Sound used to be a huge issue with HL2 & Portal. I don't buy the "it's not our fault" because it always happened when loading data, suggestive of them having a crappy single threaded engine and not cutting the sound properly prior to making that thread busy loading the next scene.
Why does it? If you absolutely must avoid google even in a device that has their apps preinstalled you can. The android compatible device spec explicitly requires that compatible devices must permit the core intents to be overridden by 3rd party replacements. That is things like contacts, browser, calendar, clock, email, launcher etc.
I'd agree that not many people would be inclined to do this (the power of the default etc.) but it's eminently doable. You CAN do it and people do do it.
There are too many free to play games for WOW to carry on the way it's going right now. Many subscribers are probably getting sick of the grind and wondering why they're forking over $15 a month for a game when they can play something equivalent to it (e.g. Everquest II, Lord of the Rings Online, Age of Conan, Freerealms etc.) for a fraction of that. Or nothing since free to play usually offers a substantial chunk of content gratis and then an a la carte micropayment system on top. It makes games very suitable for casual players who don't want to spend a fortune for something they only play for a few hours at a time. Some games even offer a traditional subscription style model too for more hardcore players.
While it's a long time until the WOW servers get switched off, I think there will be a point where subscribers keep falling, servers keep getting merged and Blizzard will be compelled to go F2P. Their model simply doesn't work any more. I wouldn't be surprised if the same happens for other subscription based stalwarts like EVE too eventually.
No, it falls into the definition of CAN but you're on your own. Google apps are preinstalled. If you want to use something else you can go hunt for the replacements.
How is bankrolling Nokia equality for all partners? Does anyone seriously think Nokia flipped over to Windows Phone without some substantial financial incentives and preferential treatment?
I think its right to raise concerns about what happens to Android but it's laughable for any analyst to pretend Microsoft is any better.
I think it's very clear you haven't a clue what you're bleating about. You made a really stupid statement to wit, "Compositing is a function of the X server you clueless gimp , it has NOTHING to do with the window manager/desktop." and are now desperately attempting to shape reality to fit your stupid misconception. Just because there is an extension to outsource composition to a compositor doesn't mean X is the compositor. It doesn't and X isn't the compositor. I'd point you to the place in mutter where it takes over damage management and compositing for the whole window hierarchy if I thought you had the slightest sense to comprehend it.
Banning other languages than Objective C. Banning alternative runtimes including web browsers. Banning apps with in content purchases systems unless they go through Apple's store (kind of inconvenient for book / video / music stores), banning apps for reasons unknown (e.g. Google Voice), banning subscription based apps that don't offer an in-app subscription button that leads to app store, banning alternative ad providers, banning alternative file formats.
The simple and obvious fact is they have been leveraging their position as OS owner to squash the opposition with a series of increasingly petty and monopolistic acts. I except their next trick will be to gimp HTML because a number of apps are using HTML5 and local storage to provide the functionality they can't implement otherwise. I would not be surprised if suddenly HTML5 apps suffer a mysterious 2mb storage limit or similar.
Stop compounding your ignorance please. Of course the compositor is an extension because X doesn't know the first thing about compositing. It sends out a damage event and the compositor rerenders everything and tells X to page flip. That's what the compositor is for and it is built into the window manager that GNOME uses. You're really making a fool of yourself here.
Pobjoy mint and others do this kind of thing all the time. For example for Harry Potter Isle of Man coins. I expect its an easy way for the mint and the host country to make money because only collectors would buy these things.
In earlier times it used to be commemorative stamps. Islands used to print out sheets of these phoney baloney stamps for collectors. The sheets even had fake post marks printed on the stamps so they couldn't be inadvertently used to post letters with.
I see you know as little about compositing as you appear to about kernels. Compositing is done by a compositor which in GNOME 3's case is the window manager - mutter standing for metacity + clutter. Mutter takes surfaces representing each window, manages them as a scenegraph and renders them as a whole to form the screen. X plays very little part in any of this except providing some hoops and context switches that the compositor must jump through to render. X is largely superfluous otherwise, playing little part in how apps render, little part in how the desktop functions and serving mainly just to pass windows and keyboard events. It is impeding performance which is why wayland is likely to replace it.
Of course companies are free to expand how they like. However, they cannot make deals with manufacturers that force competitors out or unfairly leverage their position in another market to another. Apple hasn't done that, Google has, and Microsoft did so in the past.
Where have you been the last few years when Apple has engaged in one anti-competitive practice after another?
I don't think it's necessarily bad for other vendors. Microsoft and Apple have been beating them up because Google can't fight back or countersue. Now it can and that most likely is a good thing for them. I also think it's worth observing that Motorola is really an also-ran as far as handset makers go. I doubt even Google could turn them around now. More likely they've been bought for their wide swathe of patents which would certainly be handy in a legal fight.
I'm sorry , which "modern world" are you talking about? The one where the GUI gets in the fscking way of what the user actually wants to do?
I'm talking about the compositing desktop world. You know, the world that has allowed Windows and OS X desktops to race ahead and be dramatically more useful (for games, video etc.), responsive (by harnessing the GPU) and attractive (by using compositing technology) than Linux counterparts. I'm talking about GNOME (and KDE) not sitting on their hands and ignoring user interface and usability developments which have happened in the last 10 years elsewhere. Maybe you're happy stuck in the year 2000 like some kind of technological Amish, but there is no reason anybody else should be. And if you are happy to be stuck in the past, quit whining about what dists or GUIs choose to do with themselves now. Go run your ancient Linux and fuck the right off and take your attitude with you.
No , its not "tough" , its moronic. Backwards compatability is not a nice-to-have , its a pretty damn fundamental to businesses and normal users. If you don't understand this then stay away from software development because you're obviously utterly clueless.
You're not calling me utterly clueless, you're calling the Linux kernel developers utterly clueless including Linus Torvalds because this is the way the kernel has been developed for the LAST 20 YEARS. Linus is on record numerous times to explain why there is no ABI, why there are no guarantees of backwards compatibility and so on. So furnish yourself with a clue and go look up his reasoning. Or perhaps you can bleat it's moronic.
No kernel be it Linux, Windows or OS X pledges backwards compatibility because it would be stupid, limiting, and a maintenance headache. "Businesses and normal users" as you put it don't give to give a crap about the inner workings of their kernel and leave it to the dist to sort out. The dist rolls with whatever changes happen in the kernel.
So in summary it appears to be you who are utterly clueless.
Don't be ridiculous. Someone may have movies or music on an HDD and wants to be able to play them from the tablet. Or wants to sync their device through a standard off the shelf cable. Or wants to charge their device with the same cable and charger as works for virtually every other mobile device these days. Or wants to copy files to and from their tablet and a PC without special software. All extremely unreasonable demands right? Perhaps you love the way the iPad makes you use a proprietary connector and requires you to use a bloated piece of crap called iTunes. It doesn't mean everyone else does, especially when there is a widely adopted standard called USB which means they don't need to.
Assuming what you say to be correct, that probably is in no small part because of the flexibility that Firefox addons enjoy. They can literally change the user interface, replacing buttons, adding stuff, so they must be installed and running before the app can do anything else. I think Mozilla are aware of the problems that bad add ons can cause which is why they've been spanking them so hard, naming & shaming the worst of them. FF6 for example doesn't allow addons to be installed by stealth (e.g. by Skype) presumably because they can really destabilize the product and FF would get the blame.
The flipside is true too though. The 2.6.x has been running so damned long and there can be massive changes between revision bumps. Your execs and admins might as easily be lulled into thinking there is no big deal between bumping between 2.6.39 and 2.6.40 when there could be substantial differences. And it extends to minor versions too. For example jumping from 2.4 to 2.6 doesn't sound like a big deal right?
Perhaps Linus is fed of listening this and has decided to change the versioning in a way more reflective of your expectations. As for Firefox & Chrome, yes I think it's really stupid to bump major versions like this. Perhaps the answer is a major.minor version followed by a datestamp and some form of commitment that the major version is only bumped when new protocols or standards are introduced and minor for new client side functionality.
I'm sorry to say it but if you want long term stability, stop upgrading your damned Linux dist so often. It's that simple. Pick a version of Debian or one of the longer lived commercial dists and stick with it forever. Then your arcane code will continue to run and you will be happy. If however you're trying to track the latest dists and run the oldest software, the chasm between your feet will continue to grow.
As for the other things, the changes to GNOME & the kernel. Perhaps it is in large part through the recognition that things as they standard are not right that change is happening. GNOME (for example) needs to be dragged kicking and screaming into the modern world and if that causes some churn then so be it. I don't personally like 3.0 but I can see it will get there eventually. And I absolutely sure as hell would not be using a bleeding edge version of GNOME if I was someone like you who wants stability.
The same goes for the kernel. The Linux developers starting with Linus are pragmatists. If something is broken, brain damaged or can be made better they will fix it. If the improvements break something in user land then tough. Again if you want the stability of a kernel use a long lived dist. Red Hat (for example) maintains its own kernel and backports stuff if necessary.
Why not just tax fuel like everyone else? This messing about with GPS seems ridiculous to achieve such a simple aim.
Not everyone else just taxes fuel. The recognition being that it doesn't affect buying behaviour / consumption as much as it should. Many countries have a motor tax and these days it is usually based on engine size and / or CO2 emissions. The idea is the upfront & and annual financial hit is a more effective way to impress upon people to buy efficient vehicles. It certainly works in Ireland where diesel and small engine sizes are the norm and there is a €2000 difference between the best tax band and the worst..
Yup, so I call the cameras, etc. "failed". The idea of security is to prevent something from happening - not cleaning up the mess after it happened.
Right, so logging is completely useless on websites and triggers are completely useless on databases and checksums are completely useless on files?
After all none of these things would prevent someone busting into your site or using it inappropriately. They sure as hell might help you figure out when the breakin occurred though, figure out what was touched, which route the attacker took to get in and possibly reveal enough information to find the attacker was and prove it in court.
It's called security in depth. I'm sure most CCTV is used after the fact but it's blatantly obvious it serves an important role.
Well. One thing 5000 cameras DIDN'T do is stop people from looting.
No, but I bet they let the police know where trouble was occurring and more rapidly respond to it. I also bet that when they did arrest people the CCTV footage would make for very strong evidence that could secure a conviction.
I expect the police have a large collection of mugshots to work off, and lots of high and low quality pictures of looters in action, plus random pics taken in and around the time of the crimes. So why not cross reference one set of pics to the other and see what matches come up? It might certainly provide leads that let them track someone done. They'd still have to prove it in court of course.
What's more the real name policy definitely discriminates against folks with unusual names.
And people with common names, e.g. John Smith, Bob Jones etc. are almost defacto anonymous anyway. There are probably millions of people with the same name.
Real names is completely unnecessary and unfair. Even if a site requires a real name (and even that should be hard to justify), people should entitled to roll their own aliases.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, so the trial took at least an entire day?
Well they plead guilty so what else is there to do?
Sound used to be a huge issue with HL2 & Portal. I don't buy the "it's not our fault" because it always happened when loading data, suggestive of them having a crappy single threaded engine and not cutting the sound properly prior to making that thread busy loading the next scene.
I'd agree that not many people would be inclined to do this (the power of the default etc.) but it's eminently doable. You CAN do it and people do do it.
While it's a long time until the WOW servers get switched off, I think there will be a point where subscribers keep falling, servers keep getting merged and Blizzard will be compelled to go F2P. Their model simply doesn't work any more. I wouldn't be surprised if the same happens for other subscription based stalwarts like EVE too eventually.
IMO, that falls into the definition of "CAN'T".
No, it falls into the definition of CAN but you're on your own. Google apps are preinstalled. If you want to use something else you can go hunt for the replacements.
I think its right to raise concerns about what happens to Android but it's laughable for any analyst to pretend Microsoft is any better.
I think it's very clear you haven't a clue what you're bleating about. You made a really stupid statement to wit, "Compositing is a function of the X server you clueless gimp , it has NOTHING to do with the window manager/desktop." and are now desperately attempting to shape reality to fit your stupid misconception. Just because there is an extension to outsource composition to a compositor doesn't mean X is the compositor. It doesn't and X isn't the compositor. I'd point you to the place in mutter where it takes over damage management and compositing for the whole window hierarchy if I thought you had the slightest sense to comprehend it.
The simple and obvious fact is they have been leveraging their position as OS owner to squash the opposition with a series of increasingly petty and monopolistic acts. I except their next trick will be to gimp HTML because a number of apps are using HTML5 and local storage to provide the functionality they can't implement otherwise. I would not be surprised if suddenly HTML5 apps suffer a mysterious 2mb storage limit or similar.
Stop compounding your ignorance please. Of course the compositor is an extension because X doesn't know the first thing about compositing. It sends out a damage event and the compositor rerenders everything and tells X to page flip. That's what the compositor is for and it is built into the window manager that GNOME uses. You're really making a fool of yourself here.
In earlier times it used to be commemorative stamps. Islands used to print out sheets of these phoney baloney stamps for collectors. The sheets even had fake post marks printed on the stamps so they couldn't be inadvertently used to post letters with.
I see you know as little about compositing as you appear to about kernels. Compositing is done by a compositor which in GNOME 3's case is the window manager - mutter standing for metacity + clutter. Mutter takes surfaces representing each window, manages them as a scenegraph and renders them as a whole to form the screen. X plays very little part in any of this except providing some hoops and context switches that the compositor must jump through to render. X is largely superfluous otherwise, playing little part in how apps render, little part in how the desktop functions and serving mainly just to pass windows and keyboard events. It is impeding performance which is why wayland is likely to replace it.
Of course companies are free to expand how they like. However, they cannot make deals with manufacturers that force competitors out or unfairly leverage their position in another market to another. Apple hasn't done that, Google has, and Microsoft did so in the past.
Where have you been the last few years when Apple has engaged in one anti-competitive practice after another?
They're up 15% immediately after the announcement. That tells something.
Yeah it says some market investors think they're they next one for the chop and most likely Microsoft will snap them up at a premium.
I don't think it's necessarily bad for other vendors. Microsoft and Apple have been beating them up because Google can't fight back or countersue. Now it can and that most likely is a good thing for them. I also think it's worth observing that Motorola is really an also-ran as far as handset makers go. I doubt even Google could turn them around now. More likely they've been bought for their wide swathe of patents which would certainly be handy in a legal fight.
Motorola phones will get updates? Since when?
Since now I guess.
I'm sorry , which "modern world" are you talking about? The one where the GUI gets in the fscking way of what the user actually wants to do?
I'm talking about the compositing desktop world. You know, the world that has allowed Windows and OS X desktops to race ahead and be dramatically more useful (for games, video etc.), responsive (by harnessing the GPU) and attractive (by using compositing technology) than Linux counterparts. I'm talking about GNOME (and KDE) not sitting on their hands and ignoring user interface and usability developments which have happened in the last 10 years elsewhere. Maybe you're happy stuck in the year 2000 like some kind of technological Amish, but there is no reason anybody else should be. And if you are happy to be stuck in the past, quit whining about what dists or GUIs choose to do with themselves now. Go run your ancient Linux and fuck the right off and take your attitude with you.
No , its not "tough" , its moronic. Backwards compatability is not a nice-to-have , its a pretty damn fundamental to businesses and normal users. If you don't understand this then stay away from software development because you're obviously utterly clueless.
You're not calling me utterly clueless, you're calling the Linux kernel developers utterly clueless including Linus Torvalds because this is the way the kernel has been developed for the LAST 20 YEARS. Linus is on record numerous times to explain why there is no ABI, why there are no guarantees of backwards compatibility and so on. So furnish yourself with a clue and go look up his reasoning. Or perhaps you can bleat it's moronic.
No kernel be it Linux, Windows or OS X pledges backwards compatibility because it would be stupid, limiting, and a maintenance headache. "Businesses and normal users" as you put it don't give to give a crap about the inner workings of their kernel and leave it to the dist to sort out. The dist rolls with whatever changes happen in the kernel.
So in summary it appears to be you who are utterly clueless.
Don't be ridiculous. Someone may have movies or music on an HDD and wants to be able to play them from the tablet. Or wants to sync their device through a standard off the shelf cable. Or wants to charge their device with the same cable and charger as works for virtually every other mobile device these days. Or wants to copy files to and from their tablet and a PC without special software. All extremely unreasonable demands right? Perhaps you love the way the iPad makes you use a proprietary connector and requires you to use a bloated piece of crap called iTunes. It doesn't mean everyone else does, especially when there is a widely adopted standard called USB which means they don't need to.
Assuming what you say to be correct, that probably is in no small part because of the flexibility that Firefox addons enjoy. They can literally change the user interface, replacing buttons, adding stuff, so they must be installed and running before the app can do anything else. I think Mozilla are aware of the problems that bad add ons can cause which is why they've been spanking them so hard, naming & shaming the worst of them. FF6 for example doesn't allow addons to be installed by stealth (e.g. by Skype) presumably because they can really destabilize the product and FF would get the blame.
Perhaps Linus is fed of listening this and has decided to change the versioning in a way more reflective of your expectations. As for Firefox & Chrome, yes I think it's really stupid to bump major versions like this. Perhaps the answer is a major.minor version followed by a datestamp and some form of commitment that the major version is only bumped when new protocols or standards are introduced and minor for new client side functionality.
As for the other things, the changes to GNOME & the kernel. Perhaps it is in large part through the recognition that things as they standard are not right that change is happening. GNOME (for example) needs to be dragged kicking and screaming into the modern world and if that causes some churn then so be it. I don't personally like 3.0 but I can see it will get there eventually. And I absolutely sure as hell would not be using a bleeding edge version of GNOME if I was someone like you who wants stability.
The same goes for the kernel. The Linux developers starting with Linus are pragmatists. If something is broken, brain damaged or can be made better they will fix it. If the improvements break something in user land then tough. Again if you want the stability of a kernel use a long lived dist. Red Hat (for example) maintains its own kernel and backports stuff if necessary.
Why not just tax fuel like everyone else? This messing about with GPS seems ridiculous to achieve such a simple aim.
Not everyone else just taxes fuel. The recognition being that it doesn't affect buying behaviour / consumption as much as it should. Many countries have a motor tax and these days it is usually based on engine size and / or CO2 emissions. The idea is the upfront & and annual financial hit is a more effective way to impress upon people to buy efficient vehicles. It certainly works in Ireland where diesel and small engine sizes are the norm and there is a €2000 difference between the best tax band and the worst..
Yup, so I call the cameras, etc. "failed". The idea of security is to prevent something from happening - not cleaning up the mess after it happened.
Right, so logging is completely useless on websites and triggers are completely useless on databases and checksums are completely useless on files?
After all none of these things would prevent someone busting into your site or using it inappropriately. They sure as hell might help you figure out when the breakin occurred though, figure out what was touched, which route the attacker took to get in and possibly reveal enough information to find the attacker was and prove it in court.
It's called security in depth. I'm sure most CCTV is used after the fact but it's blatantly obvious it serves an important role.
Well. One thing 5000 cameras DIDN'T do is stop people from looting.
No, but I bet they let the police know where trouble was occurring and more rapidly respond to it. I also bet that when they did arrest people the CCTV footage would make for very strong evidence that could secure a conviction.
I expect the police have a large collection of mugshots to work off, and lots of high and low quality pictures of looters in action, plus random pics taken in and around the time of the crimes. So why not cross reference one set of pics to the other and see what matches come up? It might certainly provide leads that let them track someone done. They'd still have to prove it in court of course.
What's more the real name policy definitely discriminates against folks with unusual names.
And people with common names, e.g. John Smith, Bob Jones etc. are almost defacto anonymous anyway. There are probably millions of people with the same name.
Real names is completely unnecessary and unfair. Even if a site requires a real name (and even that should be hard to justify), people should entitled to roll their own aliases.