Apple choosed their resolution based on backward compability, so old apps still loked good by scaling 1 pixel to 2x2. A truly resolution independent display can scale any content to any size and still looking great. I'm not sure Apples Retina is enough for that, Apple themselves indicates it's not by choosing the resolution they did.
Either you do a window-based DE or an application based, Gnome 3 went for application based. I happen to like it, a lot. this includes alt-tab behavior. If you happen do not like application based, then you should probably not try to turn Gnome 3 into one, there are other choices for you.
I think Gnome 3 is the best thing that happened to the *nix desktop for a long time. The navigation is fast if you know how to use it. I do use a few extensions, like static workspaces (altough I think this is included in 3.4). It also happen to be quite fast, running it on my ion2 netbook, no problem. Have never used a composition desktop before, they where all to slow. Gnome 3 changed that.
Gnome developers have always had cojones and done things which may not look to be the right thing, in the end they come out winning, this time should not be an exception.
I believe that it has something to do with the fact that only Apple approved and checked software can be installed thereon. This closed system may not appeal to many here on/., but it is certainly as close as we have gotten to a malware proof computing experience we are likely to get anytime soon. Mac users will be able to enjoy this form of security with OS X 10.8 this summer.
It is obviously a security feature to have trusted sources for your programs, there is nothing new to this, Linux have used this for the last 15 years and I can't believe Linux was the first. You have to understand that Unix was created like 40 years ago, and there is nothing technically secure about it in todays world. This is the same for Linux, BSD, OSX, Android and IOS. Most security is bolted upon it but the fact is that it probably can't be totaly secured, it's not designed that way. Compare with a web browser or Java/Flash/NaCL which is secure by design. Yes, they have security holes but they can be fixed. Unix is "fixed" by having trusted sources, that's not a technical solution. The problem with Apples stance on this subject is that there source is the only source on the IOS platform, and they happen to use it for a lot more than security, like keeping the competition out. Yes, I know *nix isn't really secure, but I still want to be able to run certain programs (this is more important to me than outmost security), and I wan't to use a platform where competition is fair.
I'd love to hear what business model can possibly compete with stealing.
Broadband taxation? if you pay 50$ a month you can download whaterver you want, no strings attached. We pay for (although very cheap) anonymization services today to use the internet as we see fit, so there are actually people making money from copying. I would gladly pay tenfold to get out of the relative clusterfuck that is Piratebay today. Let's face it, PB is no Netflix in terms of usability. But the content industry isn't interested, they still want 25$ per movie using DRM which takes hours to circumvent if you need play them on anything not sanctioned by them, while PB is offering movies in formats people actually can play. The industry is protecting what your parent said an "outdated bussiness model". They need to change, their former and hopefully future customers already have.
Best way to defeat this would be to stop the sensors (for background apps) when the keyboard is up. But really, if you got some nasty trojan on there you got problems anyway, and password stealing by reading sensors is probably not the worst of them.
Nvidia Ion2 does HD Audio (all supported BR formats), I'm running a Asus S1-AT5NM10E. It's cheap and only missing harddrive and memory. XBMC Linux does not yet do HD audio but standard mplayer does. I'm streaming full BR rips over NFS and it's smooth. I'm running XBMC for now, and if I want the full experience I just start the movie with mplayer.
I have tried some media streamers in the past altough not the Popcorn Hour, my problem have been with scale, the one I've tried didn't do a collection of thousands movies too well.
Those programs work the way they do becuase X11 is what it is. If there where no network transparancy the installer would probably be comandline. Likewise diagnosicsprograms would probably be better by using a simple webserver and serve to your browser. No change comes with zero flaws, but in the end X11 network transparency is used only by a few (I have definitely used it also for these examples so I know whar you are saying). But I can live without it, and X isn't really going away in 5 minutes anyway, there will be time to adapt. Most of the time even VNC would be adequate today. Also remember that Wayland is made to make desktop Linux/Unix better, the examples I hear about why X11 and it's network transparency are great are always about the server.
There are hundreds of things in these games which are not compatible with the book of lord. Killing people every minute, mystery forces and so on. Just get over it and play Hello kitty adventure instead, 100% free of gay marriage.
Speaking as a Linux user, there has always been problems with third party programs in Linux, nonstandard installers, manual updating and so on. I, and I'm probably not the only one very seldom install third party software in my operating system (something not in the distro). I know if I use the distro supplied packages the system will work, like forever. I've seen (and used) Windows installes which have crawled to an halt in a year, mac likewise (although some would say this can't be). I've never seen a Linux install just getting sluggier as time moves on. I do believe this is because we use mostly distro supplied programs. Breaking this barrier is hard and probably one of the reasons Linux users don't like to buy programs, a normal distro have most of what we need anyways.
Now, late to the game, there has finaly come a technology which will not only offer games to Linux, but also don't screw with our operating systems. That tech is Google NaCL (I'm sort of a fanboy for NaCL if you check my history). I believe this to be the premier way to deliver games, not only to Linux (which most devs don't really care about anyway) but also to Windows and mac. Sandboxed (No possible way to screw around) is the way of the future for this type of programs. I do not want to install my games (And yes, I game in Windows), I want them playable from the net, and just trash them (could even be automatic, similiar to a web cache) when I'm through playing them. Not leaving anything behind. I have payed for a few Linux games over the years (Not enough to justify a Linux version I admit), but now I no longer want a Linux version at all, I want NaCL, it's just superior tech, for any OS.
This looks more like an ultralight you can drive home from the field... Which is not that bad of an idea, might be feasable. Very important is that this vehicle should be able to land on engine failure (just autorotate), which is a requirement (at least if I where to fly in it). Have seen alot of futuristic looking "4 fan" cars, those will never be realised as they can't fly on engine failure, perhaps parachute landing, but that will need height to deploy.
I think Mozillas stance on this Pepper/NaCL thing is quite bad founded. What Google have done is essentially to technicaly sandbox plugins (giving them about the same security as Javascript) and with that made a new and improved plugin API. This is not a bad thing. It of course might keep developers from HTML/JS and instead use C/C++/Any language you can think of. I really don't see how this is a bad thing either. It's pretty much proven by now that HTML/JS will never get native speeds, Chrome already have it. Compare Airmech on chrome with that mozilla MMORPG released this week and you will see for yourself. Airmech looks modern, the Mozzila game is a litte better than NES quality.
I just this weekend dropped my homebuilt system I have been using for over 10 years, have not seen anything which has ALL the features I want before. I'm very impressed by this piece of software. Scales really well to big collections, nice fast "GF proof" UI and pretty stable. HD Audio (DTS-HDMA, TrueHD) is still missing in the Linux version which is a bummer but I can live without that and start from the CLI when I need the full experience, don't happen that often. The scraper (matching movies to get actors, descriptions and so on) works really well and altough some cleaning up was needed it didn't take too long. There are cheap iPhone and android apps to browse and start movies, also without using the phone as a remote, and more as a browser. Using as remote pretty much sucks on a touchscreen since you can't feel the buttons. I'm very glad I tried this and hope it will be a keeper for years to come. Now of to install the new version since I installed the RC yesterday.
I do not suggests that any single part is in the true philosophy of Unix. The Single UNIX Specification, Unix(tm) that is, was created out of the necessity to create compatible operating systems. It really only mandates small parts of a modern OS and it isn't really relevant anymore since pretty much all OSes are compliant, certified or not. Part of the philophosy of Unix is still to create compatible operating systems.
Put another way, if you run one Unix(-like) it should be pretty straighforward to change to another Unix(-like) OS based on the merits of the operating system, there should be minimal lock-in. Lock-ins and nonstandard API:s create fragmentation, and that was exactly why the Single UNIX Specification was created to remedy in the first place.
Taken from wikipedia The SUS emerged from a mid-1980s project to standardize operating system interfaces for software designed for variants of the Unix operating system. The need for standardization arose because enterprises using computers wanted to be able to develop programs that could be used on the computer systems of different manufacturers without reimplementing the programs. Unix was selected as the basis for a standard system interface partly because it was manufacturer-neutral.
Unix has been dead and burried for the last 15 years, no traditional Unix user cares anymore. Linux (and others) have taken over the Unix philosophy. It's all about creating operating systems which are compatible within an OS family, for mutual benefits. The modern "Unix philosophy" support desktop apps, but Mac OS apps of course will not work on any other Unix. Apple don't care about being compatible with other operating systems, which I would see as a basic requirement for being "Unix". Being POSIX compliant and having a nice certification isn't enough.
I'm not judging operating systems here. Mac OS is great, but Unix(tm) don't evolve that much and Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD and all the other compatible operating systems picked up the axe, and it happend a long time ago. Mac OS took a different path.
There is no way Apple would let MS Office onto iOS. MS Office has extensive scripting capabilities, not allowed.
"An Application may not download or install executable code. Interpreted code may only be used in an Application if all scripts, code and interpreters are packaged in the Application and not downloaded. The only exception to the foregoing is scripts and code downloaded and run by Apple's built-in WebKit framework."
I can only use a photocopy of money to wipe my ass with since I cannot even buy toilet paper with it. I do not enjoy the copy at all because I couldn't use it as currency and all it did is hurt my ass.
How are those two things at all similar?
More similar then you think. Money will hurt your ass just as much as the photocopy when used as toilet paper.
I'm not sure how much this format war will matter in the future. Web browsers are getting faster and faster, Chrome can probably decode 720p or even 1080p H.264 using NaCL today. Javascipt sees speedups in every browser version, computers are getting faster, it's not unreasonable to think that it may in the quite near future be fast enough to decode video. When this happens you can send your codec along with your webpage. Yes, there are some stumbling blocks, like HW accelerating, not sure it will be needed though, maybe it could be implemented without "supporting" specific formats, don't know...
I don't understand why there are shiny new massmarket hardware stories on slashdot at all. And the resulting flamy discussion about market shares, so bloddy boring...
Maybe so, but why have a tablet with magazines, and then not make it a "first rate experience". I just buy the magazines at the store instead, and that's fine. I would rather have them on the tablet but not if it's harder to read them. On current tech it is.
Sure we need higher resolution. I have an iPad 2 and have bought a cople of magazines, but I can't read a page without zooming because of the low resolution. Which is so irritating I no longer by magazines for it.
And since I'm shopping for an Android tab anyway, this sounds like a good bet.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course they have. They found Facebook like buttons, Google +1 buttons, they like it and want in on the deal.
"Carefull there, I will +Terror your post. See you at Gitmo loser."
Apple choosed their resolution based on backward compability, so old apps still loked good by scaling 1 pixel to 2x2. A truly resolution independent display can scale any content to any size and still looking great. I'm not sure Apples Retina is enough for that, Apple themselves indicates it's not by choosing the resolution they did.
Either you do a window-based DE or an application based, Gnome 3 went for application based. I happen to like it, a lot. this includes alt-tab behavior. If you happen do not like application based, then you should probably not try to turn Gnome 3 into one, there are other choices for you.
I think Gnome 3 is the best thing that happened to the *nix desktop for a long time. The navigation is fast if you know how to use it. I do use a few extensions, like static workspaces (altough I think this is included in 3.4). It also happen to be quite fast, running it on my ion2 netbook, no problem. Have never used a composition desktop before, they where all to slow. Gnome 3 changed that.
Gnome developers have always had cojones and done things which may not look to be the right thing, in the end they come out winning, this time should not be an exception.
I believe that it has something to do with the fact that only Apple approved and checked software can be installed thereon. This closed system may not appeal to many here on /., but it is certainly as close as we have gotten to a malware proof computing experience we are likely to get anytime soon. Mac users will be able to enjoy this form of security with OS X 10.8 this summer.
It is obviously a security feature to have trusted sources for your programs, there is nothing new to this, Linux have used this for the last 15 years and I can't believe Linux was the first. You have to understand that Unix was created like 40 years ago, and there is nothing technically secure about it in todays world. This is the same for Linux, BSD, OSX, Android and IOS. Most security is bolted upon it but the fact is that it probably can't be totaly secured, it's not designed that way. Compare with a web browser or Java/Flash/NaCL which is secure by design. Yes, they have security holes but they can be fixed. Unix is "fixed" by having trusted sources, that's not a technical solution. The problem with Apples stance on this subject is that there source is the only source on the IOS platform, and they happen to use it for a lot more than security, like keeping the competition out. Yes, I know *nix isn't really secure, but I still want to be able to run certain programs (this is more important to me than outmost security), and I wan't to use a platform where competition is fair.
I'd love to hear what business model can possibly compete with stealing.
Broadband taxation? if you pay 50$ a month you can download whaterver you want, no strings attached. We pay for (although very cheap) anonymization services today to use the internet as we see fit, so there are actually people making money from copying. I would gladly pay tenfold to get out of the relative clusterfuck that is Piratebay today. Let's face it, PB is no Netflix in terms of usability. But the content industry isn't interested, they still want 25$ per movie using DRM which takes hours to circumvent if you need play them on anything not sanctioned by them, while PB is offering movies in formats people actually can play. The industry is protecting what your parent said an "outdated bussiness model". They need to change, their former and hopefully future customers already have.
Best way to defeat this would be to stop the sensors (for background apps) when the keyboard is up. But really, if you got some nasty trojan on there you got problems anyway, and password stealing by reading sensors is probably not the worst of them.
Nvidia Ion2 does HD Audio (all supported BR formats), I'm running a Asus S1-AT5NM10E. It's cheap and only missing harddrive and memory. XBMC Linux does not yet do HD audio but standard mplayer does. I'm streaming full BR rips over NFS and it's smooth. I'm running XBMC for now, and if I want the full experience I just start the movie with mplayer.
I have tried some media streamers in the past altough not the Popcorn Hour, my problem have been with scale, the one I've tried didn't do a collection of thousands movies too well.
Those programs work the way they do becuase X11 is what it is. If there where no network transparancy the installer would probably be comandline. Likewise diagnosicsprograms would probably be better by using a simple webserver and serve to your browser. No change comes with zero flaws, but in the end X11 network transparency is used only by a few (I have definitely used it also for these examples so I know whar you are saying). But I can live without it, and X isn't really going away in 5 minutes anyway, there will be time to adapt. Most of the time even VNC would be adequate today. Also remember that Wayland is made to make desktop Linux/Unix better, the examples I hear about why X11 and it's network transparency are great are always about the server.
There are hundreds of things in these games which are not compatible with the book of lord. Killing people every minute, mystery forces and so on. Just get over it and play Hello kitty adventure instead, 100% free of gay marriage.
Speaking as a Linux user, there has always been problems with third party programs in Linux, nonstandard installers, manual updating and so on. I, and I'm probably not the only one very seldom install third party software in my operating system (something not in the distro). I know if I use the distro supplied packages the system will work, like forever. I've seen (and used) Windows installes which have crawled to an halt in a year, mac likewise (although some would say this can't be). I've never seen a Linux install just getting sluggier as time moves on. I do believe this is because we use mostly distro supplied programs. Breaking this barrier is hard and probably one of the reasons Linux users don't like to buy programs, a normal distro have most of what we need anyways.
Now, late to the game, there has finaly come a technology which will not only offer games to Linux, but also don't screw with our operating systems. That tech is Google NaCL (I'm sort of a fanboy for NaCL if you check my history). I believe this to be the premier way to deliver games, not only to Linux (which most devs don't really care about anyway) but also to Windows and mac. Sandboxed (No possible way to screw around) is the way of the future for this type of programs. I do not want to install my games (And yes, I game in Windows), I want them playable from the net, and just trash them (could even be automatic, similiar to a web cache) when I'm through playing them. Not leaving anything behind. I have payed for a few Linux games over the years (Not enough to justify a Linux version I admit), but now I no longer want a Linux version at all, I want NaCL, it's just superior tech, for any OS.
Qt isn't going for web apps.
http://qt-project.org/wiki/Qt_for_Google_Native_Client
Everything will eventually be web/net apps, you can quote me on this 10 years from now...
This looks more like an ultralight you can drive home from the field... Which is not that bad of an idea, might be feasable. Very important is that this vehicle should be able to land on engine failure (just autorotate), which is a requirement (at least if I where to fly in it). Have seen alot of futuristic looking "4 fan" cars, those will never be realised as they can't fly on engine failure, perhaps parachute landing, but that will need height to deploy.
I think Mozillas stance on this Pepper/NaCL thing is quite bad founded. What Google have done is essentially to technicaly sandbox plugins (giving them about the same security as Javascript) and with that made a new and improved plugin API. This is not a bad thing. It of course might keep developers from HTML/JS and instead use C/C++/Any language you can think of. I really don't see how this is a bad thing either. It's pretty much proven by now that HTML/JS will never get native speeds, Chrome already have it. Compare Airmech on chrome with that mozilla MMORPG released this week and you will see for yourself. Airmech looks modern, the Mozzila game is a litte better than NES quality.
I think what he says is that there will be more $200 tablets on the market... Not that they will rise in price.
I just this weekend dropped my homebuilt system I have been using for over 10 years, have not seen anything which has ALL the features I want before. I'm very impressed by this piece of software. Scales really well to big collections, nice fast "GF proof" UI and pretty stable. HD Audio (DTS-HDMA, TrueHD) is still missing in the Linux version which is a bummer but I can live without that and start from the CLI when I need the full experience, don't happen that often. The scraper (matching movies to get actors, descriptions and so on) works really well and altough some cleaning up was needed it didn't take too long. There are cheap iPhone and android apps to browse and start movies, also without using the phone as a remote, and more as a browser. Using as remote pretty much sucks on a touchscreen since you can't feel the buttons. I'm very glad I tried this and hope it will be a keeper for years to come. Now of to install the new version since I installed the RC yesterday.
I do not suggests that any single part is in the true philosophy of Unix. The Single UNIX Specification, Unix(tm) that is, was created out of the necessity to create compatible operating systems. It really only mandates small parts of a modern OS and it isn't really relevant anymore since pretty much all OSes are compliant, certified or not. Part of the philophosy of Unix is still to create compatible operating systems.
Put another way, if you run one Unix(-like) it should be pretty straighforward to change to another Unix(-like) OS based on the merits of the operating system, there should be minimal lock-in. Lock-ins and nonstandard API:s create fragmentation, and that was exactly why the Single UNIX Specification was created to remedy in the first place.
Taken from wikipedia
The SUS emerged from a mid-1980s project to standardize operating system interfaces for software designed for variants of the Unix operating system. The need for standardization arose because enterprises using computers wanted to be able to develop programs that could be used on the computer systems of different manufacturers without reimplementing the programs. Unix was selected as the basis for a standard system interface partly because it was manufacturer-neutral.
Unix has been dead and burried for the last 15 years, no traditional Unix user cares anymore. Linux (and others) have taken over the Unix philosophy. It's all about creating operating systems which are compatible within an OS family, for mutual benefits. The modern "Unix philosophy" support desktop apps, but Mac OS apps of course will not work on any other Unix. Apple don't care about being compatible with other operating systems, which I would see as a basic requirement for being "Unix". Being POSIX compliant and having a nice certification isn't enough.
I'm not judging operating systems here. Mac OS is great, but Unix(tm) don't evolve that much and Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD and all the other compatible operating systems picked up the axe, and it happend a long time ago. Mac OS took a different path.
There is no way Apple would let MS Office onto iOS. MS Office has extensive scripting capabilities, not allowed.
"An Application may not download or install executable code. Interpreted code may only be used in an Application if all scripts, code and interpreters are packaged in the Application and not downloaded. The only exception to the foregoing is scripts and code downloaded and run by Apple's built-in WebKit framework."
I can only use a photocopy of money to wipe my ass with since I cannot even buy toilet paper with it. I do not enjoy the copy at all because I couldn't use it as currency and all it did is hurt my ass.
How are those two things at all similar?
More similar then you think. Money will hurt your ass just as much as the photocopy when used as toilet paper.
I'm not sure how much this format war will matter in the future. Web browsers are getting faster and faster, Chrome can probably decode 720p or even 1080p H.264 using NaCL today. Javascipt sees speedups in every browser version, computers are getting faster, it's not unreasonable to think that it may in the quite near future be fast enough to decode video. When this happens you can send your codec along with your webpage. Yes, there are some stumbling blocks, like HW accelerating, not sure it will be needed though, maybe it could be implemented without "supporting" specific formats, don't know...
I don't understand why there are shiny new massmarket hardware stories on slashdot at all. And the resulting flamy discussion about market shares, so bloddy boring...
Maybe so, but why have a tablet with magazines, and then not make it a "first rate experience". I just buy the magazines at the store instead, and that's fine. I would rather have them on the tablet but not if it's harder to read them. On current tech it is.
Sure we need higher resolution. I have an iPad 2 and have bought a cople of magazines, but I can't read a page without zooming because of the low resolution. Which is so irritating I no longer by magazines for it.
And since I'm shopping for an Android tab anyway, this sounds like a good bet.
I accidentely modded you down...