No. The MeeGo development certainly had it's troubles not saying it hadn't, but the Nokia N9 was seen as a phone that quality-wise was even better than the iPhone. Maybe not *everyone* thought so, but, a lot of people thought so. Seriously, they compared it to a serious iPhone competitor at the time where iPhone was the gold standard. You can twist that around however you wish, fact is, getting a phone out the door good enough to rival the iPhone is a failure? I'd like to see a few other of these failures thank you very much.
"No it hasn't. Marketshare is up in virtually every market vs. 3 or 6 months ago. And certainly hugely up vs. 2 years ago."
Right, keep on living in denial, don't really care.
Some markets may be bigger than others, but you are seriously overlooking the global picture. Global 2014 Q1 market share of new devices showed Windows Phone at a 2.2% market share total. Early 2014 Q2 for the global picture reports does not improve these numbers much - in fact, seems to have flatlined. Windows Phone can sell at most 5-10 million units a quarter - and the market itself is growing, not shrinking.
No, Windows Phone has a long, hard, and winding road to go before it can become a serious contender for third Ecosystem. As has all the other emerging platforms (Tizen, Firefox, Ubuntu and Sailfish OS). And the old ones (at this point only blackberry remains).
"There was a huge drop in Symbian marketshare 6 months before Elop came on as CEO. Causes cannot happen temporally before effects."
Yes, Symbian was an aging OS that needed replacement - and there was a replacement in the works, with a clear migration path, Meego. However, at Nokia, Symbian was still alive and well, albeit the writing was on the wall. Take a look at these three pictures:
The data points are rather damning. Sales do not lie. Would Nokia have collapsed as much as it did, had it stuck with Meego or switched to Android? No. They might've lost a bit of market share, but it would have paid off quite handsomely, especially with Meego. It is quite clear that it's the choice of the WinPhone platform that is the culprit, here.
Why they choose WinPhone I do not know. They go from a clear upgrade path for their users to no upgrade path for their users, along with the infamous "Burning platforms" memo, and then expect their customers won't jump ship? Sorry, not happening.
It doesn't matter what you think - WinPhone will have a hell of a hard time to reach even double-digit market share. Right now it's flatlined. Everyone thinking otherwise are either: a) delusional, b) have a vested stake in seeing Windows Phone succeed, or c) has been fed with Snake Oil by their advisors.
What's really, really sad though, is that we've traded the IBM monopoly for the Windows monopoly, and now the Windows monopoly for the Android monopoly.
Yes, Android has passed iOS in both market- and mindshare - and there are no other viable competitors. Free software blew it - again!:(
Except it isn't. Tomi has rather damning evidence in his wall of text:
The FACT is, that Nokia CEO Stephen Elop told Nokia shareholders - and I quote - "Indeed, Microsoft did buy the Skype company as part of the ecosystem that comes with Windows Phone and Windows. The feedback from operators is they don’t like Skype, of course." Elop went on to explain why carriers/operators hate Skype " (because) it could take away from revenues."
This is spoken by Elop himself. Why do you think Nokia fell from being twice as large as it's biggest competitor to completely fall out the top ten in mobile in a mere three years? It's called Windows Phone, and nobody wants a windows phone!
The problem is not that retail does not carry WinPhone. The problem is that carriers - e.g. Verizon, AT&T, Sprint etc - Will not subsidize windows phones, and they started this ever since the Skype purchase. That is what is meant by the "carrier boycott". Oh sure they will sell those phones, but only at full price. Why is this a problem? Well, "you want this winphone for $49 a month or this androidphone for $29 a month?" is a serious problem because Joe Sixpack doesn't care about Android or Windows, he will take the cheapest alternative.
Is this a fixable problem? No, it is not. Skype is now an integrated part of Microsofts Cloud strategy. So this means Microsoft has to choose between Skype or Mobile.
Please do note that carriers do not wish to support technology that will one day make them a "mere data channel". Carriers have built their business on exclusive services in their own networks. By subsidising Windows phones, they are funding technology which will make them obsolete one day. Sure they are only delaying the inevitable, but that's how they roll.
Windows Phone will most probably never see double digit market share. The reason? Skype. Microsoft owns Skype, the single biggest threat to current carrier revenue. The Skype/VOIP revolution will happen, but if you were a carrier, would YOU invest in technology that would kill you off, long-term?
Tomi Ahonen has a rather complete rant about this topic from late 2012, and very little has changed since then.
Re messed up docs: Yes, exactly, and those errors come up because Word uses the "visual" workflow, while Writer uses the "structure" workflow which IMO is both easier to understand, less prone to errors and easier to use.
LibreOffice is just as capable as Office, as Munich has proven with it's LiMux migration. Different, but capable. Besides - is it LO being incompatible with MSO or MSO being incompatible with LO?;)
As for resumes - I always send those as PDFs which are super-easy to create in LO. But whatever.
If that is your only argument - Office2007 isn't compatible with Office2003/2000 either. So not a very good one.
The reason why LibreOffice sometimes "messes up" your layout is that it uses the "document structure" workflow instead of the "visual" workflow as seen with Word. Once you find out "Wait, I don't have to care about how this looks until I've finished with the report, and then I just change a few parameters", it's amazing how much Writer throws itself to be out of your way as much as possible.
With word I have to constantly mind what format I need to use. "Wait, should I use 12pt or 16pt text here? And was it Verdana or Times New Roman?" In LO - no need for that. "That's a headline, that one is a paragraph, that one is a bullet list, and there we have a quote." Mark text accordingly, insert emphasis where needed, done, no need to bother about looks at all, and it's easy as pie to, for instance, a table of contents. That's why I find LO superior.
Oh and now you might say "But word has that too!" - yes, and LO has the visual styles too. But in LO everything is designed through the document structure paradigm. In Word it's just a half-assed mess.
Finally, yes, LO Writer is quite a bit limited when designing, say, a pamphlet - but why on earth would you use a word processor to make a pamphlet? Get indesign or Scribus for that!
I think the path of least resistance when it comes to federation would be to make MG compatible with the BuddyCloud MediaServer concept, since BC being based on XMPP already has excellent federation.
Regardless I think this is promising. My hope is that GMG+Federation will some day in the future challenge both Facebook, Youtube and similar sites - which is sorely needed because the contentID-issue at Google has shown that we need a solution where users control their own data.
Problem with Minesweeper though is when you end up with problems like these (5x3 board with 4 mines) - then it's a 50-50 chance of the mine being the lower cell or upper cell, and no way of knowing which one..FFF..3[]3..1[]1.
F - Flagged mine [] - unopened square . - Open, empty space
Russia may have a strong military, but is it strong enough to take on the entirety of western civilization?
I agree that US has a vested interest - but it's not strong enough to warrant an intervention in a country literally on the other side of the world. Not yet, anyhow.
This isn't a problem of the U.S. since Ukraine isn't in any way, shape or form affiliated with NATO.
The EU on the other hand might be interested... But intervening with Ukraine at this stage would be enough to provoke Putin and the rest of Russia into World War 3 mode.
That would be a mistake on Putin's part, since barring a full nuclear war, he cannot realisticly win, and even with nukes he can only drag the rest of the world to the dark ages. EU + USA has enough troops to repel all of Russias advances, and then some.
The only thing Russia will accomplish with it's bullying is to make it's neighbours more determined to seek strong alliances; NATO in the west, and probably China/India will create a strong asian alliance in the east. I do not understand why Putin is that stupid.
These days it's quite popular to both bash the copyright system and sue those thieving filesharers to oblivion. I'd like to ask you what you, as an independant musician, think would be a good balance between the creator rights and the public interests? Would it be a RIAA wet dream where all the content is locked up behind paywalls and getting a copy from an unauthorized source, like say a library, would constitute a crime with a minimum of 6 months in jail? Do you believe more in the Pirate Parties vision of abolishing the monopoly on creating copies, but retaining the protection against economic abuse? Or are you more in favor of going full nuclear by abolishing the entire copyright system alltogether? Thank you for all the great songs you have produced over the years!
DirectCompute isn't widely used last time I checked, CUDA and OpenCL has far greater mindshare. It's also more or less equivalent to those two technologies. Though granted you must use it for XBox...
DirectSetup is only a minor utility library that only makes sense if you're already using DirectX.
DirectXMath is, likewise, more of a utility library. I consider it a part of D3D, since 90% of the functions only make sense with D3D (and maybe DirectCompute).
So, yeah, revising that list, Direct3D, Direct2D, DirectCompute and DirectWrite.
Sometimes you need more fine-grained control than Apache gives you though.
Like, consider an Apache system running three domains at foo.example.com, bar.example.com and baz.example.com. Baz needs CGI scripts, Foo and Bar doesn't.
These days this scenario will probably be solved with three separate virtual machines running from the same master copy (i.e. RO mounted filesystem over local netboot with separate storage partitions), but, yeah...
If you're going to be nitpicky, then yes, it's SDL+OpenGL.
However, the only DirectX system still relevant in Win8.1 is Direct3D. Everything else has been removed;
DirectDraw - Repaced by Direct2D DirectInput - Replaced by XInput DirectSound - Replaced by XAudio2 DirectMusic - Legacy MIDI format - also replaced by XAudio2 DirectPlay - A complete joke, replaced by Games for Windows Live and XB Live. DirectX Media/Media Objects: Deprecated and replaced/removed by all of above
That leaves DirectWrite and Direct2D as the only relevant (and minor) DIrectX components left. So yes, DX is more than a graphics API; these days and for gaming though, the only thing being used is D3D in DX.
No, the extensions aren't standard, that's true. It's not a perfect solution. But if you want to use a new nifty feature not yet standardised by OpenGL, you do not have to wait for the ARB to get their shit together. You as a developer can use it and then with minimal fuss port your non-standard extension to the standard when it becomes available. DirectX does not have that advantage.
This is a major advantage if some new technology shows up, like say geometry shaders. OpenGL supported geometry shaders from day one - but through proprietary extensions. These then trickled down to the specification. Even if it's invented elsewhere OpenGL can take advantage of it basicly instantly. It's not standard - true - but it's there and if it's a good idea it will most probably become standard.
Similarly, I have no doubt extensions will show up that will implement these new DX inventions, should they prove to be helpful.
XBOne can't use DX12. Reason being, the hardware in XBOne is not DX12 compatible. I can't see how a GPU manufactured atleast 9 months earlier than DX12 release will ever be compatible with DX12.
Slashdot Mirror
"MeeGo was a failed product."
No. The MeeGo development certainly had it's troubles not saying it hadn't, but the Nokia N9 was seen as a phone that quality-wise was even better than the iPhone. Maybe not *everyone* thought so, but, a lot of people thought so. Seriously, they compared it to a serious iPhone competitor at the time where iPhone was the gold standard. You can twist that around however you wish, fact is, getting a phone out the door good enough to rival the iPhone is a failure? I'd like to see a few other of these failures thank you very much.
"No it hasn't. Marketshare is up in virtually every market vs. 3 or 6 months ago. And certainly hugely up vs. 2 years ago."
Right, keep on living in denial, don't really care.
Some markets may be bigger than others, but you are seriously overlooking the global picture. Global 2014 Q1 market share of new devices showed Windows Phone at a 2.2% market share total. Early 2014 Q2 for the global picture reports does not improve these numbers much - in fact, seems to have flatlined. Windows Phone can sell at most 5-10 million units a quarter - and the market itself is growing, not shrinking.
No, Windows Phone has a long, hard, and winding road to go before it can become a serious contender for third Ecosystem. As has all the other emerging platforms (Tizen, Firefox, Ubuntu and Sailfish OS). And the old ones (at this point only blackberry remains).
"There was a huge drop in Symbian marketshare 6 months before Elop came on as CEO. Causes cannot happen temporally before effects."
Yes, Symbian was an aging OS that needed replacement - and there was a replacement in the works, with a clear migration path, Meego. However, at Nokia, Symbian was still alive and well, albeit the writing was on the wall. Take a look at these three pictures:
http://communities-dominate.bl...
http://communities-dominate.bl...
http://communities-dominate.bl...
And the article in full, in case you're interested: http://communities-dominate.bl...
The data points are rather damning. Sales do not lie. Would Nokia have collapsed as much as it did, had it stuck with Meego or switched to Android? No. They might've lost a bit of market share, but it would have paid off quite handsomely, especially with Meego. It is quite clear that it's the choice of the WinPhone platform that is the culprit, here.
Why they choose WinPhone I do not know. They go from a clear upgrade path for their users to no upgrade path for their users, along with the infamous "Burning platforms" memo, and then expect their customers won't jump ship? Sorry, not happening.
It doesn't matter what you think - WinPhone will have a hell of a hard time to reach even double-digit market share. Right now it's flatlined. Everyone thinking otherwise are either: a) delusional, b) have a vested stake in seeing Windows Phone succeed, or c) has been fed with Snake Oil by their advisors.
What's really, really sad though, is that we've traded the IBM monopoly for the Windows monopoly, and now the Windows monopoly for the Android monopoly.
Yes, Android has passed iOS in both market- and mindshare - and there are no other viable competitors. Free software blew it - again! :(
Except it isn't. Tomi has rather damning evidence in his wall of text:
This is spoken by Elop himself. Why do you think Nokia fell from being twice as large as it's biggest competitor to completely fall out the top ten in mobile in a mere three years? It's called Windows Phone, and nobody wants a windows phone!
The problem is not that retail does not carry WinPhone. The problem is that carriers - e.g. Verizon, AT&T, Sprint etc - Will not subsidize windows phones, and they started this ever since the Skype purchase. That is what is meant by the "carrier boycott". Oh sure they will sell those phones, but only at full price. Why is this a problem? Well, "you want this winphone for $49 a month or this androidphone for $29 a month?" is a serious problem because Joe Sixpack doesn't care about Android or Windows, he will take the cheapest alternative.
Is this a fixable problem? No, it is not. Skype is now an integrated part of Microsofts Cloud strategy. So this means Microsoft has to choose between Skype or Mobile.
Please do note that carriers do not wish to support technology that will one day make them a "mere data channel". Carriers have built their business on exclusive services in their own networks. By subsidising Windows phones, they are funding technology which will make them obsolete one day. Sure they are only delaying the inevitable, but that's how they roll.
Because of the Carrier boycott.
Windows Phone will most probably never see double digit market share. The reason? Skype. Microsoft owns Skype, the single biggest threat to current carrier revenue. The Skype/VOIP revolution will happen, but if you were a carrier, would YOU invest in technology that would kill you off, long-term?
Tomi Ahonen has a rather complete rant about this topic from late 2012, and very little has changed since then.
Sony Xperia Z Compact? It's 4.3 rather than 4 inches but other than that seems to fit your bill...
They also don't spread to more than maybe 10-20 000 people at most. Really big ones get maybe 100 000 views.
Compare that to blockbusters that often gets viewed by 10 million people or more.
Economics of scale - they do scale. A lot.
Well, higan (formerly bsnes) comes extremely close, with very few known bugs in it's SNES core (other cores not as good though). :)
Re messed up docs: Yes, exactly, and those errors come up because Word uses the "visual" workflow, while Writer uses the "structure" workflow which IMO is both easier to understand, less prone to errors and easier to use.
LibreOffice is just as capable as Office, as Munich has proven with it's LiMux migration. Different, but capable. Besides - is it LO being incompatible with MSO or MSO being incompatible with LO? ;)
As for resumes - I always send those as PDFs which are super-easy to create in LO. But whatever.
If that is your only argument - Office2007 isn't compatible with Office2003/2000 either. So not a very good one.
The reason why LibreOffice sometimes "messes up" your layout is that it uses the "document structure" workflow instead of the "visual" workflow as seen with Word. Once you find out "Wait, I don't have to care about how this looks until I've finished with the report, and then I just change a few parameters", it's amazing how much Writer throws itself to be out of your way as much as possible.
With word I have to constantly mind what format I need to use. "Wait, should I use 12pt or 16pt text here? And was it Verdana or Times New Roman?" In LO - no need for that. "That's a headline, that one is a paragraph, that one is a bullet list, and there we have a quote." Mark text accordingly, insert emphasis where needed, done, no need to bother about looks at all, and it's easy as pie to, for instance, a table of contents. That's why I find LO superior.
Oh and now you might say "But word has that too!" - yes, and LO has the visual styles too. But in LO everything is designed through the document structure paradigm. In Word it's just a half-assed mess.
Finally, yes, LO Writer is quite a bit limited when designing, say, a pamphlet - but why on earth would you use a word processor to make a pamphlet? Get indesign or Scribus for that!
Don't you mean
There are only 10 types of programming languages, those everybody bitches about, and those nobody uses...
I think the path of least resistance when it comes to federation would be to make MG compatible with the BuddyCloud MediaServer concept, since BC being based on XMPP already has excellent federation.
Regardless I think this is promising. My hope is that GMG+Federation will some day in the future challenge both Facebook, Youtube and similar sites - which is sorely needed because the contentID-issue at Google has shown that we need a solution where users control their own data.
That's more Youtubes' fault than JoCos.
Youtube's contentID system is crazy these days. It's only a matter of time before someone invites something better than youtube at this rate.
Aye. It could be:
But it could also be:
Both choices are equally valid.
Propery formatted board:
Problem with Minesweeper though is when you end up with problems like these (5x3 board with 4 mines) - then it's a 50-50 chance of the mine being the lower cell or upper cell, and no way of knowing which one. .FFF. .3[]3. .1[]1.
F - Flagged mine
[] - unopened square
. - Open, empty space
The Bucaneer had this same concept for over a year ago...
Russia may have a strong military, but is it strong enough to take on the entirety of western civilization?
I agree that US has a vested interest - but it's not strong enough to warrant an intervention in a country literally on the other side of the world. Not yet, anyhow.
Bad idea.
This isn't a problem of the U.S. since Ukraine isn't in any way, shape or form affiliated with NATO.
The EU on the other hand might be interested... But intervening with Ukraine at this stage would be enough to provoke Putin and the rest of Russia into World War 3 mode.
That would be a mistake on Putin's part, since barring a full nuclear war, he cannot realisticly win, and even with nukes he can only drag the rest of the world to the dark ages. EU + USA has enough troops to repel all of Russias advances, and then some.
The only thing Russia will accomplish with it's bullying is to make it's neighbours more determined to seek strong alliances; NATO in the west, and probably China/India will create a strong asian alliance in the east. I do not understand why Putin is that stupid.
Hi Jonathan!
These days it's quite popular to both bash the copyright system and sue those thieving filesharers to oblivion. I'd like to ask you what you, as an independant musician, think would be a good balance between the creator rights and the public interests? Would it be a RIAA wet dream where all the content is locked up behind paywalls and getting a copy from an unauthorized source, like say a library, would constitute a crime with a minimum of 6 months in jail? Do you believe more in the Pirate Parties vision of abolishing the monopoly on creating copies, but retaining the protection against economic abuse? Or are you more in favor of going full nuclear by abolishing the entire copyright system alltogether? Thank you for all the great songs you have produced over the years!
DirectCompute isn't widely used last time I checked, CUDA and OpenCL has far greater mindshare. It's also more or less equivalent to those two technologies. Though granted you must use it for XBox...
DirectSetup is only a minor utility library that only makes sense if you're already using DirectX.
DirectXMath is, likewise, more of a utility library. I consider it a part of D3D, since 90% of the functions only make sense with D3D (and maybe DirectCompute).
So, yeah, revising that list, Direct3D, Direct2D, DirectCompute and DirectWrite.
Sometimes you need more fine-grained control than Apache gives you though.
Like, consider an Apache system running three domains at foo.example.com, bar.example.com and baz.example.com. Baz needs CGI scripts, Foo and Bar doesn't.
These days this scenario will probably be solved with three separate virtual machines running from the same master copy (i.e. RO mounted filesystem over local netboot with separate storage partitions), but, yeah...
If you're going to be nitpicky, then yes, it's SDL+OpenGL.
However, the only DirectX system still relevant in Win8.1 is Direct3D. Everything else has been removed;
DirectDraw - Repaced by Direct2D
DirectInput - Replaced by XInput
DirectSound - Replaced by XAudio2
DirectMusic - Legacy MIDI format - also replaced by XAudio2
DirectPlay - A complete joke, replaced by Games for Windows Live and XB Live.
DirectX Media/Media Objects: Deprecated and replaced/removed by all of above
That leaves DirectWrite and Direct2D as the only relevant (and minor) DIrectX components left. So yes, DX is more than a graphics API; these days and for gaming though, the only thing being used is D3D in DX.
No, the extensions aren't standard, that's true. It's not a perfect solution. But if you want to use a new nifty feature not yet standardised by OpenGL, you do not have to wait for the ARB to get their shit together. You as a developer can use it and then with minimal fuss port your non-standard extension to the standard when it becomes available. DirectX does not have that advantage.
This is a major advantage if some new technology shows up, like say geometry shaders. OpenGL supported geometry shaders from day one - but through proprietary extensions. These then trickled down to the specification. Even if it's invented elsewhere OpenGL can take advantage of it basicly instantly. It's not standard - true - but it's there and if it's a good idea it will most probably become standard.
Similarly, I have no doubt extensions will show up that will implement these new DX inventions, should they prove to be helpful.
XBOne can't use DX12. Reason being, the hardware in XBOne is not DX12 compatible. I can't see how a GPU manufactured atleast 9 months earlier than DX12 release will ever be compatible with DX12.
Oh, yes, one more point to note;
OpenGL is now the dominant API on around 80% of all computing devices (Smartphone+Tablet+PC).