That's exactly the point for Google. One of the demos is Quake inside the browser, and in one Google I/O conference (IIRC the last one), they showed the Lego Star Wars game. They wish they can sell you all sorts of games through the Chrome Store (replace games with video edit apps, or any kind of software that requires heavy use of the CPU).
You probably should start reading about it first, please. The browser doesn't allow you to run native binaries of the system, or native code in general. It allows you to run very constrained routines in assembler code, but a very limited set of instructions, only the ones that can be secured enough. That's why you need an specialized SDK: the generated binaries have to use a very reduced set of machine instructions.
The great benefit of this, is that the generated ".nexe" files are portable accross operating systems. Basically, is a way to run heavy routines in C/C++ instead of JavaScript. The API is limited too.
It's pretty cool in the sense that you could do fancy graphics or UIs without Flash or Silverlight. You could write them in Qt or GTK+ or SDL, and the generated executable works on every OS (you'll need a recompile for ARM phones though).
If it can be refactored to a plugin for every browser, this will be the best Flash/Silverlight killer ever.
Accidentally, a friend of mine checked in an mp3 file in a repository that we don't have the rights to redistribute. I promise you that if you fear a copyright infringement case, you end up not only deleting the files from the tip of the branch or the trunk. You actually make manual amendments in the history of the repository, even if that's impossible with regular commands, and you have to dig in the internal structure, and from now then everyone has to redo their checkouts/clones (or dump the whole history and start fresh).
Go to a limit case. What if somebody committed by accident a picture of the CEO when he was drunk? Or pornography? Would the AOSP still distribute the file in the past branches? I doubt so.
Android is a term given to a set of derived operating systems. It is neither open source nor a codebase (most Android distributions are closed source).
So, Florian says that there is a problem in the Android source code found in the repository, and you claim that there is only one repository opened to the public and with open source code. Where is he doing "creative interpretation"? There is only one open repo and one open codebase, so it's obvious which is. He maybe got wrong the name, but stating that he was "creative" is trying to make it look like he made up the infringement, which is not the case.
That only applies to enthusiasts that love their phone, but only on the software side. Geeks that like phones would love to see extra features from software updates, but also will love to have faster, more powerful devices.
I'm quite happy my HTC Desire got an update recently, and I have the new Market and new Maps, but I'm pretty sure I would like to buy a new phone in at least a year or less, because I also want a front facing camera, gyroscope, NFC, etc. I can't have a phone with all those features without buying a new one.
Also, if my phone were stuck with Android 2.1 (the version that came with out of the box), I would be buying less applications (those that require 2.2 or higher).
What a stupid headline. Page views, clicks, etc. Yeah I know.
Absolutely. The guy just says that is the end of KDE because, originally, it meant "desktop environment", and now there is software for non desktops, such as tablets or phones.
Well dude, it's been a year since that changed. Now KDE is the name of the community. And that community started developing a DE, but now develops a lot more.
Some changes in the KOffice situation required a rename, but renaming KDE just because that people is doing software for more platforms is absurd.
Qt is not fully owned by Nokia right now, and is moving to be a fully openly governed project. And Qt has now Qt Quick, which is a system for developing apps using a declarative language, and can be mixed with C++ very nicely. I've been playing with it lately, and is a great product.
Exactly which category of application are you thinking about? A frequent upgrade doesn't mean a frequent ABI or API incompatible change. I'm a Sid user, and I have no problem with, for example, VirtualBox packages targetted for Lenny. And VirtualBox spans from the kernel level to the GUI, passing through init scripts and so on.
I remember a discussion a year or two ago here on Slashdot how X was badly in need of replacing. Sounds to me like Canonical have the right idea, and the impetus to make it happen.
You know that the guy developing Wayland works for Intel, and previously worked for Red Hat? I'm puzzled that everyone gives credit to Canonical for everything, when they usually seem to do very few work outside of their distribution, with not much interest in pushing changes upstream.
I would consider that the superior compiler is the one that outputs (at least) a warning, and the programmer that refuses to release code with warnings a superior coder.
As stated in a comment before, -Wall -Werror should not be optional.
Permissions are pretty badly designed from a usability point of view. An example: A huge amount of free apps require permission to have full internet access. Why? Because they need to display ads. Even if you check with a sniffer (which isn't trivial for even the average geek) that the phone is using the network only to display ads... are you going to do that for every app, and every version of the app?
Even worse: I was looking for a keyboard alternative, and I found one in the market. It's not free, but still needs full internet access to use the voice recognition from Google (or so it's claimed by its developers). Given that you have a clear, scary warning from the OS about how dangerous is giving a 3rd party app the control of the text input, how do you feel about that if that app also has full internet access and can "call home" with your passwords or credit card numbers?
The proper solution would be that, if your app uses some Google API for ads and or voice recognition, such API gives no way of the developer to use the access as a backdoor. This way the message that the app installer would display would be different "full internet access", because it's just a limited access.
Slashdot Mirror
That's exactly the point for Google. One of the demos is Quake inside the browser, and in one Google I/O conference (IIRC the last one), they showed the Lego Star Wars game. They wish they can sell you all sorts of games through the Chrome Store (replace games with video edit apps, or any kind of software that requires heavy use of the CPU).
Wrong. The NEXE files are OS independent. You will need a recompile for ARM though. Why don't you at least read the FAQ?
You probably should start reading about it first, please. The browser doesn't allow you to run native binaries of the system, or native code in general. It allows you to run very constrained routines in assembler code, but a very limited set of instructions, only the ones that can be secured enough. That's why you need an specialized SDK: the generated binaries have to use a very reduced set of machine instructions.
The great benefit of this, is that the generated ".nexe" files are portable accross operating systems. Basically, is a way to run heavy routines in C/C++ instead of JavaScript. The API is limited too.
It's pretty cool in the sense that you could do fancy graphics or UIs without Flash or Silverlight. You could write them in Qt or GTK+ or SDL, and the generated executable works on every OS (you'll need a recompile for ARM phones though).
If it can be refactored to a plugin for every browser, this will be the best Flash/Silverlight killer ever.
Accidentally, a friend of mine checked in an mp3 file in a repository that we don't have the rights to redistribute. I promise you that if you fear a copyright infringement case, you end up not only deleting the files from the tip of the branch or the trunk. You actually make manual amendments in the history of the repository, even if that's impossible with regular commands, and you have to dig in the internal structure, and from now then everyone has to redo their checkouts/clones (or dump the whole history and start fresh). Go to a limit case. What if somebody committed by accident a picture of the CEO when he was drunk? Or pornography? Would the AOSP still distribute the file in the past branches? I doubt so.
Android is a term given to a set of derived operating systems. It is neither open source nor a codebase (most Android distributions are closed source).
So, Florian says that there is a problem in the Android source code found in the repository, and you claim that there is only one repository opened to the public and with open source code. Where is he doing "creative interpretation"? There is only one open repo and one open codebase, so it's obvious which is. He maybe got wrong the name, but stating that he was "creative" is trying to make it look like he made up the infringement, which is not the case.
Engadget does this all the time. I wrote to one of their editors when he published an article stating that you needed to root your N900 to do something, and remembered him that the N900 doesn't need that because it's already open. I'm still waiting for the response from him, or the needed correction to his article.
That only applies to enthusiasts that love their phone, but only on the software side. Geeks that like phones would love to see extra features from software updates, but also will love to have faster, more powerful devices.
I'm quite happy my HTC Desire got an update recently, and I have the new Market and new Maps, but I'm pretty sure I would like to buy a new phone in at least a year or less, because I also want a front facing camera, gyroscope, NFC, etc. I can't have a phone with all those features without buying a new one.
Also, if my phone were stuck with Android 2.1 (the version that came with out of the box), I would be buying less applications (those that require 2.2 or higher).
What a stupid headline. Page views, clicks, etc. Yeah I know.
Absolutely. The guy just says that is the end of KDE because, originally, it meant "desktop environment", and now there is software for non desktops, such as tablets or phones.
Well dude, it's been a year since that changed. Now KDE is the name of the community. And that community started developing a DE, but now develops a lot more.
Some changes in the KOffice situation required a rename, but renaming KDE just because that people is doing software for more platforms is absurd.
Qt is not fully owned by Nokia right now, and is moving to be a fully openly governed project. And Qt has now Qt Quick, which is a system for developing apps using a declarative language, and can be mixed with C++ very nicely. I've been playing with it lately, and is a great product.
Exactly which category of application are you thinking about? A frequent upgrade doesn't mean a frequent ABI or API incompatible change. I'm a Sid user, and I have no problem with, for example, VirtualBox packages targetted for Lenny. And VirtualBox spans from the kernel level to the GUI, passing through init scripts and so on.
I remember a discussion a year or two ago here on Slashdot how X was badly in need of replacing. Sounds to me like Canonical have the right idea, and the impetus to make it happen.
You know that the guy developing Wayland works for Intel, and previously worked for Red Hat? I'm puzzled that everyone gives credit to Canonical for everything, when they usually seem to do very few work outside of their distribution, with not much interest in pushing changes upstream.
I would consider that the superior compiler is the one that outputs (at least) a warning, and the programmer that refuses to release code with warnings a superior coder.
As stated in a comment before, -Wall -Werror should not be optional.
Permissions are pretty badly designed from a usability point of view. An example: A huge amount of free apps require permission to have full internet access. Why? Because they need to display ads. Even if you check with a sniffer (which isn't trivial for even the average geek) that the phone is using the network only to display ads... are you going to do that for every app, and every version of the app?
Even worse: I was looking for a keyboard alternative, and I found one in the market. It's not free, but still needs full internet access to use the voice recognition from Google (or so it's claimed by its developers). Given that you have a clear, scary warning from the OS about how dangerous is giving a 3rd party app the control of the text input, how do you feel about that if that app also has full internet access and can "call home" with your passwords or credit card numbers?
The proper solution would be that, if your app uses some Google API for ads and or voice recognition, such API gives no way of the developer to use the access as a backdoor. This way the message that the app installer would display would be different "full internet access", because it's just a limited access.