Quit with the trolling nonsense. The bill was proposed by the "Women's Rights and Gender Equality" committee, which, at a glance, the majority of members of which belong to the European People's Party (Christian Democrats). We are quite capable of producing a homegrown religious "Think of the Children" brigade without resorting to Islam.
The offensive bit of the directive (the sweeping ban on otherwise legal material on the internet) has been removed, so democracy has done it's job. The rest of the bill is a typical EU directive- well meaning, high-minded stuff which is far too broad to be meaningfully implemented. That's fine too; that's a part of how our not-even-federal system works in Europe; the details should be (and in this case are) left entirely to the member states.
Chrome is a part of Google's business model. No, they don't charge you for it- but it's a gateway into their other services. Chrome is important to Google, and anyone abusing a monopoly to keep Chrome down would have harmed them.
Firefox is Mozilla's flagship product. Without it, they would have nothing. No, they don't charge you for it- but they do make money from you using it. Google (again!) for example pay them to have their search engine as the homepage and default on the search bar. If anyone abused a monopoly to keep usage of Firefox down, it would have killed of their business model and perhaps their whole organisation.
Note, that's how SimCity 4 worked. You had a great big region made up of squares on which to build cities. The cities in each square could interact (i.e., I could build a recycling plant in one city, and the neighbouring city could then pay the first city to take some of its trash off of its hands). This was an inherently single player game.
It sounds like SimCity 5 has taken this already established single-player feature and used it to add a (perfectly decent sounding) multi-player mode. That does not make this game "designed from the ground up to be multi-player".
Intel have shown themselves to be a very competitive company; but that does not give them any magic bullets. x86 is laden with legacy nonsense, and there is a very real possibility that ARM (which is meaner and leaner by design, was ahead of x86 in performance terms at one point, and which has every popular up-and-coming system supporting it ahead of x86) simply has an innate advantage that will carry it through.
Intel know it; as TFA says, they've tried to kill of x86 in favour of better architectures many times. They're not doing that for fun; they're doing it because they know that developing x86 is like fighting with both hands tied behind their back. The legion of ARM companies out there (including ARM Holdings itself, but also including serious semi-conductor rivals like Nvidia and Samsung) aren't going to be as easy to face down as AMD was in isolation.
"Fast enough" isn't going to be fast enough for everyone (if you catch my drift), but it wouldn't take long before ARM could start to seriously erode Intel's profits at one end of the market. We've already got ARM-powered tablets in laptops clothing in the shops (such as the Asus Transformer or Surface RT), not to mention ARM Chromebooks. ARM netbooks started to take off before tablets killed off the netbook craze.
If Intel go from "first choice for all computers" to "high end performance computers only" they're going to suffer greatly. And that's assuming ARM don't keep up the momentum, invigorated by swelling coffers and a huge user base, and gradually eats that part of their lunch too
Is this "change for the sake of change" though, really?
A quick glance through says that Mir is intended for Ubuntu Touch device. They say that X11 is too heavy for a mobile device (which arguably it is), and Wayland is neither much better or ready. And they don't want to be stuck using Android's Display Finger. So they're rolling their own.
I don't want to prejudge it (that's literally all I know on the subject so far), but it sounds reasonable enough to me.
Im also sure the engineering and science advances that come out of a flyby like this also has nothing to do with it. Nor would be the information gathered from doing 90% of a Mars landing be of any use too.
What exactly would you be testing? The manned mission would be using the same rockets we're using on robotic missions- that doesn't need testing. Deep space navigation? Again, robotic missions. Long term life support in space? ISS has been doing that, and if you wanted to work on that as an area of technology then Earth orbit would be a good place to start.
The tricky bits of a proper manned mission are- the landing (a heavy payload that must touch down gently and not pull too many Gs- that's hard), life support equipment that can operate in the Martian atmosphere (i.e., dust storms and so forth), the ability to touchdown and return (either having a craft with enough fuel to land, lift off and set off Earthward, or having a mothership which can enter a stable orbit while a lander touches down and returns to rendezvous). None of which would be tested by a fly-by.
If you really wanted to test out a manned mission to Mars, I'd say the bare minimum would involve entering a stable orbit before returning. A fly-by is, in a sense, "too easy" to be of use- unpleasant and dangerous for all involved, without actually trying anything new.
An iPad mini makes sense now; however that's only because the iPad went before it and defined the category of a tablet. If that hadn't happened people would just be complaining that it's a too heavy phone.
Obvious criticism of that is the success of the "phablets"- such as the 5.3" Galaxy Note. Clearly there is in fact a market for "really heavy phones"
My main criticism of the original iPad and it's rival Android devices was that it was very close, both in size and price, to a small laptop. I want and need a laptop, and I don't think many people have genuinely considered dumping their laptops in favour of a tablet. So essentially, it was "same size as a laptop, same price as a laptop, can't do half of what a laptop does". The new smaller form factor makes a lot more sense to me- it's a device for when I don't want to take my laptop with me, but need more than my phone. So I have a 2.5" phone, a 7" tablet, and a 10" laptop (an X10 Mini Pro, a Kindle Fire, and an Eee PC respectively). Plus my more muscley desktop gaming machine / wokstation, that's a well rounded set of gadgets.
Actually, I don't really. I mean, I know AAA means "big name game", but I have no idea how you would technically qualify that.
Is it synonymous with "best selling"? In which case, according to the "best selling games" section on Amazon.co.uk, that would include such hits as Just Dance 4 and Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Storm 3; clearly colossi of the gaming world, those. Or is it just a budget thing? Is Aliens: Colonial Marines AAA because it cost a fortune to make, even though the end product is shit? Whereas the universally acclaimed and quick-selling The Walking Dead game is disqualified because it cost considerably less to develop?
Pedantry aside, all that really matters is whether the games on Steam For Linux are good ones that will sell well, and if the number keeps going up at a good rate over time. The ones on there at the moment are all great games bar none, and we'll need to wait and see before calling judgement on the second point.
KDE have taken the highly sensible approach of keeping their touch stuff segregated from their standard point-and-click stuff- it's in the KDE Plasma Active package. Same approach as Unity (with "Unity Touch" distinct from "Unity not-touch"). It's a myth that Unity sucked because it was touch optimised (it isn't in any way)- the ways that Unity sucked were entirely distinct from the issue of touch screens.
Source on that one please (although I doubt I'd believe it, if it's come from PR).
Nokia, just a couple of years ago, had about 60% share of the smartphone market (and more similar for non-smart phones); they manufactured and sold 10's of millions of phones without a hitch. Now you're telling me that their flagship, "save our company" phone is inexplicably impossible to manufacture in batches of more than a handful a month? That they're selling every single phone their factory can squeeze out, and can still barely turn a profit? I literally don't believe that.
Actually, Waking Mars was bar none the best game I played last year.
Thanks for the tip; I'd never heard of that game and just gone to look it up on their website. Looks like $10 of my money is going to be well spent there...
More "Linuxy" than Ubuntu? Ubuntu's Mobile offering boasts (or will boast) a terminal application, Busybox, SSH, a shared UI with a desktop distro, etc. etc. Just about the only difference I can see with Sailfish is that it runs X11/Wayland rather than whatever it is that Android uses (and Ubuntu will share). Which is certainly nice, but I'm not sure that that's a game changer in any ways that matter.
Real X11/GNU/Linux phone with a fresh, elegant UI.
I'm really excited about Sailfish, and will definitely be eyeing it up (along with Ubuntu Phone and Tizen) when I come to make my next purchase (assuming they're both on the market). However, Sailfish's UI is hardly ground-breaking. It looks essentially the same, in methodology, as Android (only with a few details changed). Home screen and widgets are stacked vertically, rather than horizontally. Status bar is swipe from the right, rather than from the top. You have to swipe through the screens with the widgets before you get to the grid of icons screen.
Don't get me wrong, Sailfish (in the video you linked) looks much nicer than my current Android phone's UI; but just a nicer version of the same thing. I'm sure it'll compare fairly evenly with whatever the most recent Android phones are when it is finally on the shelves.
Say what you like about Ubuntu Phone / Unity Touch- at least they're punting out in their own direction, with a UI which they've built and designed from the ground up over several years of production releases. I don't know whether it'll be any good or not (I reserve judgement until I've gotten my hands on a ready or nearly-ready version of it), but full marks to them for effort.
We already have 3 platforms (4 if BBOS can survive), plus there are a few other little ones. We have choice and competition.
We don't need 8 or 15 options.
I'm intrigued as to which OS you had in mind for number 3. Surely not Windows Phone, which still lags behind BBOS (combining v7 and v10) in market share terms. And Symbian still outstrips both of them.
Really, we only have two major mobile OS at the moment, and half a dozen others scrapping it out for distant third place. There's no real reason why another OS (Ubuntu or Firefox or Sailfish or Tizen) couldn't leapfrog the others into third place, and may even be able to start growing third place into something respectably close to the market leaders.
Our work computers mostly are still Windows XP with Office 2003, and mostly with no compatibility pack (for reasons I can't fathom), and we can't install it ourselves (locked down working environment for IS reasons). We're a major UK company with 18,000 or so employees.
Frequently, third parties will send me documents in whizzy.docx or.xlsx format. I reply and tell them to send it to me in Office 2003 format (or something standard) instead. They always obligingly do. That is life with Microsoft Office.
If any of them replied telling me to "fuck off", they, as a supplier, would be toast.
You are probably not familiar with MS's UK pricing policy. As a rough rule of thumb, take what you would consider to be a reasonable price in the US, then double it.
The phrasing is sensationalist and overt the top, but the point does still stand. HP is one of the biggest Windows shops there is. Microsoft now has not one but three OSs for touchscreen devices (Windows 8, Windows RT and Windows Phone). Instead of opting for one of these for their new tablet, HP went for Google's product instead.
That's hardly a vote of confidence in Windows 8/RT's ability to crack the tablet market. Like you say- "everyone" makes Android tablets- even the biggest Microsoft flag wavers.
Very true; I was putting it whimsically for comic effect.
The point is that, excluding the kernel (which is the Android kernel, as opposed to the mainstream Linux kernel), Ubuntu On Android is proper, full Ubuntu- not just a Unity-themed Android skin.
I suspect most of these will eventually wind up running Windows, unless there's something about the hardware that prevents this.
The fact that there will be no OEM shipping with Windows will be the main thing preventing this. The overwhelming majority of PC users (i.e., not Slashdot readers) will use whatever OS ships with the device, and buy whatever device has the OS they like. Most people wouldn't even consider upgrading from Vista to Win7, let alone changing from one major vendor to another. Why do you think Linux is still languishing at 2% after all this time, when it is quite comparable to the big two OSs?
I'm guessing that ChromeOS is marketed mainly at non-technical folk, seeing as a lack of a full native environment would be a big turn off for any semi-serious Linux/Windows/Mac user. These people will either find ChromeOS "magical" and buy a Chromebook, or won't and won't.
The project has not yet released a stable release candidate, and their API's do not yet function as a drop in replacement for all Windows programmes (even with a caveat, i.e. "Windows XP programmes". It's a great project, but it's nowhere near "off the ground" yet. It's barely out of the hangar.
Slashdot Mirror
Added bonus with Civitas- it is promising a Linux port.
Quit with the trolling nonsense. The bill was proposed by the "Women's Rights and Gender Equality" committee, which, at a glance, the majority of members of which belong to the European People's Party (Christian Democrats). We are quite capable of producing a homegrown religious "Think of the Children" brigade without resorting to Islam.
The offensive bit of the directive (the sweeping ban on otherwise legal material on the internet) has been removed, so democracy has done it's job. The rest of the bill is a typical EU directive- well meaning, high-minded stuff which is far too broad to be meaningfully implemented. That's fine too; that's a part of how our not-even-federal system works in Europe; the details should be (and in this case are) left entirely to the member states.
Chrome is a part of Google's business model. No, they don't charge you for it- but it's a gateway into their other services. Chrome is important to Google, and anyone abusing a monopoly to keep Chrome down would have harmed them.
Firefox is Mozilla's flagship product. Without it, they would have nothing. No, they don't charge you for it- but they do make money from you using it. Google (again!) for example pay them to have their search engine as the homepage and default on the search bar. If anyone abused a monopoly to keep usage of Firefox down, it would have killed of their business model and perhaps their whole organisation.
Note, that's how SimCity 4 worked. You had a great big region made up of squares on which to build cities. The cities in each square could interact (i.e., I could build a recycling plant in one city, and the neighbouring city could then pay the first city to take some of its trash off of its hands). This was an inherently single player game.
It sounds like SimCity 5 has taken this already established single-player feature and used it to add a (perfectly decent sounding) multi-player mode. That does not make this game "designed from the ground up to be multi-player".
Intel have shown themselves to be a very competitive company; but that does not give them any magic bullets. x86 is laden with legacy nonsense, and there is a very real possibility that ARM (which is meaner and leaner by design, was ahead of x86 in performance terms at one point, and which has every popular up-and-coming system supporting it ahead of x86) simply has an innate advantage that will carry it through.
Intel know it; as TFA says, they've tried to kill of x86 in favour of better architectures many times. They're not doing that for fun; they're doing it because they know that developing x86 is like fighting with both hands tied behind their back. The legion of ARM companies out there (including ARM Holdings itself, but also including serious semi-conductor rivals like Nvidia and Samsung) aren't going to be as easy to face down as AMD was in isolation.
"Fast enough" isn't going to be fast enough for everyone (if you catch my drift), but it wouldn't take long before ARM could start to seriously erode Intel's profits at one end of the market. We've already got ARM-powered tablets in laptops clothing in the shops (such as the Asus Transformer or Surface RT), not to mention ARM Chromebooks. ARM netbooks started to take off before tablets killed off the netbook craze.
If Intel go from "first choice for all computers" to "high end performance computers only" they're going to suffer greatly. And that's assuming ARM don't keep up the momentum, invigorated by swelling coffers and a huge user base, and gradually eats that part of their lunch too
Is this "change for the sake of change" though, really?
A quick glance through says that Mir is intended for Ubuntu Touch device. They say that X11 is too heavy for a mobile device (which arguably it is), and Wayland is neither much better or ready. And they don't want to be stuck using Android's Display Finger. So they're rolling their own.
I don't want to prejudge it (that's literally all I know on the subject so far), but it sounds reasonable enough to me.
Im also sure the engineering and science advances that come out of a flyby like this also has nothing to do with it. Nor would be the information gathered from doing 90% of a Mars landing be of any use too.
What exactly would you be testing? The manned mission would be using the same rockets we're using on robotic missions- that doesn't need testing. Deep space navigation? Again, robotic missions. Long term life support in space? ISS has been doing that, and if you wanted to work on that as an area of technology then Earth orbit would be a good place to start.
The tricky bits of a proper manned mission are- the landing (a heavy payload that must touch down gently and not pull too many Gs- that's hard), life support equipment that can operate in the Martian atmosphere (i.e., dust storms and so forth), the ability to touchdown and return (either having a craft with enough fuel to land, lift off and set off Earthward, or having a mothership which can enter a stable orbit while a lander touches down and returns to rendezvous). None of which would be tested by a fly-by.
If you really wanted to test out a manned mission to Mars, I'd say the bare minimum would involve entering a stable orbit before returning. A fly-by is, in a sense, "too easy" to be of use- unpleasant and dangerous for all involved, without actually trying anything new.
I did put it in inverted commas. It still made me feel dirty.
An iPad mini makes sense now; however that's only because the iPad went before it and defined the category of a tablet. If that hadn't happened people would just be complaining that it's a too heavy phone.
Obvious criticism of that is the success of the "phablets"- such as the 5.3" Galaxy Note. Clearly there is in fact a market for "really heavy phones"
My main criticism of the original iPad and it's rival Android devices was that it was very close, both in size and price, to a small laptop. I want and need a laptop, and I don't think many people have genuinely considered dumping their laptops in favour of a tablet. So essentially, it was "same size as a laptop, same price as a laptop, can't do half of what a laptop does". The new smaller form factor makes a lot more sense to me- it's a device for when I don't want to take my laptop with me, but need more than my phone. So I have a 2.5" phone, a 7" tablet, and a 10" laptop (an X10 Mini Pro, a Kindle Fire, and an Eee PC respectively). Plus my more muscley desktop gaming machine / wokstation, that's a well rounded set of gadgets.
Actually, I don't really. I mean, I know AAA means "big name game", but I have no idea how you would technically qualify that.
Is it synonymous with "best selling"? In which case, according to the "best selling games" section on Amazon.co.uk, that would include such hits as Just Dance 4 and Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Storm 3; clearly colossi of the gaming world, those. Or is it just a budget thing? Is Aliens: Colonial Marines AAA because it cost a fortune to make, even though the end product is shit? Whereas the universally acclaimed and quick-selling The Walking Dead game is disqualified because it cost considerably less to develop?
Pedantry aside, all that really matters is whether the games on Steam For Linux are good ones that will sell well, and if the number keeps going up at a good rate over time. The ones on there at the moment are all great games bar none, and we'll need to wait and see before calling judgement on the second point.
KDE have taken the highly sensible approach of keeping their touch stuff segregated from their standard point-and-click stuff- it's in the KDE Plasma Active package. Same approach as Unity (with "Unity Touch" distinct from "Unity not-touch"). It's a myth that Unity sucked because it was touch optimised (it isn't in any way)- the ways that Unity sucked were entirely distinct from the issue of touch screens.
Source on that one please (although I doubt I'd believe it, if it's come from PR).
Nokia, just a couple of years ago, had about 60% share of the smartphone market (and more similar for non-smart phones); they manufactured and sold 10's of millions of phones without a hitch. Now you're telling me that their flagship, "save our company" phone is inexplicably impossible to manufacture in batches of more than a handful a month? That they're selling every single phone their factory can squeeze out, and can still barely turn a profit? I literally don't believe that.
Actually, Waking Mars was bar none the best game I played last year.
Thanks for the tip; I'd never heard of that game and just gone to look it up on their website. Looks like $10 of my money is going to be well spent there...
More "Linuxy" than Ubuntu? Ubuntu's Mobile offering boasts (or will boast) a terminal application, Busybox, SSH, a shared UI with a desktop distro, etc. etc. Just about the only difference I can see with Sailfish is that it runs X11/Wayland rather than whatever it is that Android uses (and Ubuntu will share). Which is certainly nice, but I'm not sure that that's a game changer in any ways that matter.
Real X11/GNU/Linux phone with a fresh, elegant UI.
I'm really excited about Sailfish, and will definitely be eyeing it up (along with Ubuntu Phone and Tizen) when I come to make my next purchase (assuming they're both on the market). However, Sailfish's UI is hardly ground-breaking. It looks essentially the same, in methodology, as Android (only with a few details changed). Home screen and widgets are stacked vertically, rather than horizontally. Status bar is swipe from the right, rather than from the top. You have to swipe through the screens with the widgets before you get to the grid of icons screen.
Don't get me wrong, Sailfish (in the video you linked) looks much nicer than my current Android phone's UI; but just a nicer version of the same thing. I'm sure it'll compare fairly evenly with whatever the most recent Android phones are when it is finally on the shelves.
Say what you like about Ubuntu Phone / Unity Touch- at least they're punting out in their own direction, with a UI which they've built and designed from the ground up over several years of production releases. I don't know whether it'll be any good or not (I reserve judgement until I've gotten my hands on a ready or nearly-ready version of it), but full marks to them for effort.
We already have 3 platforms (4 if BBOS can survive), plus there are a few other little ones. We have choice and competition.
We don't need 8 or 15 options.
I'm intrigued as to which OS you had in mind for number 3. Surely not Windows Phone, which still lags behind BBOS (combining v7 and v10) in market share terms. And Symbian still outstrips both of them.
Really, we only have two major mobile OS at the moment, and half a dozen others scrapping it out for distant third place. There's no real reason why another OS (Ubuntu or Firefox or Sailfish or Tizen) couldn't leapfrog the others into third place, and may even be able to start growing third place into something respectably close to the market leaders.
Our work computers mostly are still Windows XP with Office 2003, and mostly with no compatibility pack (for reasons I can't fathom), and we can't install it ourselves (locked down working environment for IS reasons). We're a major UK company with 18,000 or so employees.
Frequently, third parties will send me documents in whizzy .docx or .xlsx format. I reply and tell them to send it to me in Office 2003 format (or something standard) instead. They always obligingly do. That is life with Microsoft Office.
If any of them replied telling me to "fuck off", they, as a supplier, would be toast.
You are probably not familiar with MS's UK pricing policy. As a rough rule of thumb, take what you would consider to be a reasonable price in the US, then double it.
Best I could find at a glance was "Home and Business" for £175 ($265)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Microsoft-Office-Home-Business-Licence/dp/B00A2ILYZ0/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1362037821&sr=8-3
"Professional" for £318 ($482)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Microsoft-Office-Professional-2013-Licence/dp/B00A2IM080/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1362037821&sr=8-4
Johnny Mnemonic was a William Gibson story, not Philip K. Dick.
The phrasing is sensationalist and overt the top, but the point does still stand. HP is one of the biggest Windows shops there is. Microsoft now has not one but three OSs for touchscreen devices (Windows 8, Windows RT and Windows Phone). Instead of opting for one of these for their new tablet, HP went for Google's product instead.
That's hardly a vote of confidence in Windows 8/RT's ability to crack the tablet market. Like you say- "everyone" makes Android tablets- even the biggest Microsoft flag wavers.
Very true; I was putting it whimsically for comic effect.
The point is that, excluding the kernel (which is the Android kernel, as opposed to the mainstream Linux kernel), Ubuntu On Android is proper, full Ubuntu- not just a Unity-themed Android skin.
Agreed. Worst thing about my original EEE was that Xandros nonsense. If they'd gone with a proper distro they'd have had far less trouble.
Ubuntu Netbook Remix (as it was then) turned mine into a lovely device.
I suspect most of these will eventually wind up running Windows, unless there's something about the hardware that prevents this.
The fact that there will be no OEM shipping with Windows will be the main thing preventing this. The overwhelming majority of PC users (i.e., not Slashdot readers) will use whatever OS ships with the device, and buy whatever device has the OS they like. Most people wouldn't even consider upgrading from Vista to Win7, let alone changing from one major vendor to another. Why do you think Linux is still languishing at 2% after all this time, when it is quite comparable to the big two OSs?
I'm guessing that ChromeOS is marketed mainly at non-technical folk, seeing as a lack of a full native environment would be a big turn off for any semi-serious Linux/Windows/Mac user. These people will either find ChromeOS "magical" and buy a Chromebook, or won't and won't.
The project has not yet released a stable release candidate, and their API's do not yet function as a drop in replacement for all Windows programmes (even with a caveat, i.e. "Windows XP programmes". It's a great project, but it's nowhere near "off the ground" yet. It's barely out of the hangar.