You seem to be completely AGREEING with what you attempting to be disagreeing with.
Or perhaps you are just misunderstanding. I'm saying the way it is works fine because you are not limited if you have a convergent device and that if you want to limit yourself when it makes sense to (say on a desktop) then you can do that too.
You're stating that the system should have two modes, desktop mode and tablet mode.
Yes but I'm not saying you should restrict it and be explicit about it, for example I can use photoshop on a tablet with a stylus even though it is a desktop application.
Divest itself of the operating system business. The handwriting was on the wall 10 years ago that there is a coming race to zero for the price of what an operating system is worth to the end-user.
errr....you mean drop the business that has 90+% market share and earns them tens of billions of dollars per year? That's how they do business in the bizarro world. They still make record profits thanks almost entirely to that business.
The workflows on mobile devices is entirely different than a PC.
That's why you have the desktop, with all your traditional desktop applications and the metro interface when using the device in tablet mode, and if you never do that - say your device is a desktop - then you just don't use it in metro mode at all, frankly why would you want to? That said this whole thing would be avoided if they left the start menu in. This is why the experience of convergent devices running Android is so poor, you still end up with this fullscreen (yes I know some Samsung devices can do windows with some applications) interface that is primarily touch driven, which is like Windows 8's Metro except that you don't have a desktop to use in mouse/keyboard mode.
Really the people who can't manage using Windows 8 are hardly going to do particularly well on other platforms, for example I work the same on OSX as I do on Windows 8. The Mac doesn't have a start menu (which is probably why I don't lament the loss of it in Windows 8) but it has a Dock (like the Taskbar) and Finder (like Explorer) and Spotlight cmd+space (like Search win+S) and a desktop. It even has a touch-centric launcher called Launchpad (like the Metro start screen) if you're into that sort of thing.
It comes down to: would you rather have Security, or Freedom?
They aren't absolutes. You never have 100% security or 100% freedom and most people would rather a device that can only access a particular app store (Apple's or Google's) as the tradeoff is a much lower security risk (see TFA which states that only 0.1% of the malware is in Google Play). It isn't a case of "you use an iPhone and they took away your freedom!", that's just rubbish fear-mongering, nothing was taken away at all, you have just chosen a device that has certain particular limitations. For some reason (actually it's clearly because they are pushing an agenda) some in the freedom camp like to portray this as your freedom being taken away, but it clearly isn't.
Saying that you shouldn't choose a device that has software limitations doesn't sound nearly as nefarious as "the corporations are stealing your freedom" so I get the reason for the FUD but I really wish it would stop and then perhaps such people would be taken seriously.
While Android is off the Linux Kernel, it isn't GNU/Linux.
Of course it isn't, but who cares about that? When you can replace glibc with uClibc or bionic or whatever and various other components is there really any need to separate it from GNU/Linux other than to point out that GNU/Linux distributions have largely failed in the consumer space where non-GNU distributions like Android have done well? Given that I really don't think that has anything to do with GNU I can't see why differentiating between them has any importance at all.
Realistically you can never guarantee what you put on the internet has ever been deleted, but then most of us have known that ever since the internet was invented.
Just relax and try to discuss this in a more measured manner, you're clearly getting extremely worked up and emotional about this issue so just calm down and tell me what the real problem is. So your profile exists for 2 weeks after you asked them to delete it, how does that affect your ability to not use facebook?
Wow you really seem to be pretty emotionally tied to this. The point made here was "You have the option to leave if you want to.". So your account still exists for a few weeks, big deal. That doesn't mean you need to log in to it. Post a final message (even change all your personal details if you feel the need), schedule it for deletion and walk away. What's the problem?
Not today you don't. If you decide to leave today you will not be allowed to do so for a couple of weeks. Facebook will keep your account active for two weeks after you request it be deleted. Just an FYI...
And for some reason you just won't be able to resist signing in to it?
My daughter has an iPhone without a data plan, and I can send her iMessages when she is connected to Wifi and when she is not, I simply turn off iMessage on my phone and send her plain texts and it works.
Isn't having to work out whether or not she is on wifi and then changing settings on your phone to accommodate that really annoying?
While Stallman does hold his belief that proprietary software and proprietary software vendors are "evil" I don't recall ever seeing anything like that in reference to LLVM or BSD.
As other posters have pointed out, there's an option in iOS to default to SMS if iMessage fails. Which seems about right. You have it switched on. But anyone who doesn't want to incur SMS charges can have it switched off.
How do you know that the message you are about to send will be an iMessage and not an SMS?
A company (Microsoft) with a dominant position in a market (desktop operating systems) is using that position to gain traction in another market (Internet Search)?
I doubt that would hold up anymore, these days people do their personal computing on tablets and smartphones too. If you combine that as the 'personal computer' market then Microsoft's share dwindles.
Sounds like all of CPAN, Ruby gems, and the Python "pear" modules. "I never bothered to learn the industry standard one, so I'll just invent my own, to include some feature everybody else already learned was a bad, bad, bad idea!!!"
So what is the "industry standard" for language/framework package management?
which to me says 'we're all rather incompetent and need another juggler in there to do the hard work for us".
That's just an example of NIH syndrome, do you also re-implement all of your own collections in C++ instead of using the STL or Boost libraries? It isn't about having the hard work done for you, it's about not re-inventing the wheel just for the sake of it.
There are no "many eyes" on Android The most important parts, the drivers, are closed source binary blobs in most cases. It is ungodly easy to hide crap inside those blobs.
The key is to differentiate between Android and AOSP, there are many eyes on AOSP but devices don't actually ship with AOSP, as you say they ship with many binary blobs that are platform services, UI layer, stock & 3rd party applications and drivers for all the hardware. The Android Open Source Project is open but (AFAIK) there is no device that runs Android that is open.
it's really nasty stuff like the recent Android SMS exploit where just getting an SMS can infect you.
Which one is that? I did see a recent SMS exploit but it relied on the user using the Facebook app, being presented a particular ad from Facebook's ad network, clicking on that ad and following it to a fake version of google play then downloading a malicious application and only then are they available to the SMS vulnerability. Perhaps you are thinking of another one but that's the only one I've seen recently.
Really? Where can I get a version of either Chrome OS using the Gecko engine or Firefox OS using the WebKit engine?
I think his point is that it could be done in theory, just like you could theoretically replace Trident in Windows with a wrapped version of WebKit that has the same API calls. But I tend to agree with you that it isn't practical unless you want to fork the entire project and continue maintenance and development yourself, maintaining compatibility with something like AOSP isn't going to be easy (or rather timely) when the development process is closed.
I'm pretty sure Microsoft have basically killed it in favor of having full Windows and Windows Phone rather than having a 3rd option in the middle that isn't really very useful. The $300 price point is where those x86 Windows tablets should have always been and RT should never have existed, now the perception is that a $300 Windows tablet is most likely a crippled RT device.
It's only the simple basic stuff that has been rebuilt as either Java or NDK applications, not sure what there is pre-existing in GTK/Qt that works great on a phone and is so much better than the Android versions.
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You seem to be completely AGREEING with what you attempting to be disagreeing with.
Or perhaps you are just misunderstanding. I'm saying the way it is works fine because you are not limited if you have a convergent device and that if you want to limit yourself when it makes sense to (say on a desktop) then you can do that too.
You're stating that the system should have two modes, desktop mode and tablet mode.
Yes but I'm not saying you should restrict it and be explicit about it, for example I can use photoshop on a tablet with a stylus even though it is a desktop application.
Divest itself of the operating system business. The handwriting was on the wall 10 years ago that there is a coming race to zero for the price of what an operating system is worth to the end-user.
errr....you mean drop the business that has 90+% market share and earns them tens of billions of dollars per year? That's how they do business in the bizarro world. They still make record profits thanks almost entirely to that business.
The workflows on mobile devices is entirely different than a PC.
That's why you have the desktop, with all your traditional desktop applications and the metro interface when using the device in tablet mode, and if you never do that - say your device is a desktop - then you just don't use it in metro mode at all, frankly why would you want to? That said this whole thing would be avoided if they left the start menu in. This is why the experience of convergent devices running Android is so poor, you still end up with this fullscreen (yes I know some Samsung devices can do windows with some applications) interface that is primarily touch driven, which is like Windows 8's Metro except that you don't have a desktop to use in mouse/keyboard mode.
Really the people who can't manage using Windows 8 are hardly going to do particularly well on other platforms, for example I work the same on OSX as I do on Windows 8. The Mac doesn't have a start menu (which is probably why I don't lament the loss of it in Windows 8) but it has a Dock (like the Taskbar) and Finder (like Explorer) and Spotlight cmd+space (like Search win+S) and a desktop. It even has a touch-centric launcher called Launchpad (like the Metro start screen) if you're into that sort of thing.
It comes down to: would you rather have Security, or Freedom?
They aren't absolutes. You never have 100% security or 100% freedom and most people would rather a device that can only access a particular app store (Apple's or Google's) as the tradeoff is a much lower security risk (see TFA which states that only 0.1% of the malware is in Google Play). It isn't a case of "you use an iPhone and they took away your freedom!", that's just rubbish fear-mongering, nothing was taken away at all, you have just chosen a device that has certain particular limitations. For some reason (actually it's clearly because they are pushing an agenda) some in the freedom camp like to portray this as your freedom being taken away, but it clearly isn't.
Saying that you shouldn't choose a device that has software limitations doesn't sound nearly as nefarious as "the corporations are stealing your freedom" so I get the reason for the FUD but I really wish it would stop and then perhaps such people would be taken seriously.
While Android is off the Linux Kernel, it isn't GNU/Linux.
Of course it isn't, but who cares about that? When you can replace glibc with uClibc or bionic or whatever and various other components is there really any need to separate it from GNU/Linux other than to point out that GNU/Linux distributions have largely failed in the consumer space where non-GNU distributions like Android have done well? Given that I really don't think that has anything to do with GNU I can't see why differentiating between them has any importance at all.
Realistically you can never guarantee what you put on the internet has ever been deleted, but then most of us have known that ever since the internet was invented.
That's correct. That's the big deal.
Why is that a big deal?
Just relax and try to discuss this in a more measured manner, you're clearly getting extremely worked up and emotional about this issue so just calm down and tell me what the real problem is. So your profile exists for 2 weeks after you asked them to delete it, how does that affect your ability to not use facebook?
Wow you really seem to be pretty emotionally tied to this. The point made here was "You have the option to leave if you want to.". So your account still exists for a few weeks, big deal. That doesn't mean you need to log in to it. Post a final message (even change all your personal details if you feel the need), schedule it for deletion and walk away. What's the problem?
Not today you don't. If you decide to leave today you will not be allowed to do so for a couple of weeks. Facebook will keep your account active for two weeks after you request it be deleted. Just an FYI ...
And for some reason you just won't be able to resist signing in to it?
My daughter has an iPhone without a data plan, and I can send her iMessages when she is connected to Wifi and when she is not, I simply turn off iMessage on my phone and send her plain texts and it works.
Isn't having to work out whether or not she is on wifi and then changing settings on your phone to accommodate that really annoying?
While Stallman does hold his belief that proprietary software and proprietary software vendors are "evil" I don't recall ever seeing anything like that in reference to LLVM or BSD.
As other posters have pointed out, there's an option in iOS to default to SMS if iMessage fails. Which seems about right. You have it switched on. But anyone who doesn't want to incur SMS charges can have it switched off.
How do you know that the message you are about to send will be an iMessage and not an SMS?
A company (Microsoft) with a dominant position in a market (desktop operating systems) is using that position to gain traction in another market (Internet Search)?
I doubt that would hold up anymore, these days people do their personal computing on tablets and smartphones too. If you combine that as the 'personal computer' market then Microsoft's share dwindles.
Sounds like all of CPAN, Ruby gems, and the Python "pear" modules. "I never bothered to learn the industry standard one, so I'll just invent my own, to include some feature everybody else already learned was a bad, bad, bad idea!!!"
So what is the "industry standard" for language/framework package management?
which to me says 'we're all rather incompetent and need another juggler in there to do the hard work for us".
That's just an example of NIH syndrome, do you also re-implement all of your own collections in C++ instead of using the STL or Boost libraries? It isn't about having the hard work done for you, it's about not re-inventing the wheel just for the sake of it.
There are no "many eyes" on Android The most important parts, the drivers, are closed source binary blobs in most cases. It is ungodly easy to hide crap inside those blobs.
The key is to differentiate between Android and AOSP, there are many eyes on AOSP but devices don't actually ship with AOSP, as you say they ship with many binary blobs that are platform services, UI layer, stock & 3rd party applications and drivers for all the hardware. The Android Open Source Project is open but (AFAIK) there is no device that runs Android that is open.
it's really nasty stuff like the recent Android SMS exploit where just getting an SMS can infect you.
Which one is that? I did see a recent SMS exploit but it relied on the user using the Facebook app, being presented a particular ad from Facebook's ad network, clicking on that ad and following it to a fake version of google play then downloading a malicious application and only then are they available to the SMS vulnerability. Perhaps you are thinking of another one but that's the only one I've seen recently.
Really? Where can I get a version of either Chrome OS using the Gecko engine or Firefox OS using the WebKit engine?
I think his point is that it could be done in theory, just like you could theoretically replace Trident in Windows with a wrapped version of WebKit that has the same API calls. But I tend to agree with you that it isn't practical unless you want to fork the entire project and continue maintenance and development yourself, maintaining compatibility with something like AOSP isn't going to be easy (or rather timely) when the development process is closed.
What are you even reading? I understand that perfectly which is why I explicitly pointed out exactly that fact: It didn't remove IE, it left the entire HTML rendering engine there which is why Windows continued working. I'm not sure how you can misinterpret something so clear.
I'm pretty sure Microsoft have basically killed it in favor of having full Windows and Windows Phone rather than having a 3rd option in the middle that isn't really very useful. The $300 price point is where those x86 Windows tablets should have always been and RT should never have existed, now the perception is that a $300 Windows tablet is most likely a crippled RT device.
It's only the simple basic stuff that has been rebuilt as either Java or NDK applications, not sure what there is pre-existing in GTK/Qt that works great on a phone and is so much better than the Android versions.
What's that got to do with xbox?
Last I checked I could not run anything I wanted on my XBOX/360/One.
You probably can't on any major game console, what's your point?
Some professor wrote a small utility that removed IE, and Windows continued working.
It didn't remove IE, it left the entire HTML rendering engine there which is why Windows continued working.
Webgl is also supported.
But while many devices support OpenGL ES 3.0, WebGL does not so the only way to use OpenGL ES 3.0 is to develop native applications.