run OS X... So you take off a perfectly good unix with drivers for all the bits of the hardware, and lots of application support, and replace it with a one-size-fits all OS that doesn't do the half of it... Why?
Yes, why would people do that? Why do they bother making Linux distributions and installing them on their Mac hardware if OS X is really everything you make it out to be? Why?
I'll tell you why: because they don't see OS X the way you do.
What they don't understand is that they have good alternatives. Get an unlocked Google, Nokia, or Windows Mobile phone and a prepaid plan and you pay much less for a smartphone that gets the job done (and actually is nicer for text messages and a lot of other uses).
So.... how do you use any phone with out service? The contract really means nothing the US since AT&T is the only major GSM carrier in the US that supports all of the features of the iPhone.
You can get an unlocked Nokia N78 for about $230 with no contract. Then, buy AT&T prepaid. It's a lot cheaper than an iPhone with a 2 year contract and has the same functionality.
What carrier would a person switch to without losing features?
Works fine in Europe, where phones and service are a lot cheaper, all carriers are compatible, and people can switch freely (unless they sign a contract, which also exist if you want the phone discount). There's no reason it couldn't work here.
Isn't the whole point of the article about current users utilising existing features in new and innovative ways. i.e. with a marginal cost of zero.
That would be using one of the many location tracking features that have been out for years for other smartphones. The total cost isn't $99+2 year contract, but simply $200 for the phone and no contract.
These days, the simplest of the bunch is probably Google Latitude.
So you're saying that pictures that make fun of Mohammed are "hate speech"? I disagree strongly. If people riot because of that, the problem is with the rioters not with the people publishing the pictures.
Short of asking people to kill each other, any other kind of offensive speech needs to be legitimate in a democracy because, sadly, the truth often offends people. Or do you think the Reformation, Enlightenment, Darwinism, or heliocentrism didn't offend people and their religious sensitivities?
But, hey, maybe we can finally get these laws to work both ways. I find what Muslim clerics and the Pope say about me highly offensive and insulting. Muslims have even called for my death. In fact, the Pope pretty much agrees with these two British men on many things. So, let's throw the Pope and Muslim clerics in jail.
The promise includes the term "irrevocable". If Microsoft were to revoke it, it's not that they have resumed their original position, it's that they have never honored the promise at all.
Furthermore, the people affected by this is not the Mono developers (who developed prior to this promise), but the people who now adopt Mono because of this promise. If Microsoft were to revoke their promise, these people can't "resume" their original position because they can't magically get back the money they invested in developing software based on Mono.
Hopefully this will change in the future. I just think the Community Promise falls a little short compared to Sun's *public* stance on Java's patent issues.
Microsoft has committed to not asserting their patents against *any* ECMA/ISO C# implementation. That makes ECMA C# as open and unencumbered as C, C++, Ada, or any other standardized language.
Sun has committed only to not asserting patents against their own GPL implementation; any other implementation is fair game for their intellectual property lawyers. And Sun has plenty of patents on Java. That makes Java a highly encumbered programming language.
Sun has lots of patents on lots of aspects of Java. The only area where you *may* be safe is if you use Sun's own implementations.
I know that these.net libraries have been implemented in Mono but would we have to write new open-source libraries to replace thier functionality and remain "patent-threat" free?
Most people who develop with Mono develop using standard Linux libraries, libraries that are free of any hint of Microsoft patents. That's one of the things that makes Mono so attractive.
prefer Mono - especially Banshee... Without the other libraries I fear Mono is hamstrung.
Banshee, like almost all Mono desktop apps, is based on Gtk#, not Winforms.
What are the overheads of both the Java and Mono virtual machines running at the same time? Would we be better getting behind just one environment and using that.
IKVM runs Java inside a CLR. It also neatly avoids Sun's patents.
I'm sorry, but wasn't part of the point of Mono (and.NET, actually) compatibility and cross-platform independence?
That was the point of Java. Most people use Mono simply because it's a good platform for Linux desktop development. And Mono is so good at it because it is NOT cross-platform.
I have to say though, the hardware support aspect to me makes h.264 support a must.
Hardware de/encoders can easily support both with no significant extra cost or battery usage. If W3C adopts it, you'd see hardware supporting both long before HTML5-only pages show up.
Furthermore, having a hardware codec for video viewing of your iTunes movies doesn't prevent you from using software for the occasional short web video clip.
We're talking about video embedded in web pages, for a standard that will take years to become adopted (long before Apple's non-removable batteries are dead). If HTML5 adopts Ogg today, you're going to see H.264 hardware also support Ogg in less than a year.
What difference does it make? People who watch videos on iPhones and iPods are going to buy them through iTunes. Furthermore, Apple's proprietary phones have equally proprietary web sites to go with them anyway. And until HTML5 actually gets widely adopted, all those Apple products are going to be obsolete anyway; Apple has plenty of time to build Ogg hardware into their devices if they really care.
This girl's girlfriends got her to come down to LA to do "modeling" which then turned into drinking and drugs on a scale she wasn't used to,... Top shelf pussy, just ruined by porn. There's nothing happy about that story.
She's an adult? Then she's responsible for her actions. She wasn't ruined by porn, she was ruined by being irresponsible. It's not the law's purpose to protect adults from doing stupid, irresponsible things with their lives.
So, because we fail to regulate abuse x and abuse y by law, we should quit trying to regulate abuse z by law?
But there is nothing intrinsically abusive about pornography; its creation and distribution are voluntary business transactions between adults.
That's another slippery slope.
Well, I'm not willing to support laws because of tired "slippery slope" arguments.
Should we allow films in which the actors are hired (in other words, it's in the script and in their contracts) to actually maim themselves, or commit suicide, or be murdered on film?
Depends on the legality of those acts. If they are legal, then you should be able to do them for pay and/or on film.
We don't know whether the sex you're having with your wife is consensual. Maybe you keep her locked up in the basement and then force her to have sex. Or maybe she was destitute and your marriage was her ticket to a warm meal every day. So, obviously, we should eliminate marriage, right?
only full-time, for-profit professionals are able to consistently beat BD+
Maybe open source developers have better things to do than to do legally questionable things in order to circumvent copy protection on an overpriced, obsolete distribution format?
Bluephone Elite for the Mac kind of does what you are asking for. But why? A cell phone is actually better at making phone calls than a desktop PC, desktop microphone, and desktop speakers.
Walk the halls of any open-source conference and you'll see a large percentage of attendees with ironically non-open-source Apple laptops and iPhones
There are many "open source" developers. It wouldn't surprise me if Java or PHP developers use a lot of Macs. But what does that actually show? Just because people use or develop open source in one niche doesn't mean that they need to use open source for everything. And their reasons are probably the usual ones: Microsoft compatibility, appeal of Mac hardware, what they are used to,... It does not show that Macs are easier to use than modern Linux desktops.
Open-source projects have tended to be great commoditizers, but not necessarily the best innovators
Really? Many innovations have first become available in open source form before companies like Microsoft and Apple finally managed to ship them as part of their commercial software. And what actual innovations have Microsoft or Apple actually created? I mean, much of Apple's platform is based on open source software.
I think the real reason it seems like Apple and Microsoft innovate so much is... because they spend billions of dollars to create that illusion.
Don't use US carrier SIM cards for international travel: you get no cost control and high rates for data.
Your best bet is to get a local, prepaid SIM card. In some countries, you can get day-by-day data subscriptions for a few bucks a day.
If you can't do that, your next best bet is to get an international prepaid SIM card. Their rates are a little higher, but they are still fairly low, and they are fairly low across the entire globe.
Either way, you get cost control: they can't charge you more than you prepaid.
Search on Google; there are many companies offering this service. Oh, and you need a GSM phone, preferably one that supports tethering. Most Nokias running Symbian will work and you just plug them into your laptop and they work as a 3G modem; they also have good E-mail readers.
(Nokias are a bit old-fashioned in that they ask you for every Internet connection you make; normally, that's a nuisance, but for data roaming, it's great.)
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C++ has reached staggering complexity already; I don't think adding another 40 pages of complicated features is going to make the language any better.
Just a brief list of linux stuff that runs on top of OS X: X11 kde e17
Fink and Apple's X11 drove me off the Mac platform; they are such a PITA.
meaning if you really, really have a hard on to run just linux apps, you could run the core OS with the drivers and all with X11 on top of it.
Yeah, but why would you want to?
run OS X... So you take off a perfectly good unix with drivers for all the bits of the hardware, and lots of application support, and replace it with a one-size-fits all OS that doesn't do the half of it... Why?
Yes, why would people do that? Why do they bother making Linux distributions and installing them on their Mac hardware if OS X is really everything you make it out to be? Why?
I'll tell you why: because they don't see OS X the way you do.
What they don't understand is that they have good alternatives. Get an unlocked Google, Nokia, or Windows Mobile phone and a prepaid plan and you pay much less for a smartphone that gets the job done (and actually is nicer for text messages and a lot of other uses).
So.... how do you use any phone with out service? The contract really means nothing the US since AT&T is the only major GSM carrier in the US that supports all of the features of the iPhone.
You can get an unlocked Nokia N78 for about $230 with no contract. Then, buy AT&T prepaid. It's a lot cheaper than an iPhone with a 2 year contract and has the same functionality.
What carrier would a person switch to without losing features?
Works fine in Europe, where phones and service are a lot cheaper, all carriers are compatible, and people can switch freely (unless they sign a contract, which also exist if you want the phone discount). There's no reason it couldn't work here.
Isn't the whole point of the article about current users utilising existing features in new and innovative ways. i.e. with a marginal cost of zero.
That would be using one of the many location tracking features that have been out for years for other smartphones. The total cost isn't $99+2 year contract, but simply $200 for the phone and no contract.
These days, the simplest of the bunch is probably Google Latitude.
No expensive iPhone needed.
So you're saying that pictures that make fun of Mohammed are "hate speech"? I disagree strongly. If people riot because of that, the problem is with the rioters not with the people publishing the pictures.
Short of asking people to kill each other, any other kind of offensive speech needs to be legitimate in a democracy because, sadly, the truth often offends people. Or do you think the Reformation, Enlightenment, Darwinism, or heliocentrism didn't offend people and their religious sensitivities?
But, hey, maybe we can finally get these laws to work both ways. I find what Muslim clerics and the Pope say about me highly offensive and insulting. Muslims have even called for my death. In fact, the Pope pretty much agrees with these two British men on many things. So, let's throw the Pope and Muslim clerics in jail.
The promise includes the term "irrevocable". If Microsoft were to revoke it, it's not that they have resumed their original position, it's that they have never honored the promise at all.
Furthermore, the people affected by this is not the Mono developers (who developed prior to this promise), but the people who now adopt Mono because of this promise. If Microsoft were to revoke their promise, these people can't "resume" their original position because they can't magically get back the money they invested in developing software based on Mono.
Hopefully this will change in the future. I just think the Community Promise falls a little short compared to Sun's *public* stance on Java's patent issues.
Microsoft has committed to not asserting their patents against *any* ECMA/ISO C# implementation. That makes ECMA C# as open and unencumbered as C, C++, Ada, or any other standardized language.
Sun has committed only to not asserting patents against their own GPL implementation; any other implementation is fair game for their intellectual property lawyers. And Sun has plenty of patents on Java. That makes Java a highly encumbered programming language.
Java has less "patent liability" than Mono.
Sun has lots of patents on lots of aspects of Java. The only area where you *may* be safe is if you use Sun's own implementations.
I know that these .net libraries have been implemented in Mono but would we have to write new open-source libraries to replace thier functionality and remain "patent-threat" free?
Most people who develop with Mono develop using standard Linux libraries, libraries that are free of any hint of Microsoft patents. That's one of the things that makes Mono so attractive.
prefer Mono - especially Banshee ... Without the other libraries I fear Mono is hamstrung.
Banshee, like almost all Mono desktop apps, is based on Gtk#, not Winforms.
What are the overheads of both the Java and Mono virtual machines running at the same time? Would we be better getting behind just one environment and using that.
IKVM runs Java inside a CLR. It also neatly avoids Sun's patents.
I'm sorry, but wasn't part of the point of Mono (and .NET, actually) compatibility and cross-platform independence?
That was the point of Java. Most people use Mono simply because it's a good platform for Linux desktop development. And Mono is so good at it because it is NOT cross-platform.
I have to say though, the hardware support aspect to me makes h.264 support a must.
Hardware de/encoders can easily support both with no significant extra cost or battery usage. If W3C adopts it, you'd see hardware supporting both long before HTML5-only pages show up.
Furthermore, having a hardware codec for video viewing of your iTunes movies doesn't prevent you from using software for the occasional short web video clip.
We're talking about video embedded in web pages, for a standard that will take years to become adopted (long before Apple's non-removable batteries are dead). If HTML5 adopts Ogg today, you're going to see H.264 hardware also support Ogg in less than a year.
What difference does it make? People who watch videos on iPhones and iPods are going to buy them through iTunes. Furthermore, Apple's proprietary phones have equally proprietary web sites to go with them anyway. And until HTML5 actually gets widely adopted, all those Apple products are going to be obsolete anyway; Apple has plenty of time to build Ogg hardware into their devices if they really care.
This girl's girlfriends got her to come down to LA to do "modeling" which then turned into drinking and drugs on a scale she wasn't used to, ... Top shelf pussy, just ruined by porn. There's nothing happy about that story.
She's an adult? Then she's responsible for her actions. She wasn't ruined by porn, she was ruined by being irresponsible. It's not the law's purpose to protect adults from doing stupid, irresponsible things with their lives.
So, because we fail to regulate abuse x and abuse y by law, we should quit trying to regulate abuse z by law?
But there is nothing intrinsically abusive about pornography; its creation and distribution are voluntary business transactions between adults.
That's another slippery slope.
Well, I'm not willing to support laws because of tired "slippery slope" arguments.
Should we allow films in which the actors are hired (in other words, it's in the script and in their contracts) to actually maim themselves, or commit suicide, or be murdered on film?
Depends on the legality of those acts. If they are legal, then you should be able to do them for pay and/or on film.
We don't know whether the sex you're having with your wife is consensual. Maybe you keep her locked up in the basement and then force her to have sex. Or maybe she was destitute and your marriage was her ticket to a warm meal every day. So, obviously, we should eliminate marriage, right?
only full-time, for-profit professionals are able to consistently beat BD+
Maybe open source developers have better things to do than to do legally questionable things in order to circumvent copy protection on an overpriced, obsolete distribution format?
Apparently the next keyboard evolution could be the death of the caps lock
I hope not. The key is incredibly useful... for remapping to some other function.
I've been very happy with my HP laptops and desktops and their quality control.
I wouldn't know about XP drivers, but the hardware runs current versions of Windows and Linux just fine.
Bluephone Elite for the Mac kind of does what you are asking for. But why? A cell phone is actually better at making phone calls than a desktop PC, desktop microphone, and desktop speakers.
Walk the halls of any open-source conference and you'll see a large percentage of attendees with ironically non-open-source Apple laptops and iPhones
There are many "open source" developers. It wouldn't surprise me if Java or PHP developers use a lot of Macs. But what does that actually show? Just because people use or develop open source in one niche doesn't mean that they need to use open source for everything. And their reasons are probably the usual ones: Microsoft compatibility, appeal of Mac hardware, what they are used to, ... It does not show that Macs are easier to use than modern Linux desktops.
Open-source projects have tended to be great commoditizers, but not necessarily the best innovators
Really? Many innovations have first become available in open source form before companies like Microsoft and Apple finally managed to ship them as part of their commercial software. And what actual innovations have Microsoft or Apple actually created? I mean, much of Apple's platform is based on open source software.
I think the real reason it seems like Apple and Microsoft innovate so much is... because they spend billions of dollars to create that illusion.
Don't use US carrier SIM cards for international travel: you get no cost control and high rates for data.
Your best bet is to get a local, prepaid SIM card. In some countries, you can get day-by-day data subscriptions for a few bucks a day.
If you can't do that, your next best bet is to get an international prepaid SIM card. Their rates are a little higher, but they are still fairly low, and they are fairly low across the entire globe.
Either way, you get cost control: they can't charge you more than you prepaid.
Search on Google; there are many companies offering this service. Oh, and you need a GSM phone, preferably one that supports tethering. Most Nokias running Symbian will work and you just plug them into your laptop and they work as a 3G modem; they also have good E-mail readers.
(Nokias are a bit old-fashioned in that they ask you for every Internet connection you make; normally, that's a nuisance, but for data roaming, it's great.)
Does AT&T have dedicated data packages for traveling overseas? I'm not aware of any.
It clearly states in the contract that the rates... are subject to change and new rates can be published by AT&T at any time.