Hear, hear! I disagree about the "has all the features I need" bit (I'm haven't found replacements for all my extensions yet), so I do split my browsing between Chromium and Firefox, but I am sad that it's even gotten to that point. Lets hope that Mozilla's leadership can turn it around, but in the meantime I'm thankful that they made it possible for me to have a choice.
You got halfway there, but the point here is not about the apps themselves (which would indeed be platform independent), but about the ability of the browser to support standalone apps. Since the browser has to handle all the hooks into the OS on behalf of the app (in case it wants e.g. storage, or printing), the browser does have to be customized. The good news is that once (not if) they finish the Linux support, the apps that work on Windows and Mac won't have to be ported.
For a while flash playback was choppy for me on Firefox, but not on Chromium. About a month ago performance degraded on Chromium as well, so at this point it doesn't really work at all. Of course, I'm still back on Isadora, so that specific example isn't relevant for you, but it's worth noting that it can be worth trying on the other if one doesn't work.
The apps in the marketplace should be OS independent, you have that correct, but they accomplish that by having the browser do all the interfacing to the OS. That means that the marketplace itself does need to be tailored to it.
Strictly speaking, if you link GPL code with your own proprietary non-GPL code and distribute it, the result is an infringement of the GPL license for which you could be sued.
I've added a clarification there, because GGPs point rests on it: the license doesn't matter if you're only planning to use it internally. For those who want to distribute, your correction of the GP stands.
I'm willing to grant that it may depend heavily on what you're used to. When I try to help my roommate with problems in his Win 7 installation, I find myself pulling my hair out. For some reason they changed things in the network connections that worked just fine on Vista. You would probably be able to figure it out right away, but my experience is not of it "working out of the box." (Though I'll also grant that it is significantly better than prior versions.)
This is what has always, and may always, keep people from moving to Linux: you have to learn a significantly different skill set. It's the same thing that kept people from moving to Mac for a long time, and the only way they are getting past that is by providing a significantly better experience for folks who keep all of their devices in the family. I don't think there will ever be that sort of benefit for moving to Linux, so I don't expect to see it gain any real market share on the desktop. And that's OK. I'm just happy it works for me.
And let's be fair to Ubuntu, it's not just about the advance warning. Just as Debian is relevant on the desktop as the base for Ubuntu, Ubuntu is relevant for providing application repositories for Mint.
You're right, but I don't see that as a positive. It's like the battered housewife who keeps saying "sure he hits me, but I know deep down he really loves me." As somebody who has tried, repeatedly, to join the linux faithful... it doesn't seem to matter which distro I try, they all have something that eventually becomes a dealbreaker
...
Be honest people, even if you're a fan, put down the kool-aid and admit that Linux fights with you FROM DAY ONE. It's like an annoying little brother. Sure you love him, but there's always something he's doing to annoy you. A buddy of mine described Linux on your primary machine aptly: "It's like the hot rod you build in your garage. It's a lot of fun to play with, and you learn a lot turning those wrenches, but it's not really something you want to drive every day."
I'm not going to claim that everything in Linux is sunshine and roses, but I'm rather amazed that you seem to think that Windows is. I didn't install Linux the first time because I was happy with what I had, so it doesn't have to be perfect, just better. And it is. There have been things I have put work into customizing to my preference and things which annoy me not quite enough to fix, but the thing is that I am able to fix them if I want. I often don't have that option on Windows, which means that the annoyances (big or small) that particularly bothered me really started to grate after a while.
Yes, exactly! I'll get to play a bunch of games that I couldn't before because I had made other decisions that are more important to me than which games I get to play. Is that not enough to be excited about? I hear some of their titles are really good, too.
I'd even put up with Ubuntu if that were the distro they targeted.
Agreed, I'd put up with whatever distro is necessary, especially because I wouldn't have to deal with it except when gaming. "Reboot into gaming distro" beats the hell out of "reboot into Windows."
Thank you for this. I don't use Steam (because Linux), and regularly play games that are >10 years old. My only concern with this was that I wouldn't have offline/lan play available, so that when they kill the matchmaking servers I wouldn't be able to play without crazy hacks. Now I'm jonesing for them to just release it already!
On a somewhat different topic, this linux release of theirs might have some ties to the persistent rumors of some sort of Valve-blessed hardware configuration providing a console-like package. If they suspect that they can even break even on Steam/Source for Linux, that might improve their prospects of being able to release a valvebox spec that leaves buyers with the extra $100 to spend on games, rather than on Windows. Even people who don't care about freedom care about free, after all.
You said a lot of good things, but I think this deserves to be called out. If there's one thing that makes me think this may happen sooner than later, it's precisely that they are thinking about a console. That console will need an OS, and they'd be braindead to write one from scratch or eat the cost of licensing from MS (who presumably wouldn't be happy about the competition) when there's a perfectly viable alternative readily available. Their only problem with that is that folks would be upset to purchase the console and find out most of their games won't run. If they get the Linux client out first and all of their games ported, there will be some incentive for other developers to do the same. And of course, many of the indies already have a Linux client that they would just have to upload. This could very easily be their solution for smoothing that transition.
In other words, they don't expect to win, but just want to confuse stuff as much as possible for as long as possible. I'd be looking for a money trail from MS in that case, though...
Normally I'd be with you on that, but this is Oracle we're talking about. It's fairly reasonable to assume that MS's hands are clean on this one, only because there's no value in trying to convince an entity to do something they would do anyway.
Alice and Bob then can compare their measurements and find that Victor was fiddling with the equipment on his end or not.
Not quite, they can get correlated measurements just from chance, even if Victor was not fiddling. The only thing they can know is that if their results are not correlated, then Victor was not fiddling.
What constitutions "no communication passes between them during the experiment"? Does Victor have to do his measurements to determine that the experiment is over, or Can I shoot Victor as the only one who knows whether he diddled the equipment or not and his message would still exist in the hands of Alice and Bob?
Victor does not have to do measurements, he has to do the entangling (or not). If you shoot him before he has a chance, you are deciding for him that he will not. Once he's done it (or decided not to) the experiment is over and you can shoot him all you like without affecting the results.
No message gets sent as part of the experiment, faster than light or otherwise.
The problem is this isn't international but interplanetary, and the Outer Space Treaty is a lot more restrictive. It's a topic that's been the subject of a lot of discussion lately.
I think a lot of people are used to space being a government endeavour. When it's NASA/ESA/JAXA/etc it's perfectly natural for the public to have an opinion, since it's their money being spent. It'll be interesting to see what happens as more private ventures move into space, and don't have to answer to a majority.
Not that it will stop the comments, of course. We certainly hear enough opinions about what Apple and Google should do.
Rare earths are indeed more common in asteroids (or I should say more accessible - the theory is that their density caused them to mostly end up in Earth's core). Iridium, for example, is one of the big clues that it was a meteor that killed the dinosaurs.
Even rare earths aren't THAT rare down here, though, compared to the cost of bringing them down (barring revolutionary tech like a space elevator). This still seems much more feasible for generating resources to use in space, where they are much more valuable.
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Hear, hear! I disagree about the "has all the features I need" bit (I'm haven't found replacements for all my extensions yet), so I do split my browsing between Chromium and Firefox, but I am sad that it's even gotten to that point. Lets hope that Mozilla's leadership can turn it around, but in the meantime I'm thankful that they made it possible for me to have a choice.
You got halfway there, but the point here is not about the apps themselves (which would indeed be platform independent), but about the ability of the browser to support standalone apps. Since the browser has to handle all the hooks into the OS on behalf of the app (in case it wants e.g. storage, or printing), the browser does have to be customized. The good news is that once (not if) they finish the Linux support, the apps that work on Windows and Mac won't have to be ported.
For a while flash playback was choppy for me on Firefox, but not on Chromium. About a month ago performance degraded on Chromium as well, so at this point it doesn't really work at all. Of course, I'm still back on Isadora, so that specific example isn't relevant for you, but it's worth noting that it can be worth trying on the other if one doesn't work.
Oh for mod points. You do make me wonder if there's a correlation between men who use Linux and those who use straight razors. I certainly do both...
I'm sure Amazon will.
(Or rather, I'm sure they will integrate this capability into their existing market.)
The apps in the marketplace should be OS independent, you have that correct, but they accomplish that by having the browser do all the interfacing to the OS. That means that the marketplace itself does need to be tailored to it.
You'd be surprised how many sole proprietor accounts I've run into working at a bank. (And yes, of places that would have employees.)
Strictly speaking, if you link GPL code with your own proprietary non-GPL code and distribute it, the result is an infringement of the GPL license for which you could be sued.
I've added a clarification there, because GGPs point rests on it: the license doesn't matter if you're only planning to use it internally. For those who want to distribute, your correction of the GP stands.
This seems like a good place to link to the Data Liberation Front. As long as they're around, I'm pretty comfortable with Google.
You do realize that's exactly what they want, right?
I'm willing to grant that it may depend heavily on what you're used to. When I try to help my roommate with problems in his Win 7 installation, I find myself pulling my hair out. For some reason they changed things in the network connections that worked just fine on Vista. You would probably be able to figure it out right away, but my experience is not of it "working out of the box." (Though I'll also grant that it is significantly better than prior versions.)
This is what has always, and may always, keep people from moving to Linux: you have to learn a significantly different skill set. It's the same thing that kept people from moving to Mac for a long time, and the only way they are getting past that is by providing a significantly better experience for folks who keep all of their devices in the family. I don't think there will ever be that sort of benefit for moving to Linux, so I don't expect to see it gain any real market share on the desktop. And that's OK. I'm just happy it works for me.
Indeed, Maya is expected to be available at the end of May.
And let's be fair to Ubuntu, it's not just about the advance warning. Just as Debian is relevant on the desktop as the base for Ubuntu, Ubuntu is relevant for providing application repositories for Mint.
You're right, but I don't see that as a positive. It's like the battered housewife who keeps saying "sure he hits me, but I know deep down he really loves me." As somebody who has tried, repeatedly, to join the linux faithful... it doesn't seem to matter which distro I try, they all have something that eventually becomes a dealbreaker
Be honest people, even if you're a fan, put down the kool-aid and admit that Linux fights with you FROM DAY ONE. It's like an annoying little brother. Sure you love him, but there's always something he's doing to annoy you. A buddy of mine described Linux on your primary machine aptly: "It's like the hot rod you build in your garage. It's a lot of fun to play with, and you learn a lot turning those wrenches, but it's not really something you want to drive every day."
I'm not going to claim that everything in Linux is sunshine and roses, but I'm rather amazed that you seem to think that Windows is. I didn't install Linux the first time because I was happy with what I had, so it doesn't have to be perfect, just better. And it is. There have been things I have put work into customizing to my preference and things which annoy me not quite enough to fix, but the thing is that I am able to fix them if I want. I often don't have that option on Windows, which means that the annoyances (big or small) that particularly bothered me really started to grate after a while.
Yes, exactly! I'll get to play a bunch of games that I couldn't before because I had made other decisions that are more important to me than which games I get to play. Is that not enough to be excited about? I hear some of their titles are really good, too.
I'd even put up with Ubuntu if that were the distro they targeted.
Agreed, I'd put up with whatever distro is necessary, especially because I wouldn't have to deal with it except when gaming. "Reboot into gaming distro" beats the hell out of "reboot into Windows."
Thank you for this. I don't use Steam (because Linux), and regularly play games that are >10 years old. My only concern with this was that I wouldn't have offline/lan play available, so that when they kill the matchmaking servers I wouldn't be able to play without crazy hacks. Now I'm jonesing for them to just release it already!
On a somewhat different topic, this linux release of theirs might have some ties to the persistent rumors of some sort of Valve-blessed hardware configuration providing a console-like package. If they suspect that they can even break even on Steam/Source for Linux, that might improve their prospects of being able to release a valvebox spec that leaves buyers with the extra $100 to spend on games, rather than on Windows. Even people who don't care about freedom care about free, after all.
You said a lot of good things, but I think this deserves to be called out. If there's one thing that makes me think this may happen sooner than later, it's precisely that they are thinking about a console. That console will need an OS, and they'd be braindead to write one from scratch or eat the cost of licensing from MS (who presumably wouldn't be happy about the competition) when there's a perfectly viable alternative readily available. Their only problem with that is that folks would be upset to purchase the console and find out most of their games won't run. If they get the Linux client out first and all of their games ported, there will be some incentive for other developers to do the same. And of course, many of the indies already have a Linux client that they would just have to upload. This could very easily be their solution for smoothing that transition.
In other words, they don't expect to win, but just want to confuse stuff as much as possible for as long as possible. I'd be looking for a money trail from MS in that case, though...
Normally I'd be with you on that, but this is Oracle we're talking about. It's fairly reasonable to assume that MS's hands are clean on this one, only because there's no value in trying to convince an entity to do something they would do anyway.
But it could just be the caffeine withdrawal too.
So, you're testifying that you also did not use Sun's IP?
Alice and Bob then can compare their measurements and find that Victor was fiddling with the equipment on his end or not.
Not quite, they can get correlated measurements just from chance, even if Victor was not fiddling. The only thing they can know is that if their results are not correlated, then Victor was not fiddling.
What constitutions "no communication passes between them during the experiment"? Does Victor have to do his measurements to determine that the experiment is over, or Can I shoot Victor as the only one who knows whether he diddled the equipment or not and his message would still exist in the hands of Alice and Bob?
Victor does not have to do measurements, he has to do the entangling (or not). If you shoot him before he has a chance, you are deciding for him that he will not. Once he's done it (or decided not to) the experiment is over and you can shoot him all you like without affecting the results.
No message gets sent as part of the experiment, faster than light or otherwise.
The problem is this isn't international but interplanetary, and the Outer Space Treaty is a lot more restrictive. It's a topic that's been the subject of a lot of discussion lately.
I think a lot of people are used to space being a government endeavour. When it's NASA/ESA/JAXA/etc it's perfectly natural for the public to have an opinion, since it's their money being spent. It'll be interesting to see what happens as more private ventures move into space, and don't have to answer to a majority.
Not that it will stop the comments, of course. We certainly hear enough opinions about what Apple and Google should do.
Rare earths are indeed more common in asteroids (or I should say more accessible - the theory is that their density caused them to mostly end up in Earth's core). Iridium, for example, is one of the big clues that it was a meteor that killed the dinosaurs.
Even rare earths aren't THAT rare down here, though, compared to the cost of bringing them down (barring revolutionary tech like a space elevator). This still seems much more feasible for generating resources to use in space, where they are much more valuable.
I'm pretty sure that right now it's 100% Unobtanium.
That just completely made my day, if only for "Saskatchewan threatens Alberta with weaponized gophers."