AMD has already bet on x86-64 scaling down to tablet form factors
That may actually pay off. Tablets aren't that far from the point where 32-bit address space becomes a serious limitation, and 64-bit ARM cores are only just on the horizon as far as I know. ARM is coming in from the low-power end and ramping up the performance, and AMD is coming from the high-performance end and cutting the power consumption. Both will benefit from miniaturization. Eventually, I could see them go head-to-head in the mobile multimedia computer race. Of course, Intel will have some tricks up its sleeve, too.
I agree with the vast majority of what you say, but I find the comment about marketplaces a bit odd. The standard install path for the vast majority of applications on all operating systems for the past decade or so has been "Go to website. Click download. Click install."
Perhaps, but that model isn't very nice. One of the things I like about free software operating systems is that they can and do offer a central, unified, and quality-controlled way to install, uninstall, and upgrade software. That's actually how I have been managing software for over a decade. It's so nice that it actually got me to switch away from Mac OS X after using it for a few months; I just couldn't put up with the lack of unification in how software was managed, and the "new version available" notifications of some apps just drive me insane.
I am happy that Apple has seen the light and now provides a centralized way to manage software for the iPhone and iPad. Perhaps they will do it on their desktop OS, too (and integrate free software with it, please). Of course, they are also doing this because of the control and revenue it gives them, but the result is that a lot of people who don't have the desire to learn enough about how their computer works to be able to successfully manage software that comes from various websites are now finding it easy to manage their software using the app store - be it Apple's, Google's, or Nokia's. I think that's a great achievement. I also think that, now that the major mobile OS vendors are on board with the user-friendly way to manage software, releasing an OS that doesn't support it is a sign that you're not really taking things seriously.
I remember my former CEO standing in my office nearly 7 years ago with myself and a colleague, saying "Hey, I have [some senior RIM guy] on the line... Anything you want to say to him?" Both myself and my colleague looked at each other, then said "Tell him RIM treats developers like crap. We need better tools."
Not the most intelligent thing to say, I guess, but it was a casual conversation and we were both pretty frustrated. Of course, the RIM guy had no response.
Had I been the RIM guy, I would have taken action. If the first thing two people can think of when asked to comment on your product is "it's crap and we need something better", then something is very seriously wrong. You also don't often get told this. It's a golden opportunity to work with these people and improve things for everyone.
How can the shareholders think this is profitable?
Shareholders? I am happy I am not one of them. If I had been, I would have sold my shares by now.
Only time will tell if the new course for Nokia will be successful. As for me, I am still enjoying my N900, but that now seems to be the Road Not Taken. Too bad; I will have to find a different platform to support and develop for.
I am curious what options there will be for running your own software on the machine, and what the world's reaction to that will be. People will want to run their Linux and homebrew games on this machine, and it will be interesting to see if Nintendo will be supportive of that, or try to fight it. And, of course, what kind of roadblocks they will throw up and what the world will do to defeat them.
I'm curious to see what kind of hardware this thing has
So am I. According to the article (i.e. speculation), it will have a Radeon R700 family GPU (with support for 1080p) and a triple-core PowerPC CPU, both slightly higher performance than what the competition is currently offering. To be honest, I think that would be a bit underwhelming, especially if they are going to ask $350 to $400 for the machine. On the other hand, the original Wii wasn't impressive because of hardware performance, either - but the fun innovations made it a big success.
I was born and raised in Europe, using metric measurements. Among my hobbies are computer programming, sailing, and aviation.
I measure many things in metric, but in sailing and aviation, distances are measured in nautical miles, and speed in knots. Depth is measured in meters. Length of the ship is usually expressed in feet. Altitude of airplanes is usually measured in flight levels or feet above mean sea level, but in meters above ground level in Russia. To top it all off, I have a friend in Canada who uses imperial units... in French.
it's swings and roundabouts, though. If you only have your own copy and it's not online somewhere, then you're at risk of theft, fire, flood, magnets, children pouring water on your pc etc etc. A professionally backed up cloud is way safer.
It's safer to say "If you care about it you have your own copy AND a copy on the cloud".
True. Or have your own copies in multiple locations. It doesn't have to be some buzzword-compliant cloud service.
And if it is information that you don't want to disclose, take appropriate measures. For example, store the copies in encrypted form, and keep multiple, password-protected copies of the key.
Also, make sure to regularly verify that your backups can be restored, and that this gives you everything you would need after a restore.
We need another "language" like we need a hole in our collective heads.
In a way, yeah. In that regard, the good news is that most people will never use most of these languages.
However, what I see happening is a desperate effort to improve the state of the world. The good thing about Java is that it broke open the field of programming languages. If we can get industry to switch to Java, we should be able to switch it to better languages, too. So now groups from around the world are trying to make that happen.
You seem convinced that the JVM is a good platform for a new language. I am not so convinced. Last I looked at the JVM, it was very much geared towards Java (pre-1.5 Java, that is). That may be ok if that's what you need for the language that you are implementing. However, if the language you implement is like what you already have, what is the point?
If we look at more interesting languages, they are likely to not fit the JVMs primitives. So while I agree with you that reinventing things we already have is a waste of time, I think the greater waste of time here is (1) reimplementing lots of things we already had outside the JVM inside the JVM and (2) implementing the same workarounds over and over when targeting languages to the JVM.
You say: "they care about language features, and whether those features work quickly." That is correct, and it is exactly why we do care about the instruction set: most real machine instruction sets are things we can and know how to work with. The JVM has always had limitations (although my understanding is that they are now beginning to be addressed) in what could be efficiently implemented on it.
Now Java as a language... leaves something to be desired.
So does the JVM, though, at least as a target for languages that aren't Java. The primitives you get were clearly designed with a language like pre-1.5 Java in mind. Try to build a more flexible language, and they get in the way. That doesn't mean it can't be done, it just means "highly-optimized" won't be as helpful anymore. I haven't yet read enough about Ceylon to judge whether it will run into trouble here, though.
I don't have a big problem with the way the chain of trust works. I have software on my computer that allows me to manage the certificates that I trust. That way, I can decide for myself. Since I don't actually want to bother to do so, I defer to my operating system vendor's judgment. They provide a package containing a list of trusted certificates, which I then use. I can have as much or as little control as I want. I think this is a good system.
What I do have a problem with is the fact that many applications will use cleartext connections without complaint, but give ominous warnings when using TLS with self-signed certificates. Sure, self-signed certificates don't provide authentication, but neither do clear connections. With TLS, at least I get encryption. This should be a step up in security. At the very least, security is no worse than without TLS.
I am OK with a warning being shown the first time I connect to a service with a non-trusted SSL certificate, but I feel applications should take a page from SSH here: give a warning that isn't too ominous, and offer the chance to save the public key. Then, next time I connect, if the key matches, go right ahead without a warning. And shout if the key does not match. This should provide good security if the first contact is uncompromised. Importantly, it matches the scariness of the warnings with the risk of the situation.
I wonder if people simply don't know the right and wrong ways, or do know, but can't or won't do it the right way.
I think that everyone who has worked on projects of different sizes knows that the more people are in a project, and the more people are in a meeting, the more overhead there is. I would certainly expect managers to know this. Yet it seems that you never have to look far to see projects with overly large meetings, too many layers of management, managers managing teams that would work better without their attentions, or large teams costing money while nobody actually decides what to do. And then, of course, everybody likes to contribute something valuable, so you end up with monstrous requirements for a project where something simple would have brought great value.
I also think that part of the reason this happens so often is that it pays well. Usually, being a manager pays more than being a production worker. And being a manager certainly pays better than saying "Actually, I am not needed here" and giving up the position.
Some people gain great reputations by taking over large, failing companies and turning them around, making them profitable again. I think there is much to gain by learning how they do that and applying the same methods to organizations that suffer from great inefficiency, even if they aren't on the brink of destruction yet.
So my only choices for smartphone development are Objective C or Java? Seems like a lose-lose situation to me. Why can't I use native C or C++ on either of them?
You can on some phones, like Nokia's N900, Symbian phones. And Windows Mobile smartphones, I think.
On the N900, you even get a standard *nix environment, with libc and shell and X and a package manager that lets you install pretty much whatever you want.
Alright! Having read about Mirah some more, I definitely see exciting possibilities. I will also check out the mailing lists and see what ideas are floating around for language features. I might have to add a few of my own. But first, getting familiar with the existing code base sounds like a great place to start. Now to find some time next to my job...
Thank you for the clarification. So it's close to Ruby, but statically typed. That's actually really exciting. I'm going to give this a spin. Also, are you looking for help with this project?
I read the article in the original Dutch, and while it indeed states that hijacking someone else's "secured or unsecured Internet connection" is not a criminal offense, it is still a civil offense. You could sue for damages.
Another interesting note is that this is in the context of a school kid posting a death threat online. The kid was convicted for the death threat, but wasn't punished extra for having used his neighbor's network or Internet connection, presumably without permission.
We do have other ways of making electricity than nuclear fission, and, depending on what you care about, those might actually be called better.
For example, the Wikipedia article Cost of electricity by source lists various ways of generating electricity that are considered cheaper than nuclear fission.
On the other hand, there are several reasons why nuclear fission may be with us for a while.
For one thing, many of the other ways we know for generating electricity aren't exactly harmless, either. What is worse, having a low probability of negatively impacting the lives of thousands of people quickly in a nuclear accident, or slowly negatively affecting millions of people through airborne toxins, radioactive particles, and greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels?
Secondly, with global electricity demand rising, we may need to use all known means to be able to meet that demand. Fossil fuels and clean sources and fission and even fusion when we get it.
Thirdly, none of the other means of generating electricity is as effective at producing fissile plutonium as is nuclear fission.
Still, I think it would be interesting to see how much money and effort is being poured into the various ways of generating electricity. Energy is an important issue, that could kill every one of us, but there is surprisingly little indication that we, as a species, are willing to put serious effort in realizing good solutions.
What I find curious is that releasing ARM-based hardware is somehow tied to Windows 8 supporting it. What happened to the ARM-based netbooks we have been hearing about? Linux supports ARM just fine, and a lot of netbooks are sold with Linux anyway, so why aren't we seeing more ARM-based netbooks? Are the netbook manufacturers waiting for Windows 8, too? What gives? And how about servers? Do we have to wait for Windows 8 before we can save energy by running Linux/*BSD/... on ARM-based servers?
And, I guess, I'm kind of wondering why it needs to be rebooted in your situation. You've got a script monitoring zombie processes... And those processes can apparently be killed manually... So why not have that script kill the processes instead of just monitoring them? Or write a second script to fire off a batch of zombie kills?
How would you get rid of the zombies? Killing them won't help: zombies are processes that are already dead, but that don't have any process waiting for their exit status. They can be cleaned up by the operating system once the system figures out that nobody is ever going to call wait/waitpid for them, but until that happens, they will clutter up the process table, which only has a limited number of entries (often about 32000). If you create zombies faster than the system destroys them, you will eventually run out of process descriptors, and calls to fork will fail.
Actually, I am not sure if Microsoft Exchange is an exception to the rule that the world prefers open over closed.
First of all, if you look at Exchange, it implements many open standards. It is doubtful that it would have succeeded if it hadn't. In e-mail, for example, a lot of proprietary protocols have fallen by the wayside, with the open SMTP becoming the worldwide standard.
Secondly, a lot of organizations have bumped into artificial limitations in Microsoft Exchange and would have preferred to go with a solution that better aligned with their needs had they been aware of one. Many alternatives have sprung up over the years, and it seems to me that it only a matter of time until Exchange won't seem to offer much of an advantage anymore. People are already moving away from MS Outlook, which means they won't be able to use some of the features that set Exchange apart from the competition anyway.
If Exchange is to survive in a world where there is a great diversity on the client side, it must interoperate with a great number of clients. The best way to do so is through an open, or at least published protocol. And lo and behold, since Exchange Server 2007, clients can access the server through Exchange Web Services, a SOAP-based protocol published by Microsoft.
So, true, Microsoft Exchange is not open source, but it interacts with the world through several open protocols, and, in that sense, has been becoming more and more open throughout its history. With all the protocols published, Exchange+Outlook becomes just one choice among many, and I think that's what really matters. If some organization prefers to run Exchange on their servers and some user preferes to use Outlook, I think they should have that option. As long as the rest of the world can use the software they prefer.
Symbian open? You realise you have to pay to get access to half the SDKs, right?
I don't know if the parent did, but I didn't. Thanks for pointing that out. Are they still keeping that up these days? I thought they had open sourced Symbian.
Slashdot Mirror
AMD has already bet on x86-64 scaling down to tablet form factors
That may actually pay off. Tablets aren't that far from the point where 32-bit address space becomes a serious limitation, and 64-bit ARM cores are only just on the horizon as far as I know. ARM is coming in from the low-power end and ramping up the performance, and AMD is coming from the high-performance end and cutting the power consumption. Both will benefit from miniaturization. Eventually, I could see them go head-to-head in the mobile multimedia computer race. Of course, Intel will have some tricks up its sleeve, too.
I agree with the vast majority of what you say, but I find the comment about marketplaces a bit odd. The standard install path for the vast majority of applications on all operating systems for the past decade or so has been "Go to website. Click download. Click install."
Perhaps, but that model isn't very nice. One of the things I like about free software operating systems is that they can and do offer a central, unified, and quality-controlled way to install, uninstall, and upgrade software. That's actually how I have been managing software for over a decade. It's so nice that it actually got me to switch away from Mac OS X after using it for a few months; I just couldn't put up with the lack of unification in how software was managed, and the "new version available" notifications of some apps just drive me insane.
I am happy that Apple has seen the light and now provides a centralized way to manage software for the iPhone and iPad. Perhaps they will do it on their desktop OS, too (and integrate free software with it, please). Of course, they are also doing this because of the control and revenue it gives them, but the result is that a lot of people who don't have the desire to learn enough about how their computer works to be able to successfully manage software that comes from various websites are now finding it easy to manage their software using the app store - be it Apple's, Google's, or Nokia's. I think that's a great achievement. I also think that, now that the major mobile OS vendors are on board with the user-friendly way to manage software, releasing an OS that doesn't support it is a sign that you're not really taking things seriously.
I remember my former CEO standing in my office nearly 7 years ago with myself and a colleague, saying "Hey, I have [some senior RIM guy] on the line... Anything you want to say to him?" Both myself and my colleague looked at each other, then said "Tell him RIM treats developers like crap. We need better tools."
Not the most intelligent thing to say, I guess, but it was a casual conversation and we were both pretty frustrated. Of course, the RIM guy had no response.
Had I been the RIM guy, I would have taken action. If the first thing two people can think of when asked to comment on your product is "it's crap and we need something better", then something is very seriously wrong. You also don't often get told this. It's a golden opportunity to work with these people and improve things for everyone.
Strong agree.
Canonical doesn't sell computers
Also, Canonical doesn't sell their OS. Canonical therefore has a completely different business model than Apple.
It all depends on what the "Next Apple" is supposed to mean. I hear Apple is a fun place to work. Maybe Canonical is, too.
I agree with you, though. Without making the hardware and the software and selling them together, Canonical is very much unlike Apple.
I can't moderate because I already posted, but you made me laugh. Good one!
How can the shareholders think this is profitable?
Shareholders? I am happy I am not one of them. If I had been, I would have sold my shares by now.
Only time will tell if the new course for Nokia will be successful. As for me, I am still enjoying my N900, but that now seems to be the Road Not Taken. Too bad; I will have to find a different platform to support and develop for.
I am curious what options there will be for running your own software on the machine, and what the world's reaction to that will be. People will want to run their Linux and homebrew games on this machine, and it will be interesting to see if Nintendo will be supportive of that, or try to fight it. And, of course, what kind of roadblocks they will throw up and what the world will do to defeat them.
I'm curious to see what kind of hardware this thing has
So am I. According to the article (i.e. speculation), it will have a Radeon R700 family GPU (with support for 1080p) and a triple-core PowerPC CPU, both slightly higher performance than what the competition is currently offering. To be honest, I think that would be a bit underwhelming, especially if they are going to ask $350 to $400 for the machine. On the other hand, the original Wii wasn't impressive because of hardware performance, either - but the fun innovations made it a big success.
For confusion of units, try this story:
I was born and raised in Europe, using metric measurements. Among my hobbies are computer programming, sailing, and aviation.
I measure many things in metric, but in sailing and aviation, distances are measured in nautical miles, and speed in knots. Depth is measured in meters. Length of the ship is usually expressed in feet. Altitude of airplanes is usually measured in flight levels or feet above mean sea level, but in meters above ground level in Russia. To top it all off, I have a friend in Canada who uses imperial units ... in French.
it's swings and roundabouts, though. If you only have your own copy and it's not online somewhere, then you're at risk of theft, fire, flood, magnets, children pouring water on your pc etc etc. A professionally backed up cloud is way safer.
It's safer to say "If you care about it you have your own copy AND a copy on the cloud".
True. Or have your own copies in multiple locations. It doesn't have to be some buzzword-compliant cloud service.
And if it is information that you don't want to disclose, take appropriate measures. For example, store the copies in encrypted form, and keep multiple, password-protected copies of the key.
Also, make sure to regularly verify that your backups can be restored, and that this gives you everything you would need after a restore.
Of course, all of this is covered in The Tao Of Backup
We need another "language" like we need a hole in our collective heads.
In a way, yeah. In that regard, the good news is that most people will never use most of these languages.
However, what I see happening is a desperate effort to improve the state of the world. The good thing about Java is that it broke open the field of programming languages. If we can get industry to switch to Java, we should be able to switch it to better languages, too. So now groups from around the world are trying to make that happen.
You seem convinced that the JVM is a good platform for a new language. I am not so convinced. Last I looked at the JVM, it was very much geared towards Java (pre-1.5 Java, that is). That may be ok if that's what you need for the language that you are implementing. However, if the language you implement is like what you already have, what is the point?
If we look at more interesting languages, they are likely to not fit the JVMs primitives. So while I agree with you that reinventing things we already have is a waste of time, I think the greater waste of time here is (1) reimplementing lots of things we already had outside the JVM inside the JVM and (2) implementing the same workarounds over and over when targeting languages to the JVM.
You say: "they care about language features, and whether those features work quickly." That is correct, and it is exactly why we do care about the instruction set: most real machine instruction sets are things we can and know how to work with. The JVM has always had limitations (although my understanding is that they are now beginning to be addressed) in what could be efficiently implemented on it.
Now Java as a language... leaves something to be desired.
So does the JVM, though, at least as a target for languages that aren't Java. The primitives you get were clearly designed with a language like pre-1.5 Java in mind. Try to build a more flexible language, and they get in the way. That doesn't mean it can't be done, it just means "highly-optimized" won't be as helpful anymore. I haven't yet read enough about Ceylon to judge whether it will run into trouble here, though.
I don't have a big problem with the way the chain of trust works. I have software on my computer that allows me to manage the certificates that I trust. That way, I can decide for myself. Since I don't actually want to bother to do so, I defer to my operating system vendor's judgment. They provide a package containing a list of trusted certificates, which I then use. I can have as much or as little control as I want. I think this is a good system.
What I do have a problem with is the fact that many applications will use cleartext connections without complaint, but give ominous warnings when using TLS with self-signed certificates. Sure, self-signed certificates don't provide authentication, but neither do clear connections. With TLS, at least I get encryption. This should be a step up in security. At the very least, security is no worse than without TLS.
I am OK with a warning being shown the first time I connect to a service with a non-trusted SSL certificate, but I feel applications should take a page from SSH here: give a warning that isn't too ominous, and offer the chance to save the public key. Then, next time I connect, if the key matches, go right ahead without a warning. And shout if the key does not match. This should provide good security if the first contact is uncompromised. Importantly, it matches the scariness of the warnings with the risk of the situation.
Given the success of Wikipedia, it seems to me that Joe Public has no trouble at all using Wikis, WYSIWYG or no.
I wonder if people simply don't know the right and wrong ways, or do know, but can't or won't do it the right way.
I think that everyone who has worked on projects of different sizes knows that the more people are in a project, and the more people are in a meeting, the more overhead there is. I would certainly expect managers to know this. Yet it seems that you never have to look far to see projects with overly large meetings, too many layers of management, managers managing teams that would work better without their attentions, or large teams costing money while nobody actually decides what to do. And then, of course, everybody likes to contribute something valuable, so you end up with monstrous requirements for a project where something simple would have brought great value.
I also think that part of the reason this happens so often is that it pays well. Usually, being a manager pays more than being a production worker. And being a manager certainly pays better than saying "Actually, I am not needed here" and giving up the position.
Some people gain great reputations by taking over large, failing companies and turning them around, making them profitable again. I think there is much to gain by learning how they do that and applying the same methods to organizations that suffer from great inefficiency, even if they aren't on the brink of destruction yet.
So my only choices for smartphone development are Objective C or Java? Seems like a lose-lose situation to me. Why can't I use native C or C++ on either of them?
You can on some phones, like Nokia's N900, Symbian phones. And Windows Mobile smartphones, I think.
On the N900, you even get a standard *nix environment, with libc and shell and X and a package manager that lets you install pretty much whatever you want.
Alright! Having read about Mirah some more, I definitely see exciting possibilities. I will also check out the mailing lists and see what ideas are floating around for language features. I might have to add a few of my own. But first, getting familiar with the existing code base sounds like a great place to start. Now to find some time next to my job ...
Thank you for the clarification. So it's close to Ruby, but statically typed. That's actually really exciting. I'm going to give this a spin. Also, are you looking for help with this project?
I read the article in the original Dutch, and while it indeed states that hijacking someone else's "secured or unsecured Internet connection" is not a criminal offense, it is still a civil offense. You could sue for damages.
Another interesting note is that this is in the context of a school kid posting a death threat online. The kid was convicted for the death threat, but wasn't punished extra for having used his neighbor's network or Internet connection, presumably without permission.
We do have other ways of making electricity than nuclear fission, and, depending on what you care about, those might actually be called better.
For example, the Wikipedia article Cost of electricity by source lists various ways of generating electricity that are considered cheaper than nuclear fission.
On the other hand, there are several reasons why nuclear fission may be with us for a while.
For one thing, many of the other ways we know for generating electricity aren't exactly harmless, either. What is worse, having a low probability of negatively impacting the lives of thousands of people quickly in a nuclear accident, or slowly negatively affecting millions of people through airborne toxins, radioactive particles, and greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels?
Secondly, with global electricity demand rising, we may need to use all known means to be able to meet that demand. Fossil fuels and clean sources and fission and even fusion when we get it.
Thirdly, none of the other means of generating electricity is as effective at producing fissile plutonium as is nuclear fission.
Still, I think it would be interesting to see how much money and effort is being poured into the various ways of generating electricity. Energy is an important issue, that could kill every one of us, but there is surprisingly little indication that we, as a species, are willing to put serious effort in realizing good solutions.
What I find curious is that releasing ARM-based hardware is somehow tied to Windows 8 supporting it. What happened to the ARM-based netbooks we have been hearing about? Linux supports ARM just fine, and a lot of netbooks are sold with Linux anyway, so why aren't we seeing more ARM-based netbooks? Are the netbook manufacturers waiting for Windows 8, too? What gives? And how about servers? Do we have to wait for Windows 8 before we can save energy by running Linux/*BSD/... on ARM-based servers?
And, I guess, I'm kind of wondering why it needs to be rebooted in your situation. You've got a script monitoring zombie processes... And those processes can apparently be killed manually... So why not have that script kill the processes instead of just monitoring them? Or write a second script to fire off a batch of zombie kills?
How would you get rid of the zombies? Killing them won't help: zombies are processes that are already dead, but that don't have any process waiting for their exit status. They can be cleaned up by the operating system once the system figures out that nobody is ever going to call wait/waitpid for them, but until that happens, they will clutter up the process table, which only has a limited number of entries (often about 32000). If you create zombies faster than the system destroys them, you will eventually run out of process descriptors, and calls to fork will fail.
Actually, I am not sure if Microsoft Exchange is an exception to the rule that the world prefers open over closed.
First of all, if you look at Exchange, it implements many open standards. It is doubtful that it would have succeeded if it hadn't. In e-mail, for example, a lot of proprietary protocols have fallen by the wayside, with the open SMTP becoming the worldwide standard.
Secondly, a lot of organizations have bumped into artificial limitations in Microsoft Exchange and would have preferred to go with a solution that better aligned with their needs had they been aware of one. Many alternatives have sprung up over the years, and it seems to me that it only a matter of time until Exchange won't seem to offer much of an advantage anymore. People are already moving away from MS Outlook, which means they won't be able to use some of the features that set Exchange apart from the competition anyway.
If Exchange is to survive in a world where there is a great diversity on the client side, it must interoperate with a great number of clients. The best way to do so is through an open, or at least published protocol. And lo and behold, since Exchange Server 2007, clients can access the server through Exchange Web Services, a SOAP-based protocol published by Microsoft.
So, true, Microsoft Exchange is not open source, but it interacts with the world through several open protocols, and, in that sense, has been becoming more and more open throughout its history. With all the protocols published, Exchange+Outlook becomes just one choice among many, and I think that's what really matters. If some organization prefers to run Exchange on their servers and some user preferes to use Outlook, I think they should have that option. As long as the rest of the world can use the software they prefer.
Symbian open? You realise you have to pay to get access to half the SDKs, right?
I don't know if the parent did, but I didn't. Thanks for pointing that out. Are they still keeping that up these days? I thought they had open sourced Symbian.