This is just revisionist history. The number of open OSes has gone down, the number of curated OSes has gone up, the number of out-of-the-box open devices has gone down, the out-of-the-box curated devices now utterly dominate the market, the only stats that look better today are *maybe* adoption of open OSes (how many users root and sideload vs. peak number of WinMo and PalmOS users?) and number of apps (a meaningless stat that shouldn't be admired - it glorifies quantity with zero regard to quality).
Not true at all -- if you have an iOS device, pay Apple the $99 per year, download the development kit, get yourself the necessary signing certificates from Apple, and compile and run anything you want. You can even get the necessary certificate files to install it onto the devices of up to 100 friends.
As I read this I thought you were going to write a satirical post supporting my points. I think this paragraph says it all.
"Fragmentation" is what Apple fanboys call "diversity." They see it as a bad thing, they want a one-true-platform future, it's such a neat and tidy concept...
And this is why the GNU/Linux distinction is important, even if we (understandably) can't be assed to say it most of the time. Without the GNU tools it's hardly "Linux" at all.
Offering Linux costs OEMs money because MS gives the OEMs cash incentives for preloading Windows. That's why the Dell laptops with Linux on them cost the same or more.
Good luck doing any web browsing with no ability to input letters. I hope you're not advocating something similar to the high-score initial input system.
A single OS that allows app sideloading by default on some models doesn't sound "better than ever" to me. Doing anything that the default OS doesn't allow, like tethering, still requires a jailbreak so sideloading on default Android installs isn't very open anyways.
Before the iPhone came out the only curated OS was Symbian, found on dumb phones and used as such. There were two open OSes that allowed you to install whatever you wanted by default, PalmOS and Windows Mobile. Now there is 1 OS that in some instances will allow you to load arbitrary applets, but is usually a curated OS for all intents and purposes by default, and 2 other fully curated OSes, and we've had two mostly-FOSS open OSes that were technically superior fail in that time as well. No way that's an improvement.
Rooting an android is not a market-provided option. It's no different than jailbreaking an iOS phone or hacking a PS3, conceptually it's no different than putting a custom-built GNU/Linux distro on an Android phone but it doesn't seem to radical because it's based on the default OS. The options have been reduced, make no mistake.
Yep, sad that the curated computing fansheep can't see this coming. I'll just have to drop out of it like I did with online gaming when they removed LAN play and the ability to connect directly to other players and introduced subscription fees and DLC.
I have this, but it's two devices in total, not one. It's a computer I plug into the TV. Plays DVDs and could play blu-rays if you upgraded the drive. It has one handy remote, a DS3 with a thumb keyboard. When you log into it, you have a full-fledged browser and a link to the local media library on the desktop. It could act as a DVR box if necessary and it's fully upgradeable. You could put it in a tidy case if you want. For the cost of not having everything integrated into the TV unit, and having just one external box (or two if you have a cable receiver, but no getting away from that), you can have all this, and the devices are all independently upgradeable.
No kidding. A good monitor lasts much longer than the computer it's attached to. Keeping a screen from one hardware generation to the next is one of the biggest cost savers available to the cognoscenti.
Then you can imagine how disappointed I was when the screen backlight border spontaneously started to peel on the 24" 1080p monitor I bought and planned to keep for at least 6 years, and still use for many years after that. I just don't know what happened, it was sitting on a desk out of the sun and one day I see the shadow of the black border edging (apparently somewhere between the backlight source and the pixel layer) covering a corner of the screen T_T If I was to buy another one now the only thing I'd do different is get one with LED backlighting, hardly worth an upgrade.
Only rough thing that ever happened to it was being smuggled in a suitcase a few years ago, probably no worse than regular shipping.
Exactly, another dumb idea. It seems like the tech industry is getting dumber, in the early/mid-2000s you saw some crazy "out-there" ideas but no blatantly dumb ideas such as embedding a non-upgradeable (and quite lame) HTPC into a TV for all time. If anything TVs need to be made more modular, not less.
On top of that there's no consumer demand for these things, but I think that's because most people want a purely passive TV experience, which is understandable, in fact I've been thinking of writing a script for my HTPC to bring up a random episode of a random show to simulate cable TV's passive viewing, sometimes that's what I want, but it seems that most people want that almost all of the time.
I didn't present a false dichotomy, I was using a device known as hyperbole - moving to the opposite end of the spectrum from curated computing. Again, you suggest the "inherent dangers and evil" of curated computing but fail to actually point any out. And again, why does it affect you? There is still wide choice in computing environments, and those will continue to exist.
If I want an open mobile device (as in, lets me compile and run anything I want on it) today there is NOTING I can buy off the shelf, the device would have to be hacked. You bet your ass it affects me. Curated computing has taken over mobile devices entirely and is creeping it's way into desktop computing. You really don't see a problem with removing all freedom of software choice from the user and having a centralized authority dictate what computers can do? You don't see the problem with a monolithic middleman controlling all software sales on a platform? You don't see how bad this might get when open computing is shrunk down to a niche market making hacker toys for geeks? Then you deserve the world you're creating but the rest of us don't.
Well I don't think my logic is any good against this level of sycophantic apologism (you obviously don't see the inherent danger and evil of curated computing, and think that iOS is "open" because the file formats it uses are roughly as open as MS'). Also you present a false dichotomy of either curated computing or command line mastery, but like I said, not much point arguing if Apple can do no - or "little" wrong to you. They are objectively and fairly obviously the most evil company in computing today and you consider them near-perfect. That's a reality gap I can't bridge.
I was excited at the idea of a DRM-free music store outside the US, but the only one I can find is iTunes which requires a proprietary client and is only available in a limited number of countries. Still, DRM wouldn't have lasted much longer even without iTunes.
It gives me an excuse to put off migrating from Mac OS X to Linux, which was going to be a good deal of work.
Unless you've heavily modified the OS itself, difficulty in migrating OSes is a sign that you've either locked yourself in or are about to lock yourself in, and your choice of destination OS rules out the latter.
You should do it anyway, it'll save you money and time in the future and reduce funding to a tyrant megacorp. You know they're going to wall-in MacOS at some point, there's too much money to be made.
Apart from gaming, migrating from Windows to Linux was easy for me, even back in the days when I was new to it. I was already using all FOSS apps so I didn't have to change any apps when I switched.
If you download and verify the source, and then compile it, the only way a backdoor can get into it is if your compiler is made to put a backdoor into the Maemo source as in the old UNIX login backdoor. Is it time to put our tinfoil hats on?
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There's a truck in Texas with a kill switch, oh noes!
This is just revisionist history. The number of open OSes has gone down, the number of curated OSes has gone up, the number of out-of-the-box open devices has gone down, the out-of-the-box curated devices now utterly dominate the market, the only stats that look better today are *maybe* adoption of open OSes (how many users root and sideload vs. peak number of WinMo and PalmOS users?) and number of apps (a meaningless stat that shouldn't be admired - it glorifies quantity with zero regard to quality).
Not true at all -- if you have an iOS device, pay Apple the $99 per year, download the development kit, get yourself the necessary signing certificates from Apple, and compile and run anything you want. You can even get the necessary certificate files to install it onto the devices of up to 100 friends.
As I read this I thought you were going to write a satirical post supporting my points. I think this paragraph says it all.
The OSes themselves weren't better (at least comparing to rooted Android) but it was a better situation for consumers, they had much more choice.
"Fragmentation" is what Apple fanboys call "diversity." They see it as a bad thing, they want a one-true-platform future, it's such a neat and tidy concept...
Yep, it would take some time (mostly waiting) but you could hack Ubuntu into a really nice OS with little more than changing packages around.
"or you could write your own" is the same as, "or you can build your own car from scratch"...
I'm pretty much already there, luckily it's conceptually much easier than building your own computer, and the parts aren't so tiny.
And this is why the GNU/Linux distinction is important, even if we (understandably) can't be assed to say it most of the time. Without the GNU tools it's hardly "Linux" at all.
Offering Linux costs OEMs money because MS gives the OEMs cash incentives for preloading Windows. That's why the Dell laptops with Linux on them cost the same or more.
Good luck doing any web browsing with no ability to input letters. I hope you're not advocating something similar to the high-score initial input system.
A single OS that allows app sideloading by default on some models doesn't sound "better than ever" to me. Doing anything that the default OS doesn't allow, like tethering, still requires a jailbreak so sideloading on default Android installs isn't very open anyways.
Before the iPhone came out the only curated OS was Symbian, found on dumb phones and used as such. There were two open OSes that allowed you to install whatever you wanted by default, PalmOS and Windows Mobile. Now there is 1 OS that in some instances will allow you to load arbitrary applets, but is usually a curated OS for all intents and purposes by default, and 2 other fully curated OSes, and we've had two mostly-FOSS open OSes that were technically superior fail in that time as well. No way that's an improvement.
Rooting an android is not a market-provided option. It's no different than jailbreaking an iOS phone or hacking a PS3, conceptually it's no different than putting a custom-built GNU/Linux distro on an Android phone but it doesn't seem to radical because it's based on the default OS. The options have been reduced, make no mistake.
Yep, sad that the curated computing fansheep can't see this coming. I'll just have to drop out of it like I did with online gaming when they removed LAN play and the ability to connect directly to other players and introduced subscription fees and DLC.
You call my attitude "chicken little" but I call yours "frog in hot water."
Before the iPhone there were PalmOS and Windows Mobile smartphones. Not open source but you could freely compile and run whatever you wanted on them.
I have this, but it's two devices in total, not one. It's a computer I plug into the TV. Plays DVDs and could play blu-rays if you upgraded the drive. It has one handy remote, a DS3 with a thumb keyboard. When you log into it, you have a full-fledged browser and a link to the local media library on the desktop. It could act as a DVR box if necessary and it's fully upgradeable. You could put it in a tidy case if you want. For the cost of not having everything integrated into the TV unit, and having just one external box (or two if you have a cable receiver, but no getting away from that), you can have all this, and the devices are all independently upgradeable.
Any HTPC remote needs a thumb keyboard or it's a joke. Shoulda looked at the remote before you bought it.
I'm not even interested in consumer electronics any more because of this. Fuck curated computing. All of it.
No kidding. A good monitor lasts much longer than the computer it's attached to. Keeping a screen from one hardware generation to the next is one of the biggest cost savers available to the cognoscenti.
Then you can imagine how disappointed I was when the screen backlight border spontaneously started to peel on the 24" 1080p monitor I bought and planned to keep for at least 6 years, and still use for many years after that. I just don't know what happened, it was sitting on a desk out of the sun and one day I see the shadow of the black border edging (apparently somewhere between the backlight source and the pixel layer) covering a corner of the screen T_T If I was to buy another one now the only thing I'd do different is get one with LED backlighting, hardly worth an upgrade.
Only rough thing that ever happened to it was being smuggled in a suitcase a few years ago, probably no worse than regular shipping.
Exactly, another dumb idea. It seems like the tech industry is getting dumber, in the early/mid-2000s you saw some crazy "out-there" ideas but no blatantly dumb ideas such as embedding a non-upgradeable (and quite lame) HTPC into a TV for all time. If anything TVs need to be made more modular, not less.
On top of that there's no consumer demand for these things, but I think that's because most people want a purely passive TV experience, which is understandable, in fact I've been thinking of writing a script for my HTPC to bring up a random episode of a random show to simulate cable TV's passive viewing, sometimes that's what I want, but it seems that most people want that almost all of the time.
I didn't present a false dichotomy, I was using a device known as hyperbole - moving to the opposite end of the spectrum from curated computing. Again, you suggest the "inherent dangers and evil" of curated computing but fail to actually point any out. And again, why does it affect you? There is still wide choice in computing environments, and those will continue to exist.
If I want an open mobile device (as in, lets me compile and run anything I want on it) today there is NOTING I can buy off the shelf, the device would have to be hacked. You bet your ass it affects me. Curated computing has taken over mobile devices entirely and is creeping it's way into desktop computing. You really don't see a problem with removing all freedom of software choice from the user and having a centralized authority dictate what computers can do? You don't see the problem with a monolithic middleman controlling all software sales on a platform? You don't see how bad this might get when open computing is shrunk down to a niche market making hacker toys for geeks? Then you deserve the world you're creating but the rest of us don't.
Yeah it's decent, if DCTech is a shill then MS is hurting MSSE's reputation with this shit. Good tools don't need to be advertised by shills.
Maybe you're a shill after all, who modded this shit up? You work for Waggener Edstrom?
Well I don't think my logic is any good against this level of sycophantic apologism (you obviously don't see the inherent danger and evil of curated computing, and think that iOS is "open" because the file formats it uses are roughly as open as MS'). Also you present a false dichotomy of either curated computing or command line mastery, but like I said, not much point arguing if Apple can do no - or "little" wrong to you. They are objectively and fairly obviously the most evil company in computing today and you consider them near-perfect. That's a reality gap I can't bridge.
I was excited at the idea of a DRM-free music store outside the US, but the only one I can find is iTunes which requires a proprietary client and is only available in a limited number of countries. Still, DRM wouldn't have lasted much longer even without iTunes.
It gives me an excuse to put off migrating from Mac OS X to Linux, which was going to be a good deal of work.
Unless you've heavily modified the OS itself, difficulty in migrating OSes is a sign that you've either locked yourself in or are about to lock yourself in, and your choice of destination OS rules out the latter.
You should do it anyway, it'll save you money and time in the future and reduce funding to a tyrant megacorp. You know they're going to wall-in MacOS at some point, there's too much money to be made.
Apart from gaming, migrating from Windows to Linux was easy for me, even back in the days when I was new to it. I was already using all FOSS apps so I didn't have to change any apps when I switched.
If you download and verify the source, and then compile it, the only way a backdoor can get into it is if your compiler is made to put a backdoor into the Maemo source as in the old UNIX login backdoor. Is it time to put our tinfoil hats on?