Personally, I think that the recent news of the personal details of 1 million Apple users ending up on a single person's laptop, and from there getting spread publicly over the Internet, might make somebody reconsider if there's really need for every single personal detail of their life to pass from a datacenter on the other side of the planet while travelling from their own phone to their own PC.
Also, there's plenty of use cases for standard connectors and protocols. Why should I have to send a 1080p video clip (that this phone is able to take) to SkyDrive if all I want to do is to watch it once on my TV / PC? It will take forever for me to upload it to Microsoft's servers over wifi, and if I'm not at home, uploading it over 3G will be expensive (and even slower).
Windows Phone 8 uses the real Windows 8 kernel, doesn't it? If so, I'll bet that the thing runs UEFI-on-ARM, with the associated "secure" boot in its non-deactivatable personality. In this case you could forget about installing anything not signed by Microsoft on the device.
You see, Apple was also the first to look into the working conditions and do something to improve them;
No, they started doing "something" only after the bad press that they got for the horrible working conditions they took advantage of for years (and the bad press they got was just a fraction of what they deserved - we even had reparatory articles here on slashdot, such as "can you really build anything without exploiting slavery?"). What they were doing before that, was building spaceship - shaped campuses for their american employees while their chinese ones worked in exploding factories.
Certain "desktop Linux" projects, not "Linux on the Desktop" as a whole, are no longer successful as they once were simply because they sawed the branch on which they were sitting.
Their leaders tried to shove complex architectures into the projects, with the result that new coders are no longer attracted to them, because they'd rather start a new pet project instead of trying to get the picture of one that has become so complex, and is so underdocumented, that solving differential equations would be more fun.
They also tried to remove any feature which had a geeky appeal, under the mantra that "geeks don't understand what ordinary people want". Even if that was true, it's also true that only geeks code for free, not "ordinary people". Scare geeks away, and you're killing the future of your open source project.
Even though Linux is no longer the simple OS of some decade ago, it's still relatively easy to study, it's well documented, its principles are still the same, and its developers never break things for the sake of "improvement". And they never leave anybody behind (there's still Amiga fast file system support in the kernel, and the latest kernel will still build and run on a '386). So don't say that Linus is to blame if people no longer care about KDE or GNOME. If anything, he's the only one that is doing everything that needs to be done in order for Linux to succeed, on the desktop or elsewhere.
I almost can see a pattern there, as it's the same thing that's happening in Italy. Multiple bankers at the government, stripping the workers' rights, selling public heritage to speculators and passing laws that are killing the country's economy even more.
I also read that the automatic drive wasn't able to cope with simple situations such as another car coming from the opposite direction in a narrow street, requiring manual intervention. So alongside the triumphant tones, they should also explain how much these cars are really self driving; most car accidents don't occur in straight motorways.
When I said that "OpenGL on Windows is a second class citizen", I meant that Microsoft does no longer develop it, document it, promote it, not that you can't have good third-party OpenGL implementations (and games that make good use of it) on Windows. Check the OpenGL documentation on MSDN, it's stuck to OpenGL 1.1, probably dating back to the times when OpenGL was THE high performance graphics API for Windows NT.
You're comparing a quantity and its derivative, a stock and a flow. I never said that Windows hasn't a large market share, and that you can't target OpenGL on Windows.
After Windows NT, OpenGL has been a second class citizen there, and after Windows Vista, it became a third class one. It's hardware manufacturers that still provide the independent OpenGL implementations you enjoy on Windows. Microsoft's OpenGL implementation (version 1.1 I think) is a remnant of the NT era, when Windows was entering the workstation market, and that meant it had to support OpenGL.
OpenGL never caught on? I think you're talking from inside a Windows perception bubble, for everything but Windows is based on OpenGL nowadays. And Windows is slowly losing relevance.
You're missing the background. Google's "admission" was not spontaneous.
They were first investigated by the German authorities for collecting WiFi addresses (not even private data). During that investigation, they accidentally falsely stated that they did not collect private data beyond unique WiFi addresses. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/22/google_streetview_logs_wlans/
So they were "caught" by the German, they accidentally lied to them, then they rectified their statement by saying that they accidentally did store users' data, they were investigated by half world as a result of that, were accused of impeding the investigations by the FCC in the USA, and they were "caught" by the French having stored sensitive data.
CNIL, like many other data protection agencies worldwide, asked Google to hand over copies of the data it gathered to find out if privacy laws had been breached.
CNIL chairman Alex Turk said Google handed the data to the agency on 4 June following an official request and it was now in the process of combing through the reams of information.
Yeah, because the FCC says they were "uncooperative" it must be true. After all, the FCC is part of the government. And the government never lies, right? Right?
Actually, they were caught, by the French, stashing private user data by mistake. And they were uncooperative during the investigations in the USA ( http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/14/fcc-google-wifi-investigation/ ). And now they even admit they didn't comply with the british regulators' order, still by mistake.
This is why I disagree when people call business-friendly licenses "pragmatic". Businesses are always more "pragmatic" than you, and this is how they behave when they hold the knife by the handle: while they sponsor GNOME conferences, or proclaim open source friendliness, they've locked us all out of our computers.
In this situation, it's more pragmatic to require distributors of free software to also distribute the keys needed by the user to run modified versions of the software. A requirement that the authors of GPLv3, with foresight, chose to adopt, with no lack of criticism for being too "extremist".
With "Secure" Boot, hardware must no longer allow BIOS to be freely flashed, it must only be replaced with a new cryptographically signed BIOS image. That must be true for both the main one and the option ROMs. Otherwise the "secure" boot mechanism would be meaningless. (Not that it has much meaning anyway...)
Windows 8 on ARM already does no longer have the old UI.
It certainly does.
It only supports a couple of built-in MS applications, namely Explorer, Internet Explorer and some Office applications; probably, because Microsoft haven't properly ported all of their functionality into metro yet.
From the same article you linked: "WOA does not support running, emulating, or porting existing x86/64 desktop apps."
And by the way, the "old UI" in Windows 8 is crippled enough
How so exactly?
There's no Start menu. So no recent items list. The control panel is hidden in a toolbar button that appears only when you open explorer and click "my computer". Start menu items are scattered all over the metro wall (or sometimes they don't appear at all, I haven't figured out). Launching a program, or interacting with any metro app, implies going to a full screen wall that hides the work you're currently doing.
If you boot to desktop
Can I do this in the Consumer Preview without recurring to a hack?
and install an application launcher of your liking,
Remember, the point of the discussion isn't that you can no longer install desktop programs in the x86/x86_64 ports of Windows 8. What I'm saying is that Microsoft is phasing out the old UI, in the same way they phased out the DOS/Windows 3.1 interface with Windows 95. Being able to install a third party application that gives me back the old UI is not evidence of the contrary.
That's like saying that DOS was still there in Windows 95. Yes, it was still there, but it was clearly on its way out. Windows 8 on ARM already does no longer have the old UI. Next version of Windows will probably drop it for the x86 port too.
And by the way, the "old UI" in Windows 8 is crippled enough, in order to fit into a system designed around the "new UI", that it's a pain in the backside to use.
Certainly, this is only because of the deep technical differences between Windows Vista and Windows 7, which didn't enable Microsoft's experts to port Office 2013 to Windows Vista; it's not an arbitrary decision by Microsoft, trying to leverage vendor lock-in: because Microsoft has changed since the 90s.
It's funny how, on Windows XP, Microsoft wasn't even able to port an old-fashioned, low on features browser such as Internet Explorer 9, whereas on the same OS you're free to install, say, Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox and enjoy the latest and the greatest of web technologies. (And let's remember that even on Vista, with IE9, it's not native HTML5. )
Since I can't imagine the changed Microsoft deliberately cutting compatibility with their older and not-so-old OSes in order to force their customers to upgrade, I have to think that Microsoft's coders are either lazy or incompetent.
Slashdot Mirror
Also, there's plenty of use cases for standard connectors and protocols. Why should I have to send a 1080p video clip (that this phone is able to take) to SkyDrive if all I want to do is to watch it once on my TV / PC? It will take forever for me to upload it to Microsoft's servers over wifi, and if I'm not at home, uploading it over 3G will be expensive (and even slower).
Windows Phone 8 uses the real Windows 8 kernel, doesn't it? If so, I'll bet that the thing runs UEFI-on-ARM, with the associated "secure" boot in its non-deactivatable personality. In this case you could forget about installing anything not signed by Microsoft on the device.
It's dual core, not quad.
Since iPad factories were still exploding (repeatedly) as late as December 2011, something must haven't worked well with Apple's checks.
You see, Apple was also the first to look into the working conditions and do something to improve them;
No, they started doing "something" only after the bad press that they got for the horrible working conditions they took advantage of for years (and the bad press they got was just a fraction of what they deserved - we even had reparatory articles here on slashdot, such as "can you really build anything without exploiting slavery?"). What they were doing before that, was building spaceship - shaped campuses for their american employees while their chinese ones worked in exploding factories.
Their leaders tried to shove complex architectures into the projects, with the result that new coders are no longer attracted to them, because they'd rather start a new pet project instead of trying to get the picture of one that has become so complex, and is so underdocumented, that solving differential equations would be more fun.
They also tried to remove any feature which had a geeky appeal, under the mantra that "geeks don't understand what ordinary people want". Even if that was true, it's also true that only geeks code for free, not "ordinary people". Scare geeks away, and you're killing the future of your open source project.
Even though Linux is no longer the simple OS of some decade ago, it's still relatively easy to study, it's well documented, its principles are still the same, and its developers never break things for the sake of "improvement". And they never leave anybody behind (there's still Amiga fast file system support in the kernel, and the latest kernel will still build and run on a '386). So don't say that Linus is to blame if people no longer care about KDE or GNOME. If anything, he's the only one that is doing everything that needs to be done in order for Linux to succeed, on the desktop or elsewhere.
I almost can see a pattern there, as it's the same thing that's happening in Italy. Multiple bankers at the government, stripping the workers' rights, selling public heritage to speculators and passing laws that are killing the country's economy even more.
I also read that the automatic drive wasn't able to cope with simple situations such as another car coming from the opposite direction in a narrow street, requiring manual intervention. So alongside the triumphant tones, they should also explain how much these cars are really self driving; most car accidents don't occur in straight motorways.
When I said that "OpenGL on Windows is a second class citizen", I meant that Microsoft does no longer develop it, document it, promote it, not that you can't have good third-party OpenGL implementations (and games that make good use of it) on Windows. Check the OpenGL documentation on MSDN, it's stuck to OpenGL 1.1, probably dating back to the times when OpenGL was THE high performance graphics API for Windows NT.
After Windows NT, OpenGL has been a second class citizen there, and after Windows Vista, it became a third class one. It's hardware manufacturers that still provide the independent OpenGL implementations you enjoy on Windows. Microsoft's OpenGL implementation (version 1.1 I think) is a remnant of the NT era, when Windows was entering the workstation market, and that meant it had to support OpenGL.
OpenGL never caught on? I think you're talking from inside a Windows perception bubble, for everything but Windows is based on OpenGL nowadays. And Windows is slowly losing relevance.
Then suggest me a better word for "accidentally storing large quantities of private user data, including (according to the French) e-mail passwords, while saying that they weren't doing that". http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.com/2010/04/data-collected-by-google-cars.html
They were first investigated by the German authorities for collecting WiFi addresses (not even private data). During that investigation, they accidentally falsely stated that they did not collect private data beyond unique WiFi addresses. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/22/google_streetview_logs_wlans/
Some time after that, they corrected their accidental false statement with the "admission" you're talking about. http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-20005051-266.html?tag=mncol;txt
So they were "caught" by the German, they accidentally lied to them, then they rectified their statement by saying that they accidentally did store users' data, they were investigated by half world as a result of that, were accused of impeding the investigations by the FCC in the USA, and they were "caught" by the French having stored sensitive data.
You said they "tried to hide" something.
I didn't. FCC, if anything, said they "deliberately impeded and delayed the investigation".
Fucking lie.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10364073
Yeah, because the FCC says they were "uncooperative" it must be true. After all, the FCC is part of the government. And the government never lies, right? Right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law
Actually, they were caught, by the French, stashing private user data by mistake. And they were uncooperative during the investigations in the USA ( http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/14/fcc-google-wifi-investigation/ ). And now they even admit they didn't comply with the british regulators' order, still by mistake.
Moreover, offenses committed "by mistake" are still offenses.
In this situation, it's more pragmatic to require distributors of free software to also distribute the keys needed by the user to run modified versions of the software. A requirement that the authors of GPLv3, with foresight, chose to adopt, with no lack of criticism for being too "extremist".
With "Secure" Boot, hardware must no longer allow BIOS to be freely flashed, it must only be replaced with a new cryptographically signed BIOS image. That must be true for both the main one and the option ROMs. Otherwise the "secure" boot mechanism would be meaningless. (Not that it has much meaning anyway...)
Windows 8 on ARM already does no longer have the old UI.
It certainly does.
It only supports a couple of built-in MS applications, namely Explorer, Internet Explorer and some Office applications; probably, because Microsoft haven't properly ported all of their functionality into metro yet.
From the same article you linked: "WOA does not support running, emulating, or porting existing x86/64 desktop apps."
There's no Start menu. So no recent items list. The control panel is hidden in a toolbar button that appears only when you open explorer and click "my computer". Start menu items are scattered all over the metro wall (or sometimes they don't appear at all, I haven't figured out). Launching a program, or interacting with any metro app, implies going to a full screen wall that hides the work you're currently doing.
Can I do this in the Consumer Preview without recurring to a hack?
Remember, the point of the discussion isn't that you can no longer install desktop programs in the x86/x86_64 ports of Windows 8. What I'm saying is that Microsoft is phasing out the old UI, in the same way they phased out the DOS/Windows 3.1 interface with Windows 95. Being able to install a third party application that gives me back the old UI is not evidence of the contrary.
Don't forget OBEY, CONSUME, MARRY AND REPRODUCE, DO NOT QUESTION AUTHORITY, and most important, NO INDEPENDENT THOUGHT.
And by the way, the "old UI" in Windows 8 is crippled enough, in order to fit into a system designed around the "new UI", that it's a pain in the backside to use.
It's funny how, on Windows XP, Microsoft wasn't even able to port an old-fashioned, low on features browser such as Internet Explorer 9, whereas on the same OS you're free to install, say, Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox and enjoy the latest and the greatest of web technologies. (And let's remember that even on Vista, with IE9, it's not native HTML5. )
Since I can't imagine the changed Microsoft deliberately cutting compatibility with their older and not-so-old OSes in order to force their customers to upgrade, I have to think that Microsoft's coders are either lazy or incompetent.
Not against rootkits loaded from userspace after the system has booted. Which are the majority.