All of which don't add "revolutionary" features, but only things that should have been in 1.0. Its almost as bad as the iPhone OS releases, but at least Android is free.
How do you prove something true? Eventually you get to the point where you either have to assume something without proof, or spend your life searching for a basic truth. Lets take George Washington, everyone knows he exists but could he be a patriotic fabrication? You can only trace his linage back so far and even then public records were inaccurate many times. You hit a point where you can't prove anything. Some things should be assumed without full proof. Nothing can be fully proven.
Sure, but really for an OSS project, development has been painfully slow in general with Android. There are many good ideas that shouldn't take too long to implement but have been sitting there for a long time.
Most people spend -far- more time on their computers than they did writing papers, unless they were, say a monk or something. I use my computer for work, when I get home I'm usually also, on the computer. If I used paper at work and no computer at home chances are after writing on paper I'm going to do something different than write on more paper. The same computer that you use to do work on can also view Facebook, YouTube, etc.
Why is it that Android (and other cell phones) seem to have some obvious feature left out that developers are unwilling to fix? And usually they aren't "this will take years of R&D and some genius to realize we left it out" but blindingly obvious features. Why isn't Android embracing Bluetooth? I can think of a lot of good reasons for it, for one would be P2P networks for gaming, file sharing, etc. Or perhaps a feature that would let you use text messages and MMS over Bluetooth rather than using the cell network. If there was a phone with the openness of Android/WebOS, the polish of the iPhone, the large amount of networks like the BlackBerry, all in one phone it would sell like crazy. Instead they leave out important features and make phones that are decent, but not great.
Its a lot less of an effort to use a mouse than it is to use a touchscreen. The hardware just isn't there yet also, screens smudge and are inaccurate or suffer from slow speed.
I would agree, but the fact remains that in general we've already paid for it via bailouts. We didn't exactly have a choice (we meaning the average American, it was never put to a popular vote, not congress who could have rejected it) and its unfeasible to give away cars (requires too many raw materials). The lobbyists could have won if the auto industries didn't screw up so badly and "require" a bailout.
That would work... But we don't have a free market. Lets see here, oh you mean that we as the taxpayers have -paid- with our tax dollars to bail out various failing auto companies? I don't call that the free market. I call that wealth redistribution. Would you pay with your taxes for a new bridge and then accept not being able to drive across it for no reason? Taxpayers paid for these companies, it is not feasible with the current technology to hand out free cars because the raw materials cost money. However, source code and repair documentation costs nothing. It is the very least they could do after we were forced to give up our hard earned money to support an industry without the financial sense to balance its finances.
EULAs though aren't usually legally enforceable. In fact, I hope they do include them to be struck down by various courts leading to the elimination of them for software too.
Why would anyone oppose this? Lets see here our tax money has (without a popular vote even) bailed out most US auto makers, made it a crime to really reverse engineer computer systems in general, and has supported various pro-auto maker legislation. If they are going to take -our- tax money, and if the government insists on criminalizing reverse engineering and modification of cars, the only sane thing is that they must release documentation allowing everyone to do repairs themselves. Don't like it? Don't take our tax money, and lobby congress with all your $$$ to repeal various forms of legislation making it hard to reverse engineer things legally.
Arrhythmia though in most cases is -very- mild and chances are everyone has had it, we just don't have heart rhythm monitors strapped to us. While I think this person is just a bit on the "totally insane" side, arrhythmia is pretty normal and doesn't mean something terrible all the time.
Riiiight, most consumers, nearly all aren't that stupid. Unless you are using an easily identifiable logo, 99.9% of people won't notice a difference. For example, if I use the Slashdot favicon, people -might- be confused into thinking it was Slashdot, but lets say they use http://c.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topicsecurity.gif ? No one thinks its Slashdot then even though it uses an image from Slashdot.
Mod parent informative. A -free- government will only tax when we actually -get- something in return. That is, it makes sense to charge taxes for something that the government directly did, such things as registration fees to drive on government paid roads makes sense, however, it really is only -very- minor wear and tear on the roads even if I decided to drive 10,000 miles a year in even a large SUV compared to a simi. Because the government did not do anything, this tax is unjust.
It is exactly this reason why I quit being a republican and now support the libertarian party. However, in general, democrats are for huge government while republicans are for slightly less huge government. Republicans in general want government in the far-off distance (more involvement overseas), and democrats want more government here (more taxes, more government programs, "health" care). While republicans in recent years have really increased a lot of governmental power (the "patriot" act), they aren't used on the "average" citizen (that is, few people are on MSNBC/Fox/CNN complaining about it) though they do increase the government's power beyond reasonable limits. The democrats prefer to increase things that are very visible, they have more voiced opposition because they do affect the "average" citizen, though they do increase the government's power beyond reasonable limits.
A) Use YouTube and a multitude of other video sites
B) Play Flash games
C) Use parts of Google Maps
D) View some sites with webmasters who sought fit to put the navigation in 100% Flash
Just setting up a decent/etc/hosts file can eliminate 95% of ads, and Adblock plus or noscript can eliminate all the others.
But you have an unique situation. Myself cameras on everything make my life in general easier. I'm not a photographer but taking pictures with a cell phone to put on Facebook, record odd happenings for use on a blog, etc.
The problem is twofold, for one, OGG/FLAC/Theora are niche formats, yeah, FLAC has its benefits, OGG sounds better than MP3 on lower bitrates and they are all patent free and are a breeze to work with on Linux. However, Apple wants control, proprietary formats give it control. Theres no real technical reason why Apple can't have iTunes on Linux, but they don't. Apple wants control so badly that they removed an app off the App Store because you could run Commodore BASIC code, yeah, Commodore BASIC, not Python or any major language, but Commodore BASIC.
Yeah, but how many more Mac users or Linux users (who in general are "immune" to viruses and other malware due to their lower marketshare and in general better security) would be fooled into running a strange program if it looked exactly like something that they were running? An "update" to Firefox or Safari? No Mac user is going to download something that looks like XP, and a lot of Vista users would be suspicious if it looks like XP.
I wonder when they will start searching user agent strings and making it look native (Classic on pre-XP, Luna on XP and Aero on Vista/7, and Aqua on OS X). A dialogue that looks like the Ubuntu install software window could fool a lot of users....
There are already a lot of ways we could get rid of Flash, if people would stop using it. After all, Flash is mostly used for vector graphics (we've got SVG), interactivity (we've got AJAX/DHTML), and audio/video (we've got the audio and video tags).
As far as I know, SVG is -still- not supported on IE.
So does every useful feature. I'll bet money that the first serious vulnerability is in a driver, not a browser.
Either way, it introduces more security vulnerabilities to the average user.
OpenGL can be implemented in software.
And you lost that argument already with Flash. When there are one or more video ads on many pages I visit, I doubt low-end netbooks are doing well.
Owning a "low-end netbook" (EEE 701 running Xubuntu 7.10 with EEE specific customizations) Flash in general works decently enough and the only major problems I've noticed are really due to scaling, not the hardware itself. Then again, my router is set up to block a few adservers.
The fact is, there are ways to abuse any technology -- there's always the possibility that someone will print out a website, make the changes they want, scan it back in, and upload it as an image. The fact that people can abuse technology should never prevent us from creating new, interesting bits of technology that have real, practical applications.
The fact is, Flash is nearly always used for the wrong reasons. WebGL will become the next Flash, and be just as annoying if not more so. So why make a slightly better duplicate of technology that is always misused?
Nope. They need Flash because they were authored in Flash. They could have been done with SVG, Javascript, and the audio tag, it's just that the authoring tools for these aren't anywhere near Flash itself, from what I understand.
And the fact that many browsers can't do them. IE can do Flash, IE can't do SVG. If I can't reach 60% of web users by default, why bother?
It's not a "high end video card" now, either. Just about any video card is going to have some 3D capability on it -- and we're moving in the direction of compositing window managers, which will actually lead to cards supporting just 3D (and having to emulate 2D) being cheaper than cards supporting just 2D (and having to emulate 3D).
Eventually. However have you seen the state of technology for non-geeks? I still know people who use Windows 98 as their default operating system, old Dell towers with low-end Pentium 4s are very common, and for most notebooks integrated graphics is the best they have. Just because we have Core 2 Duos and a decent graphics card doesn't mean that the masses do
So, 10 or 15 years from now, when people want to add a little effect to their website -- or build an interesting "flash game" that's capable of actually using 3D hardware -- would you prefer it use Flash? Or maybe you'd prefer Quake Live -- a plugin for each game -- may as well just download an exe?
When people want to add things to their website they can do it with things such as... HTML and CSS (or whatever their replacements are in 10-15 years). I would prefer it to be in either server-side language with a small client interpreter (similar to how/. is coded) or make it be a desktop application. The risks are too great when you have code running like crazy on the client side, that is when security vulnerabilities come out.
Or would you prefer a world where someone could develop and deploy a visually-impressive MMO that is just a webpage -- where you don't need an account or a download to enter something like Second Life, you can just click a link and you're in the world?
Would you also want ads to run the same way? Or what about malware? Security issues are a major concern as things get more complex. We have
Why is this necessary? There are some positive uses for it (such as getting us out of dependence on proprietary technologies like Flash) but a lot more negative issues. For one, this will add even more vulnerabilities to browsers which seem to already have loads of them. And for another the web should be accessible for -everyone- from the low-end netbook to a Core i7, and even older systems should be able to browse web. Already many sites are unusable without a recent version of Flash, we don't need extra hardware as requirements to view sites. Yeah, we all know that they should do it in HTML and that will still stick around, but how many of us have encountered sites built entirely in Flash? Or have a requirement of Flash for simple things like navigation? While some things obviously need Flash (such as Homestar Runner because they are Flash cartoons) others use Flash for no real reason. Currently most platforms have Flash or will be getting it. But adding a high-end graphics card to a computer just to view the web? Thats just a bit ridiculous.
Yeah, and we all know that Tetris didn't do anything other than create an entire new market for games and changed the face of gaming by introducing portable gaming as a real means of gaming. Without Tetris we wouldn't have the DS or PSP.
I think a lot of people fail to notice that Microsoft is LESS EVIL than they were before. No doubt, guys like Sam Ramji played a part in that. For that, I am grateful.
How are they less evil? All they have done is simply went from ignoring OSS to attempting to embrace and extend it. All they have done is realize that OSS is in actual competition to their software and if they don't at least make improvements to their software, people will chose OSS over MS software.
And do you want to run a start-up trying to compete with a multi-billion dollar behemoth that likes to crush competition?
One way MS likes to crush competition is by buying them. When you get millions for your company for doing very little, I'd say its a success. Yeah, if your an employee things might not be as good, but if you are owning the company? Its a great thing and you get a pretty early retirement if you so choose.
You should have realized EA sucked a long time ago. They ruin everything they touch, keep buying good game companies then turning them into crapfests. About the only good games that they have ever made was Sim City and a few of its sequels and spinoffs. The other 90% were either cash-ins (Madden Football anyone?), terrible tie-ins, or just terrible games.
Slashdot Mirror
All of which don't add "revolutionary" features, but only things that should have been in 1.0. Its almost as bad as the iPhone OS releases, but at least Android is free.
How do you prove something true? Eventually you get to the point where you either have to assume something without proof, or spend your life searching for a basic truth. Lets take George Washington, everyone knows he exists but could he be a patriotic fabrication? You can only trace his linage back so far and even then public records were inaccurate many times. You hit a point where you can't prove anything. Some things should be assumed without full proof. Nothing can be fully proven.
Sure, but really for an OSS project, development has been painfully slow in general with Android. There are many good ideas that shouldn't take too long to implement but have been sitting there for a long time.
Most people spend -far- more time on their computers than they did writing papers, unless they were, say a monk or something. I use my computer for work, when I get home I'm usually also, on the computer. If I used paper at work and no computer at home chances are after writing on paper I'm going to do something different than write on more paper. The same computer that you use to do work on can also view Facebook, YouTube, etc.
Why is it that Android (and other cell phones) seem to have some obvious feature left out that developers are unwilling to fix? And usually they aren't "this will take years of R&D and some genius to realize we left it out" but blindingly obvious features. Why isn't Android embracing Bluetooth? I can think of a lot of good reasons for it, for one would be P2P networks for gaming, file sharing, etc. Or perhaps a feature that would let you use text messages and MMS over Bluetooth rather than using the cell network. If there was a phone with the openness of Android/WebOS, the polish of the iPhone, the large amount of networks like the BlackBerry, all in one phone it would sell like crazy. Instead they leave out important features and make phones that are decent, but not great.
Its a lot less of an effort to use a mouse than it is to use a touchscreen. The hardware just isn't there yet also, screens smudge and are inaccurate or suffer from slow speed.
I would agree, but the fact remains that in general we've already paid for it via bailouts. We didn't exactly have a choice (we meaning the average American, it was never put to a popular vote, not congress who could have rejected it) and its unfeasible to give away cars (requires too many raw materials). The lobbyists could have won if the auto industries didn't screw up so badly and "require" a bailout.
That would work... But we don't have a free market. Lets see here, oh you mean that we as the taxpayers have -paid- with our tax dollars to bail out various failing auto companies? I don't call that the free market. I call that wealth redistribution. Would you pay with your taxes for a new bridge and then accept not being able to drive across it for no reason? Taxpayers paid for these companies, it is not feasible with the current technology to hand out free cars because the raw materials cost money. However, source code and repair documentation costs nothing. It is the very least they could do after we were forced to give up our hard earned money to support an industry without the financial sense to balance its finances.
EULAs though aren't usually legally enforceable. In fact, I hope they do include them to be struck down by various courts leading to the elimination of them for software too.
Why would anyone oppose this? Lets see here our tax money has (without a popular vote even) bailed out most US auto makers, made it a crime to really reverse engineer computer systems in general, and has supported various pro-auto maker legislation. If they are going to take -our- tax money, and if the government insists on criminalizing reverse engineering and modification of cars, the only sane thing is that they must release documentation allowing everyone to do repairs themselves. Don't like it? Don't take our tax money, and lobby congress with all your $$$ to repeal various forms of legislation making it hard to reverse engineer things legally.
Arrhythmia though in most cases is -very- mild and chances are everyone has had it, we just don't have heart rhythm monitors strapped to us. While I think this person is just a bit on the "totally insane" side, arrhythmia is pretty normal and doesn't mean something terrible all the time.
Riiiight, most consumers, nearly all aren't that stupid. Unless you are using an easily identifiable logo, 99.9% of people won't notice a difference. For example, if I use the Slashdot favicon, people -might- be confused into thinking it was Slashdot, but lets say they use http://c.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topicsecurity.gif ? No one thinks its Slashdot then even though it uses an image from Slashdot.
Mod parent informative. A -free- government will only tax when we actually -get- something in return. That is, it makes sense to charge taxes for something that the government directly did, such things as registration fees to drive on government paid roads makes sense, however, it really is only -very- minor wear and tear on the roads even if I decided to drive 10,000 miles a year in even a large SUV compared to a simi. Because the government did not do anything, this tax is unjust.
It is exactly this reason why I quit being a republican and now support the libertarian party. However, in general, democrats are for huge government while republicans are for slightly less huge government. Republicans in general want government in the far-off distance (more involvement overseas), and democrats want more government here (more taxes, more government programs, "health" care). While republicans in recent years have really increased a lot of governmental power (the "patriot" act), they aren't used on the "average" citizen (that is, few people are on MSNBC/Fox/CNN complaining about it) though they do increase the government's power beyond reasonable limits. The democrats prefer to increase things that are very visible, they have more voiced opposition because they do affect the "average" citizen, though they do increase the government's power beyond reasonable limits.
Those pedometers were always fun to just put on a massage chair and watch it rack up all the steps :)
Lets see here, I use flash to:
/etc/hosts file can eliminate 95% of ads, and Adblock plus or noscript can eliminate all the others.
A) Use YouTube and a multitude of other video sites
B) Play Flash games
C) Use parts of Google Maps
D) View some sites with webmasters who sought fit to put the navigation in 100% Flash
Just setting up a decent
But you have an unique situation. Myself cameras on everything make my life in general easier. I'm not a photographer but taking pictures with a cell phone to put on Facebook, record odd happenings for use on a blog, etc.
The problem is twofold, for one, OGG/FLAC/Theora are niche formats, yeah, FLAC has its benefits, OGG sounds better than MP3 on lower bitrates and they are all patent free and are a breeze to work with on Linux. However, Apple wants control, proprietary formats give it control. Theres no real technical reason why Apple can't have iTunes on Linux, but they don't. Apple wants control so badly that they removed an app off the App Store because you could run Commodore BASIC code, yeah, Commodore BASIC, not Python or any major language, but Commodore BASIC.
Yeah, but how many more Mac users or Linux users (who in general are "immune" to viruses and other malware due to their lower marketshare and in general better security) would be fooled into running a strange program if it looked exactly like something that they were running? An "update" to Firefox or Safari? No Mac user is going to download something that looks like XP, and a lot of Vista users would be suspicious if it looks like XP.
I wonder when they will start searching user agent strings and making it look native (Classic on pre-XP, Luna on XP and Aero on Vista/7, and Aqua on OS X). A dialogue that looks like the Ubuntu install software window could fool a lot of users....
There are already a lot of ways we could get rid of Flash, if people would stop using it. After all, Flash is mostly used for vector graphics (we've got SVG), interactivity (we've got AJAX/DHTML), and audio/video (we've got the audio and video tags).
As far as I know, SVG is -still- not supported on IE.
So does every useful feature. I'll bet money that the first serious vulnerability is in a driver, not a browser.
Either way, it introduces more security vulnerabilities to the average user.
OpenGL can be implemented in software. And you lost that argument already with Flash. When there are one or more video ads on many pages I visit, I doubt low-end netbooks are doing well.
Owning a "low-end netbook" (EEE 701 running Xubuntu 7.10 with EEE specific customizations) Flash in general works decently enough and the only major problems I've noticed are really due to scaling, not the hardware itself. Then again, my router is set up to block a few adservers.
The fact is, there are ways to abuse any technology -- there's always the possibility that someone will print out a website, make the changes they want, scan it back in, and upload it as an image. The fact that people can abuse technology should never prevent us from creating new, interesting bits of technology that have real, practical applications.
The fact is, Flash is nearly always used for the wrong reasons. WebGL will become the next Flash, and be just as annoying if not more so. So why make a slightly better duplicate of technology that is always misused?
Nope. They need Flash because they were authored in Flash. They could have been done with SVG, Javascript, and the audio tag, it's just that the authoring tools for these aren't anywhere near Flash itself, from what I understand.
And the fact that many browsers can't do them. IE can do Flash, IE can't do SVG. If I can't reach 60% of web users by default, why bother?
It's not a "high end video card" now, either. Just about any video card is going to have some 3D capability on it -- and we're moving in the direction of compositing window managers, which will actually lead to cards supporting just 3D (and having to emulate 2D) being cheaper than cards supporting just 2D (and having to emulate 3D).
Eventually. However have you seen the state of technology for non-geeks? I still know people who use Windows 98 as their default operating system, old Dell towers with low-end Pentium 4s are very common, and for most notebooks integrated graphics is the best they have. Just because we have Core 2 Duos and a decent graphics card doesn't mean that the masses do
So, 10 or 15 years from now, when people want to add a little effect to their website -- or build an interesting "flash game" that's capable of actually using 3D hardware -- would you prefer it use Flash? Or maybe you'd prefer Quake Live -- a plugin for each game -- may as well just download an exe?
When people want to add things to their website they can do it with things such as... HTML and CSS (or whatever their replacements are in 10-15 years). I would prefer it to be in either server-side language with a small client interpreter (similar to how /. is coded) or make it be a desktop application. The risks are too great when you have code running like crazy on the client side, that is when security vulnerabilities come out.
Or would you prefer a world where someone could develop and deploy a visually-impressive MMO that is just a webpage -- where you don't need an account or a download to enter something like Second Life, you can just click a link and you're in the world?
Would you also want ads to run the same way? Or what about malware? Security issues are a major concern as things get more complex. We have
Why is this necessary? There are some positive uses for it (such as getting us out of dependence on proprietary technologies like Flash) but a lot more negative issues. For one, this will add even more vulnerabilities to browsers which seem to already have loads of them. And for another the web should be accessible for -everyone- from the low-end netbook to a Core i7, and even older systems should be able to browse web. Already many sites are unusable without a recent version of Flash, we don't need extra hardware as requirements to view sites. Yeah, we all know that they should do it in HTML and that will still stick around, but how many of us have encountered sites built entirely in Flash? Or have a requirement of Flash for simple things like navigation? While some things obviously need Flash (such as Homestar Runner because they are Flash cartoons) others use Flash for no real reason. Currently most platforms have Flash or will be getting it. But adding a high-end graphics card to a computer just to view the web? Thats just a bit ridiculous.
Yeah, and we all know that Tetris didn't do anything other than create an entire new market for games and changed the face of gaming by introducing portable gaming as a real means of gaming. Without Tetris we wouldn't have the DS or PSP.
I think a lot of people fail to notice that Microsoft is LESS EVIL than they were before. No doubt, guys like Sam Ramji played a part in that. For that, I am grateful.
How are they less evil? All they have done is simply went from ignoring OSS to attempting to embrace and extend it. All they have done is realize that OSS is in actual competition to their software and if they don't at least make improvements to their software, people will chose OSS over MS software.
And do you want to run a start-up trying to compete with a multi-billion dollar behemoth that likes to crush competition?
One way MS likes to crush competition is by buying them. When you get millions for your company for doing very little, I'd say its a success. Yeah, if your an employee things might not be as good, but if you are owning the company? Its a great thing and you get a pretty early retirement if you so choose.
You should have realized EA sucked a long time ago. They ruin everything they touch, keep buying good game companies then turning them into crapfests. About the only good games that they have ever made was Sim City and a few of its sequels and spinoffs. The other 90% were either cash-ins (Madden Football anyone?), terrible tie-ins, or just terrible games.