Or perhaps the phone has been in development for some time, maybe it takes longer than Marketing announcement cycles to design and deliver new technology.
I can't find now the link (maybe it was on a video), but they say they have been developing this technology for four years.
And BTW, the summary is somewhat unfair. On the announcement they have posted (besides some impressive photo samples) a whitepaper were they clearly say that is not about quantity of megapixels, is about the quality you get when you average the results given by each one. I've also seen some of the videos were you get a very smooth digital zoom without loss of quality, and is quite remarkable.
However the newer versions of KDE4 are being based on Qt5, which has a base requirement of OpenGL (ES) 2.0 or above.
If I understood properly, the issue is that Qt5 will use an OpenGL rendering model. That doesn't mean that the graphics hardware requires an OpenGL working driver to function, because Qt5 can use a raster engine in the CPU, like does right now (passing "-graphicssystem raster", which is the default). Actually, they have given some numbers, and the CPU rasterizer is faster in Qt5, because LLVMpipe is faster than Qt's rasterizer.
Remember also that Qt5 is not out yet, much less KDE5. It will take years for being forced to upgrade to KDE5. This year we will have a LTS release of Kubuntu, which means you will have supported KDE4 till April 2017. I think there will be also one or maybe even two Debian releases with KDE4.
I don't see what that page has to do with the issue. Sorry if I misread it, but the problem is not that Chromium doesn't support it (since is basically the same browser as Chrome), is that Adobe says they are not distributing the player themselves, so it seems like you have to install Chrome to get the player, even if you plan to use it on other browser.
For Flash Player releases after 11.2, the Flash Player browser plugin for Linux will only be available via the “Pepper” API as part of the Google Chrome browser distribution and will no longer be available as a direct download from Adobe.
Damn, what about chromium, then? Is quite annoying already having to install the Flash Player through an installer that fetches it from Adobe. Now we will have to use the proprietary bits of the browser, too? No way.
I agree. I think that Qt is the best in class for UI development. And if you add Qt Quick to the mix, specially the new features coming in 2.0, is a clear winner if you need 3D added smoothly. Check out the video, is really cool: how you create any element, and apply GL shaders to create all sorts of effects on it, no mather is is a simple rectangle, or a fully fledged UI element.
(...) on screen keyboard as a part of the window manager.
Why exactly the virtual keyboard has to be part of the window manager? Plasma has excellent integration with KWin (obviously). I fail to see the reason why it has to be exactly part of the WM.
Oh, and the virtual keyboard on the Nokia N9 (Maliit, open source BTW) has received lots of positive reviews, and I've never seen it described as part of the WM.
Absolutely. I only paid once for an app: a Paris city guide that offered offline maps for when I visited the place. I still have the application lying around on my phone because I paid for it, and even if I don't use it longer, I feel remorse for uninstalling it, because I "bought" it.
However, I'm more or less fine with the dozens of euros I spent in domain names that I still haven't used because that project of mine is stagnant, or the new, more powerful server that I rented months ago, and that is idle because I haven't had time to migrate to. I'm happy paying for services, but "buying" applications is a thing from the past century to me.
And what happens when I'm browsing the web on my MIPS-based TV? I'm at the mercy of the website author to specifically support my architecture. Today, I can visit any website and it will work. There is no dependency on any architecture specific stuff. Most developers will only bother compiling for x86 and ARM in all probability, which will hurt anyone else.
First, MIPS (or any other architecture) is not left out by design, just by implementation. The sandbox requires a deep study of the assembler language of the architecture to avoid all kinds of holes, so there aren't much implementations available because the technology is quite young, but if it ends up being useful, the MIPS manufacturers will be interested in supporting it. If you have a really minor architecture, chances are high that you will have little support for other kinds of hardware accelerated products (e.g. Flash comes to my mind), which are the kind of products that NaCl is aimed to.
And second, the kind of websites that you can browse right now in a low powered TV, will still be coded using technologies available on all browsers.
It is a plugin... using a non-standard, non-documented plugin API, which nobody apart from Chrome supports or has any intention of supporting (it's a huge amount of badly documented, totally web irrelevant, anti-Open-Web chunk of code --- why should anyone take it in?). If they had used the standard plugin API (NPAPI), it would work today in every browser.
OK, that's something I could agree with you. I'm not a browser developer, so I don't know which is the state of this. I certainly don't like Google's attitude in general with respect the way the release technology without some consensus with other parties. If NaCl ends up being a de facto proprietary technology, I will not see it as encouraging. I just think that, as a technology by itself, is quite interesting.
NaCl is not portable. NaCl apps only run on x86 and x86_64, not ARM or PowerPC or anything else.
NaCL binaries are not portable in the same way I can't install the FireFox's Windows binaries on Linux (or the armel ".deb" from packages.debian.org on my amd64 computer), but honestly, who cares? Mozilla and Debian guys just compile it for each supported platform. There is also the possibility of creating a "fat nexe" that supports all platforms.
As a consequence, NaCl apps only run on Chrome (and on x86 and x86_64).
Is open source code on an open source browser. I would prefer it being a plugin (I think at some point there was one) so I can run it in all my browsers. But this is no different than any other proprietary feature on other browsers. I'm currently using Mozilla's proprietary "crypto" JavaScript API for an application, and it only runs on Mozilla's browsers. Not convenient, for sure, but what should I do? Not use the feature at all? Or try to make something valuable from it, so other developers might consider incorporating it?
Huh? Apple forked WebKit from KHTML and massively developed it to the point that other companies contribute to it. And you cite Apple for contributing too much to their own project? Do you also blame Mozilla for doing too much for FireFox?
What? Sorry, I don't understand what you mean, or what relation has with what you quoted.
And again my point is they are under no obligation to do any of this. They could have open sourced everything they have done and stopped development. A point you have never addressed.
I didn't address that because I never denied nor confirmed this. From the beggining I was only writing about the size of the contributions.
Again, you are replying to things I wasn't writing about. My point is mainly this: Apple contributed to WebKit, of course, but many people mistakenly see it as a project created solely by Apple, and developed only by Apple.
As I understand it, WebKit is a derivative of KHTML, there is no way to gradually change the license. Now in WebKit there might be little from the original KHTML code, but of course the present KHTML is also very different from the one that Apple forked. Note that WebKit is now an open source project that receives contributions from many companies that are direct Apple rivals. If Apple was the starter of the WebKit name, was because they clearly failed to join an already stablished community of developers. It's not like is difficult to gain an account to access the KDE repositories (I have one, and just contributed very minor things) or the mailing lists.
I wonder what would happen if you run an 'svn blame' on the whole WebKit tree, and measure how many really comes from Apple alone.
To me is somthing as simple as that: most Objective-C developers are coding for Apple plattforms, so they ask in an Apple-specific place. My C++ coding is usually done with Qt, so I will ask in a Qt related place. Linux kernel developers are not going to ask C questions on stack overflow, they ask in a linux-related site.
Oh, you don't want to un-brand your map and keep people captured on your site? Excuse my while I shed a tear.
Google started offering a service for free, and now starts charging. Someone where I work (BTW, the city map of the website from Barcelona's City Council) compared the change to the way drug dealers act. They offer something for free to make you addict, and later charge you when you are dependent of them.
I think a better term is preventive dumping. By offering an expensive service for free during so many time, they make completely impossible for any startup to offer a similar service without lots and lots of money to spend in initial losses. Meanwhile everyone contributes making Google Maps popular because they offer the service for free. You can't compete with that. Imagine they do something like this with YouTube. Reuploading all your videos to a different provider and chaning all the links of your site is going to be a serious pain.
I've heard so many times that it was ridiculous to try to compete with Google Maps, and everyone should be using their site and their APIs. Would my town have done that some time ago, now it could be a great problem. Luckily we only depend on Google APIs for Street View, so we can get rid of that if we can't afford the extra unexpected costs.
And BTW, I use Google Maps all the time because the server is more responsive and the interface is better, but the municipal map offers some important local information that Google will never be able to offer.
And what has to do the fact that no phone has ever been released to publish the source? Nobody has released the next version of Linux, but I can access the source code already. Same for webkit, Mozilla, KDE, and what not. That's the way it is in open source project.
I have a CPU old enough to not have virtualization extensions, and runs a simple instance of Windows XP (to test stuff with Explorer 6, and to run some Win-only university software), and it works like a charm.
When I needed to have a Windows available ASAP, VirtualBox was a life saver. I set up everything through the graphical tool, and I had to read 0 manuals. It just worked in a matter of minutes, not hours or days. If in the future I have to replace everything by QEMU because VirtualBox is crap inside, then fine because I won't be in a hurry anymore.
But if anything, VirtualBox is the opposite of a frustrating experience to me.
I've just joined and watched the two first videos, but...
Why don't you post this comment to the DB's Forum? That's the nice thing about this online course, you can interact with hundreds (thousands?) of students, and I guess that the teachers will be available to read constructive criticism, too. Maybe it was just a mistake, and everybody can benefit if someone points it out.
I assisted to one of the Intel MeeGo/AppUp events, and they clearly stated:
We love Android too, but it's obvious why Intel wants to support native code, isn't it?
And that made sense to me. By lowering the costs of the software, they can make really cheap devices, like the EEE PC X101 (200 USD or 179 EURO). Also, if almost all the code is native, they can provide their software products and services not only to device manufacturers, but also to developers (e.g., a very specialiced compiler/debugger/profiler to game developers). But with HTML5 (the API for Tizen) this doesn't make sense anymore. The change from Mobiln to MeeGo (GTK+/Clutter to Qt) made sense to them: they are still encouraging native code, and they release the burden of maintaining the API. But with Tizen and Qt to HTML5? This makes the AppUp store way less relevant, isn't it?
Hi Microsoft! Thanks for releasing stuff under an Apache license. Now if, for some reason I end up in Hell, at least I know I will be comfortable with a big coat, because it should be freezing there.
I will report to you about the program once I figure it out how to install an MSI on Debian.
Yours truly: the average Linux geek that reads Slashdot.
But my main point is that addons are not broken. I'm using the exact same addons I used in Firefox 3 - I should know because I didn't download new ones. All you have to do is open the xpi in e.g. 7zip or winrar, open the install.rdf in a text editor, search for maxVersion, and change it to match your version. Change it to something big, like 10, and you'll be in the clear for a long time.
Seems quite user friendly. [end of the irony]
Now I hope you can explain me:
Should I really be forced to use the root account to edit/usr/share/xul-ext/{whatever}/install.rdf? Because is where my extensions normally are. I'm not going to do it for all users.
How can I do the same for the translations? Because I'm so tired of having to choose between holding the upgrade of the latest FireFox, or be blessed by the breakage of the translations (not always released/packaged at the same time).
Seriously, release early and often, but 6 months is enough for most people. Or at least do minor and major releases. Then the version X will be the rock solid one, and the X+1-pre1 (or something more appealing coming from marketing) could be for early adopters and enthusiasts.
Apart from sample gadget apps I have yet to see the appeal. I haven't seen a single native looking QML app for PC yet, the controls for doing so aren't even done yet, so how are they supposed to replace UI files? Also Nokia has clearly stated that C++ interfaces to the new features in QML are not a priority so it is pretty obvious that Qt is indeed loosing its C++ roots. With ui files you could do everything they did by hand. QML won't allow that anytime sone (possibly never if you read the nokia blogs).
With QML you can do "width: parent.width / 2", or whatever other expression, and the width is now bound (not assigned) to the width of the parent. IMO is waaaay better than defining a width, and having to create a bunch of logic to make sure the width stays the amount you wanted in the first place. For user interfaces is a great thing, and other technologies are already doing it (Clutter, JavaFX). I think that the way that works in Qt is pretty good, because you integrate with imperative code in a very convenient way.
Slashdot Mirror
Or perhaps the phone has been in development for some time, maybe it takes longer than Marketing announcement cycles to design and deliver new technology.
I can't find now the link (maybe it was on a video), but they say they have been developing this technology for four years.
And BTW, the summary is somewhat unfair. On the announcement they have posted (besides some impressive photo samples) a whitepaper were they clearly say that is not about quantity of megapixels, is about the quality you get when you average the results given by each one. I've also seen some of the videos were you get a very smooth digital zoom without loss of quality, and is quite remarkable.
I'm also a (happy) Debian user, however, I just googled a little bit about (k)ubuntu because they have predictable releases and time-frames. :)
However the newer versions of KDE4 are being based on Qt5, which has a base requirement of OpenGL (ES) 2.0 or above.
If I understood properly, the issue is that Qt5 will use an OpenGL rendering model. That doesn't mean that the graphics hardware requires an OpenGL working driver to function, because Qt5 can use a raster engine in the CPU, like does right now (passing "-graphicssystem raster", which is the default). Actually, they have given some numbers, and the CPU rasterizer is faster in Qt5, because LLVMpipe is faster than Qt's rasterizer.
Remember also that Qt5 is not out yet, much less KDE5. It will take years for being forced to upgrade to KDE5. This year we will have a LTS release of Kubuntu, which means you will have supported KDE4 till April 2017. I think there will be also one or maybe even two Debian releases with KDE4.
I don't see what that page has to do with the issue. Sorry if I misread it, but the problem is not that Chromium doesn't support it (since is basically the same browser as Chrome), is that Adobe says they are not distributing the player themselves, so it seems like you have to install Chrome to get the player, even if you plan to use it on other browser.
For Flash Player releases after 11.2, the Flash Player browser plugin for Linux will only be available via the “Pepper” API as part of the Google Chrome browser distribution and will no longer be available as a direct download from Adobe.
Damn, what about chromium, then? Is quite annoying already having to install the Flash Player through an installer that fetches it from Adobe. Now we will have to use the proprietary bits of the browser, too? No way.
I agree. I think that Qt is the best in class for UI development. And if you add Qt Quick to the mix, specially the new features coming in 2.0, is a clear winner if you need 3D added smoothly. Check out the video, is really cool: how you create any element, and apply GL shaders to create all sorts of effects on it, no mather is is a simple rectangle, or a fully fledged UI element.
(...) on screen keyboard as a part of the window manager.
Why exactly the virtual keyboard has to be part of the window manager? Plasma has excellent integration with KWin (obviously). I fail to see the reason why it has to be exactly part of the WM.
Oh, and the virtual keyboard on the Nokia N9 (Maliit, open source BTW) has received lots of positive reviews, and I've never seen it described as part of the WM.
Absolutely. I only paid once for an app: a Paris city guide that offered offline maps for when I visited the place. I still have the application lying around on my phone because I paid for it, and even if I don't use it longer, I feel remorse for uninstalling it, because I "bought" it.
However, I'm more or less fine with the dozens of euros I spent in domain names that I still haven't used because that project of mine is stagnant, or the new, more powerful server that I rented months ago, and that is idle because I haven't had time to migrate to. I'm happy paying for services, but "buying" applications is a thing from the past century to me.
And what happens when I'm browsing the web on my MIPS-based TV? I'm at the mercy of the website author to specifically support my architecture. Today, I can visit any website and it will work. There is no dependency on any architecture specific stuff. Most developers will only bother compiling for x86 and ARM in all probability, which will hurt anyone else.
First, MIPS (or any other architecture) is not left out by design, just by implementation. The sandbox requires a deep study of the assembler language of the architecture to avoid all kinds of holes, so there aren't much implementations available because the technology is quite young, but if it ends up being useful, the MIPS manufacturers will be interested in supporting it. If you have a really minor architecture, chances are high that you will have little support for other kinds of hardware accelerated products (e.g. Flash comes to my mind), which are the kind of products that NaCl is aimed to.
And second, the kind of websites that you can browse right now in a low powered TV, will still be coded using technologies available on all browsers.
It is a plugin... using a non-standard, non-documented plugin API, which nobody apart from Chrome supports or has any intention of supporting (it's a huge amount of badly documented, totally web irrelevant, anti-Open-Web chunk of code --- why should anyone take it in?). If they had used the standard plugin API (NPAPI), it would work today in every browser.
OK, that's something I could agree with you. I'm not a browser developer, so I don't know which is the state of this. I certainly don't like Google's attitude in general with respect the way the release technology without some consensus with other parties. If NaCl ends up being a de facto proprietary technology, I will not see it as encouraging. I just think that, as a technology by itself, is quite interesting.
NaCl is not portable. NaCl apps only run on x86 and x86_64, not ARM or PowerPC or anything else.
NaCL binaries are not portable in the same way I can't install the FireFox's Windows binaries on Linux (or the armel ".deb" from packages.debian.org on my amd64 computer), but honestly, who cares? Mozilla and Debian guys just compile it for each supported platform. There is also the possibility of creating a "fat nexe" that supports all platforms.
As a consequence, NaCl apps only run on Chrome (and on x86 and x86_64).
Is open source code on an open source browser. I would prefer it being a plugin (I think at some point there was one) so I can run it in all my browsers. But this is no different than any other proprietary feature on other browsers. I'm currently using Mozilla's proprietary "crypto" JavaScript API for an application, and it only runs on Mozilla's browsers. Not convenient, for sure, but what should I do? Not use the feature at all? Or try to make something valuable from it, so other developers might consider incorporating it?
Your first point is rather disingenuous as Apple doesn't have to contribute to open source at all.
Wrong. If they release a product based on LGPL code, they have to release said LGPL code.
Apple is one of many individuals and 30 companies that contribute, but they contribute the bulk of work.
And wrong again.
Huh? Apple forked WebKit from KHTML and massively developed it to the point that other companies contribute to it. And you cite Apple for contributing too much to their own project? Do you also blame Mozilla for doing too much for FireFox?
What? Sorry, I don't understand what you mean, or what relation has with what you quoted.
And again my point is they are under no obligation to do any of this. They could have open sourced everything they have done and stopped development. A point you have never addressed.
I didn't address that because I never denied nor confirmed this. From the beggining I was only writing about the size of the contributions.
Again, you are replying to things I wasn't writing about. My point is mainly this: Apple contributed to WebKit, of course, but many people mistakenly see it as a project created solely by Apple, and developed only by Apple.
As I understand it, WebKit is a derivative of KHTML, there is no way to gradually change the license. Now in WebKit there might be little from the original KHTML code, but of course the present KHTML is also very different from the one that Apple forked. Note that WebKit is now an open source project that receives contributions from many companies that are direct Apple rivals. If Apple was the starter of the WebKit name, was because they clearly failed to join an already stablished community of developers. It's not like is difficult to gain an account to access the KDE repositories (I have one, and just contributed very minor things) or the mailing lists.
I wonder what would happen if you run an 'svn blame' on the whole WebKit tree, and measure how many really comes from Apple alone.
Yes, they contribute, but not as much as you seem to imply. Apple is a company based in a very proprietary model, and that's hard to dispute.
To me is somthing as simple as that: most Objective-C developers are coding for Apple plattforms, so they ask in an Apple-specific place. My C++ coding is usually done with Qt, so I will ask in a Qt related place. Linux kernel developers are not going to ask C questions on stack overflow, they ask in a linux-related site.
And so on...
Oh, you don't want to un-brand your map and keep people captured on your site? Excuse my while I shed a tear.
Google started offering a service for free, and now starts charging. Someone where I work (BTW, the city map of the website from Barcelona's City Council) compared the change to the way drug dealers act. They offer something for free to make you addict, and later charge you when you are dependent of them.
I think a better term is preventive dumping. By offering an expensive service for free during so many time, they make completely impossible for any startup to offer a similar service without lots and lots of money to spend in initial losses. Meanwhile everyone contributes making Google Maps popular because they offer the service for free. You can't compete with that. Imagine they do something like this with YouTube. Reuploading all your videos to a different provider and chaning all the links of your site is going to be a serious pain.
I've heard so many times that it was ridiculous to try to compete with Google Maps, and everyone should be using their site and their APIs. Would my town have done that some time ago, now it could be a great problem. Luckily we only depend on Google APIs for Street View, so we can get rid of that if we can't afford the extra unexpected costs.
And BTW, I use Google Maps all the time because the server is more responsive and the interface is better, but the municipal map offers some important local information that Google will never be able to offer.
And what has to do the fact that no phone has ever been released to publish the source? Nobody has released the next version of Linux, but I can access the source code already. Same for webkit, Mozilla, KDE, and what not. That's the way it is in open source project.
In which spanish-speaking region means that? Never ever heard it myself. Acording to DRAE is rarely used.
I have a CPU old enough to not have virtualization extensions, and runs a simple instance of Windows XP (to test stuff with Explorer 6, and to run some Win-only university software), and it works like a charm.
When I needed to have a Windows available ASAP, VirtualBox was a life saver. I set up everything through the graphical tool, and I had to read 0 manuals. It just worked in a matter of minutes, not hours or days. If in the future I have to replace everything by QEMU because VirtualBox is crap inside, then fine because I won't be in a hurry anymore.
But if anything, VirtualBox is the opposite of a frustrating experience to me.
I've just joined and watched the two first videos, but...
Why don't you post this comment to the DB's Forum? That's the nice thing about this online course, you can interact with hundreds (thousands?) of students, and I guess that the teachers will be available to read constructive criticism, too. Maybe it was just a mistake, and everybody can benefit if someone points it out.
I assisted to one of the Intel MeeGo/AppUp events, and they clearly stated:
And that made sense to me. By lowering the costs of the software, they can make really cheap devices, like the EEE PC X101 (200 USD or 179 EURO). Also, if almost all the code is native, they can provide their software products and services not only to device manufacturers, but also to developers (e.g., a very specialiced compiler/debugger/profiler to game developers). But with HTML5 (the API for Tizen) this doesn't make sense anymore. The change from Mobiln to MeeGo (GTK+/Clutter to Qt) made sense to them: they are still encouraging native code, and they release the burden of maintaining the API. But with Tizen and Qt to HTML5? This makes the AppUp store way less relevant, isn't it?
Hi Microsoft! Thanks for releasing stuff under an Apache license. Now if, for some reason I end up in Hell, at least I know I will be comfortable with a big coat, because it should be freezing there.
I will report to you about the program once I figure it out how to install an MSI on Debian.
Yours truly: the average Linux geek that reads Slashdot.
But my main point is that addons are not broken. I'm using the exact same addons I used in Firefox 3 - I should know because I didn't download new ones. All you have to do is open the xpi in e.g. 7zip or winrar, open the install.rdf in a text editor, search for maxVersion, and change it to match your version. Change it to something big, like 10, and you'll be in the clear for a long time.
Seems quite user friendly. [end of the irony]
Now I hope you can explain me:
Seriously, release early and often, but 6 months is enough for most people. Or at least do minor and major releases. Then the version X will be the rock solid one, and the X+1-pre1 (or something more appealing coming from marketing) could be for early adopters and enthusiasts.
Apart from sample gadget apps I have yet to see the appeal. I haven't seen a single native looking QML app for PC yet, the controls for doing so aren't even done yet, so how are they supposed to replace UI files? Also Nokia has clearly stated that C++ interfaces to the new features in QML are not a priority so it is pretty obvious that Qt is indeed loosing its C++ roots. With ui files you could do everything they did by hand. QML won't allow that anytime sone (possibly never if you read the nokia blogs).
Seems like they read Slashdot or something: Native looking QML.
You will see native applications using QML way before you see QWidgets dropped.
With QML you can do "width: parent.width / 2", or whatever other expression, and the width is now bound (not assigned) to the width of the parent. IMO is waaaay better than defining a width, and having to create a bunch of logic to make sure the width stays the amount you wanted in the first place. For user interfaces is a great thing, and other technologies are already doing it (Clutter, JavaFX). I think that the way that works in Qt is pretty good, because you integrate with imperative code in a very convenient way.