For personal projects, I've mostly been happy running RCS on my own server. I use CVS from time to time, and bits of it annoy me, but I can get work done with it.
Maybe for huge open source projects with teams all over the planet who can't communicate very tightly and who don't have a unified SDLC, some of these newer tools are worthwhile. But if you've got a small team and an adequate process, what's the compelling argument for switching to one of them if what you've got in place is working fine?
If I understand the presentation I saw, one of the things this Facebook tool will have going for it is, it'll be an IMAP client. You can punch in the details of your mail server, and use it as webmail for that service. Like, embed SquirrelMail in Facebook.
If Facebook can convince users to punch in the details for GMail's IMAP server, reading their GMail mail via Facebook instead of the GMail web interface, then Google runs the mail infrastructure, but Facebook gets the ad impressions. Remember, if you access GMail via IMAP, you see no ads at all. (I use GMail via IMAP, from several desktop and handheld IMAP clients.) If that started to happen in any volume, I bet Google would wake up and notice.
The existence of PDAs running Microsoft's OS long predates the creation of the failed music service that's branded Zune or the failed MP3 player that's branded Zune. If they were to create such a thing and name it "Zune Touch", that'd simply be another example of them pushing the Zune brand inappropriately.
I don't want "ZunePass". I don't want the Zune desktop software to be involved in anything (I do not run Windows on the desktop). I want something along the lines of, say, a Jornada 520 (the first windows mobile device my eyes fell on as I was looking for an example in my office) running the most modern version of the Windows mobile OS.
If you're saying that then I guess either you don't know how indy games are done on the xbox, or you don't think the difference is significant.
The thing is, there's literally a completely separate "indy marketplace" that's not really vetted by microsoft. Your games go through the Creator's Club peer review process instead of going through a more rigorous Microsoft review process. This is exciting exactly because it's a separate marketplace. They can tolerate a tremendous amount of crap in there, and it doesn't "dilute the brand" of XBox Live Arcade at all, but it provides a channel for the occasional really creative gem.
Basically, if they'd include the same thing on WP7, it'd create a sweet spot between iPhone-like iron grip and Android-like wild west.
Actually, just FYI, I've been an Objective-C programmer since about 1989 (on NeXT machines), and I continue to prefer it over C#, Python, or Java myself. But I do understand perfectly well that I am not typical.
If I could get one of these in a PDA-like form instead of phone-like, for under $300, I'd get one, if for no other reason than compatibility testing, development, and the XBox Live integration.
But I am not going to replace my phone at this time.
And that's a real key point to remember, there. Unlike many consumer electronic devices, there are huge barriers to getting a new phone as soon as it comes on the market. Contracts to not all expire at the same time. Check for sales numbers on the 2-year anniversary of the release of previous popular phones (like the iPhone 3Gs for example), and check for sales numbers after a full year of peoples' contracts expiring, and then we'll talk.
Myself, I have no idea if WP7 will succeed, but I think it's got a shot, especially if they take certain actions that they haven't taken yet (eg. extend the "indy marketplace" concept from the XBox to WP7, and STOP PUSHING ZUNE BRANDING SO HARD).
Can we force all the recommendations Amazon gives us through this system too?
I mean like "automatically convert BluRay to DVD" (or the reverse), or "make sure DVDs are region 1", or "automatically convert PS3 games to XBox games" (or the reverse)? I'm getting quite sick of getting recommendations for media I can't use, games for systems I don't own, software for Windows, et cetera.
Remember how SunView used to work back in the day? A whole family of virtual framebuffer devices, just like the pseudoterminal devices that are still in use. It was glorious. Then X11 came along and killed it (largely because of cross-vendor compatibility).
As a heavy duty Unix user since, oh, about 1985 or so, I find modern MacOS to be more Unix-y than Linux. (Going into precisely why would take pages.)
My first reaction was "oh thank heavens, maybe there will be a desktop Linux I can stand to use some day soon". My second reaction was "hey, maybe it will even happen before Apple makes MacOS unusable for me". (I do Java development for a living right now; that day may be coming.)
I don't think Oracle sees it that way. I think they're more likely to take the (bad, imho) strategy of deciding that Java needs to make them money directly even on the desktop/enterprise (herein defined as businesses that are using Java for business apps but maybe not using "enterprise Java"), one way or another. Maybe that's trying to get rid of free decent Java IDEs and muscle the makers of the rest into paying them a fee. Maybe that's bolting features or APIs onto Java that are extremely labryinthine or poorly documented so that you need to pay Oracle for consultants to do some or all of your implementation, and suing the hell out of alternate implementations of Java.
So, what you're essentially saying is, Oracle may finally convince me to become a Mono/.Net developer, where de Icaza and Microsoft have never been able to do so.
Their own enterprise apps (like Oracle Financials) still use applets.
I'm not talking about the big back-end servers running Java (which they do, but that's not relevant), I'm talking about the end-user desktops requiring it. Oracle can "suddenly" lock Macintoshes users out of using some of their enterprise apps, they can port those apps to have a different non-Java front-end, or they can add MacOS alongside Linux and Windows as a platform they release Java for.
I'm betting that upon considering all the financial and PR trade-offs of those choices, they'll decide the last one is their best option.
Looked into it in the past. Every once in a while I look into it again.
Maybe that'll get to the point that I need some day, but I don't think it's there yet -- the certification requirements aren't narrow enough.
The MacOS X app store is going to reject any app that in any way doesn't comply with the MacOS X UI guidelines. The ones you're mentioning don't do stuff like that -- there's in general nothing stopping someone from installing KDE apps alongside GNOME apps. For geeks, that's a win. For folks like my dad, it'd be a recipe for disaster.
How long until the only way to get software on your Mac desktop is via Apple's store and all Mac developers are required to pay a 30% tribute to Apple?
I still just don't see Apple making this the policy for the platform itself -- they still ship tools to facilitate installing non-Apple operating systems on the things!
But personally, I'd love to give the option to lock down individual user accounts on the machine to the person administrating that machine.
I cannot give my dad a general purpose computer, right now -- he'd never be able to keep up with maintenance on it. (Yes, my dad really doesn't use any computers at all right now, really.) But if I could buy him a mac, keep the administrator account for myself, and give him a user account that could only install and run app store apps... with the more rigorous certification and the automatic updates and everything... with sandboxing... yeah. I could handle the support load of getting him one of those.
Since GoG packages some of their games by wrapping them up in an optimally-configured DOS emulator, this is actually quite exciting for their customers, in terms of future potential.
It's also pretty close to "Creepy Crawly Avenue" with the video cameras that are always running coupled with a machine that is almost always hooked up to the internet.
Yeup, that's true, in particular because the camera actually has motors in it and automatically decides where to aim itself (so it can keep the actors it's tracking in view). Kinect could be wonderful or awful, depending on whether it actually works and how it gets abused.
(One thing I'm excited about is, it connects via USB. Someone will figure out how to hack it so it works with a real computer. The potential for that... yum.)
Again, it sounds like it is an improvement over the existing stuff.
Hm, not to me. Or do you consider the gesture support for modern capacitive multitouch systems to just be "an improvement over", say, Graffiti on a stylus-required pressure-sensitive single-touch screen? If so, okay, then you and I set the bar very differently.
Multi-actor mo-cap without a special mo-cap suit, coupled with facial recognition, coupled with voice recognition... to me, it doesn't sound fair to dismiss that as a late-to-market incremental evolution of what Sony and Nintendo did. I mean, with one of these plugged in, you can be playing a movie on your XBox, and when the pizza guy rings the bell, you can just say "xbox, pause" out loud without hunting for the remote or controller. That's a bit more than a wiimote waggle game, or an EyeToy bubble-popping game, or an iSight "laser harp" toy. (In fact, I can't think of an existing mass-market gaming console, or any other living-room set-top box, with infrastructure for speakerphone-style no-headset voice commands.)
How? I assume by making sure that the dev kit forall of their platforms is consistent?
Ah, you're missing the aspects of the XNA creator's club that I think are innovative. It has nothing to do with the toolkit, language, or APIs. It has to do with the SDLC, review process, and delivery mechanism.
You tinker with your code on your XBox until it's in a state you are willing to distribute. Then, instead of going through the expensive and rigorous formal review process that an on-disk game or an XBLA game would go through, you submit it for peer review. Microsoft doesn't vet it, other developers do. They ensure that you're not being fraudulent, and that you're not breaking an explicit list of rules. If you pass all those filters, as determined by your peers, the app gets pushed through to the "indy games" marketplace.
The addition of a "peer review indy marketplace" distinct from yet alongside a conventional "formal approval process" marketplace on a curated platform is the bit I think is innovative. I hope to hell that Apple shamelessly rips off the idea some day. I also hope Microsoft re-uses it on Windows Phone 7.
I assume Kinect is trying to build on what Nintendo built for the Wii?
Don't assume, check. That's what the Sony controller looks like to me, but not the Kinect. It uses multiple video cameras to build a stereo image of the playing space, identifies actors in it, and does skeletal mapping of their whole bodies. It does facial recognition. It does voice recognition. Watch some of the demo footage, or talk to someone who's played with it themselves. It's considerably closer to "Dream Park" than anything I've heard coming out of Sony or Nintendo.
An example of what it can do that the others couldn't: I saw a demo of a physical fitness program using Kinect that was able to correct someone's Tai Chi posture. It was able to map the position of the shoulder, elbow, wrist, et cetera, and detect that the arm was off by a small angle, and highlighted the limb in red. As the limb moved into the correct position, the color shifted to green. That's not a simple no-brainer extension of what the WiiMote and Balance Board do, that's something else.
But, except for Clippy, I am hard pressed to think of many situations where Microsoft felt like it was innovating.
The "XNA Creator's Club" on the XBox 360 feels like innovation to me.
They've got a "curated" platform (ie. very closed to normal end-users, just like the iPhone). They've managed to make a hobbyist dev kit for it that lets people tinker with their own XBoxes, do peer review of the software, and distribute that software to regular end-users (and get paid for it), without compromising the security/integrity of the curated platform, and without creating confusion by mixing hobbyist apps in with "pro" apps (conventional disk-based games, "XBLA" games, and "indy" games are three distinct marketplaces).
Now, you may think the whole concept of "curated" platforms is bogus. But, lots of folks don't -- it's a way to make a computing device that you can put into the hands of a naïve end-user, and still end up with something relatively secure and supportable. A big downside is that innovation gets stifled, and Microsoft's innovation here is a way to mitigate exactly that downside.
(If Kinect actually works, that could feel like innovation too. I haven't had the opportunity to try it yet, though. And then there's Surface, I guess.)
I'm sure both of the people who care about this topic and who saw it on Slashdot before seeing it on a WoW-related news site or forum are delighted to see this story here.
I went and re-read the details, and I don't actually agree that the FSF's interpretation is unambiguously correct (and I'm sure Apple doesn't either, but will remove FSF-originated apps upon request anyway). If it is, the anti-TiVoizaton clauses in GPLv3 weren't necessary, and the TiVo is already infringing!
In the iOS case, those restrictions they're talking about from the app store terms of service are (arguably) in practice not applicable.
The GPL guarantees you access to the source code. All sorts of embedded devices contain GPLed code, and distribute it, but hinder the ability to change that code on those embedded devices (in some cases via code signing, in some cases by burning the binaries to silicon, etc). But you can modify and run the modified code in other environments. That applies here! Anyone can obtain the iOS dev kit, including the emulator, and build the app targeting that and do whatever. If folks have a developer's membership, they can deploy it on real hardware. Yeah, that costs money and requires tools, but the same is true for the PROM burner required to modify code on some embedded devices.
I can really see an argument that that's sufficient -- anyone who gets the app can get a version that's not subject to all those restrictions, they just can't necessarily deploy it on an iPhone (which is really pretty analogous to the TiVo situation) without additional tools (which is analogous to all sorts of embedded situations).
And, I'm sure that Apple won't remove GPLv2 apps from the app store unless the upstream copyright-owner issues a takedown request (which we now know for sure the FSF will do even for GPLv2 stuff, thanks for that cite). There's GPLv2 stuff in the store! Have the upstream VLC maintainers issued a statement on this? If they're cool with the iPad app, I bet it'll all be fine. If they're not, well, a takedown request will probably be coming if it's approved.
Slashdot Mirror
For personal projects, I've mostly been happy running RCS on my own server. I use CVS from time to time, and bits of it annoy me, but I can get work done with it.
Maybe for huge open source projects with teams all over the planet who can't communicate very tightly and who don't have a unified SDLC, some of these newer tools are worthwhile. But if you've got a small team and an adequate process, what's the compelling argument for switching to one of them if what you've got in place is working fine?
If I understand the presentation I saw, one of the things this Facebook tool will have going for it is, it'll be an IMAP client. You can punch in the details of your mail server, and use it as webmail for that service. Like, embed SquirrelMail in Facebook.
If Facebook can convince users to punch in the details for GMail's IMAP server, reading their GMail mail via Facebook instead of the GMail web interface, then Google runs the mail infrastructure, but Facebook gets the ad impressions. Remember, if you access GMail via IMAP, you see no ads at all. (I use GMail via IMAP, from several desktop and handheld IMAP clients.) If that started to happen in any volume, I bet Google would wake up and notice.
Nah, there is nothing called a "Zune Touch".
The existence of PDAs running Microsoft's OS long predates the creation of the failed music service that's branded Zune or the failed MP3 player that's branded Zune. If they were to create such a thing and name it "Zune Touch", that'd simply be another example of them pushing the Zune brand inappropriately.
I don't want "ZunePass". I don't want the Zune desktop software to be involved in anything (I do not run Windows on the desktop). I want something along the lines of, say, a Jornada 520 (the first windows mobile device my eyes fell on as I was looking for an example in my office) running the most modern version of the Windows mobile OS.
If you're saying that then I guess either you don't know how indy games are done on the xbox, or you don't think the difference is significant.
The thing is, there's literally a completely separate "indy marketplace" that's not really vetted by microsoft. Your games go through the Creator's Club peer review process instead of going through a more rigorous Microsoft review process. This is exciting exactly because it's a separate marketplace. They can tolerate a tremendous amount of crap in there, and it doesn't "dilute the brand" of XBox Live Arcade at all, but it provides a channel for the occasional really creative gem.
Basically, if they'd include the same thing on WP7, it'd create a sweet spot between iPhone-like iron grip and Android-like wild west.
Actually, just FYI, I've been an Objective-C programmer since about 1989 (on NeXT machines), and I continue to prefer it over C#, Python, or Java myself. But I do understand perfectly well that I am not typical.
If I could get one of these in a PDA-like form instead of phone-like, for under $300, I'd get one, if for no other reason than compatibility testing, development, and the XBox Live integration.
But I am not going to replace my phone at this time.
And that's a real key point to remember, there. Unlike many consumer electronic devices, there are huge barriers to getting a new phone as soon as it comes on the market. Contracts to not all expire at the same time. Check for sales numbers on the 2-year anniversary of the release of previous popular phones (like the iPhone 3Gs for example), and check for sales numbers after a full year of peoples' contracts expiring, and then we'll talk.
Myself, I have no idea if WP7 will succeed, but I think it's got a shot, especially if they take certain actions that they haven't taken yet (eg. extend the "indy marketplace" concept from the XBox to WP7, and STOP PUSHING ZUNE BRANDING SO HARD).
Can we force all the recommendations Amazon gives us through this system too?
I mean like "automatically convert BluRay to DVD" (or the reverse), or "make sure DVDs are region 1", or "automatically convert PS3 games to XBox games" (or the reverse)? I'm getting quite sick of getting recommendations for media I can't use, games for systems I don't own, software for Windows, et cetera.
Me neither. And I don't like "Google Instant' either.
Know what I do about it?
I turn it off! Just turn it off and forget it was ever implemented.
If someone out there likes this stuff, fine. They can have it. That doesn't mean that the people who don't like it are forced to deal with it.
Heh, my Unix experience predates X11.
Remember how SunView used to work back in the day? A whole family of virtual framebuffer devices, just like the pseudoterminal devices that are still in use. It was glorious. Then X11 came along and killed it (largely because of cross-vendor compatibility).
As a heavy duty Unix user since, oh, about 1985 or so, I find modern MacOS to be more Unix-y than Linux. (Going into precisely why would take pages.)
My first reaction was "oh thank heavens, maybe there will be a desktop Linux I can stand to use some day soon". My second reaction was "hey, maybe it will even happen before Apple makes MacOS unusable for me". (I do Java development for a living right now; that day may be coming.)
I don't think Oracle sees it that way. I think they're more likely to take the (bad, imho) strategy of deciding that Java needs to make them money directly even on the desktop/enterprise (herein defined as businesses that are using Java for business apps but maybe not using "enterprise Java"), one way or another. Maybe that's trying to get rid of free decent Java IDEs and muscle the makers of the rest into paying them a fee. Maybe that's bolting features or APIs onto Java that are extremely labryinthine or poorly documented so that you need to pay Oracle for consultants to do some or all of your implementation, and suing the hell out of alternate implementations of Java.
So, what you're essentially saying is, Oracle may finally convince me to become a Mono/.Net developer, where de Icaza and Microsoft have never been able to do so.
Their own enterprise apps (like Oracle Financials) still use applets.
I'm not talking about the big back-end servers running Java (which they do, but that's not relevant), I'm talking about the end-user desktops requiring it. Oracle can "suddenly" lock Macintoshes users out of using some of their enterprise apps, they can port those apps to have a different non-Java front-end, or they can add MacOS alongside Linux and Windows as a platform they release Java for.
I'm betting that upon considering all the financial and PR trade-offs of those choices, they'll decide the last one is their best option.
As far as I can tell, this means he can't use any computer that honors DRM, because DRM is implemented via cryptography.
An iPod that can play protected content from the iTunes Music Store or from Audible is a computer that uses encryption.
A reasonably modern set-top box that can decode HBO is a computer that uses encryption.
A Kindle that can display DRM-protected ebooks is a computer that uses encryption.
WTF?
Looked into it in the past. Every once in a while I look into it again.
Maybe that'll get to the point that I need some day, but I don't think it's there yet -- the certification requirements aren't narrow enough.
The MacOS X app store is going to reject any app that in any way doesn't comply with the MacOS X UI guidelines. The ones you're mentioning don't do stuff like that -- there's in general nothing stopping someone from installing KDE apps alongside GNOME apps. For geeks, that's a win. For folks like my dad, it'd be a recipe for disaster.
How long until the only way to get software on your Mac desktop is via Apple's store and all Mac developers are required to pay a 30% tribute to Apple?
I still just don't see Apple making this the policy for the platform itself -- they still ship tools to facilitate installing non-Apple operating systems on the things!
But personally, I'd love to give the option to lock down individual user accounts on the machine to the person administrating that machine.
I cannot give my dad a general purpose computer, right now -- he'd never be able to keep up with maintenance on it. (Yes, my dad really doesn't use any computers at all right now, really.) But if I could buy him a mac, keep the administrator account for myself, and give him a user account that could only install and run app store apps... with the more rigorous certification and the automatic updates and everything... with sandboxing... yeah. I could handle the support load of getting him one of those.
That new MacBook Air... imagine that with the Netbook edition of Ubuntu on it. Mmmmm.
Since GoG packages some of their games by wrapping them up in an optimally-configured DOS emulator, this is actually quite exciting for their customers, in terms of future potential.
Please let me automatically filter out every text message I receive that has "u" or "k" as a standalone word, or "thx".
Yeup, that's true, in particular because the camera actually has motors in it and automatically decides where to aim itself (so it can keep the actors it's tracking in view). Kinect could be wonderful or awful, depending on whether it actually works and how it gets abused.
(One thing I'm excited about is, it connects via USB. Someone will figure out how to hack it so it works with a real computer. The potential for that... yum.)
Hm, not to me. Or do you consider the gesture support for modern capacitive multitouch systems to just be "an improvement over", say, Graffiti on a stylus-required pressure-sensitive single-touch screen? If so, okay, then you and I set the bar very differently.
Multi-actor mo-cap without a special mo-cap suit, coupled with facial recognition, coupled with voice recognition... to me, it doesn't sound fair to dismiss that as a late-to-market incremental evolution of what Sony and Nintendo did. I mean, with one of these plugged in, you can be playing a movie on your XBox, and when the pizza guy rings the bell, you can just say "xbox, pause" out loud without hunting for the remote or controller. That's a bit more than a wiimote waggle game, or an EyeToy bubble-popping game, or an iSight "laser harp" toy. (In fact, I can't think of an existing mass-market gaming console, or any other living-room set-top box, with infrastructure for speakerphone-style no-headset voice commands.)
Ah, you're missing the aspects of the XNA creator's club that I think are innovative. It has nothing to do with the toolkit, language, or APIs. It has to do with the SDLC, review process, and delivery mechanism.
You tinker with your code on your XBox until it's in a state you are willing to distribute. Then, instead of going through the expensive and rigorous formal review process that an on-disk game or an XBLA game would go through, you submit it for peer review. Microsoft doesn't vet it, other developers do. They ensure that you're not being fraudulent, and that you're not breaking an explicit list of rules. If you pass all those filters, as determined by your peers, the app gets pushed through to the "indy games" marketplace.
The addition of a "peer review indy marketplace" distinct from yet alongside a conventional "formal approval process" marketplace on a curated platform is the bit I think is innovative. I hope to hell that Apple shamelessly rips off the idea some day. I also hope Microsoft re-uses it on Windows Phone 7.
Don't assume, check. That's what the Sony controller looks like to me, but not the Kinect. It uses multiple video cameras to build a stereo image of the playing space, identifies actors in it, and does skeletal mapping of their whole bodies. It does facial recognition. It does voice recognition. Watch some of the demo footage, or talk to someone who's played with it themselves. It's considerably closer to "Dream Park" than anything I've heard coming out of Sony or Nintendo.
An example of what it can do that the others couldn't: I saw a demo of a physical fitness program using Kinect that was able to correct someone's Tai Chi posture. It was able to map the position of the shoulder, elbow, wrist, et cetera, and detect that the arm was off by a small angle, and highlighted the limb in red. As the limb moved into the correct position, the color shifted to green. That's not a simple no-brainer extension of what the WiiMote and Balance Board do, that's something else.
The "XNA Creator's Club" on the XBox 360 feels like innovation to me.
They've got a "curated" platform (ie. very closed to normal end-users, just like the iPhone). They've managed to make a hobbyist dev kit for it that lets people tinker with their own XBoxes, do peer review of the software, and distribute that software to regular end-users (and get paid for it), without compromising the security/integrity of the curated platform, and without creating confusion by mixing hobbyist apps in with "pro" apps (conventional disk-based games, "XBLA" games, and "indy" games are three distinct marketplaces).
Now, you may think the whole concept of "curated" platforms is bogus. But, lots of folks don't -- it's a way to make a computing device that you can put into the hands of a naïve end-user, and still end up with something relatively secure and supportable. A big downside is that innovation gets stifled, and Microsoft's innovation here is a way to mitigate exactly that downside.
(If Kinect actually works, that could feel like innovation too. I haven't had the opportunity to try it yet, though. And then there's Surface, I guess.)
I'm sure both of the people who care about this topic and who saw it on Slashdot before seeing it on a WoW-related news site or forum are delighted to see this story here.
...after all, many more users are leaking Android app data.
I went and re-read the details, and I don't actually agree that the FSF's interpretation is unambiguously correct (and I'm sure Apple doesn't either, but will remove FSF-originated apps upon request anyway). If it is, the anti-TiVoizaton clauses in GPLv3 weren't necessary, and the TiVo is already infringing!
In the iOS case, those restrictions they're talking about from the app store terms of service are (arguably) in practice not applicable.
The GPL guarantees you access to the source code. All sorts of embedded devices contain GPLed code, and distribute it, but hinder the ability to change that code on those embedded devices (in some cases via code signing, in some cases by burning the binaries to silicon, etc). But you can modify and run the modified code in other environments. That applies here! Anyone can obtain the iOS dev kit, including the emulator, and build the app targeting that and do whatever. If folks have a developer's membership, they can deploy it on real hardware. Yeah, that costs money and requires tools, but the same is true for the PROM burner required to modify code on some embedded devices.
I can really see an argument that that's sufficient -- anyone who gets the app can get a version that's not subject to all those restrictions, they just can't necessarily deploy it on an iPhone (which is really pretty analogous to the TiVo situation) without additional tools (which is analogous to all sorts of embedded situations).
And, I'm sure that Apple won't remove GPLv2 apps from the app store unless the upstream copyright-owner issues a takedown request (which we now know for sure the FSF will do even for GPLv2 stuff, thanks for that cite). There's GPLv2 stuff in the store! Have the upstream VLC maintainers issued a statement on this? If they're cool with the iPad app, I bet it'll all be fine. If they're not, well, a takedown request will probably be coming if it's approved.