Ehh, yeah, that makes you exactly a non-poweruser, of your desktop environment.
A desktop's job is to let you launch programs, access files, be moderately configurable and otherwise get the fuck out of the way. So no I'm not a "power user" of my desktop, whatever the hell that means. I want to use it for doing other things - development, running servers, browsing etc. To use a car analogy I buy a car to drive places, I don't buy one simply to play with all the switches and dials.
It may do, but that means disabling privacy settings. I'm sure Firefox could consider app tabs to be something to always open while respecting a user's privacy settings and not remembering what they did the last session.
As far as user interfaces go, it is Havoc Pennington's way or the highway. Havoc has this crazy "usability comes from crippling" approach that dumbs down GNOME for entry-level users but makes it wholly unusable for power users.
GNOME is not unusable for power users. Maybe sometimes it doesn't get things right but on the whole it does what it sets out to do - be a modern, clean, intuitive desktop. As a power user myself I'm quite happy to use it. It lets me launch apps, has settings for things I might ordinarily like to tweak and otherwise tries to stay the hell out of my way.
Shuttleworth suggests that building development around FreeDesktop.org specs (as suggested by Aaron Seigo) is probably a good route to take, especially since Ubuntu is NOT just GNOME, but also KDE (Kubuntu), etc.
You'd think this would be a no brainer. Why would GNOME or KDE want to duplicate functionality which they can reasonably share. Both desktops have similar requirements, run on the same OS, and could & should be sharing functionality. It means less bugs, lower install / runtime footprints and more time for devs of both projects to work on other things.
Personally I consider GNOME to be a better desktop but I think it does a massive disservice to be refusing functionality offered up on a plate. I'm not surprised either if Ubuntu laid out what they need for their dist and when GNOME didn't offer it chose to go their own way. What I take away from this spat, is the potential it has to turn into all out war come the time that Ubuntu (correctly) chooses to migrate to Wayland. I can imagine the fun and games that will come with that.
There was some dude here not long ago with a comment on how JavaScript/XML and all that "mostly-interpreted" hallabaluja (which IS a life saver often, I'll admit) doesn't matter with UIs in particular. Wonder where he is now:-)
p.
It shouldn't and I don't feel it does for Firefox. The XML, JS & CSS all gets parsed on first invocation into XUL.mfl which is for fast loading. It still impacts startup somewhat, but after that it's just another UI that could be natively written for all the difference it makes.
I've been using FF4 since one of the earlier betas (I think beta 4?) and so I've seen the new features as it comes in. Is it me or does a lot of the new features, especially the UI features seem completely unnecessary? I've only used app-tabs maybe once and Panorama twice just to see what they do, and after that, I completely disregarded them. I haven't used Sync at all. Is this experience common with other Firefox power users? Or am I just being a bit of a Luddite in not using them?
Panorama is utterly useless in its current form and (a worse sin) is the source of many of the bugs delaying FF4.0. It should have gotten the chop. Perhaps if groups were remembered or something it might have some purpose. Perhaps if the "Group your tabs" was some kind of funky springloaded popup making it natural and easy to flip between groups or arrange them. But expecting people to arrange groups of tabs and see that all disappear when the browser closes is just a waste of time.
App tabs are useful for saving space, but again they're not persistent. Why can't I pin an app tab to my browser and have it there when I next open it? Why does clicking the Home button not take me back to the first url the app tab is associated with? Why can't I edit a bookmark and say it's an "application" url, so that opening it in a new tab does so as an App tab. Again, it needs some work.
Despite these issues FF4.0 overall is a huge improvement. The layout is hugely more efficient on small displays (e.g. netbooks) and the UI feels a lot more responsive. Beta issues such as the incredible disappearing status bar have been adequately resolved. Some of the HTML5 demos are awesome. I'd have no hesitation recommending it.
Actually, Chrome uses more memory than Firefox with both just one tab and several tabs.
How do you quantify that it "uses" more. Most browsers look at how much memory you have and then reserve a chunk of it to optimize their performance. e.g. longer session history, uncompressed image bitmaps, memory cache, cached JS code, larger heap for JS etc. Stuff that saves time if a user reloads a page or whatever. Just because a browser appears to use more memory doesn't mean it is hurting the system. Most browsers have special memory pressure monitors which will flush out this stuff and adjust downwards if real memory gets tight.
Possibly, possibly not. Sounds like the exploit involved bypassing the OS enforced randomized address space layout. We've certainly heard in the past how ASLR in OS X has been lacking compared to Windows and perhaps the exploit leverages that.
I'm sure Windows is vulnerable in its own ways though. Exploits that work through Firefox / IE or even Chrome would have as serious repercussions to Windows users. I'm sure there are many to choose from.
What a great way for your government to keep tabs on your communications.
You mean like using a government run service to deliver a message to someone? Mail can already be tracked virtually from end to end and if government had cause they could easily intercept your mail, lift fingerprints, dna samples, read / replace the contents etc. If you're that paranoid I suggest you don't use the system at all.
I think that's a pretty decent thing to do in PCs, especially those with a touchscreen like a tablet. Sometimes you might only want to turn a device on to browse the web, so why not provide something that does just that.
I think ultimately I'd like to see a Windows tablet where when you pick it up and walk around it has a tablet UI, but drop it into a dock and suddenly you have a full desktop. I'm pretty certain Microsoft will do it in Windows 8.
I think HP could have beaten Microsoft to the punch here. If they could refactor webOS into a runtime such that it runs over Windows or Linux and the apps don't care. Maybe apps would be compiled to some kind of bitcode (e.g. LLVM bitcode) so they're natively compiled or executed at runtime. Then you'll see hybrid webOS / Windows devices and dedicated devices. The apps would run on all of them. It could be incredibly cool.
I assume these developers would need a Mac and extensive knowledge of its inner workings in order to develop and test an exploit. Therefore it make no sense to say this is just some hacker after the nicest prize. They're after the prize they know how to obtain and have spent a considerable amount of time researching.
It may well be that other computers fall thereafter and I expect in those cases they fall from people who similarly have knowledge of those respective systems.
So basically it sounds like you're making excuses.
No, I'm saying that when they get legal threats which appear to have a basis in fact they're not going to take some random guy's assurances that some similar material is in the public domain.
Yes, I know they are copying the _ridiculous_ tabs on the top UI from chrome, it can be disabled in the default options though, no addon required to do so.
Tabs on top works reasonably well in Windows 7 when you're space constrained. i.e. on a 10" netbook you can squeeze the menu and tabs into a single row which saves a lot of space. Now with the status hover working properly that's even more space saved. The screen is so small that the window is more likely to maximized so it's easy to travel and stop over a tab which will be at the top of the display.
I think on large displays, it doesn't work so well. Space is not so critical and the window is less likely to maximized. If you travel and miss the tab when you click you'll send the window to the back by accident which is annoying. In this case IMO tabs underneath work better.
For example they removed the List of 210 Television designated market areas (DMAs), because Nielsen complained it was copyrighted. Even after I provided a *public domain* version from the Federal Communications Commission (they call them 'television markets' for purposes of regulation), wikipedia still refused to allow it to be posted.
Don't look to wikipedia to challenge corporations. They won't do it.
They'd probably let you keep your submission assuming you put the money in escrow to cover any potential court battle. Otherwise, are you surprised they choose to take potentially infringing things down?
Nokia and Microsoft were practically at war from the moment Nokia chose to develop EPOC / Symbian rather than use Windows CE. Nokia has been driven by "not Microsoft" throughout its recent history.
The only reason they would choose Windows Phone 7 is a very, very large hat of money. It certainly doesn't make any sense from a technical perspective. Maybe Symbian^3 / Meego were foundering, but either Android or WebOS would have been far more suitable paths out of Nokia's predicament.
Perhaps the money isn't straight cash but it must surely add up to a lot of concessions, e.g. free licenses, free marketing, developer licences, a cut of ad revenues, a cut of app sales, premium support, privileges afforded to Nokia in the placement of icons, apps, skins etc. in WP7. Or a combination of those things. Whatever the reason, it came in a very large brown paper envelope.
A single idiot with an AK-47 is unlikely to be jamming GPS. An enemy command and control centre might. The enemy might even have the resources to take out your satellites, severely degrading the service over a conflict area. It is an obvious that most guided weapons will need a failover if the GPS system is being jammed or simply isn't working for some reason.
I wonder how efficient this is going to be. We don't want HTML5 to get a bunch of autogenerated bogged down code and become the next flash (performance wise, anyway).
The answer to that is "probably less efficient than just running flash". Now you potentially have 4 or 5 JS scripts on timers all in contention on the same thread of your browser, all screaming to be updated every 1/30th of a second.
I think you'll see decent 3.0 tablets at $300. By decent I mean they'll be more than adequate for browsing, movies, writing emails, casual games. They might not sport top of the line processors or 32GB of flash, or GPS / compass, or 3G but neither will they need to for most people's requirements.
I hate to bring it up, but that's what everyone said *last year* when the iPad 1 launched (at several hundred dollars under the estimates that people were quoting), and that "cheaper, better" Android tablets would waltz in and crush the iPad. Any day now, just you wait... etc etc for 9 months.
Well there are perfectly usable Android tablets for $300 and less. Principle example would be the Archos 101 which offers 10.1" capacitive touchscreen, wifi multimedia playback etc. for $299. Biggest issue with the device is it's Android 2.2.
I expect that the release of tablet-specific Android 3.0 and the multitude of announcements that there will be a flood of tablets at all price points. The cheaper ones will ditch some of the superfluous crap that the Xoom / Tab have packed in to justify their high prices.
I wouldn't say no if someone gave me a dual core all singing, all dancing tablet with wifi, 3g, gps, compass, 32GB, front / rear cameras etc. etc. but I'm certainly not going to fork out a small fortune for one.
The truth is that the current of Android tablets are WAY overspecced. You're not going to beat Apple by selling something which costs more than an Apple and there is no need to either. If an Archos 101 can retail for $300 and deliver a 10" capacitive android tablet in a decent form factor with decent features & expansion capabilities then why can't other manufacturers?
To me it looks like Motorola / Samsung are chasing a market that barely exists and sales will reflect that. I expect as the year progresses we'll see Android 3.0 tablets at more sane price points (maybe even a successor to the 101 which is compliant with the Android CDD), but I will not be shocked if Xoom / Tab sales are tagged "disappointing".
I think it's pretty obvious that Nokia are being given hundreds of millions, possibly billions in order to transition to Windows Phone 7. Companies don't make such radical u-turns and run straight into their enemy's camp without a large financial incentive behind it.
That doesn't mean Nokia are being paid in cold cash. It might be in the form of licence fee waivers, marketing assistance, premium developer support, advertising revnues, app store revenues / waivers, server licences etc.
I wouldn't say virtualization is a the top of a home user's requirements but anyone who is remotely computer savvy would appreciate it as an option. IMO it is essential if you want to run emulators like VirtualBox for example.
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Ehh, yeah, that makes you exactly a non-poweruser, of your desktop environment.
A desktop's job is to let you launch programs, access files, be moderately configurable and otherwise get the fuck out of the way. So no I'm not a "power user" of my desktop, whatever the hell that means. I want to use it for doing other things - development, running servers, browsing etc. To use a car analogy I buy a car to drive places, I don't buy one simply to play with all the switches and dials.
It may do, but that means disabling privacy settings. I'm sure Firefox could consider app tabs to be something to always open while respecting a user's privacy settings and not remembering what they did the last session.
As far as user interfaces go, it is Havoc Pennington's way or the highway. Havoc has this crazy "usability comes from crippling" approach that dumbs down GNOME for entry-level users but makes it wholly unusable for power users.
GNOME is not unusable for power users. Maybe sometimes it doesn't get things right but on the whole it does what it sets out to do - be a modern, clean, intuitive desktop. As a power user myself I'm quite happy to use it. It lets me launch apps, has settings for things I might ordinarily like to tweak and otherwise tries to stay the hell out of my way.
Shuttleworth suggests that building development around FreeDesktop.org specs (as suggested by Aaron Seigo) is probably a good route to take, especially since Ubuntu is NOT just GNOME, but also KDE (Kubuntu), etc.
You'd think this would be a no brainer. Why would GNOME or KDE want to duplicate functionality which they can reasonably share. Both desktops have similar requirements, run on the same OS, and could & should be sharing functionality. It means less bugs, lower install / runtime footprints and more time for devs of both projects to work on other things.
Personally I consider GNOME to be a better desktop but I think it does a massive disservice to be refusing functionality offered up on a plate. I'm not surprised either if Ubuntu laid out what they need for their dist and when GNOME didn't offer it chose to go their own way. What I take away from this spat, is the potential it has to turn into all out war come the time that Ubuntu (correctly) chooses to migrate to Wayland. I can imagine the fun and games that will come with that.
There was some dude here not long ago with a comment on how JavaScript/XML and all that "mostly-interpreted" hallabaluja (which IS a life saver often, I'll admit) doesn't matter with UIs in particular. Wonder where he is now :-)
p. It shouldn't and I don't feel it does for Firefox. The XML, JS & CSS all gets parsed on first invocation into XUL.mfl which is for fast loading. It still impacts startup somewhat, but after that it's just another UI that could be natively written for all the difference it makes.
I've been using FF4 since one of the earlier betas (I think beta 4?) and so I've seen the new features as it comes in. Is it me or does a lot of the new features, especially the UI features seem completely unnecessary? I've only used app-tabs maybe once and Panorama twice just to see what they do, and after that, I completely disregarded them. I haven't used Sync at all. Is this experience common with other Firefox power users? Or am I just being a bit of a Luddite in not using them?
Panorama is utterly useless in its current form and (a worse sin) is the source of many of the bugs delaying FF4.0. It should have gotten the chop. Perhaps if groups were remembered or something it might have some purpose. Perhaps if the "Group your tabs" was some kind of funky springloaded popup making it natural and easy to flip between groups or arrange them. But expecting people to arrange groups of tabs and see that all disappear when the browser closes is just a waste of time.
App tabs are useful for saving space, but again they're not persistent. Why can't I pin an app tab to my browser and have it there when I next open it? Why does clicking the Home button not take me back to the first url the app tab is associated with? Why can't I edit a bookmark and say it's an "application" url, so that opening it in a new tab does so as an App tab. Again, it needs some work.
Despite these issues FF4.0 overall is a huge improvement. The layout is hugely more efficient on small displays (e.g. netbooks) and the UI feels a lot more responsive. Beta issues such as the incredible disappearing status bar have been adequately resolved. Some of the HTML5 demos are awesome. I'd have no hesitation recommending it.
Actually, Chrome uses more memory than Firefox with both just one tab and several tabs.
How do you quantify that it "uses" more. Most browsers look at how much memory you have and then reserve a chunk of it to optimize their performance. e.g. longer session history, uncompressed image bitmaps, memory cache, cached JS code, larger heap for JS etc. Stuff that saves time if a user reloads a page or whatever. Just because a browser appears to use more memory doesn't mean it is hurting the system. Most browsers have special memory pressure monitors which will flush out this stuff and adjust downwards if real memory gets tight.
I'm sure Windows is vulnerable in its own ways though. Exploits that work through Firefox / IE or even Chrome would have as serious repercussions to Windows users. I'm sure there are many to choose from.
What a great way for your government to keep tabs on your communications.
You mean like using a government run service to deliver a message to someone? Mail can already be tracked virtually from end to end and if government had cause they could easily intercept your mail, lift fingerprints, dna samples, read / replace the contents etc. If you're that paranoid I suggest you don't use the system at all.
I think ultimately I'd like to see a Windows tablet where when you pick it up and walk around it has a tablet UI, but drop it into a dock and suddenly you have a full desktop. I'm pretty certain Microsoft will do it in Windows 8.
I think HP could have beaten Microsoft to the punch here. If they could refactor webOS into a runtime such that it runs over Windows or Linux and the apps don't care. Maybe apps would be compiled to some kind of bitcode (e.g. LLVM bitcode) so they're natively compiled or executed at runtime. Then you'll see hybrid webOS / Windows devices and dedicated devices. The apps would run on all of them. It could be incredibly cool.
It may well be that other computers fall thereafter and I expect in those cases they fall from people who similarly have knowledge of those respective systems.
So basically it sounds like you're making excuses.
Philately will get you nowhere.
No, I'm saying that when they get legal threats which appear to have a basis in fact they're not going to take some random guy's assurances that some similar material is in the public domain.
Yes, I know they are copying the _ridiculous_ tabs on the top UI from chrome, it can be disabled in the default options though, no addon required to do so.
Tabs on top works reasonably well in Windows 7 when you're space constrained. i.e. on a 10" netbook you can squeeze the menu and tabs into a single row which saves a lot of space. Now with the status hover working properly that's even more space saved. The screen is so small that the window is more likely to maximized so it's easy to travel and stop over a tab which will be at the top of the display.
I think on large displays, it doesn't work so well. Space is not so critical and the window is less likely to maximized. If you travel and miss the tab when you click you'll send the window to the back by accident which is annoying. In this case IMO tabs underneath work better.
Wikipedia doesn't challenge copyright.
For example they removed the List of 210 Television designated market areas (DMAs), because Nielsen complained it was copyrighted. Even after I provided a *public domain* version from the Federal Communications Commission (they call them 'television markets' for purposes of regulation), wikipedia still refused to allow it to be posted.
Don't look to wikipedia to challenge corporations. They won't do it.
They'd probably let you keep your submission assuming you put the money in escrow to cover any potential court battle. Otherwise, are you surprised they choose to take potentially infringing things down?
The only reason they would choose Windows Phone 7 is a very, very large hat of money. It certainly doesn't make any sense from a technical perspective. Maybe Symbian^3 / Meego were foundering, but either Android or WebOS would have been far more suitable paths out of Nokia's predicament.
Perhaps the money isn't straight cash but it must surely add up to a lot of concessions, e.g. free licenses, free marketing, developer licences, a cut of ad revenues, a cut of app sales, premium support, privileges afforded to Nokia in the placement of icons, apps, skins etc. in WP7. Or a combination of those things. Whatever the reason, it came in a very large brown paper envelope.
A single idiot with an AK-47 is unlikely to be jamming GPS. An enemy command and control centre might. The enemy might even have the resources to take out your satellites, severely degrading the service over a conflict area. It is an obvious that most guided weapons will need a failover if the GPS system is being jammed or simply isn't working for some reason.
I wonder how efficient this is going to be. We don't want HTML5 to get a bunch of autogenerated bogged down code and become the next flash (performance wise, anyway).
The answer to that is "probably less efficient than just running flash". Now you potentially have 4 or 5 JS scripts on timers all in contention on the same thread of your browser, all screaming to be updated every 1/30th of a second.
Apple aren't using anti-competative behaviour, except where their obliged to.
Obliged to by their overriding desire for more money without interference from pesky competing services "confusing" their users with choice.
I think you'll see decent 3.0 tablets at $300. By decent I mean they'll be more than adequate for browsing, movies, writing emails, casual games. They might not sport top of the line processors or 32GB of flash, or GPS / compass, or 3G but neither will they need to for most people's requirements.
I hate to bring it up, but that's what everyone said *last year* when the iPad 1 launched (at several hundred dollars under the estimates that people were quoting), and that "cheaper, better" Android tablets would waltz in and crush the iPad. Any day now, just you wait... etc etc for 9 months.
Well there are perfectly usable Android tablets for $300 and less. Principle example would be the Archos 101 which offers 10.1" capacitive touchscreen, wifi multimedia playback etc. for $299. Biggest issue with the device is it's Android 2.2.
I expect that the release of tablet-specific Android 3.0 and the multitude of announcements that there will be a flood of tablets at all price points. The cheaper ones will ditch some of the superfluous crap that the Xoom / Tab have packed in to justify their high prices.
The truth is that the current of Android tablets are WAY overspecced. You're not going to beat Apple by selling something which costs more than an Apple and there is no need to either. If an Archos 101 can retail for $300 and deliver a 10" capacitive android tablet in a decent form factor with decent features & expansion capabilities then why can't other manufacturers?
To me it looks like Motorola / Samsung are chasing a market that barely exists and sales will reflect that. I expect as the year progresses we'll see Android 3.0 tablets at more sane price points (maybe even a successor to the 101 which is compliant with the Android CDD), but I will not be shocked if Xoom / Tab sales are tagged "disappointing".
Clearly you haven't been paying attention to Nokia's recent history. Idiot.
WTF are you talking about ? They're not getting any cash : http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/15/debunk-elop-never-said-microsoft-is-paying-nokia-billions-of-do/
I think it's pretty obvious that Nokia are being given hundreds of millions, possibly billions in order to transition to Windows Phone 7. Companies don't make such radical u-turns and run straight into their enemy's camp without a large financial incentive behind it.
That doesn't mean Nokia are being paid in cold cash. It might be in the form of licence fee waivers, marketing assistance, premium developer support, advertising revnues, app store revenues / waivers, server licences etc.
My home PC does include it fortunately.