I'm the one who finds this "We do all things now in the browser" highly suspect. I already have a perfectly fine Pdf viewer, called Okular. Why not just give me a link to the Pdf file, so that I can download it, use my favorite Pdf-Viewer and print it out if I like?
I would really appreciate their affords, but I just known this is not done for my convenience, but for cooperate interests. The only reason this is developed, so that they can put some Ads inside the Pdf file, prevent me from downloading it or printing it. Like Slideshare, but without Flash.
Maybe the second reason is, so I can view Pdf files in iPad or similar device, such don't have a Pdf viewer. But that is cooperate interests again, because they can much easier prevent me from installing software I like, and force me to use their software.
There are more important issues, like do the pupils need to buy all iPads now? Do they need to buy e-book-reader from only one vendor? Can they lend the books to classmates? Do they need to buy the e-Books but can't give them later to their brothers/sisters/cousins?
If S-Korea would do it right they would get the books as DRM free PDF or Pub files, nationwide, with the explicit right to copy the books and share it for free with other (future) S-Korean pupils, where the publishers are only paid for updates on the books. If the publishers don't like it, the S-Korea government is a very big customer, I think they will find a publisher under such terms.
That would do a government that actually wants to benefit from digital books. But I think they will just get one publisher, DRMed e-books and only one e-book-reader vendor.
Can we please stop to give stupid nick names for software projects? Mango for WP7, Honeycomb for Android, and much more and more stupid nick names for each version of a software. Why not call it Android 3 and be finished with it? So anyone can follow such a head line "Why are there so few honeycomb apps", I thought, what, did they mean honeypot for virus and trojans?
It's one thing to name a software, because "Java based smartphone OS from Google" is not really nice. But then to name every each version of the software? Then you have so many names, you don't know anymore what is which version.
Android 5 is then Banana, and WP8 is carrot. I don't know what Honeycomb is anymore, was it Android 4 or 5?
Why does a government must be an evil? In fact, most democratic governments are very good and at the beginning most leaders believed in something, like get a better live, peace, economic grown. Right now we have the most peaceful and prosperous times since WW2, about 60 years. It was only because the people in leadership get corrupted, the governments get more "evil".
I watched the vid in your sig, very interesting. But I don't get your very anti-government alignment. The US is not a very democratic country, with the two party system with no direct democracy and the extreme dependency of politics and Wall Street/cooperations (at the federal level).
The last economic collapse was the result of that corruption of the federal government, which is again the fault of the people which are voted for their party/president. But I think in the US the people don't have much choice anyway, plus the US president can do what ever he/she likes anyway with no accountability.
No that is the problem with corruption. And the fault of corruption in a democracy are the people.
"When business overruns its costs and credits like that, it likely goes under. Shouldn't the same apply to governments? I think it should"
Ok, so are you prepared to get a gun and shoot everyone or get shot down? Are you prepared the next time that there is a fire that half of the city goes down in flames? Are you prepared that if you got an accident you need to walk home, lay down and die?
I know you are most likely American and you are taught since you are a baby that American is the greatest country and you will be the next millionaire and the next president, you just have to work hard. If that is how life would work, we all be millionaires and presidents. But the true is that only the 1% fortune people will get rich and that the rest 99% would just die without a government.
Corruption was always the reason why states fail and the fault of corruption in a democracy are the people which are not paying attention to their elected leaders. Did you inform yourself about the budged of your city? Did you hold the major accountable?
If you are happy with Gnome, stay with Gnome. For myself, I like Kate, Kile, Dolphin, Kaffeine, Amarok, KOrganizer, Klipper, Kmail, Yakuage, Konsole, KTorrent. I like the plasma desktop and I like the 3D effects. I like the full customization of KDE, but I'm only using maybe 5% of that, the rest are still the default settings, but it's a good feeling that if I need it I can change it. And I like the various plasma widgets, like battery, knetworkmanager, printer applet, device notifier. But I'm a really conservative desktop user, I don't have my desktop full of widgets and I don't use the activities.
I watched the videos and they build a nice phone. But why oh why they always need to spoil it to use a mirror for the display? I could puke when I see the background and the lights are all mirroring on the phone. How can I use that outside in the sun where I usually would use a phone? Why they can't invest the 5$ more for an anti-glare display?
Because most of the CEOs in the US are working for a) them self and b) for the shareholders. Most of them are not working for the interest of the company. That's also why they have 20 times the income of other countries like Germany which similar large and successful companies and they are not held responsible for a failure, but get big bonuses.
What do you think how an ex-MS manager will run a company? He will get with his buddy how can they manage to increase their personal income and increase the shareholders values. They are not interested in what will happen to Nokia in 10 years from now. Even if they totally wrack the company, they get a big bonus and the shareholders are happy because they got a big dividend while it lasted and can now sell their stock and buy stock from another company.
Also if your company is big enough it doesn't matter how you run it anyway, if you increase the shareholders value. If the company gets to bankruptcy you just call your buddies in the fed to get a nice bailout. "Market forces" and "let the market be itself" my ass. If you bailout people it's socialism but if you bailout cooperations it's (now I'm missing a word).
That's funny. If I enter in Firefox http://apple/ then the browser puts me to http://apple.com./ Also for http://slashdot/ and for others. Maybe Firefox already knows about the new ICANN stuff?
So now a company not only have to register all permutations of their name + all the known TLDs but now permutations of their name * permutations of their name. Example corp. had to get example.com, example.net, and example.org. Adding.mobi and.xxx 'forces' them to get example.xxx and example.mobi. Adding this new BS from ICANN 'forces' them for example.example, and any modification of example.example.
Old system: modifications(example) + [.com,.net,.org,.mobi,.xxx,...] New system: modifications(example) + [.com,.net,.org,.mobi,.xxx,...] + modifications(example) In which modifications(x) gets all possible but still readable modifications of the word x, like examplee, exxample, examplle, etc.
What do you talking about, of course they done a costs and benefits analysis. For them the costs was 0 but the benefits are like 100 Billion $. That was a clear win.
"Fortunately, the US Department of Commerce / NTIA may not renew its contract with ICANN."
Maybe that's the reason why they killed the TLDs now, so they get one last big bonus in their bank accounts.
"First you have to admit that patents have at least on principle some validity. Someone has an idea for a commercial new product, describes it in a patent and get some limited protection. It is totally unfair of large company to read such patents and implement the idea at a lower cost without paying licenses."
No that is not how patents are working. With patents (not the BS business or software patents) you have a working machine, not just an idea. I can come up with thousands of ideas every day, should I be able to patent them all? No, only if I build a machine I can patent it.
And that is the one big problem with software patents, it's a patent on an idea, that can be implemented in multiple ways. I can implement a otto-motor* in just one way and if I do it in any other way it's not a otto-motor anymore and I can apply a new patent. Did you ever saw any source code with a software patent? No, because it claims the idea of an algorithm that can be implemented in anything.
"So this institution will help small-to-medium French companies defend their portfolio. The initial idea is no to collect patents but to propose services. Indeed they will put together defensible cases by polling patents in some cases, but the stated aim is to get licenses income for the companies, not for this new institution by itself. This is not the same as trolling I think."
So first the government is creating a system in which the small business owner cannot defend their ideas and now they creating a government institution to protect the small business owner against that system (that they created)? Why they just don't admit that the current patent system is broken and fix it? What they are planning to do now is spending millions of tax money to protect small business owner from a broken system instead to fix the system.
"Essentially the French government doesn't want to see its industrialization monies get wasted too much. What's bad about this ?"
Just fix the broken patent system. Is is really so hard to see where the idiocy lies? This institution is just admitting that the current government have no power against the big cooperations and the word trade agreements.
"Every time they offer something for X$, there's someone who comes along and says "If only it was available for X/2$ I'd buy it. But if you actually lowered it, most of them would now say X/4$. Or X/8$. Reality is that we know the truth, those who really liked it already bought it at the high price and those who don't will find some other excuse not to buy it."
True, but what is wrong with that? That is capitalism, why should I pay more if I can get it for less (or free)? What all the media industry want is communism, aka copyright. The only difference is that the entities controlling it are not governments but private entities. But where is the difference if all media would belong to the state or if all media would belong to a few media cooperations? That is what copyright law have now become, that media belongs to a few cooperations that claim to represent all creative work.
Furthermore, the few cooperations have such a power of the government that they are creating laws that benefit only them. The Mickey Mouse Law is the prominent example, in with Disney pushed the US government to extent copyright just before Mickey Mouse would go in to public domain.
I don't see any moral obligation to follow the current copyright laws. It is not beneficial to creating more cultural works, and we have now a different technological landscape that we had 200 years ego. I see no moral in paying the overpriced DVDs when the film in the cinemas pays for itself in the millions and the production costs for a DVD are so low. I see no moral in paying for music CDs for the artists gets only a tiny fraction of the price.
I really wish they would shut down every site out there that illegal links or shares copyrighted material, so that people have no way at all anymore to download movies and music. Then I would see the whole movie and music industry go in to oblivion because nobody will buy there crap anymore.
Are they really believing that if people couldn't share the movies and music, the people would suddenly buy more stuff? If anything, they would buy less stuff because they don't know anymore new artists or new movies.
As I was 18 I used a lot torrents, and I mean a lot. Like 5 movies and games every week. Now I don't use that anymore, do I buy more movies and more games? No, not at all. Why? Because that crap is just so expensive and I found so many new alternatives for entertainment. Like youtube where I watch news and starcraft 2 movies, and southparkstudios.com, and collegehumour.com. And I read a lot of blogs and news on the internet. For music I have youtube and lastfm and other services.
If I go to the Mediamarkt I see it why I stopped to buy new movies or music and why others are not buying, too. I see it because all the DVDs and all the music CDs are laying there around for years and nobody touches them. Because they are so freaky expensive. 20Euro for a old DVD movie, 30Euro and more for new movies and 30Euro and more for TV series.
Every time I go to the shop and see a nice movie, I see the price and I think: do I really want that DVD for that price? And the answer is every time: no, because it's just too expensive for just one movie that I will watch one day and then it will lay around collecting dust. If the DVDs would be like 5Euro each for new movies and under 5Euro for old DVDs I would buy them. But not for that price, no way. Because I have so much free entertainment.
Well, if you actually clicked on the links provided then you would see that the Java part runs on the server and the web browser gets only HTML. That's also why I wrote 100% HTML, no plugins needed.
"Imagine if for an extra $500 you could have bought plumbing for your house that would never need maintenance, or whose maintenance would be a low fixed cost every few years? Unless you are a professional plumber chances are that would be a good deal. It is the same with Chrome OS - the target is people who don't want to fiddle with their computers, but actually need to create documents/etc (as opposed to the consumption-oriented tablet)."
Yes it would be great if the plumbing is still in the house and not in the cloud. Like people who working with their computer need their computer to be operable all the time and have access to their data all the time, I need my plumbing all the time.
Why this push for take it all or nothing for cloud services? Why not lets have your application local, your data local and have synced the data to the cloud? That why you could have the best of the two worlds.
"and remote data is protected by whatever services you use (which inevitably means more protection than the average home user provides)"
No your data in the cloud is not protected at all. My data at home is at least protected because it's local in my home. In my home I have a whole bunch of protection, from thieves and from the police. In the cloud you have no rights at all, nothing, none. All you have is a promise by the cloud company that your data is "save". But neither you can sue the company if it's not save nor you have any special rights of privacy.
"and it runs great on cheap hardware. Cheap also means low-power-use so you get 8+ hours out of a charge."
Yeah right. JavaScript and Flash is so cheap to run. That is why this new laptop with runs only a browser have "... estimated at 3.5 hours" of battery.
"The device is designed to sync, so when it breaks you can be back up and running with a spare in minutes."
if you have a T1 connection to Google maybe. But with normal DSL with 60kbytes/sec up and 300kbytes/sec down it takes longer then the time I need to copy from my external hard disk.
"Yes because the majority of computer users know how what rsync or dd are let alone how to use them? I'd guess that 1% or less of computer users these days have ever touched a *nix command line."
Did you missed my part about open a file manager? Open file manager and drag&drop the files to an external hard disk. They are cost like 50$ for 500GB. There are also a lot of backup/synchronization GUI applications.
"This is where the "magic" cloud works."
Except if it doesn't. Like if your internet connection is broken, or slow, or the servers are down for what ever reason. The chances that my laptop will broke down are very very slim, and that my data is lost is very slim, too. The chances that the servers are down, I don't have any internet connection or that the internet connection will lag are so much higher. Plus, you have the inconvenience to be online every time and that despite that I have such a powerful computer device with almost unlimited data storage.
"There is a lot Google does right, but it simply can't deliver a full working environment. Fundamental problems in its product management culture will have to be resolved before anything on the scale of a Chrome OS will work."
Not only that but the whole "cloud" concept for private people doesn't make any sense at all. Storage and CPU power is so cheap, but compared to that the connection to the internet is very expensive and very unreliable. Even in high-tech countries like the US, or Germany, the latency is very height, like 60ms up to 100ms (compare that with the computer latency with is around 1ms), and it's expensive compared to 0$ for the local hard disk. If we are compare G3/G4/UMTS then it's much more expensive, slow, and unreliable.
The whole concept of cloud had made sense back in the days when storage and CPU power was so expensive that only the universities could afford it. So you had at home a relative cheap box to connect to the university computer to run your heavy computations.
For private consumers it just a big disadvantage. For firms it would make some more sense to outsource your I.T. But you should know if it makes sense to make your whole business depended on some second firm in the cloud.
For Google of course it makes perfect sense to push for the cloud. They make their money of advertising and the people's data. So of course they want you to be connected 24/7 to their services and store your data on their servers. But it's just stupid for anyone who do real work with their computer. But for facebook/hulu/youtube people , maybe it's ok if the laptop is so much cheaper. But then Google don't need to invest in the cloud-software stuff like Google Docs.
The real question is if I can install some real Linux on it, or is it locked down?
""even if you lose your computer, you can just log in to another Kogan Agora Chromium Laptop and get right back to work."
Yeah right, as if you always have a top DSL connection everywhere. And if you loose your connection are you loosing any data, too?
With Linux it's just so easy to backup your data. Because in Linux everything is just a file, you can use the simple tools like rsync or dd. Or just open a file manager and copy your whole system to some hard disk. Trust me it works. Take a laptop, with the same system, and just copy/home to some external hard disk. Then copy it back to the new laptop and you have all settings and all data on your new laptop. No magic "cloud" is needed. You can even just copy your whole system to the new computer and you don't need to install anything on the new laptop.
I still think the whole "cloud for private people" is just a scam for your money so that you need always either expensive DSL connection at home or G3 or UMTS for your laptop. The idea is, even if you use your laptop, with they have now plenty of data capacity for very cheap (like 500GB for 50$) you still need a constant internet connection either with wireless or G3/UMTS.
"Spain’s creative industries generate about €62 billion in annual added value for Spain’s €1 trillion economy. They also employ 1.2 million, in a country with five million unemployed, just over 21% of the working-age population."
If they would like to foster their creative industries they would limit the copyright, if not abandon it altogether. Where all the neo-liberals that we all known and love for free market, free trade, liberalization of the markets etc. if it comes to copyright law?
In the only instance where market liberalization should be really done (in the "I.P." market) they push for more government protection, but in every other market where it doesn't make sense and it harms the economy (labor market, financial market) they all push for less government intervention. Such hypocrite assholes.
"Oracle is swinging around their Java assets like a machete" WTF are you talking about? The only issue with Java was so far with Google's Android, but because Google implemented their own JVM and Oracle have some patents on that technology. It's like any other stupid software patent out there.
Java is only used in OOorg for the database access. That's it, nothing more. It would be trivial to remove all Java from OOorg. In fact you can just do that: go to the preferences and remove the checkbox.
From their wiki site: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Java_and_OpenOffice.org "Java is required for complete OpenOffice.org functionality. Java is mainly required to use the new embedded Java technology based HSQLDB database engine, or to make use of accessibility and assistive technologies. If you do not require database tables or accessibility integration or some wizards, then you do not need to download and install Java. Base (the database component) for example completely relies on Java technologies to run, but other programs (like Writer, Calc, and Impress) only need Java for special functionality (see below). "
Slashdot Mirror
I'm the one who finds this "We do all things now in the browser" highly suspect. I already have a perfectly fine Pdf viewer, called Okular. Why not just give me a link to the Pdf file, so that I can download it, use my favorite Pdf-Viewer and print it out if I like?
I would really appreciate their affords, but I just known this is not done for my convenience, but for cooperate interests. The only reason this is developed, so that they can put some Ads inside the Pdf file, prevent me from downloading it or printing it. Like Slideshare, but without Flash.
Maybe the second reason is, so I can view Pdf files in iPad or similar device, such don't have a Pdf viewer. But that is cooperate interests again, because they can much easier prevent me from installing software I like, and force me to use their software.
There are more important issues, like do the pupils need to buy all iPads now? Do they need to buy e-book-reader from only one vendor? Can they lend the books to classmates? Do they need to buy the e-Books but can't give them later to their brothers/sisters/cousins?
If S-Korea would do it right they would get the books as DRM free PDF or Pub files, nationwide, with the explicit right to copy the books and share it for free with other (future) S-Korean pupils, where the publishers are only paid for updates on the books. If the publishers don't like it, the S-Korea government is a very big customer, I think they will find a publisher under such terms.
That would do a government that actually wants to benefit from digital books. But I think they will just get one publisher, DRMed e-books and only one e-book-reader vendor.
Can we please stop to give stupid nick names for software projects? Mango for WP7, Honeycomb for Android, and much more and more stupid nick names for each version of a software. Why not call it Android 3 and be finished with it? So anyone can follow such a head line "Why are there so few honeycomb apps", I thought, what, did they mean honeypot for virus and trojans?
It's one thing to name a software, because "Java based smartphone OS from Google" is not really nice. But then to name every each version of the software? Then you have so many names, you don't know anymore what is which version.
Android 5 is then Banana, and WP8 is carrot. I don't know what Honeycomb is anymore, was it Android 4 or 5?
Why does a government must be an evil? In fact, most democratic governments are very good and at the beginning most leaders believed in something, like get a better live, peace, economic grown. Right now we have the most peaceful and prosperous times since WW2, about 60 years. It was only because the people in leadership get corrupted, the governments get more "evil".
I watched the vid in your sig, very interesting. But I don't get your very anti-government alignment. The US is not a very democratic country, with the two party system with no direct democracy and the extreme dependency of politics and Wall Street/cooperations (at the federal level).
The last economic collapse was the result of that corruption of the federal government, which is again the fault of the people which are voted for their party/president. But I think in the US the people don't have much choice anyway, plus the US president can do what ever he/she likes anyway with no accountability.
No that is the problem with corruption. And the fault of corruption in a democracy are the people.
"When business overruns its costs and credits like that, it likely goes under. Shouldn't the same apply to governments? I think it should"
Ok, so are you prepared to get a gun and shoot everyone or get shot down? Are you prepared the next time that there is a fire that half of the city goes down in flames? Are you prepared that if you got an accident you need to walk home, lay down and die?
I know you are most likely American and you are taught since you are a baby that American is the greatest country and you will be the next millionaire and the next president, you just have to work hard. If that is how life would work, we all be millionaires and presidents. But the true is that only the 1% fortune people will get rich and that the rest 99% would just die without a government.
Corruption was always the reason why states fail and the fault of corruption in a democracy are the people which are not paying attention to their elected leaders. Did you inform yourself about the budged of your city? Did you hold the major accountable?
If you are happy with Gnome, stay with Gnome.
For myself, I like Kate, Kile, Dolphin, Kaffeine, Amarok, KOrganizer, Klipper, Kmail, Yakuage, Konsole, KTorrent. I like the plasma desktop and I like the 3D effects. I like the full customization of KDE, but I'm only using maybe 5% of that, the rest are still the default settings, but it's a good feeling that if I need it I can change it. And I like the various plasma widgets, like battery, knetworkmanager, printer applet, device notifier. But I'm a really conservative desktop user, I don't have my desktop full of widgets and I don't use the activities.
You just summed up what's wrong with copyrights and software and drug patents (and normal patents but to a lesser extent).
"People have varying needs to make use of your products. Step up to offer the solution, or get out of the way."
I watched the videos and they build a nice phone. But why oh why they always need to spoil it to use a mirror for the display? I could puke when I see the background and the lights are all mirroring on the phone. How can I use that outside in the sun where I usually would use a phone? Why they can't invest the 5$ more for an anti-glare display?
Because most of the CEOs in the US are working for a) them self and b) for the shareholders. Most of them are not working for the interest of the company. That's also why they have 20 times the income of other countries like Germany which similar large and successful companies and they are not held responsible for a failure, but get big bonuses.
What do you think how an ex-MS manager will run a company? He will get with his buddy how can they manage to increase their personal income and increase the shareholders values. They are not interested in what will happen to Nokia in 10 years from now. Even if they totally wrack the company, they get a big bonus and the shareholders are happy because they got a big dividend while it lasted and can now sell their stock and buy stock from another company.
Also if your company is big enough it doesn't matter how you run it anyway, if you increase the shareholders value. If the company gets to bankruptcy you just call your buddies in the fed to get a nice bailout. "Market forces" and "let the market be itself" my ass. If you bailout people it's socialism but if you bailout cooperations it's (now I'm missing a word).
That's funny. If I enter in Firefox http://apple/ then the browser puts me to http://apple.com./ Also for http://slashdot/ and for others. Maybe Firefox already knows about the new ICANN stuff?
So now a company not only have to register all permutations of their name + all the known TLDs but now permutations of their name * permutations of their name. Example corp. had to get example.com, example.net, and example.org. Adding .mobi and .xxx 'forces' them to get example.xxx and example.mobi. Adding this new BS from ICANN 'forces' them for example.example, and any modification of example.example.
Old system: modifications(example) + [.com, .net, .org, .mobi, .xxx, ...] .net, .org, .mobi, .xxx, ...] + modifications(example)
New system: modifications(example) + [.com,
In which modifications(x) gets all possible but still readable modifications of the word x, like examplee, exxample, examplle, etc.
What do you talking about, of course they done a costs and benefits analysis. For them the costs was 0 but the benefits are like 100 Billion $. That was a clear win.
"Fortunately, the US Department of Commerce / NTIA may not renew its contract with ICANN."
Maybe that's the reason why they killed the TLDs now, so they get one last big bonus in their bank accounts.
"First you have to admit that patents have at least on principle some validity. Someone has an idea for a commercial new product, describes it in a patent and get some limited protection. It is totally unfair of large company to read such patents and implement the idea at a lower cost without paying licenses."
No that is not how patents are working. With patents (not the BS business or software patents) you have a working machine, not just an idea. I can come up with thousands of ideas every day, should I be able to patent them all? No, only if I build a machine I can patent it.
And that is the one big problem with software patents, it's a patent on an idea, that can be implemented in multiple ways. I can implement a otto-motor* in just one way and if I do it in any other way it's not a otto-motor anymore and I can apply a new patent. Did you ever saw any source code with a software patent? No, because it claims the idea of an algorithm that can be implemented in anything.
"So this institution will help small-to-medium French companies defend their portfolio. The initial idea is no to collect patents but to propose services. Indeed they will put together defensible cases by polling patents in some cases, but the stated aim is to get licenses income for the companies, not for this new institution by itself. This is not the same as trolling I think."
So first the government is creating a system in which the small business owner cannot defend their ideas and now they creating a government institution to protect the small business owner against that system (that they created)? Why they just don't admit that the current patent system is broken and fix it? What they are planning to do now is spending millions of tax money to protect small business owner from a broken system instead to fix the system.
"Essentially the French government doesn't want to see its industrialization monies get wasted too much. What's bad about this ?"
Just fix the broken patent system. Is is really so hard to see where the idiocy lies? This institution is just admitting that the current government have no power against the big cooperations and the word trade agreements.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrol_engine
Mango? You got to be kidding me. It's way worse then Honeypot. What's next? Orange? Or Kiwi?
Yeah you can be a dick about anything.
"Every time they offer something for X$, there's someone who comes along and says "If only it was available for X/2$ I'd buy it. But if you actually lowered it, most of them would now say X/4$. Or X/8$. Reality is that we know the truth, those who really liked it already bought it at the high price and those who don't will find some other excuse not to buy it."
True, but what is wrong with that? That is capitalism, why should I pay more if I can get it for less (or free)? What all the media industry want is communism, aka copyright. The only difference is that the entities controlling it are not governments but private entities. But where is the difference if all media would belong to the state or if all media would belong to a few media cooperations? That is what copyright law have now become, that media belongs to a few cooperations that claim to represent all creative work.
Furthermore, the few cooperations have such a power of the government that they are creating laws that benefit only them. The Mickey Mouse Law is the prominent example, in with Disney pushed the US government to extent copyright just before Mickey Mouse would go in to public domain.
I don't see any moral obligation to follow the current copyright laws. It is not beneficial to creating more cultural works, and we have now a different technological landscape that we had 200 years ego. I see no moral in paying the overpriced DVDs when the film in the cinemas pays for itself in the millions and the production costs for a DVD are so low. I see no moral in paying for music CDs for the artists gets only a tiny fraction of the price.
I really wish they would shut down every site out there that illegal links or shares copyrighted material, so that people have no way at all anymore to download movies and music. Then I would see the whole movie and music industry go in to oblivion because nobody will buy there crap anymore.
Are they really believing that if people couldn't share the movies and music, the people would suddenly buy more stuff? If anything, they would buy less stuff because they don't know anymore new artists or new movies.
As I was 18 I used a lot torrents, and I mean a lot. Like 5 movies and games every week. Now I don't use that anymore, do I buy more movies and more games? No, not at all. Why? Because that crap is just so expensive and I found so many new alternatives for entertainment. Like youtube where I watch news and starcraft 2 movies, and southparkstudios.com, and collegehumour.com. And I read a lot of blogs and news on the internet. For music I have youtube and lastfm and other services.
If I go to the Mediamarkt I see it why I stopped to buy new movies or music and why others are not buying, too. I see it because all the DVDs and all the music CDs are laying there around for years and nobody touches them. Because they are so freaky expensive. 20Euro for a old DVD movie, 30Euro and more for new movies and 30Euro and more for TV series.
Every time I go to the shop and see a nice movie, I see the price and I think: do I really want that DVD for that price? And the answer is every time: no, because it's just too expensive for just one movie that I will watch one day and then it will lay around collecting dust. If the DVDs would be like 5Euro each for new movies and under 5Euro for old DVDs I would buy them. But not for that price, no way. Because I have so much free entertainment.
Well, if you actually clicked on the links provided then you would see that the Java part runs on the server and the web browser gets only HTML. That's also why I wrote 100% HTML, no plugins needed.
You are are .NET shop and that is your fault, but did you know about Java and RAP?
http://www.eclipse.org/rap/
http://www.eclipse.org/rap/demos/
It runs in all web browsers, 100% HTML, no plugins needed, and is very rich experience, it is like a real desktop application but in your browser.
Talking about bad examples:
"Imagine if for an extra $500 you could have bought plumbing for your house that would never need maintenance, or whose maintenance would be a low fixed cost every few years? Unless you are a professional plumber chances are that would be a good deal. It is the same with Chrome OS - the target is people who don't want to fiddle with their computers, but actually need to create documents/etc (as opposed to the consumption-oriented tablet)."
Yes it would be great if the plumbing is still in the house and not in the cloud. Like people who working with their computer need their computer to be operable all the time and have access to their data all the time, I need my plumbing all the time.
Why this push for take it all or nothing for cloud services? Why not lets have your application local, your data local and have synced the data to the cloud? That why you could have the best of the two worlds.
"and remote data is protected by whatever services you use (which inevitably means more protection than the average home user provides)"
No your data in the cloud is not protected at all. My data at home is at least protected because it's local in my home. In my home I have a whole bunch of protection, from thieves and from the police. In the cloud you have no rights at all, nothing, none. All you have is a promise by the cloud company that your data is "save". But neither you can sue the company if it's not save nor you have any special rights of privacy.
"and it runs great on cheap hardware. Cheap also means low-power-use so you get 8+ hours out of a charge."
Yeah right. JavaScript and Flash is so cheap to run. That is why this new laptop with runs only a browser have "... estimated at 3.5 hours" of battery.
"The device is designed to sync, so when it breaks you can be back up and running with a spare in minutes."
if you have a T1 connection to Google maybe. But with normal DSL with 60kbytes/sec up and 300kbytes/sec down it takes longer then the time I need to copy from my external hard disk.
"Yes because the majority of computer users know how what rsync or dd are let alone how to use them? I'd guess that 1% or less of computer users these days have ever touched a *nix command line."
Did you missed my part about open a file manager? Open file manager and drag&drop the files to an external hard disk. They are cost like 50$ for 500GB. There are also a lot of backup/synchronization GUI applications.
"This is where the "magic" cloud works."
Except if it doesn't. Like if your internet connection is broken, or slow, or the servers are down for what ever reason. The chances that my laptop will broke down are very very slim, and that my data is lost is very slim, too. The chances that the servers are down, I don't have any internet connection or that the internet connection will lag are so much higher. Plus, you have the inconvenience to be online every time and that despite that I have such a powerful computer device with almost unlimited data storage.
"There is a lot Google does right, but it simply can't deliver a full working environment. Fundamental problems in its product management culture will have to be resolved before anything on the scale of a Chrome OS will work."
Not only that but the whole "cloud" concept for private people doesn't make any sense at all. Storage and CPU power is so cheap, but compared to that the connection to the internet is very expensive and very unreliable. Even in high-tech countries like the US, or Germany, the latency is very height, like 60ms up to 100ms (compare that with the computer latency with is around 1ms), and it's expensive compared to 0$ for the local hard disk. If we are compare G3/G4/UMTS then it's much more expensive, slow, and unreliable.
The whole concept of cloud had made sense back in the days when storage and CPU power was so expensive that only the universities could afford it. So you had at home a relative cheap box to connect to the university computer to run your heavy computations.
For private consumers it just a big disadvantage. For firms it would make some more sense to outsource your I.T. But you should know if it makes sense to make your whole business depended on some second firm in the cloud.
For Google of course it makes perfect sense to push for the cloud. They make their money of advertising and the people's data. So of course they want you to be connected 24/7 to their services and store your data on their servers. But it's just stupid for anyone who do real work with their computer. But for facebook/hulu/youtube people , maybe it's ok if the laptop is so much cheaper. But then Google don't need to invest in the cloud-software stuff like Google Docs.
The real question is if I can install some real Linux on it, or is it locked down?
""even if you lose your computer, you can just log in to another Kogan Agora Chromium Laptop and get right back to work."
Yeah right, as if you always have a top DSL connection everywhere. And if you loose your connection are you loosing any data, too?
With Linux it's just so easy to backup your data. Because in Linux everything is just a file, you can use the simple tools like rsync or dd. Or just open a file manager and copy your whole system to some hard disk. Trust me it works. Take a laptop, with the same system, and just copy /home to some external hard disk. Then copy it back to the new laptop and you have all settings and all data on your new laptop. No magic "cloud" is needed. You can even just copy your whole system to the new computer and you don't need to install anything on the new laptop.
I still think the whole "cloud for private people" is just a scam for your money so that you need always either expensive DSL connection at home or G3 or UMTS for your laptop. The idea is, even if you use your laptop, with they have now plenty of data capacity for very cheap (like 500GB for 50$) you still need a constant internet connection either with wireless or G3/UMTS.
"Spain’s creative industries generate about €62 billion in annual added value for Spain’s €1 trillion economy. They also employ 1.2 million, in a country with five million unemployed, just over 21% of the working-age population."
If they would like to foster their creative industries they would limit the copyright, if not abandon it altogether. Where all the neo-liberals that we all known and love for free market, free trade, liberalization of the markets etc. if it comes to copyright law?
In the only instance where market liberalization should be really done (in the "I.P." market) they push for more government protection, but in every other market where it doesn't make sense and it harms the economy (labor market, financial market) they all push for less government intervention. Such hypocrite assholes.
"Oracle is swinging around their Java assets like a machete" WTF are you talking about? The only issue with Java was so far with Google's Android, but because Google implemented their own JVM and Oracle have some patents on that technology. It's like any other stupid software patent out there.
Java is only used in OOorg for the database access. That's it, nothing more. It would be trivial to remove all Java from OOorg. In fact you can just do that: go to the preferences and remove the checkbox.
From their wiki site:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Java_and_OpenOffice.org
"Java is required for complete OpenOffice.org functionality. Java is mainly required to use the new embedded Java technology based HSQLDB database engine, or to make use of accessibility and assistive technologies. If you do not require database tables or accessibility integration or some wizards, then you do not need to download and install Java. Base (the database component) for example completely relies on Java technologies to run, but other programs (like Writer, Calc, and Impress) only need Java for special functionality (see below). "