I mean, there's something bordering on bats**t crazy about adding a second CPU and simultaneously cutting the power capacity by 25%.
To be fair that SoC uses next to no power so it isn't a real drain on the system at all. The problem is cutting the power capacity by 25% when the only significant saving in power usage is due to the screen. That's great if you're just doing web browsing or email or whatever but if you're using the CPU and GPU for things like, well I don't know, professional work then just because the screen uses 30% less power isn't going to make up for the reduction in power capacity. You need that 25% average saving across the board which hasn't happened hence the poor battery life.
MS can look at 5/10/15 percent of people to take the time to do something and 'claim' 95/90/85 percent LOVE IT
They can claim whatever they want to but really its effectiveness is measured in how many people actually click-through, even if you don't opt-out it's completely ineffective if you don't click on it. But all the more reason to take my advice and turn it off rather than pretending everything's hopeless and continuing your agenda to try and get people to leave it on.
to further goals the OP was saying didn't matter because he could turn it off currently.
It's one line of text in the start menu, which you can turn off and if your workflow is to launch programs through one of the other many means of doing so you wouldn't even see it anyway or failing that you could install a start menu replacement or failing that you could even install a different shell. There are so many solutions to this very minor issue (remember, it's one line of text) so why are you being such a defeatist about it?
What percent of users do you think did what you did? I'm guessing less than 5%.
Well firstly your "guess" is completely unsubstantiated but wouldn't that be all the more reason to spread the solution? Unless of course you want it to be accepted to the point where it can't be turned off, if that's your agenda then by all means continue trying to suppress that knowledge.
Given NINETY-FIVE PERCENT ACCEPTANCE rate, MS will no doubt disable your ability to turn them off before too long.
But there isn't a 95% acceptance rate, that's something you just made up out of nothing. I'm telling you the solution to the problem and your response is to whine about your made up fantasy future where that solution might not exist. What's your solution then? Or are you just knuckling under.
I merely pointed out that Java and C# are protected by similar licenses
No, wrong. They are not protected by similar licenses at all - what I'm talking about is the community promise which is not a license at all. What you pointed out was the license for the JDK (Java Development Kit, which is not all of Java, the license for the JDK does not apply to other parts of Java) and then asserted that you think the Community Promise is some kind of novel legal concept that has never been tried in court, which is obviously untrue. Now you have changed your mind and think the Community Promise is a license and that it is similar to the JDK license while even a cursory reading of them will demonstrate to you that they are not similar at all.
I don't need a desktop operating system that serves ads to me.
It's all well and good to hate Microsoft for whatever reason but when the solution to this is so simple and obvious do you really need to pretend it's beyond your abilities? Unpin the tiles from the start menu and uncheck the box in start menu options to "Show suggestions in start menu" to turn off that one line of text.
I've got Windows 10 on one of my machines and that's what I did to solve that issue, you're welcome.
Nah, the same kinds of arguments you're making here are the ones Java programmers made a decade ago.
No, you only think that because as you have continually demonstrated you fail to understand the legal concepts involved here. It's really not very complex so I can't see why you're having such difficulty with it. You can't even explain what you're concerned about because you don't understand it anyway.
Yeah, notice that it's an actual license, with legal weight, not some kind of novel legal concept that has never been tried in court.
You actually think a covenant not to sue and promissory estoppel are novel legal concepts that have never been tried in court? Really?
You're better off with the license, legally speaking, than some vague 'promise.'
But what we are talking about is not "some vague promise", it just appears vague to you because you are unfamiliar with the concept. And perhaps you haven't heard of Oracle Vs Google lawsuit? How did the JDK license help them out there?
They can still sue you, or they can change the terms at any time.
Sue you over what specifically in the context of the promise with relation to C#? What terms do you understand them to be able to change retroactively (of course retroactive changes are what is important here)? What is the specific thing you are concerned about here? It's seems your objection is based on the fact that you don't really understand the legal principles.
Java and C# are protected by the same kinds of licenses, so you're deluded if you think the kinds of things happening to Java users can't happen to you.
Can you cite those licenses? I don't believe Java is protected by anything akin to Microsoft's legally-binding Community/Open Specification Promises (covenant not to sue), hence the Oracle V Google litigation.
Knowledge is protection. Afraid that some people won't get the word, then send a text to everyone. Have an opt-out at least which could include a wavier.
You're being pretty silly if you think that sending a text message is a valid response here and why would anybody want to opt out of having a known dangerous that is defective by design replaced with something safe?
In a place as litigous as the US there is absolutely no reason to go to the effort of producing a waiver for a product that is known to have design problems causing injury and/or property damage. Who would even want to sign that?
How far do we take this though? Fire is one thing, but I can see this used in other ways.
See what being used in other ways? It's not like this is some legislation or new technology here.
For example, an evil version of Apple pushing out an update that bricks any phone older than an iPhone 5 because the 4S and earlier won't be receiving security updates, and thus could be considered insecure and dangerous.
What's that got to do with this scenario? If they wanted to do that they could have done it and if they want to do it in future they could do it regardless of whether this happens or not.
There is a point where a device maker makes it clear that the owner of the device is 100% responsible for it, in a way that can't be wiggled out of in court. That way, if a phone turns into a bong, it isn't the phone maker's responsibility in any way, shape, or form that it happened.
Sure, why not but I doubt many people want to sign the agreement that says "we have no responsibility for this product, if it explodes and maims you it's not our problem". Would you sign an agreement when buying a new car that said you are solely responsible and the manufacturer has no obligation whatsoever going forward. You can have all the freedom you want so long as you're happy to take the responsibility that goes with it.
For example how about you get sued by the EPA for driving a diesel VW and polluting the environment rather than VW.
Ok then well go sign a waiver that says that the defective phone and the implications of your continued use of it are your responsibility and you accept that you know the risks.
Your insurance company probably wouldn't be too happy about that.
Its being forced that sucks. What if the next stage of protecting us is disabling phones that don't have offer most recent OS versions on the basis they are not secure or safe?
So they shouldn't protect the physical safety of people from a device that you carry in your pocket that is known to have a fault causing it to catch fire on the basis of fear of something that in theory could have always happened yet never has and for which there is no evidence to suggest it ever will. In fact I'd almost welcome your scenario because at least that would mean that Android devices were getting timely updates.
I'm not sure where you got the idea that it was a "free" replacement, though that certainly does happen if it's a defect under warranty and it's swapped over on the spot. While the iPhone does cost a little more than flagship Android phones like the Pixel or Galaxy you do get those advantages of things like a much better curated app store without all the malware and software updates which you get immediately and on my primary communication device things like timely security updates are VERY important.
I'm not sure what your agenda is that drives you to brand anybody who values something different to you as a "cultist" or "more money than sense". Sure if I want timely updates on Android I could switch to a Pixel - I don't think I actually have any purchased apps anyway - but that's even more expensive!
Really what I was hoping with Android was that the freedom to modify the OS and all the different carrier options would lead to some awesome innovations, some features that would be hugely compelling to end users but ultimately it's just come down to, as you summarized: if you're willing to sacrifice things like timely updates then you can get something cheaper.
it's always Apple which is pushing the envelope on thinness, and iPhone buyers are very cult-like in their behavior, insisting on buying iPhones no matter what without even looking at alternatives
You seem to be generalizing a bit there, if you want iOS then there is no choice but an iPhone - thinner or not. I don't think many phone buyers will be put off to look at alternatives because the new device is thinner than the last one.
But then again why do you think they don't look at alternatives? There is no doubt Apple's app store is better curated, you don't need to worry about whether the phone you choose will get software updates or not and if something goes wrong you can just go into an Apple store and get a replacement on the spot. That's pretty compelling, I'm sure a great many people look at features like that and then look at what Android offers that offsets all those benefits, there is the flexibility of being able to load custom ROMs, fix problems and do updates yourself but outside of the geek community who really wants to do that for their phone? Most of the Android OEMs are just copying Apple these days anyway so what is the specific feature(s) that Android offers to the average user that makes you believe they are so irrational as to ignore in favor of Apple's brand?
ISVs made Windows versions of their apps ages ago when their customers pressured them to because they wanted to move to Windows from whatever they were using before (usually UNIX); this is no different.
Of course they did because at that time they expended huge amounts of effort supporting the various different platforms but when the trend of everybody having their own flavour of UNIX on their own hardware died out in favour of a more standardized x86 PC platform that ended up running Windows for better or worse the ISVs saw the value in consolidating on the one dominant platform. Sure they could have kept spending resources supporting SunOS, Xenix, IRIX, HP-UX, Minix, et al but what would be the value in that?
So the question really is: what advantage does a different OS give them that would be worth the expensive and effort of getting ISVs to make new versions, and of getting your IT department to switch? Well, we can go back in time and ask the very same question of companies in the 1990s, when they all switched to Windows.
Well actually we can't go back in time, perhaps you can enlighten us as to what you think that answer was?
Am I the only one here who remembers a time before Windows?
We had many different very expensive workstations that had different operating systems - SGI systems running IRIX and Sun systems running Solaris for example - then eventually it made sense to just buy Windows-based workstations because they were much much cheaper and more powerful thanks to economies of scale.
If companies were actually serious about putting this kind of effort into a different OS, many more would have switched by now.
Why would they? If their applications run just fine on Windows or macOS then why would have switched? What extraoardinary advantage does a different OS give them that would be worth the enormous effort and huge expenses involved in recruiting and managing talent to build capable and feature-comparable versions of industry leading content-creation applications? Like say you run architectural firm and your draftsmen, engineers, architects, whatever come in, load up Revit on their Windows machines and do their work what would be the value for them in investing the untold sums of money and effort in building a Revit competitor just to run a different operating system?
not to mention its near constant attempts to sell me shit because I didn't invest in the enterprise edition
How is it making these attempts to sell you stuff? The only places i've seen advertising are a one-line of text in the start menu (which I just turned off in the start menu options) and the default tiles in the start menu (which I removed because I don't see any value in the live tiles) and they certainly aren't "constant".
Open source is fine and dandy, but the real killer feature is being able to easily fix a bug in the OS yourself, deploy and test to yourself, and share with others.
That's the killer feature of "Free Software" (or at least that's the idea), this is Open Source. Though of course it's a bit of a moving target for Free Software what with things like Tivoization (addressed with GPLv3) and "cloud computing" (Affero GPL) so what is and isn't "Free Software" can be a bit confusing in itself.
There is a hugely diminishing return. I guarantee if you double-blind test 1000 random people and place them 10 feet from two identical 70" 4K TV's both playing the same identical video, one playing it from 1080P video upscaled to 4K and the other playing the 4K native, almost nobody would be able to notice any difference, resulting in about a 50/50 chance.
Well it depends on what your eyesight is like, how big your TV is and how far you sit from it. The same as with 720p vs 1080p or retina-level screens on smartphones, tablets or PCs. Obviously if those variables align such that you can't tell the difference then it has no value to you so you don't invest in it, otherwise it does. But like I said, if you can't tell the difference then fine, it doesn't matter to you so why are you so worried about it?
If they focused on things that actually matter, like HDR or color space, it would be different.
They are doing HDR. Netflix aren't beholden to only doing the things where you can tell the difference.
Yeah yeah, we heard the same thing going DVD to Bluray and going from standard smartphone/tablet/laptop screens to retina-level displays and now we're seeing it yet again with 1080p to 4k. Yes not everybody can tell the difference, if you can't then obviously this isn't relevant to you, for those that can it is relevant to them.
If only things could be decrypted without "hardware decryption features."
They can, there's plenty of different processors that support 10-bit HVEC decoding, in fact there's even many Android set-top boxes with ARM processors that can do it just fine. In this case their decoder implementation is taking advantage of Kaby Lake features because they are more efficient at doing it.
Slashdot Mirror
I mean, there's something bordering on bats**t crazy about adding a second CPU and simultaneously cutting the power capacity by 25%.
To be fair that SoC uses next to no power so it isn't a real drain on the system at all. The problem is cutting the power capacity by 25% when the only significant saving in power usage is due to the screen. That's great if you're just doing web browsing or email or whatever but if you're using the CPU and GPU for things like, well I don't know, professional work then just because the screen uses 30% less power isn't going to make up for the reduction in power capacity. You need that 25% average saving across the board which hasn't happened hence the poor battery life.
MS can look at 5/10/15 percent of people to take the time to do something and 'claim' 95/90/85 percent LOVE IT
They can claim whatever they want to but really its effectiveness is measured in how many people actually click-through, even if you don't opt-out it's completely ineffective if you don't click on it. But all the more reason to take my advice and turn it off rather than pretending everything's hopeless and continuing your agenda to try and get people to leave it on.
to further goals the OP was saying didn't matter because he could turn it off currently.
It's one line of text in the start menu, which you can turn off and if your workflow is to launch programs through one of the other many means of doing so you wouldn't even see it anyway or failing that you could install a start menu replacement or failing that you could even install a different shell. There are so many solutions to this very minor issue (remember, it's one line of text) so why are you being such a defeatist about it?
It's not a case, it is the legal principle of promissory estoppel which is not a "novel legal concept".
What percent of users do you think did what you did? I'm guessing less than 5%.
Well firstly your "guess" is completely unsubstantiated but wouldn't that be all the more reason to spread the solution? Unless of course you want it to be accepted to the point where it can't be turned off, if that's your agenda then by all means continue trying to suppress that knowledge.
Given NINETY-FIVE PERCENT ACCEPTANCE rate, MS will no doubt disable your ability to turn them off before too long.
But there isn't a 95% acceptance rate, that's something you just made up out of nothing. I'm telling you the solution to the problem and your response is to whine about your made up fantasy future where that solution might not exist. What's your solution then? Or are you just knuckling under.
I merely pointed out that Java and C# are protected by similar licenses
No, wrong. They are not protected by similar licenses at all - what I'm talking about is the community promise which is not a license at all. What you pointed out was the license for the JDK (Java Development Kit, which is not all of Java, the license for the JDK does not apply to other parts of Java) and then asserted that you think the Community Promise is some kind of novel legal concept that has never been tried in court, which is obviously untrue. Now you have changed your mind and think the Community Promise is a license and that it is similar to the JDK license while even a cursory reading of them will demonstrate to you that they are not similar at all.
I don't need a desktop operating system that serves ads to me.
It's all well and good to hate Microsoft for whatever reason but when the solution to this is so simple and obvious do you really need to pretend it's beyond your abilities? Unpin the tiles from the start menu and uncheck the box in start menu options to "Show suggestions in start menu" to turn off that one line of text.
I've got Windows 10 on one of my machines and that's what I did to solve that issue, you're welcome.
Nah, the same kinds of arguments you're making here are the ones Java programmers made a decade ago.
No, you only think that because as you have continually demonstrated you fail to understand the legal concepts involved here. It's really not very complex so I can't see why you're having such difficulty with it. You can't even explain what you're concerned about because you don't understand it anyway.
Yeah, notice that it's an actual license, with legal weight, not some kind of novel legal concept that has never been tried in court.
You actually think a covenant not to sue and promissory estoppel are novel legal concepts that have never been tried in court? Really?
You're better off with the license, legally speaking, than some vague 'promise.'
But what we are talking about is not "some vague promise", it just appears vague to you because you are unfamiliar with the concept. And perhaps you haven't heard of Oracle Vs Google lawsuit? How did the JDK license help them out there?
They can still sue you, or they can change the terms at any time.
Sue you over what specifically in the context of the promise with relation to C#? What terms do you understand them to be able to change retroactively (of course retroactive changes are what is important here)? What is the specific thing you are concerned about here? It's seems your objection is based on the fact that you don't really understand the legal principles.
I don't believe Java is protected by anything akin to Microsoft's legally-binding Community/Open Specification Promises (covenant not to sue)
Check it
That's the license for the JDK and isn't a covenant not to sue.
Java and C# are protected by the same kinds of licenses, so you're deluded if you think the kinds of things happening to Java users can't happen to you.
Can you cite those licenses? I don't believe Java is protected by anything akin to Microsoft's legally-binding Community/Open Specification Promises (covenant not to sue), hence the Oracle V Google litigation.
Knowledge is protection. Afraid that some people won't get the word, then send a text to everyone. Have an opt-out at least which could include a wavier.
You're being pretty silly if you think that sending a text message is a valid response here and why would anybody want to opt out of having a known dangerous that is defective by design replaced with something safe?
In a place as litigous as the US there is absolutely no reason to go to the effort of producing a waiver for a product that is known to have design problems causing injury and/or property damage. Who would even want to sign that?
How far do we take this though? Fire is one thing, but I can see this used in other ways.
See what being used in other ways? It's not like this is some legislation or new technology here.
For example, an evil version of Apple pushing out an update that bricks any phone older than an iPhone 5 because the 4S and earlier won't be receiving security updates, and thus could be considered insecure and dangerous.
What's that got to do with this scenario? If they wanted to do that they could have done it and if they want to do it in future they could do it regardless of whether this happens or not.
There is a point where a device maker makes it clear that the owner of the device is 100% responsible for it, in a way that can't be wiggled out of in court. That way, if a phone turns into a bong, it isn't the phone maker's responsibility in any way, shape, or form that it happened.
Sure, why not but I doubt many people want to sign the agreement that says "we have no responsibility for this product, if it explodes and maims you it's not our problem". Would you sign an agreement when buying a new car that said you are solely responsible and the manufacturer has no obligation whatsoever going forward. You can have all the freedom you want so long as you're happy to take the responsibility that goes with it.
For example how about you get sued by the EPA for driving a diesel VW and polluting the environment rather than VW.
Ok then well go sign a waiver that says that the defective phone and the implications of your continued use of it are your responsibility and you accept that you know the risks.
Your insurance company probably wouldn't be too happy about that.
Its being forced that sucks. What if the next stage of protecting us is disabling phones that don't have offer most recent OS versions on the basis they are not secure or safe?
So they shouldn't protect the physical safety of people from a device that you carry in your pocket that is known to have a fault causing it to catch fire on the basis of fear of something that in theory could have always happened yet never has and for which there is no evidence to suggest it ever will. In fact I'd almost welcome your scenario because at least that would mean that Android devices were getting timely updates.
I'm not sure where you got the idea that it was a "free" replacement, though that certainly does happen if it's a defect under warranty and it's swapped over on the spot. While the iPhone does cost a little more than flagship Android phones like the Pixel or Galaxy you do get those advantages of things like a much better curated app store without all the malware and software updates which you get immediately and on my primary communication device things like timely security updates are VERY important.
I'm not sure what your agenda is that drives you to brand anybody who values something different to you as a "cultist" or "more money than sense". Sure if I want timely updates on Android I could switch to a Pixel - I don't think I actually have any purchased apps anyway - but that's even more expensive!
Really what I was hoping with Android was that the freedom to modify the OS and all the different carrier options would lead to some awesome innovations, some features that would be hugely compelling to end users but ultimately it's just come down to, as you summarized: if you're willing to sacrifice things like timely updates then you can get something cheaper.
it's always Apple which is pushing the envelope on thinness, and iPhone buyers are very cult-like in their behavior, insisting on buying iPhones no matter what without even looking at alternatives
You seem to be generalizing a bit there, if you want iOS then there is no choice but an iPhone - thinner or not. I don't think many phone buyers will be put off to look at alternatives because the new device is thinner than the last one.
But then again why do you think they don't look at alternatives? There is no doubt Apple's app store is better curated, you don't need to worry about whether the phone you choose will get software updates or not and if something goes wrong you can just go into an Apple store and get a replacement on the spot. That's pretty compelling, I'm sure a great many people look at features like that and then look at what Android offers that offsets all those benefits, there is the flexibility of being able to load custom ROMs, fix problems and do updates yourself but outside of the geek community who really wants to do that for their phone? Most of the Android OEMs are just copying Apple these days anyway so what is the specific feature(s) that Android offers to the average user that makes you believe they are so irrational as to ignore in favor of Apple's brand?
iPhone buyers.
No they aren't. Pretty much everybody stuffs theirs into a protective case anyway and nobody is advertising the thinnest protective case.
ISVs made Windows versions of their apps ages ago when their customers pressured them to because they wanted to move to Windows from whatever they were using before (usually UNIX); this is no different.
Of course they did because at that time they expended huge amounts of effort supporting the various different platforms but when the trend of everybody having their own flavour of UNIX on their own hardware died out in favour of a more standardized x86 PC platform that ended up running Windows for better or worse the ISVs saw the value in consolidating on the one dominant platform. Sure they could have kept spending resources supporting SunOS, Xenix, IRIX, HP-UX, Minix, et al but what would be the value in that?
So the question really is: what advantage does a different OS give them that would be worth the expensive and effort of getting ISVs to make new versions, and of getting your IT department to switch? Well, we can go back in time and ask the very same question of companies in the 1990s, when they all switched to Windows.
Well actually we can't go back in time, perhaps you can enlighten us as to what you think that answer was?
Am I the only one here who remembers a time before Windows?
We had many different very expensive workstations that had different operating systems - SGI systems running IRIX and Sun systems running Solaris for example - then eventually it made sense to just buy Windows-based workstations because they were much much cheaper and more powerful thanks to economies of scale.
If companies were actually serious about putting this kind of effort into a different OS, many more would have switched by now.
Why would they? If their applications run just fine on Windows or macOS then why would have switched? What extraoardinary advantage does a different OS give them that would be worth the enormous effort and huge expenses involved in recruiting and managing talent to build capable and feature-comparable versions of industry leading content-creation applications? Like say you run architectural firm and your draftsmen, engineers, architects, whatever come in, load up Revit on their Windows machines and do their work what would be the value for them in investing the untold sums of money and effort in building a Revit competitor just to run a different operating system?
I just can't believe that people are paying these prices for phones. The Pixel XL is $870! Probably the iPhone 7 is similar. Seriously? For a phone?
If what you want is just a phone then no, you wouldn't be paying that much because you can get a phone for much much cheaper than that.
not to mention its near constant attempts to sell me shit because I didn't invest in the enterprise edition
How is it making these attempts to sell you stuff? The only places i've seen advertising are a one-line of text in the start menu (which I just turned off in the start menu options) and the default tiles in the start menu (which I removed because I don't see any value in the live tiles) and they certainly aren't "constant".
Open source is fine and dandy, but the real killer feature is being able to easily fix a bug in the OS yourself, deploy and test to yourself, and share with others.
That's the killer feature of "Free Software" (or at least that's the idea), this is Open Source. Though of course it's a bit of a moving target for Free Software what with things like Tivoization (addressed with GPLv3) and "cloud computing" (Affero GPL) so what is and isn't "Free Software" can be a bit confusing in itself.
There is a hugely diminishing return. I guarantee if you double-blind test 1000 random people and place them 10 feet from two identical 70" 4K TV's both playing the same identical video, one playing it from 1080P video upscaled to 4K and the other playing the 4K native, almost nobody would be able to notice any difference, resulting in about a 50/50 chance.
Well it depends on what your eyesight is like, how big your TV is and how far you sit from it. The same as with 720p vs 1080p or retina-level screens on smartphones, tablets or PCs. Obviously if those variables align such that you can't tell the difference then it has no value to you so you don't invest in it, otherwise it does. But like I said, if you can't tell the difference then fine, it doesn't matter to you so why are you so worried about it?
If they focused on things that actually matter, like HDR or color space, it would be different.
They are doing HDR. Netflix aren't beholden to only doing the things where you can tell the difference.
Yeah yeah, we heard the same thing going DVD to Bluray and going from standard smartphone/tablet/laptop screens to retina-level displays and now we're seeing it yet again with 1080p to 4k. Yes not everybody can tell the difference, if you can't then obviously this isn't relevant to you, for those that can it is relevant to them.
If only things could be decrypted without "hardware decryption features."
They can, there's plenty of different processors that support 10-bit HVEC decoding, in fact there's even many Android set-top boxes with ARM processors that can do it just fine. In this case their decoder implementation is taking advantage of Kaby Lake features because they are more efficient at doing it.