Yes, because a software package where the entry for Windows builds is to install a linux livecd is something I'm sure will be of the highest quality...
They are creepy. And everyone on Facebook will think so too. Along with the rest of the world.
You say that; and I do believe you that that is what they will say too. However, their actions speak louder than their words, and when they broadcast their every little move and argument to the world, I think that you can see that in fact these people secretly like these applications.
A pair of camera glasses supposedly invented by Lady Ga Ga 2 years ago. And surprise, surprise, they haven't caught on. And you're using that as a n example FOR camera glasses?
No; just as an example to show that the design doesn't have to emphasise the camera bit. This is a Google choice for now and I expect that they would change it for the next generation allowing in anyone else who made glasses.
There's a store near where I used to live, that's been selling cameras in glasses, pens, ties, transistor radios, electric plugs, etc for a couple of decades. Clearly there are some private investigators, industrial espionage operatives, stalkers and peeping toms that want this stuff. But it's really niche.
Right, but those don't have any applications. Think:
Head up display for runers; tells you how well you are doing; integrates with your heart monitoring; plans a route that will stretch you today.
can't remember that cute girl's name. Google can. Plus, if you link into her facebook profile you will get to know whether she's dating or not. And who. And whether this is a good moment when they might just have had an argument.
bargain/no bargain. about to buy something? Get a warning if you can get it 5% cheaper within 100 metres.
Most of these are scary/downright creepy for me. But then I'm not a great facebook lover either. In any case you can't claim they wouldn't add to most people's lives. In fact I think I'm no a roll here.
wanna buy a girl some underwear? Have google glasses size her up. Check whether anyone else has registered her sizes
standard; boring; watch porn videos sure nobody else can see you doing it.
ultra creepy: most naked picture available of anyone you see off the internet
friend's reviews of anyone you meet; judge people before they judge you
My only hope is that Google has some patents on this because "facebook glasses" would be terrible.
And yet this is more or less the same thing they said about mobile phones in the early 80's. No more than a few k needed in the world or something similarly stupid.
Someone explain to me why you can't do the same technology on mirrored glasses in a way that nobody will notice the camera? If I look on Google for "camera sunglasses" most of the results are dorky, but some begin to look quite cool (second photo; warning there may be some flash media my browser ignored).
There also seem to be a bunch of ideas for holographic contact lenses. Google glass is more of a technology demonstrator and beginning of something bigger. I don't see why it can't take off long term if they can do something useful with it.
Now if only someone could come up with a version where we could control the privacy a bit.
Google Play, while still the second choice for app development, is large enough that no sane developer would just ignore that market. Conversations at an App Developer might never switch to 'Lets develop a commercial App for Android, and then develop it for iOS' (at least for now), but it was going to be very unlikely for that developer to follow up with 'And we MUST make sure it gets on the B&N Nook market'
I think for startups/small companies, this may well still be true. iOS users still tend to have more apps and pay more for them than Android users. In the large corporate world, though, that's already changed long ago. There are two fundamental applications here:
provide easier access to something I already had (e.g. BBC android app makes access to their site better)
interlink with a product idea (e.g. barcode-scan -> product-id -> you already know the history of the wing component).
Sometimes of course a combination of the two (provide a more secure access to my customer's bank accounts). In both cases the question is not "where will I get the most money from selling the app". The questions are "where can I get the largest audience to access my system", "which BYOD devices will my users insist on using" and occasionally "how can I avoid having to distribute special client hardware just for my app". In this case the order is Android, then iOS then, in certain special corporate environments possibly even Blackberry.
In these cases the mobile devices are typically supplementing web pages or replacing legacy Windows clients where something more available, more modern or more secure is needed.
As long as exactly the same thing happens to each biologically, then it would be discrimination. If there were some difference; say the man actually gave birth to the child and had to recover whilst the woman just supported him afterwards; then you might expect a difference. However I would have thought that the man would need more time in that case.
She purposefully created an explosion (maybe not true explosion, but thats what one would call it).
This. Yes This. This is the stupidest comment ever. Could every American who agrees with this statement now... and has ever used a firework or been involved in the use of a firework (especially at the fifth of July) please lock yourselves away in a cupboard till you stave yourselves to death as a punishment for being terrorists and a way of reducing the budget deficit. Maybe finally the intelligent Americans will be able to live in peace.
A bomb is a device for killing people and/or blowing things up. She made a device for making popping noises. If you cannot see the difference you are the problem..
If you're always going to be carrying the keyboard, why not just use a laptop? At least a laptop would let you split the screen down the middle to look at two things at once.
The entire setup is much lighter than almost any laptop; this would be for someone who wants to use a tablet anyway, but has a risk of having to type fast. Instead of having a tablet and a laptop, you just have a tablet and a keyboard.
you have no expectation of privacy when you're out in public
This is such a common, glib statement, but let's put it in a way which makes it clear how evil this is:
at any time, even if you are hiding in some bushes, miles from the habitation, you should always act as if you could be being spied on by any of the people who don't like you or don't approve of what you do
This basically means there is no way for a bunch of free people to go out and expect to discuss in private what they think. This means that people who live in small houses with their stay at home parents have no way to have personal privacy at all. I know this comes as a quote from decisions of US courts. You should think about the threat that puts freedom in the USA under.
I tried that a couple of years ago, but I could not figure out how to send an ESC key
Weird / interesting. I just press the escape key on my keyboard and it works in both my ssh clients and local shells. I wonder if that's a difference with newer software or a different keyboard? Alt-Tab is trapped by the OS but that's pretty rare to use in a shell. Nothing much else I could find.
How hard would it be for Google to use code from Linux to gradually expand the features/capabilities of Android until it approached full functionality?
There are several barriers here. Firstly technical. Whist the "Linux" part is common with the Ubuntu style "GNU/Linux" you are used to, most of the rest of Android is not. Applications very rarely talk directly to the Linux kernel. They mediate through libraries and in Android's case those libraries are almost all different.
The second barrier is application design. Mobile applications should be very much designed for simplicity and to conserve power. Things that work on desktops don't work on tablets and phones. This means that any such transfer will have to be done slowly. Making the transfer somewhat different and using APIs which force different design choices (e.g. no way to run a busy loop indefinitely) means that when the apps finally arrive they don't spoil the user experience.
The third barrier is Google themselves. The reason that the Android is so different is because Google very much wants to have some control over all of it and very much wants to avoid having to share too much. They don't actually like licenses such as the GPLv3 which fully protect the users. Don't get me wrong here. They are just a normal bunch of people in a normal company (which, being a company has certain psychotic tendancies). Not as bad as Apple and nowhere near the Microsoft Oracle league. However, you do need to be careful to deliberately pick open devices such as the Nexus series a) to show you care and b) to ensure you can escape as you want later.
[With the underlying idea being to bring it along slowly so that the userbase could learn to use it gradually rather than be exposed to the complexity of full Linux all at once]
Some of that complexity may never be needed, so bringing it along will be baggage which would spoil things. Remember that one key difference between the iPad and Windows attempts at Tablets (which began years before the iPad came out) is Microsoft's inability to make good choices. The general idea is good though. I think that there are lots of things that will gradually be added to tablets as people work out how to do them without compromising the idea of a tablet.
(N.B. if you add a link you will get more clicks on your product; since for once the spam is on topic I added one for you - ed. )
There's always been a bunch of these interesting cheap things on ebay (and on some of the Chinese sites or other auction sites). Some of them even seem to come from top rated sellers who seem to sell quite a few of them (not this example.. but who knows). I wonder if the reason they don't get through to shops in the West is simply Microsoft? Has anyone tried them? (Search Ebay for "Android Netbook" - you will find plenty).
It is made for content consumption: Web browsing, multimedia playing, games.
Actually Android is perfectly fine as an SSH terminal with an add on bluetooth keyboard. Alt-TAB switches between sessions just as you would want. There's almost never a need to touch the screen which is a major benefit. Oh.. when you said "work" you meant playing with excel spreadsheets.;-)
Seriously though, there's a screen size below which multi-window doesn't work well. At that level the Android interface becomes somewhat logical. Such a device is always going to be a compromise.
I never really understood how webOS, as neglected and stillborn as it was, had a native X11 client (server, whatever, bite me) written for it by some community fan. But Android with its gazillion users never has, at least not that I ever found. Maybe some good technical reason for that which is over my head, but it seems odd.
Part of the reason is likely that X11 is the wrong solution here. It's an okay protocol on a fast local LAN. With the correct extensions it's great on a local machine, but it has very little compression. You will do better with something like XVNC and an Android VNC client. What's a real shame, though, is I don't seem to be able to find an NX app for Android which should be much better than VNC. This is strange since I know Google uses NX internally.
Still, when I searched Play there do seem to be some X servers. Just none I have ever tried.
One could argue that, but one would be talking out of one's ass in doing so.
I don't think the code signing is directly screwing Microsoft, but it's part of an element of 'customer hatred' that really shows the way they are going. We all know how development works. You choose to do one feature or another. Code signing the way Microsoft chose it, has almost no customer benefits and plenty of long term customer negatives in terms of reducing competition and your own freedom to fix your system when needed (even fixing the bottom layer of Windows is blocked). Almost certainly one of the key features which makes Android better was dropped to do this. For example maybe Gesture Typing - a bit like the Swype Nokia used to have on the N9 before it was cancelled.
Compare that to Google's "Data Liberation Front" features designed to let you export your data when you want to. This has very little direct benefit for Google, but the customer benefit is massive and comes at the point when you least expect it. Short term this looks stupid, but long term it means that users come to "trust" Google which is to Google's long term advantage as well.
Microsoft has a long history of choosing features like Active-X and directly executable email content which allow them to deliver proprietary control of your machine to themselves at the cost of problems (in those case security problems) for customers later. Customers may not know that they are being screwed now, but they remember that they were screwed before and are beginning to expect that. The Microsoft ban on GPL software in Windows Market place is an example. They don't like the software so they make the choice for you. The choice to have a fixed user interface around hubs, not allowing Apps to change things is another example - at the beginning it makes things more consistent; it makes it easier for them to sell you more similar devices; but later on it means you can never achieve the full power of a customized mobile device and is part of a whole attitude problem leading to continual app disappointment.
Simply put, code signing is a symptom of Microsoft's hatred of their own customers (just one of the first links to pop up searching for Mirosoft customer hatred. They look at their "ecosystem partners" as a bunch of suckers ready to be screwed when the chance comes up. That used to work in the old days when every tech company had to come round Redmond to get permission before doing a big new launch. Now it's just getting users and partners annoyed.
Google came out themselves about the issue. If anything, these years of fighting over the issue should make companies not want to disclose voluntarily.
This article from Tech Eye says that it the admission was forced by a request to audit from the German authorities. Do you have a more specific time line for this?
By making that silly mistake Google opened the door to the whole line of Scroogled commercials and other FUD based attacks by their rivals.
The market is correcting this mistake and "imposing harsher fines" is just more ammunition for them to use on some dumb kid whose trying to sniff dirty pictures from other people's wifi connections.
The "market" would never know about this if the government agencies hadn't investigated. They could just have ignored the whole issue. In fact it was quite specifically the German authorities that brought this up by auditing the Street View system. The only possible way to do this is to have a special authority which has the right to investigate and punish. The punishments must be more than the amount that the company can expect to make.
Choice of license can certainly be a matter of personal judgement, and sometimes even more complex than that. There are small amounts of code, for example compression code and media codecs, where it's a big benefit for the code to be used everywhere, even in your competitors software, so that different applications are compatible. Please note, I didn't say "never use the MIT license". I said "change to MIT where you see a real benefit".
Personally I don't mind that someone can use open source code that I wrote and use it in a proprietary version. I don't see that as a problem. If they would pay me I would much prefer that they pay me for writing the source code or modify it for their needs, rather than maintaining some dual licensing thing.
I would say that, in most (though not all) cases, the AGPLv3 actually encourages this model. You add little improvements for each customer; the customers tend to be happy to share back because they know their competitors can't take the code and use it against them without also making it available back to them when they distribute. Your code gradually improves and becomes more useful. More people use it and so more people see special needs where they would like something developed for them.
It's very important to remember that the GPL licenses are designed with the interests of users in mind. The BSD licenses are designed with the interests of other developers in mind. You, yourself, have full right on your own code no matter what license you have put it out in already. This normally means that your own interests are more closely aligned with your users ("customers") than with other developers ("competitors"). The exception comes when other developers are working together on a project with you and contributing back in which case they become "partners". In most cases AGPLv3 is the best way to encourage that.
I am talking about several fundamental interests you have in your code
as a user, in return for having handed out your code you would like to be able to use other people's code
as a developer you would like your code to grow and become more valuable so it can be used for more
the right to get paid for proprietary use of your code.
If someone wants to make a proprietary version from your code, you can then discuss with them. They can pay you if they think it's worth it. If you put it under the AGPLv3 this is pretty easy and clear. If you put it under the BSD license then they just take and that's it.
Nothing could be further from the truth. By basing XCode on LLWM, it makes it EASIER to write third-party tools that can properly work over the source true with the same rich understanding of context.
Please don't get me wrong. I'm not questioning that LLVM is technically better in a number of ways, especially the ability to interoperate and especially in ways which are designed to encourage developers to get trapped using it.
What I'm wondering is, why concentrate on a project where the aim is to rewrite the entire compiler from zero when there was nothing in the GPL which would stop them from having using it to generate their entire proprietary code base. They could have forked GCC and provided an EGCS like clone which did what they wanted. The saving would have been huge.
The answer to that is simple. They would like to be able to push fully free operating systems like FreeBSD, Linux and OpenBSD out of the market. Their best way to do this is to get as much as possible of those systems BSD licensed so that they can build fully closed versions which move ahead of the rest of the system.
"Interesting", said a person who hasn't followed C++ so much recently. Does anyone know how easy is it to mix different garbage collection policies in different threads in the same application? Looking at the FAQ it seems this would be pretty nasty? Is it easy to have a real time thread that uses only manual allocate/free and another which might get blocked during garbage collection?
It has long been accepted fact that GPL does hurt open source in the long run.
Normally I ignore obviously wrong unmoderated AC posts, however this one is an interesting example. Why would a non logged in user see my post, which is still at normal level, so quickly as to be the first person to comment? Remember that posts for logged out users sort according to moderation not time of posting. Even if this had already reached the static page it would be way down at the bottom. Why the "long been accepted fact" rather than something like a link to an argument or "it seems pretty clear to me". Again the answer is simple. Properly logged in shills astroturfing to make this look like a common argument and mostly posting as AC to avoid taking hits on their real accounts and/or being traced later.
There may be a fair number of people who agree with this position, but it's never come close to being "accepted". In fact, anyone who knows the history of computing knows that originally most software was distributed under completely free licenses. That world was completely destroyed by proprietary software in the '70s and '80s and it was only the arrival of the GPL and GCC in particular which allowed, for example, the BSD operating systems to become self hosting and self sustaining.
Think about it. Why are these people trying to persuade you of something which is against your interests? If you release your software under the BSD license you can never put it back under the AGPL. The opposite is never true. If there turns out to be a true benefit later, you can always opt to change over. The answer is simple. They want something from you. Make sure you get something in return before you give it out. Money maybe; better benefit for your and your children's future.
What makes you think it has anything to do with generosity?
Assuming he's not a shill (in which case the answer would be his pay check), propaganda, stupidity and things like ESR's essay saying that the GPL is no longer needed.
For a time, up to a few years ago it looked like programmers could become truly independent of the companies they work directly for, a bit like graphic artists, shop keepers, SAP specialists and so on. The basis of this would be that most companies would use the same FOSS software, sharing that from company to company. The vast efficiency gain would have been shared between the (no longer) customers of big IT companies like Microsoft and the programmers. Software would start to advance at the rate that benefitted its users, not the people stealing from them.
Apple, and to a large extent Google, have come with new business models where they take the output of that process and rebundle it in a way which allows them to avoid sharing the key features which differentiate their products. In Google's case by keeping the most important bits on servers where you can't access it. In Apple's case by adding proprietary GUIs and other features which mean that nobody else can the free stuff and compete with them.
LLVM is one of their key tools in trying to leverage that. This is done for profit, mostly by taking money out of the pockets of people like Slashdotters. It is a tool in ensuring they will be able to build developer environments where they take your source code and hide it from you. It is not a coincidence that we keep getting stories about there being lots of non-GPL software coming out etc. The shills want us to give them everything we have for free and have no need to return to the community.
Correct answer: License under the AGPLv3 whenever you can and only back off to the GPL or LGPL, let alone MIT licenses when someone gives you a really compelling benefit for doing so.
Very much beside the point. Only a relatively small percentage of connected landlines can call out of area at the same time. If there is a reason for many people in an area to call or be called at the same time, POTS users experience congestion just like mobile phone users do.
Please mod posts like this up. It's pretty insightful.
What you say is mostly true. However, the fact is that the ability of mobile users to all gather in one area does make things seem worse than they would be with fixed lines. With the fixed line, when everyone suddenly wants to call, you end up with queues to get access to the phone (you wait whilst your each of your sisters in turn hog the line for 1/2 an hour). With the mobile network they do it differently and have a bunch of phones queuing. Whilst more phone calls go through the mobile network for the same investment, you also get more fast busy tones. From the point of view of user perception (where user's understand a line of people they can see, but don't understand that their particular group of phones is suspended for a short while) there is a difference.
Mozilla still includes all kinds of questionable cert authorities.
Oh yes? Please list them and link to a certificate provided by one of them which has been issued without the permission of the party it has reputedly been issued to. Specifics please. This is the criteria, more or less the only criteria, which makes a cert authority questionable. Otherwise you are just (correctly) questioning the CA system which doesn't do what you think it does.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, because a software package where the entry for Windows builds is to install a linux livecd is something I'm sure will be of the highest quality...
you what?
Installers for GIMP for Windows
They are creepy. And everyone on Facebook will think so too. Along with the rest of the world.
You say that; and I do believe you that that is what they will say too. However, their actions speak louder than their words, and when they broadcast their every little move and argument to the world, I think that you can see that in fact these people secretly like these applications.
A pair of camera glasses supposedly invented by Lady Ga Ga 2 years ago. And surprise, surprise, they haven't caught on. And you're using that as a n example FOR camera glasses?
No; just as an example to show that the design doesn't have to emphasise the camera bit. This is a Google choice for now and I expect that they would change it for the next generation allowing in anyone else who made glasses.
There's a store near where I used to live, that's been selling cameras in glasses, pens, ties, transistor radios, electric plugs, etc for a couple of decades. Clearly there are some private investigators, industrial espionage operatives, stalkers and peeping toms that want this stuff. But it's really niche.
Right, but those don't have any applications. Think:
Most of these are scary/downright creepy for me. But then I'm not a great facebook lover either. In any case you can't claim they wouldn't add to most people's lives. In fact I think I'm no a roll here.
My only hope is that Google has some patents on this because "facebook glasses" would be terrible.
Thread closed.
And yet this is more or less the same thing they said about mobile phones in the early 80's. No more than a few k needed in the world or something similarly stupid.
Someone explain to me why you can't do the same technology on mirrored glasses in a way that nobody will notice the camera? If I look on Google for "camera sunglasses" most of the results are dorky, but some begin to look quite cool (second photo; warning there may be some flash media my browser ignored).
There also seem to be a bunch of ideas for holographic contact lenses. Google glass is more of a technology demonstrator and beginning of something bigger. I don't see why it can't take off long term if they can do something useful with it.
Now if only someone could come up with a version where we could control the privacy a bit.
Google Play, while still the second choice for app development, is large enough that no sane developer would just ignore that market. Conversations at an App Developer might never switch to 'Lets develop a commercial App for Android, and then develop it for iOS' (at least for now), but it was going to be very unlikely for that developer to follow up with 'And we MUST make sure it gets on the B&N Nook market'
I think for startups/small companies, this may well still be true. iOS users still tend to have more apps and pay more for them than Android users. In the large corporate world, though, that's already changed long ago. There are two fundamental applications here:
Sometimes of course a combination of the two (provide a more secure access to my customer's bank accounts). In both cases the question is not "where will I get the most money from selling the app". The questions are "where can I get the largest audience to access my system", "which BYOD devices will my users insist on using" and occasionally "how can I avoid having to distribute special client hardware just for my app". In this case the order is Android, then iOS then, in certain special corporate environments possibly even Blackberry.
In these cases the mobile devices are typically supplementing web pages or replacing legacy Windows clients where something more available, more modern or more secure is needed.
As long as exactly the same thing happens to each biologically, then it would be discrimination. If there were some difference; say the man actually gave birth to the child and had to recover whilst the woman just supported him afterwards; then you might expect a difference. However I would have thought that the man would need more time in that case.
She purposefully created an explosion (maybe not true explosion, but thats what one would call it).
This. Yes This. This is the stupidest comment ever. Could every American who agrees with this statement now... and has ever used a firework or been involved in the use of a firework (especially at the fifth of July) please lock yourselves away in a cupboard till you stave yourselves to death as a punishment for being terrorists and a way of reducing the budget deficit. Maybe finally the intelligent Americans will be able to live in peace.
A bomb is a device for killing people and/or blowing things up. She made a device for making popping noises. If you cannot see the difference you are the problem..
If you're always going to be carrying the keyboard, why not just use a laptop? At least a laptop would let you split the screen down the middle to look at two things at once.
The entire setup is much lighter than almost any laptop; this would be for someone who wants to use a tablet anyway, but has a risk of having to type fast. Instead of having a tablet and a laptop, you just have a tablet and a keyboard.
you have no expectation of privacy when you're out in public
This is such a common, glib statement, but let's put it in a way which makes it clear how evil this is:
This basically means there is no way for a bunch of free people to go out and expect to discuss in private what they think. This means that people who live in small houses with their stay at home parents have no way to have personal privacy at all. I know this comes as a quote from decisions of US courts. You should think about the threat that puts freedom in the USA under.
I tried that a couple of years ago, but I could not figure out how to send an ESC key
Weird / interesting. I just press the escape key on my keyboard and it works in both my ssh clients and local shells. I wonder if that's a difference with newer software or a different keyboard? Alt-Tab is trapped by the OS but that's pretty rare to use in a shell. Nothing much else I could find.
How hard would it be for Google to use code from Linux to gradually expand the features/capabilities of Android until it approached full functionality?
There are several barriers here. Firstly technical. Whist the "Linux" part is common with the Ubuntu style "GNU/Linux" you are used to, most of the rest of Android is not. Applications very rarely talk directly to the Linux kernel. They mediate through libraries and in Android's case those libraries are almost all different.
The second barrier is application design. Mobile applications should be very much designed for simplicity and to conserve power. Things that work on desktops don't work on tablets and phones. This means that any such transfer will have to be done slowly. Making the transfer somewhat different and using APIs which force different design choices (e.g. no way to run a busy loop indefinitely) means that when the apps finally arrive they don't spoil the user experience.
The third barrier is Google themselves. The reason that the Android is so different is because Google very much wants to have some control over all of it and very much wants to avoid having to share too much. They don't actually like licenses such as the GPLv3 which fully protect the users. Don't get me wrong here. They are just a normal bunch of people in a normal company (which, being a company has certain psychotic tendancies). Not as bad as Apple and nowhere near the Microsoft Oracle league. However, you do need to be careful to deliberately pick open devices such as the Nexus series a) to show you care and b) to ensure you can escape as you want later.
[With the underlying idea being to bring it along slowly so that the userbase could learn to use it gradually rather than be exposed to the complexity of full Linux all at once]
Some of that complexity may never be needed, so bringing it along will be baggage which would spoil things. Remember that one key difference between the iPad and Windows attempts at Tablets (which began years before the iPad came out) is Microsoft's inability to make good choices. The general idea is good though. I think that there are lots of things that will gradually be added to tablets as people work out how to do them without compromising the idea of a tablet.
look at these
http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Google-Android-4-0-MID-10-inch-Netbook-with-Webcam-1GB-Ram-4GB-Memory-/350753904645?pt=Laptops_Nov05&hash=item51aa8fd805
(N.B. if you add a link you will get more clicks on your product; since for once the spam is on topic I added one for you - ed. )
There's always been a bunch of these interesting cheap things on ebay (and on some of the Chinese sites or other auction sites). Some of them even seem to come from top rated sellers who seem to sell quite a few of them (not this example.. but who knows). I wonder if the reason they don't get through to shops in the West is simply Microsoft? Has anyone tried them? (Search Ebay for "Android Netbook" - you will find plenty).
Android is a great OS for what it is made to do.
It is not made to do serious work on.
It is made for content consumption: Web browsing, multimedia playing, games.
Actually Android is perfectly fine as an SSH terminal with an add on bluetooth keyboard. Alt-TAB switches between sessions just as you would want. There's almost never a need to touch the screen which is a major benefit. Oh.. when you said "work" you meant playing with excel spreadsheets. ;-)
Seriously though, there's a screen size below which multi-window doesn't work well. At that level the Android interface becomes somewhat logical. Such a device is always going to be a compromise.
I never really understood how webOS, as neglected and stillborn as it was, had a native X11 client (server, whatever, bite me) written for it by some community fan. But Android with its gazillion users never has, at least not that I ever found. Maybe some good technical reason for that which is over my head, but it seems odd.
Part of the reason is likely that X11 is the wrong solution here. It's an okay protocol on a fast local LAN. With the correct extensions it's great on a local machine, but it has very little compression. You will do better with something like XVNC and an Android VNC client. What's a real shame, though, is I don't seem to be able to find an NX app for Android which should be much better than VNC. This is strange since I know Google uses NX internally.
Still, when I searched Play there do seem to be some X servers. Just none I have ever tried.
One could argue that, but one would be talking out of one's ass in doing so.
I don't think the code signing is directly screwing Microsoft, but it's part of an element of 'customer hatred' that really shows the way they are going. We all know how development works. You choose to do one feature or another. Code signing the way Microsoft chose it, has almost no customer benefits and plenty of long term customer negatives in terms of reducing competition and your own freedom to fix your system when needed (even fixing the bottom layer of Windows is blocked). Almost certainly one of the key features which makes Android better was dropped to do this. For example maybe Gesture Typing - a bit like the Swype Nokia used to have on the N9 before it was cancelled.
Compare that to Google's "Data Liberation Front" features designed to let you export your data when you want to. This has very little direct benefit for Google, but the customer benefit is massive and comes at the point when you least expect it. Short term this looks stupid, but long term it means that users come to "trust" Google which is to Google's long term advantage as well.
Microsoft has a long history of choosing features like Active-X and directly executable email content which allow them to deliver proprietary control of your machine to themselves at the cost of problems (in those case security problems) for customers later. Customers may not know that they are being screwed now, but they remember that they were screwed before and are beginning to expect that. The Microsoft ban on GPL software in Windows Market place is an example. They don't like the software so they make the choice for you. The choice to have a fixed user interface around hubs, not allowing Apps to change things is another example - at the beginning it makes things more consistent; it makes it easier for them to sell you more similar devices; but later on it means you can never achieve the full power of a customized mobile device and is part of a whole attitude problem leading to continual app disappointment.
Simply put, code signing is a symptom of Microsoft's hatred of their own customers (just one of the first links to pop up searching for Mirosoft customer hatred. They look at their "ecosystem partners" as a bunch of suckers ready to be screwed when the chance comes up. That used to work in the old days when every tech company had to come round Redmond to get permission before doing a big new launch. Now it's just getting users and partners annoyed.
Google came out themselves about the issue. If anything, these years of fighting over the issue should make companies not want to disclose voluntarily.
This article from Tech Eye says that it the admission was forced by a request to audit from the German authorities. Do you have a more specific time line for this?
By making that silly mistake Google opened the door to the whole line of Scroogled commercials and other FUD based attacks by their rivals.
The market is correcting this mistake and "imposing harsher fines" is just more ammunition for them to use on some dumb kid whose trying to sniff dirty pictures from other people's wifi connections.
The "market" would never know about this if the government agencies hadn't investigated. They could just have ignored the whole issue. In fact it was quite specifically the German authorities that brought this up by auditing the Street View system. The only possible way to do this is to have a special authority which has the right to investigate and punish. The punishments must be more than the amount that the company can expect to make.
I guess it's a matter of personal optinion.
Choice of license can certainly be a matter of personal judgement, and sometimes even more complex than that. There are small amounts of code, for example compression code and media codecs, where it's a big benefit for the code to be used everywhere, even in your competitors software, so that different applications are compatible. Please note, I didn't say "never use the MIT license". I said "change to MIT where you see a real benefit".
Personally I don't mind that someone can use open source code that I wrote and use it in a proprietary version. I don't see that as a problem. If they would pay me I would much prefer that they pay me for writing the source code or modify it for their needs, rather than maintaining some dual licensing thing.
I would say that, in most (though not all) cases, the AGPLv3 actually encourages this model. You add little improvements for each customer; the customers tend to be happy to share back because they know their competitors can't take the code and use it against them without also making it available back to them when they distribute. Your code gradually improves and becomes more useful. More people use it and so more people see special needs where they would like something developed for them.
It's very important to remember that the GPL licenses are designed with the interests of users in mind. The BSD licenses are designed with the interests of other developers in mind. You, yourself, have full right on your own code no matter what license you have put it out in already. This normally means that your own interests are more closely aligned with your users ("customers") than with other developers ("competitors"). The exception comes when other developers are working together on a project with you and contributing back in which case they become "partners". In most cases AGPLv3 is the best way to encourage that.
Which interests?
I am talking about several fundamental interests you have in your code
If someone wants to make a proprietary version from your code, you can then discuss with them. They can pay you if they think it's worth it. If you put it under the AGPLv3 this is pretty easy and clear. If you put it under the BSD license then they just take and that's it.
Nothing could be further from the truth. By basing XCode on LLWM, it makes it EASIER to write third-party tools that can properly work over the source true with the same rich understanding of context.
Please don't get me wrong. I'm not questioning that LLVM is technically better in a number of ways, especially the ability to interoperate and especially in ways which are designed to encourage developers to get trapped using it.
What I'm wondering is, why concentrate on a project where the aim is to rewrite the entire compiler from zero when there was nothing in the GPL which would stop them from having using it to generate their entire proprietary code base. They could have forked GCC and provided an EGCS like clone which did what they wanted. The saving would have been huge.
The answer to that is simple. They would like to be able to push fully free operating systems like FreeBSD, Linux and OpenBSD out of the market. Their best way to do this is to get as much as possible of those systems BSD licensed so that they can build fully closed versions which move ahead of the rest of the system.
"Interesting", said a person who hasn't followed C++ so much recently. Does anyone know how easy is it to mix different garbage collection policies in different threads in the same application? Looking at the FAQ it seems this would be pretty nasty? Is it easy to have a real time thread that uses only manual allocate/free and another which might get blocked during garbage collection?
It has long been accepted fact that GPL does hurt open source in the long run.
Normally I ignore obviously wrong unmoderated AC posts, however this one is an interesting example. Why would a non logged in user see my post, which is still at normal level, so quickly as to be the first person to comment? Remember that posts for logged out users sort according to moderation not time of posting. Even if this had already reached the static page it would be way down at the bottom. Why the "long been accepted fact" rather than something like a link to an argument or "it seems pretty clear to me". Again the answer is simple. Properly logged in shills astroturfing to make this look like a common argument and mostly posting as AC to avoid taking hits on their real accounts and/or being traced later.
There may be a fair number of people who agree with this position, but it's never come close to being "accepted". In fact, anyone who knows the history of computing knows that originally most software was distributed under completely free licenses. That world was completely destroyed by proprietary software in the '70s and '80s and it was only the arrival of the GPL and GCC in particular which allowed, for example, the BSD operating systems to become self hosting and self sustaining.
Think about it. Why are these people trying to persuade you of something which is against your interests? If you release your software under the BSD license you can never put it back under the AGPL. The opposite is never true. If there turns out to be a true benefit later, you can always opt to change over. The answer is simple. They want something from you. Make sure you get something in return before you give it out. Money maybe; better benefit for your and your children's future.
What makes you think it has anything to do with generosity?
Assuming he's not a shill (in which case the answer would be his pay check), propaganda, stupidity and things like ESR's essay saying that the GPL is no longer needed.
For a time, up to a few years ago it looked like programmers could become truly independent of the companies they work directly for, a bit like graphic artists, shop keepers, SAP specialists and so on. The basis of this would be that most companies would use the same FOSS software, sharing that from company to company. The vast efficiency gain would have been shared between the (no longer) customers of big IT companies like Microsoft and the programmers. Software would start to advance at the rate that benefitted its users, not the people stealing from them.
Apple, and to a large extent Google, have come with new business models where they take the output of that process and rebundle it in a way which allows them to avoid sharing the key features which differentiate their products. In Google's case by keeping the most important bits on servers where you can't access it. In Apple's case by adding proprietary GUIs and other features which mean that nobody else can the free stuff and compete with them.
LLVM is one of their key tools in trying to leverage that. This is done for profit, mostly by taking money out of the pockets of people like Slashdotters. It is a tool in ensuring they will be able to build developer environments where they take your source code and hide it from you. It is not a coincidence that we keep getting stories about there being lots of non-GPL software coming out etc. The shills want us to give them everything we have for free and have no need to return to the community.
Correct answer: License under the AGPLv3 whenever you can and only back off to the GPL or LGPL, let alone MIT licenses when someone gives you a really compelling benefit for doing so.
Very much beside the point. Only a relatively small percentage of connected landlines can call out of area at the same time. If there is a reason for many people in an area to call or be called at the same time, POTS users experience congestion just like mobile phone users do.
Please mod posts like this up. It's pretty insightful. What you say is mostly true. However, the fact is that the ability of mobile users to all gather in one area does make things seem worse than they would be with fixed lines. With the fixed line, when everyone suddenly wants to call, you end up with queues to get access to the phone (you wait whilst your each of your sisters in turn hog the line for 1/2 an hour). With the mobile network they do it differently and have a bunch of phones queuing. Whilst more phone calls go through the mobile network for the same investment, you also get more fast busy tones. From the point of view of user perception (where user's understand a line of people they can see, but don't understand that their particular group of phones is suspended for a short while) there is a difference.
Mozilla still includes all kinds of questionable cert authorities.
Oh yes? Please list them and link to a certificate provided by one of them which has been issued without the permission of the party it has reputedly been issued to. Specifics please. This is the criteria, more or less the only criteria, which makes a cert authority questionable. Otherwise you are just (correctly) questioning the CA system which doesn't do what you think it does.