perfectly credible option.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab is small, thin, and light; it has a 7" screen instead of a 10.1" screen, but at 380 grams it is much lighter than even an iPad 2. It is running an older build of Android, but when I played with one it seemed okay. The Galaxy Tab has a docking port connector (I think it's PDMI) that includes a USB host port. I haven't spent much time with the Galaxy Tab but I think it is another credible option, especially if you want the lightest possible tablet.
It's no longer a slam-dunk that you have to buy in on the Apple ecosystem to get a good tablet. There are Android alternatives, and those alternatives will only continue to get better over time.
steveha
I have a Motorola Xoom on my desk right now as I type this.
Your long list of silliness about the "Zoom" includes: silly things that imply complexity, "25 pounds", USB port, "three 9-volt batteries".
In order:
The UI is a bit more busy than an iPad, with more little options, but I haven't found it at all hard to use.
According to specs, it is 730 grams, which is exactly the same as an iPad with 3G. Note that the second generation iPad 2 is listed as 600 grams; presumably that is not including the 3G option but it is still a win for Apple. On the other hand, an M16 rifle weighs about 8 pounds, so your innuendo is that the Xoom probably weighs three times as much as the Apple product; clearly false.
Yes, the Xoom has a USB port. That is a good feature and I like it. The iPad has a USB port, but only if you put a special dongle on the special Apple connector. But I guess your point was that it would be silly for a rifle to have a USB port. In that case, please list the actual features of the Xoom that are silly. You might, for example, mock the Xoom for having a barometer; but it adds no significant weight or cost, and it will be very useful for certain applications, and I don't see how you could claim it makes the Xoom harder to use, so perhaps it's not that silly after all.
As for batteries, the Xoom has built-in sealed battery pack, just like the iPad. The iPad claimed battery life is 9 hours for the 3G model; the Xoom claimed battery life is 8 hours, with a faster processor. The iPad 2 claims to have 9 or 10 hour battery life.
I think the actual specs show that the Xoom is not quite as slick as an iPad but it is in the ballpark, and I personally do not want to shackle myself to Apple's ecosystem. If you want a device that gives you the most freedom, then the Xoom is a worthy option. If you want the slickest device currently made, then get an iPad 2.
steveha
This cardboard box would have no RF shielding at all, unless ASUS spent a lot of money to build in a Faraday cage or something, which I highly doubt.
How much radio frequency noise does a modern PC generate? Does it interfere with any common devices such as an FM radio or an HDTV running off an antenna? (We don't have analog TV to worry about anymore, at least.)
Does anyone other than amateur radio enthusiasts care about this? Do even the amateur radio guys care?
Does the FCC still require certification of new PCs to not leak RF noise? Does the FCC not care about PC cases with a big clear window, or would they like to ban those and they can't somehow?
steveha