I disagree. AMD has had open source drivers (and specs) for years now, and the quality is still terrible. Intel has open source drivers and I still wouldn't choose Intel graphics for anything serious.
Sure, if all you want is a picture on your screen, then even the nouveau driver will get you there. But if you want fast graphics, like you get on windows, then this licensing crap is just another way of ensuring it won't come to linux.
If NVIDIA started only offering its binary driver on BSD, windows and OSX, I think it's more likely that Linux users (particularly commercial ones) would switch to another OS, than switch to another graphics card manufacturer.
If the quality of the other drivers/hardware was better, then that might not be the case, but AFAIC(oncerned) AMD's drivers are a bit flaky (even on windows) and intel's hardware has yet to come near the performance of AMD/NVIDIA.
And yet, if NVIDIA decided to ditch linux (ignoring Android for now), would it hurt NVIDIA? or would it hurt linux? I think it would be a nail in the linux desktop coffin (if it needed any help).
If you put android in the picture, then we have a knock-on effect. If this hurts nvidia, then it hurts Android, and if it affects Android enough, it becomes Google's problem too. All it amounts to is pressure for vendors to move away from linux, rather than pressure to make vendors release their code under the GPL.
I was thinking about Android when I read the summary.
The summary mentioned that all ARM SoC's are affected, not just NVIDIA.
If this change affects Android, what's to stop Google simply moving the Android stack over to something like BSD?
Sure, they'd lose a lot of goodwill, both internally and externally, but things like this might force them to make such a move for business/competitive reasons.
Personally it wouldn't bother me at all, but I'm not representative in any way.
The GPL is proving to be a make-or-break "feature" more than ever these days.
I think Linux still has a future in any case, but the GPL probably ensures it will remain a niche on the desktop. It's unfortunate, because so much work has gone into it.
As I understood it, things can travel FASTER than light, and things can travel SLOWER than light, but something that is currently travelling slower than light cannot accelerate so that it is travelling faster than light and likewise things travelling faster than light cannot slow down past the speed of light.
In other words, whichever side of the speed of light you are on now, is the side you must stay on forever.
The extension of that is that I don't know whether it makes sense to even discuss things that travel faster than light unless we can come up with some way of those things having an effect in our world. It may well be that those things are not "visible" to our reality in any way and have no effect on us at all. Therefore, whether they exist or not, we'll never know.
What you said doesn't disagree with the post you replied to. Perhaps you are aware of that, but I thought I should point it out anyway.
In other words, at the point where Einstein's theories weren't testable, then they too were just neat thought experiments. In his case, they reached the point where they were testable and thus became real science, but in this case there is no guarantee.
I'd rather an interface that allows me to achieve the same end goals as you but with half the training.
The way you worded it, it sounds like you are saying ubuntu still works despite hiding everything. That would sound like a plus to me (less clutter).
I think what you really meant is that ubuntu doesn't work for you. And in that case I'd emphasize that the "for you" part is significant, though you may well disagree.
As I understand it, there only needs to be 1 technical person to set it up for each community. So once it is set up, the rest of the community can use it without any technical knowledge at all.
I really like that aspect of it, and the fact that you have your data in-house (or at least in your control).
Even non-techies care about the privacy aspects of social networks - when the risks are explained to them.
You are essentially equating being religious with denying evolution, which is a false dichotomy.
It is entirely possible to be religious (even christian) and believe in evolution, big bang theory etc. The key is to understand that the bible is a collection of ancient texts that contain views that reflect the "scientific" understanding of their day. Yeah the bible claims to be "inspired" by God, but no one really knows what that means exactly. It certainly doesn't mean every word is divine (and we don't have "every word" anyway). Nowhere in the bible will you find a claim that God wrote all of it. Nowhere in the bible will you find a claim that God wrote any of it (directly). This might sound odd if you were taught that the bible is somehow God's divine personal message to humans. The bible is a human book - it contains words said to have been spoken by God, but it was still written down by humans. Some parts even claim that God told the author what to write, but they are just short passages, and not entire books. If we project our modern worldview onto an ancient text, we're going to end up in all kinds of confusion. So with this in mind, it shouldn't be all that surprising when we find views in the bible that contradict what we know today from science. The authors back then didn't have that knowledge, and if Genesis 1 was written in a way that was scientifically accurate, people living 3500 years ago wouldn't have understood it. Its goal wasn't to teach scientific truth, it was to teach theological truth. Expecting scientific truth is asking for something the bible never claimed to give. Compare Genesis 1 with the views held in the time it was written, and you'll see that it was a polemic, not a history document.
I believe the bible is written by humans to tell us about what they experienced and what they know about God (who they claim appeared and spoke to them), and that if we are to believe the claims of these people then we can come to know God through their testimony. I also believe that that is how God wants to be known.
Don't expect to find God through science. It is impossible. God is outside the realm of science. If I had to make a wild guess, then I'd say in terms of science God is just 'energy'. But I don't think science ever set out to answer that question. The existence of God is a philosophical question, not a scientific one. It is beyond the realm of science. Don't get me wrong, science is extremely beneficial, but it has limits. It cannot give us the meaning of life, for example, because meaning comes only from philosophy. Science is about mechanics, philosophy is about meaning.
We also have 4 largely independent witnesses to the life of Jesus (the synoptic gospels do share material, but also all contain unique material and unique details as well), and the discrepancies in their witness only serves to strengthen the fact that different people remember events differently (and sometimes in a different order). There must still have been real events behind the memories to account for the existence of the memories. Something dramatic happened in the lives of the apostles to account for their dramatic change in confidence and mission. Something very unique happened in order to account for the explosion in christianity even before the writings of Paul (which surfaced only 20 years after Jesus' death). People are free to believe that it is all made up, but I am also free to believe that any explanation for these dramatic events must have been something extraordinary, and the usual theories (stolen body, apostles agreed to tell lies, etc) fail to convince me.
I know my views above disagree with the fundamentalists, but if you're only referring to fundamentalists then I agree with what you said. I believe there is much truth to be found in the bible despite its incorrect portrayal of what we know as "science". It isn't a science textbook, and doesn't claim to be. But that doesn't mean it can't give us theology. Anyway, that isn't the topic here.
Is it buggy? I thought the complaints were that people don't like the way it works. I've even used the release preview for a few hours. I never encountered any bugs.
That's not to say there are no bugs, but I certainly didn't get the impression that it was "buggy".
To be honest I'm not sure I agree with what Windows 8 is trying to do, or perhaps it just doesn't achieve it really well, I don't know. I'd just rather have a better Windows 7, without the Metro stuff. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
They just typed the code in manually. AFAIK this is intended behaviour.
The vulnerability was that you could accidentally trigger this through a web link. They didn't test that on 4.1.1, so we still don't really know whether it is vulnerable.
If you have physical access to the phone you could just as easily do a factory reset through the settings. You could do the same on an iPhone.
Anyone know if the 4.1.1 version can be wiped by clicking a web link? If not then I can't see what the problem is.
There's no indication that the 4.1.1 version has the vulnerability. Typing the number into the dialer is the intended way to do it. The issue was in being able to launch the dialer and dial the number after clicking a web link. People with fixed phones have said that the web link just opens a blank dialer.
It's possible that 4.1.1 has not been fixed, but they did not test it correctly.
What they did is hardly a problem, since if you had physical access to the phone you could factory reset it through the settings menu. You could do the same on an iPhone.
Fair enough. I can't remember if NFC was enabled on my phone when I got it. It isn't enabled now, and I've always been a bit unsure about it.
I believe the exploit is fixed in JB so I wont need to worry soon.
I think the Android ecosystem needs to put more emphasis on bugfix/security updates, and force manufacturers to keep on top of them. Feature updates are not a primary concern - I got the phone I paid for.
panorama mode has been available on even the cheapest digicams for about 4-5 years, and was available on the Samsung Galaxy S1. In any case, it was officially a feature of ICS, which kind of came out a couple of years ago.
If by "modified android to look more like IOS" you mean "installed touchwiz", then yeah, sure they wanted to present a familiar interface to their users. Sue them - such evil motives shouldn't be allowed.
Samsung phones were arguably popular because you could switch to a different launcher and have an almost vanilla Android experience. They made very minor changes to a few apps but on the whole you just got vanilla android + touchwiz. Touchwiz is just an app, so they could hardly be accused of "modifying android to look like iOS".
Compare touchwiz to the standard Android launcher (in both look AND feel) and you'll find it much more similar to stock android than anything from Apple.
I had a Galaxy S1 and now have a S3. The S1 - you could say it looked like an iPhone 3GS, but no one would confuse the two phones. It was clearly bigger, the back was different, it was different colours, it felt different to hold/use, and it had SAMSUNG in big letters across the front.
The S3 looks nothing like any Apple device.
The wall warts looked nothing like the iPhone ones for either of those phones. The packaging looked the same - you know, a rectangular box. Pretty much all phones come in such a box, probably since before the iPhone.
In that they "modified Android to look more like iOS" - they built their own home screen/launcher (TouchWiz). The launcher now looks much the same as stock android, and the home screen is barely different to any other home screen app. The only way you could say they copied Apple would be in the ordering of the icons on the bottom row, which is mostly seen in their marketing.
I think the similarities are vague and only on the surface. As soon as you use either device you would not think they were similar.
When it all comes down to it, I don't really care whether they were found guilty. It doesn't look like they were trying to clone the iPhone, more like just present a fairly familiar interface so that iPhone users would feel at home.
So you think the TouchWiz launcher is the problem? The same launcher has been used since the original Galaxy S, so I don't know how you could say that the S3 has a more android feel than any previous version of the phone.
In any case, does anyone think that simply copying ideas and elements from the UI is worth $1bn ??
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I disagree. AMD has had open source drivers (and specs) for years now, and the quality is still terrible. Intel has open source drivers and I still wouldn't choose Intel graphics for anything serious.
Sure, if all you want is a picture on your screen, then even the nouveau driver will get you there. But if you want fast graphics, like you get on windows, then this licensing crap is just another way of ensuring it won't come to linux.
If NVIDIA started only offering its binary driver on BSD, windows and OSX, I think it's more likely that Linux users (particularly commercial ones) would switch to another OS, than switch to another graphics card manufacturer.
If the quality of the other drivers/hardware was better, then that might not be the case, but AFAIC(oncerned) AMD's drivers are a bit flaky (even on windows) and intel's hardware has yet to come near the performance of AMD/NVIDIA.
And yet, if NVIDIA decided to ditch linux (ignoring Android for now), would it hurt NVIDIA? or would it hurt linux? I think it would be a nail in the linux desktop coffin (if it needed any help).
If you put android in the picture, then we have a knock-on effect. If this hurts nvidia, then it hurts Android, and if it affects Android enough, it becomes Google's problem too. All it amounts to is pressure for vendors to move away from linux, rather than pressure to make vendors release their code under the GPL.
I was thinking about Android when I read the summary.
The summary mentioned that all ARM SoC's are affected, not just NVIDIA.
If this change affects Android, what's to stop Google simply moving the Android stack over to something like BSD?
Sure, they'd lose a lot of goodwill, both internally and externally, but things like this might force them to make such a move for business/competitive reasons.
Personally it wouldn't bother me at all, but I'm not representative in any way.
Those were my thoughts exactly.
The GPL is proving to be a make-or-break "feature" more than ever these days.
I think Linux still has a future in any case, but the GPL probably ensures it will remain a niche on the desktop. It's unfortunate, because so much work has gone into it.
As I understood it, things can travel FASTER than light, and things can travel SLOWER than light, but something that is currently travelling slower than light cannot accelerate so that it is travelling faster than light and likewise things travelling faster than light cannot slow down past the speed of light.
In other words, whichever side of the speed of light you are on now, is the side you must stay on forever.
The extension of that is that I don't know whether it makes sense to even discuss things that travel faster than light unless we can come up with some way of those things having an effect in our world. It may well be that those things are not "visible" to our reality in any way and have no effect on us at all. Therefore, whether they exist or not, we'll never know.
What you said doesn't disagree with the post you replied to. Perhaps you are aware of that, but I thought I should point it out anyway.
In other words, at the point where Einstein's theories weren't testable, then they too were just neat thought experiments. In his case, they reached the point where they were testable and thus became real science, but in this case there is no guarantee.
sounds like you just want a tiling window manager? That isn't one of unity's goals AFAIK.
What do you currently use? (I'm asking in earnest).
I'd rather an interface that allows me to achieve the same end goals as you but with half the training.
The way you worded it, it sounds like you are saying ubuntu still works despite hiding everything. That would sound like a plus to me (less clutter).
I think what you really meant is that ubuntu doesn't work for you. And in that case I'd emphasize that the "for you" part is significant, though you may well disagree.
Who would choose the words 'nominal' and 'anomoly' for this anyway? Say them both fast and you'd never tell them apart.
As I understand it, there only needs to be 1 technical person to set it up for each community. So once it is set up, the rest of the community can use it without any technical knowledge at all.
I really like that aspect of it, and the fact that you have your data in-house (or at least in your control).
Even non-techies care about the privacy aspects of social networks - when the risks are explained to them.
I don't think that is fair.
You are essentially equating being religious with denying evolution, which is a false dichotomy.
It is entirely possible to be religious (even christian) and believe in evolution, big bang theory etc. The key is to understand that the bible is a collection of ancient texts that contain views that reflect the "scientific" understanding of their day. Yeah the bible claims to be "inspired" by God, but no one really knows what that means exactly. It certainly doesn't mean every word is divine (and we don't have "every word" anyway). Nowhere in the bible will you find a claim that God wrote all of it. Nowhere in the bible will you find a claim that God wrote any of it (directly). This might sound odd if you were taught that the bible is somehow God's divine personal message to humans. The bible is a human book - it contains words said to have been spoken by God, but it was still written down by humans. Some parts even claim that God told the author what to write, but they are just short passages, and not entire books. If we project our modern worldview onto an ancient text, we're going to end up in all kinds of confusion. So with this in mind, it shouldn't be all that surprising when we find views in the bible that contradict what we know today from science. The authors back then didn't have that knowledge, and if Genesis 1 was written in a way that was scientifically accurate, people living 3500 years ago wouldn't have understood it. Its goal wasn't to teach scientific truth, it was to teach theological truth. Expecting scientific truth is asking for something the bible never claimed to give. Compare Genesis 1 with the views held in the time it was written, and you'll see that it was a polemic, not a history document.
I believe the bible is written by humans to tell us about what they experienced and what they know about God (who they claim appeared and spoke to them), and that if we are to believe the claims of these people then we can come to know God through their testimony. I also believe that that is how God wants to be known.
Don't expect to find God through science. It is impossible. God is outside the realm of science. If I had to make a wild guess, then I'd say in terms of science God is just 'energy'. But I don't think science ever set out to answer that question. The existence of God is a philosophical question, not a scientific one. It is beyond the realm of science. Don't get me wrong, science is extremely beneficial, but it has limits. It cannot give us the meaning of life, for example, because meaning comes only from philosophy. Science is about mechanics, philosophy is about meaning.
We also have 4 largely independent witnesses to the life of Jesus (the synoptic gospels do share material, but also all contain unique material and unique details as well), and the discrepancies in their witness only serves to strengthen the fact that different people remember events differently (and sometimes in a different order). There must still have been real events behind the memories to account for the existence of the memories.
Something dramatic happened in the lives of the apostles to account for their dramatic change in confidence and mission. Something very unique happened in order to account for the explosion in christianity even before the writings of Paul (which surfaced only 20 years after Jesus' death). People are free to believe that it is all made up, but I am also free to believe that any explanation for these dramatic events must have been something extraordinary, and the usual theories (stolen body, apostles agreed to tell lies, etc) fail to convince me.
I know my views above disagree with the fundamentalists, but if you're only referring to fundamentalists then I agree with what you said. I believe there is much truth to be found in the bible despite its incorrect portrayal of what we know as "science". It isn't a science textbook, and doesn't claim to be. But that doesn't mean it can't give us theology. Anyway, that isn't the topic here.
Good point, are we measuring distance, or the speed of light?
sory to be pedantic but it's "ditto".
that is an impressive way to misspell 'messureents'
Wrong. 'messureents' is how you spell 'messureents'.
The summary now says "measurements", so I guess the above is correct now?
Exactly.
If people do use windows 8, they will use it DESPITE metro, not because of it.
Is it buggy? I thought the complaints were that people don't like the way it works. I've even used the release preview for a few hours. I never encountered any bugs.
That's not to say there are no bugs, but I certainly didn't get the impression that it was "buggy".
To be honest I'm not sure I agree with what Windows 8 is trying to do, or perhaps it just doesn't achieve it really well, I don't know. I'd just rather have a better Windows 7, without the Metro stuff. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Did you watch the video?
They just typed the code in manually. AFAIK this is intended behaviour.
The vulnerability was that you could accidentally trigger this through a web link. They didn't test that on 4.1.1, so we still don't really know whether it is vulnerable.
If you have physical access to the phone you could just as easily do a factory reset through the settings. You could do the same on an iPhone.
Anyone know if the 4.1.1 version can be wiped by clicking a web link? If not then I can't see what the problem is.
Did you watch the video?
There's no indication that the 4.1.1 version has the vulnerability. Typing the number into the dialer is the intended way to do it. The issue was in being able to launch the dialer and dial the number after clicking a web link. People with fixed phones have said that the web link just opens a blank dialer.
It's possible that 4.1.1 has not been fixed, but they did not test it correctly.
What they did is hardly a problem, since if you had physical access to the phone you could factory reset it through the settings menu. You could do the same on an iPhone.
Huh? Samsung have already released the patch for most galaxy S3s. It was several weeks ago in my case.
http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/09/25/video-most-galaxy-s-iii-devices-are-not-vulnerable-to-ussd-wiping-exploit-it-was-already-fixed-in-an-update/
The patch came over the air and installed with the touch of an on-screen button.
Oh so difficult.
It was a pretty nasty vulnerability, but I'm glad to see it is fixed (for me anyway).
Fair enough. I can't remember if NFC was enabled on my phone when I got it. It isn't enabled now, and I've always been a bit unsure about it.
I believe the exploit is fixed in JB so I wont need to worry soon.
I think the Android ecosystem needs to put more emphasis on bugfix/security updates, and force manufacturers to keep on top of them. Feature updates are not a primary concern - I got the phone I paid for.
panorama mode has been available on even the cheapest digicams for about 4-5 years, and was available on the Samsung Galaxy S1. In any case, it was officially a feature of ICS, which kind of came out a couple of years ago.
Typical.
RDF anyone?
If by "modified android to look more like IOS" you mean "installed touchwiz", then yeah, sure they wanted to present a familiar interface to their users. Sue them - such evil motives shouldn't be allowed.
Samsung phones were arguably popular because you could switch to a different launcher and have an almost vanilla Android experience. They made very minor changes to a few apps but on the whole you just got vanilla android + touchwiz. Touchwiz is just an app, so they could hardly be accused of "modifying android to look like iOS".
Compare touchwiz to the standard Android launcher (in both look AND feel) and you'll find it much more similar to stock android than anything from Apple.
I had a Galaxy S1 and now have a S3. The S1 - you could say it looked like an iPhone 3GS, but no one would confuse the two phones. It was clearly bigger, the back was different, it was different colours, it felt different to hold/use, and it had SAMSUNG in big letters across the front.
The S3 looks nothing like any Apple device.
The wall warts looked nothing like the iPhone ones for either of those phones. The packaging looked the same - you know, a rectangular box. Pretty much all phones come in such a box, probably since before the iPhone.
In that they "modified Android to look more like iOS" - they built their own home screen/launcher (TouchWiz). The launcher now looks much the same as stock android, and the home screen is barely different to any other home screen app. The only way you could say they copied Apple would be in the ordering of the icons on the bottom row, which is mostly seen in their marketing.
I think the similarities are vague and only on the surface. As soon as you use either device you would not think they were similar.
When it all comes down to it, I don't really care whether they were found guilty. It doesn't look like they were trying to clone the iPhone, more like just present a fairly familiar interface so that iPhone users would feel at home.
Was the $1bn fine fair? I really don't think so.
So you think the TouchWiz launcher is the problem? The same launcher has been used since the original Galaxy S, so I don't know how you could say that the S3 has a more android feel than any previous version of the phone.
In any case, does anyone think that simply copying ideas and elements from the UI is worth $1bn ??
You can get the full internet security for $50 a year.
I wouldn't call that expensive, especially considering how highly rated it is on the latest av-comparatives results.