Well, the kernel for starters. I'd say that's a key component. The runtime environment that the apps run in is based on Java which is also OSS. I'd safely say that at least 50% was community contributed.
All of this aside, my earlier comment still stands. Even if 100% of the code for android was developed in-house by the Open Handset Alliance (not just Google,) Android would still be OSS because the code is available under an OSS license. OSS != developed by the community. OSS means the code is available under an OSS license.
In case you are wondering about the iphone, Apple has this nice little page that details all of the OSS projects used in OSX. Most of these projects are community projects.
Android isn't really a product of the free software movement, it's a product of Google.
Bullshit. Android is a product of the Open Handset Alliance--of which Google is a key member. Android is also completely FOSS. I can download the source code to all of android from here, change what I would like and recompile/redistribute it. I may not be able to include Google's proprietary apps, but Android's base is still FOSS. I don't see anyone being able to do that with the iPhone, although it does rely on a great many FOSS utilities.
You forgot one or two major things on your list. The first thing you forgot is antivirus software. The second thing is third-party drivers. I know Windows 7 does a pretty good job of getting drivers from the net, but the microsoft-provided (video drivers especially) tend to be stripped down. It's worth it to get the third-party drivers for the extra functionality.
CPU manufacturing is what is known as a "natural monopoly."
No, it's not. According to Wikipedia: "In economics, a natural monopoly occurs when, due to the economies of scale of a particular industry, the maximum efficiency of production and distribution is realized through a single supplier, but in some cases inefficiency may take place.
Natural monopolies arise where the largest supplier in an industry, often the first supplier in a market, has an overwhelming cost advantage over other actual or potential competitors. This tends to be the case in industries where capital costs predominate, creating economies of scale which are large in relation to the size of the market, and hence high barriers to entry; examples include public utilities such as water services and electricity. It is very expensive to build transmission networks (water/gas pipelines, electricity and telephone lines), therefore it is unlikely that a potential competitor would be willing to make the capital investment needed to even enter the monopolist's market."
While fabs may be expensive, I really don't think that is what is keeping other companies from entering the market. In fact, a fab has to be retooled every few years to manufacture chips with a new/smaller process. What's keeping other companies out of the desktop CPU market is licensing. Nvidia has been rumoured to be trying to enter the x86 cpu market for the last couple of years but has been unable due to licensing restrictions of the x86 architecture.
AMD no longer owns their own fabs but they are still a "CPU Manufacturer." They design the chips which are made by someone else's Fab.
I really don't think the global market can support more than 3 companies doing this.
Off the top of my head: Intel, AMD, Freescale, IBM, TI, Motorola, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, ARM (Who designs a lot of chips made by TI, Freescale and Qualcomm,) and Sun.
The thing that's "new" here is the dynamic real-time switching between an IGP and discrete GPU... but that doesn't produce the power savings. After all, the vast majority of notebooks ship with *only* the IGP, so they're already getting the "maximum" power savings for graphics.
This is nothing new either. AMD/ATI have had this exact setup around for well over a year now. They called it "Hybrid Crossfire." This isn't even Asus's first laptop to have this technology.
I know both of our arguments here are anecdotal, but 3D acceleration and compiz-fusion are running great on my laptop with a mobile x1270 with the MESA drivers. 3D just worked right out of the (figurative) box. The motherboard that used to be in my HTPC had an x200 onboard and 3D acceleration worked fine with minimal effort on that machine as well.
ATI dropped support from their binary drivers because these cards are supported by the OSS driver. They aren't good enough to game on, so why would anyone want to run the proprietary ATI driver with this card anyway?
Its funny how Linux has only succeeded when you place it far away from the user (servers which require maintenance by professional system admins) or lock it down so that the user cant interact with it (embedded devices).
As someone who has had the unfortunate experience of doing end-user support on Windows machines, I would go ahead and suggest that Windows be placed far away from the user, maintained by a professional sysadmin or locked down as well.
I'd like to know how one would go about wiring these tiny solar cells up. It probably wouldn't be too bad on a flat surface but It doesn't seem like it would be very easy on flexible surfaces like textiles.
This isn't exactly true. While the network operators may be able to put pressure on the official Android Market to keep certain apps out, you don't have to root your phone or anything to install.apk's from alternative markets or downloaded from the web.
My Sony PRS-505's (ereader) UI can be almost completely controlled by buttons like this running along the right side of the screen. I think the UI is incredibly easy. My mother has used it as well and she had no issues figuring it out.
I've got Charter here. I got sick of being redirected to advert...I mean search pages when I typed a malformed url. When I called Charter to complain they denied that there was a problem. They blamed spyware on my (linux) machine. By the time I got to someone who knew what was actually going on they were trying to sell it as a feature. I nearly switched to another ISP on the spot. I started using 4.2.2.1 and 4.2.2.2 then. They always felt a little sluggish to me. I switched to 8.8.8.8 the other day to see if it makes a difference and I have to say it feels faster. I have no benchmarks to back this up but I probably won't switch back.
That's why a lot of other games let the players set up dedicated servers. That way the publisher does not have to worry about providing this ongoing service--the community takes care of it. This is why I refuse to pay for any game that does not allow dedicated servers. The game is worthless when the publisher decides to pull the plug on the servers.
So, let's get this right... If you contract me to do some work on your roof and it leaks -- it's your own damn fault for choosing to live in an area where it rains?
Your analogy is flawed. If I contract you to fix my roof, you use substandard roofing materials, I'm OK with that and it leaks -- it's my own damn fault. The difference is that the residents of New Orleans knew (or should have known) that the levy was not going to hold up well, just like I know (or should know) if my roof is being fixed with substandard materials.
This still does not change the fact that the Army Corps of Engineers were tasked with maintaining the levy and did not do their job. They should be held accountable for not doing their job. They should not necessarily be held responsible for the lives lost because people were too stupid to leave.
I know I'm the exception more than the rule, but I learned Photoshop (7) first when I was going to school. When working on my own stuff--which is not very demanding--the GIMP has always worked fine for me. I didn't seem to have any trouble picking it up after I figured out that you can do anything by right-clicking on the image. Since I don't use it very heavily I still stumble around when doing some things, but I still stumble around when using my brother's copy of Photoshop too. IMHO, it's all in what you are used to and whether or not you are willing to have an open mind and learn something new.
This reminds me of SUN's incredibly silly decision to remove their C compiler from SunOS when they shipped Solaris, so that one had to jump through hoops just to find a suitable gcc binary because you couldn't bootstrap gcc without a compiler. Sure, GIMP is not so crucial, but still...
Yeah, not having the GIMP on the cd is just like that. You have all those hoops to jump through. It's not like you can just apt-get install gimp. Oh, wait...
The R300M does not have "proper" 3d performance anyway. It's a 4-ish year old integrated card that is fully supported by the open-source driver. The Xpress IGP's suck and don't game worth a crap in Windows either. The OSS drivers let you run Compiz and opengl-accelerated video playback just fine. Since that's about all these cards can handle anyway I don't see how the lack of a binary blob driver matters at all.
They don't stop maintaining drivers for a card unless it is well supported in the *truly* open source drivers. What card do you have that is only 2 years old and is not supported?
My experience has been quite the opposite. I used to use nVidia cards because of their Linux drivers but the 8800GT changed my mind. When the 8800GT came out I was getting the same performance in Linux as I was getting with my old 7900GT. In Windows the 8800 blew the 7900 out of the water. I installed a friend's HD3870 just to try it. I ended up buying one of my own the next day. I've bought a few other ATI cards since then and I have been perfectly happy with them. OTOH, the nvidia card in my media center refuses to read the EDID of my projector. It works fine with the old version of the driver (about a year old) and it's fine if I use an ATI card. It almost seems as though the situation has reversed.
Google, instead, offers basically no proprietary, closed source software. The software is either on their server (and thus allowed to contain GPL code and still be kept private because it is not distributed) or OOS (Chrome). Possible exception: Picasa, I have to check:)
I disagree. I know that Google uses a lot of OSS stuff on the back end, but most of their desktop applications are closed source. Chrome is the only exception that I can think of. To name a few closed source Google apps: Picasa, Google Earth, Google Desktop, Google Toolbar and Google applications for Android (GMail, Google Voice, Google Sync, etc...)
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Well, the kernel for starters. I'd say that's a key component. The runtime environment that the apps run in is based on Java which is also OSS. I'd safely say that at least 50% was community contributed.
All of this aside, my earlier comment still stands. Even if 100% of the code for android was developed in-house by the Open Handset Alliance (not just Google,) Android would still be OSS because the code is available under an OSS license. OSS != developed by the community. OSS means the code is available under an OSS license.
In case you are wondering about the iphone, Apple has this nice little page that details all of the OSS projects used in OSX. Most of these projects are community projects.
Android isn't really a product of the free software movement, it's a product of Google.
Bullshit. Android is a product of the Open Handset Alliance--of which Google is a key member. Android is also completely FOSS. I can download the source code to all of android from here, change what I would like and recompile/redistribute it. I may not be able to include Google's proprietary apps, but Android's base is still FOSS. I don't see anyone being able to do that with the iPhone, although it does rely on a great many FOSS utilities.
You forgot one or two major things on your list. The first thing you forgot is antivirus software. The second thing is third-party drivers. I know Windows 7 does a pretty good job of getting drivers from the net, but the microsoft-provided (video drivers especially) tend to be stripped down. It's worth it to get the third-party drivers for the extra functionality.
CPU manufacturing is what is known as a "natural monopoly."
No, it's not. According to Wikipedia: "In economics, a natural monopoly occurs when, due to the economies of scale of a particular industry, the maximum efficiency of production and distribution is realized through a single supplier, but in some cases inefficiency may take place.
Natural monopolies arise where the largest supplier in an industry, often the first supplier in a market, has an overwhelming cost advantage over other actual or potential competitors. This tends to be the case in industries where capital costs predominate, creating economies of scale which are large in relation to the size of the market, and hence high barriers to entry; examples include public utilities such as water services and electricity. It is very expensive to build transmission networks (water/gas pipelines, electricity and telephone lines), therefore it is unlikely that a potential competitor would be willing to make the capital investment needed to even enter the monopolist's market."
While fabs may be expensive, I really don't think that is what is keeping other companies from entering the market. In fact, a fab has to be retooled every few years to manufacture chips with a new/smaller process. What's keeping other companies out of the desktop CPU market is licensing. Nvidia has been rumoured to be trying to enter the x86 cpu market for the last couple of years but has been unable due to licensing restrictions of the x86 architecture.
AMD no longer owns their own fabs but they are still a "CPU Manufacturer." They design the chips which are made by someone else's Fab.
I really don't think the global market can support more than 3 companies doing this.
Off the top of my head: Intel, AMD, Freescale, IBM, TI, Motorola, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, ARM (Who designs a lot of chips made by TI, Freescale and Qualcomm,) and Sun.
The thing that's "new" here is the dynamic real-time switching between an IGP and discrete GPU... but that doesn't produce the power savings. After all, the vast majority of notebooks ship with *only* the IGP, so they're already getting the "maximum" power savings for graphics.
This is nothing new either. AMD/ATI have had this exact setup around for well over a year now. They called it "Hybrid Crossfire." This isn't even Asus's first laptop to have this technology.
I know both of our arguments here are anecdotal, but 3D acceleration and compiz-fusion are running great on my laptop with a mobile x1270 with the MESA drivers. 3D just worked right out of the (figurative) box. The motherboard that used to be in my HTPC had an x200 onboard and 3D acceleration worked fine with minimal effort on that machine as well.
ATI dropped support from their binary drivers because these cards are supported by the OSS driver. They aren't good enough to game on, so why would anyone want to run the proprietary ATI driver with this card anyway?
Its funny how Linux has only succeeded when you place it far away from the user (servers which require maintenance by professional system admins) or lock it down so that the user cant interact with it (embedded devices).
As someone who has had the unfortunate experience of doing end-user support on Windows machines, I would go ahead and suggest that Windows be placed far away from the user, maintained by a professional sysadmin or locked down as well.
I'd like to know how one would go about wiring these tiny solar cells up. It probably wouldn't be too bad on a flat surface but It doesn't seem like it would be very easy on flexible surfaces like textiles.
This isn't exactly true. While the network operators may be able to put pressure on the official Android Market to keep certain apps out, you don't have to root your phone or anything to install .apk's from alternative markets or downloaded from the web.
By default, Gentoo requires users to be a member of the wheel group to use su.
I don't know about you, but I don't want a chip, phone...well anything developed by lawyers.
My Sony PRS-505's (ereader) UI can be almost completely controlled by buttons like this running along the right side of the screen. I think the UI is incredibly easy. My mother has used it as well and she had no issues figuring it out.
I've got Charter here. I got sick of being redirected to advert...I mean search pages when I typed a malformed url. When I called Charter to complain they denied that there was a problem. They blamed spyware on my (linux) machine. By the time I got to someone who knew what was actually going on they were trying to sell it as a feature. I nearly switched to another ISP on the spot. I started using 4.2.2.1 and 4.2.2.2 then. They always felt a little sluggish to me. I switched to 8.8.8.8 the other day to see if it makes a difference and I have to say it feels faster. I have no benchmarks to back this up but I probably won't switch back.
That's why a lot of other games let the players set up dedicated servers. That way the publisher does not have to worry about providing this ongoing service--the community takes care of it. This is why I refuse to pay for any game that does not allow dedicated servers. The game is worthless when the publisher decides to pull the plug on the servers.
You must be American.
You must be delusional.
The answer to your question in the civilized world is: "Because only army and police carry guns".
Criminals would as well (regardless of the legality.) If criminals did not have guns as well, why would the police need them?
If shooting guns is such an uncivilized American thing, why is it an Olympic sport?
So, let's get this right... If you contract me to do some work on your roof and it leaks -- it's your own damn fault for choosing to live in an area where it rains?
Your analogy is flawed. If I contract you to fix my roof, you use substandard roofing materials, I'm OK with that and it leaks -- it's my own damn fault. The difference is that the residents of New Orleans knew (or should have known) that the levy was not going to hold up well, just like I know (or should know) if my roof is being fixed with substandard materials.
This still does not change the fact that the Army Corps of Engineers were tasked with maintaining the levy and did not do their job. They should be held accountable for not doing their job. They should not necessarily be held responsible for the lives lost because people were too stupid to leave.
I know I'm the exception more than the rule, but I learned Photoshop (7) first when I was going to school. When working on my own stuff--which is not very demanding--the GIMP has always worked fine for me. I didn't seem to have any trouble picking it up after I figured out that you can do anything by right-clicking on the image. Since I don't use it very heavily I still stumble around when doing some things, but I still stumble around when using my brother's copy of Photoshop too. IMHO, it's all in what you are used to and whether or not you are willing to have an open mind and learn something new.
This reminds me of SUN's incredibly silly decision to remove their C compiler from SunOS when they shipped Solaris, so that one had to jump through hoops just to find a suitable gcc binary because you couldn't bootstrap gcc without a compiler. Sure, GIMP is not so crucial, but still...
Yeah, not having the GIMP on the cd is just like that. You have all those hoops to jump through. It's not like you can just apt-get install gimp. Oh, wait...
Obviously you didn't RTFA, but what should I expect. TFA specifically commented on how quiet this card is compared to most high end cards.
The R300M does not have "proper" 3d performance anyway. It's a 4-ish year old integrated card that is fully supported by the open-source driver. The Xpress IGP's suck and don't game worth a crap in Windows either. The OSS drivers let you run Compiz and opengl-accelerated video playback just fine. Since that's about all these cards can handle anyway I don't see how the lack of a binary blob driver matters at all.
They don't stop maintaining drivers for a card unless it is well supported in the *truly* open source drivers. What card do you have that is only 2 years old and is not supported?
That's odd. I turn crossfire on and off on my 4850's all the time without having to reboot.
My experience has been quite the opposite. I used to use nVidia cards because of their Linux drivers but the 8800GT changed my mind. When the 8800GT came out I was getting the same performance in Linux as I was getting with my old 7900GT. In Windows the 8800 blew the 7900 out of the water. I installed a friend's HD3870 just to try it. I ended up buying one of my own the next day. I've bought a few other ATI cards since then and I have been perfectly happy with them. OTOH, the nvidia card in my media center refuses to read the EDID of my projector. It works fine with the old version of the driver (about a year old) and it's fine if I use an ATI card. It almost seems as though the situation has reversed.
Google, instead, offers basically no proprietary, closed source software. The software is either on their server (and thus allowed to contain GPL code and still be kept private because it is not distributed) or OOS (Chrome). Possible exception: Picasa, I have to check :)
I disagree. I know that Google uses a lot of OSS stuff on the back end, but most of their desktop applications are closed source. Chrome is the only exception that I can think of. To name a few closed source Google apps: Picasa, Google Earth, Google Desktop, Google Toolbar and Google applications for Android (GMail, Google Voice, Google Sync, etc...)