Before Eclipse became Eclipse it was called Visual Age for Java, implemented in Smalltalk, and it was a joy to use. Capable of some amazing things, like recompiling pieces of a program while running it, and have that all make sense and be natural. When rewritten in Java it became the dreary, plodding thing it is today. Not useless, but soul-sucking. Implementation language had something to do with it? Funny how everything written in Java ends up awkward.
it appears this site has sold its soul to those evil advertisers
What advertisers? Since when does examining the merits of a public domain programming language amount to selling out to advertisers? Seems to me some completely ignorant person got triggered.
The Hindenberg used hydrogen. Hydrogen is highly flammable. Helium is not.
Pretty much all the helium airships crashed as well. Maybe not crashed and burned, but well and truly crashed. And some of the hydrogen airships survived until decommissioned. Fire is far from the only enemy of airships.
So for your wife, the moment when she realizes it isn't a real computer will come later, rather than sooner. But it will come... disconnected from the internet and need to print something perhaps?
[FSF] continue to make up most of the OS User Space tools
Not even close to true. Just list the packages on a typical Linux system and do some statistical sampling. FSF provides a disproportionately large share of key projects, certainly, like libc, gcc and bash. Thousands of other packages are from all over the map. None of the popular desktop environments are FSF projects, for example.
Stallman was talking about how horrible ChromeOS would be before it was even released.
As is the case more often than not, he's right. A full-blown computer that can only run a browser, feh. Everybody who uses one will run into that limitation sooner or later and complain about it, especially as the devices keep moving closer to the ultrabook form factor. Google is well aware of this and is busy back filling, supporting Android apps and multiple windows for example.
More like a horde chest. Tim Cook is too squeamish to use it in any effective way. Meanwhile, Apple's race to the bottom of the market share pile is gathering steam.
Oracle says the Android industry generates $32 billion annually. I say that's an underestimate, and I say enough wishful thinking from bitter Apple groupies.
That's Google's total revenue on Android until Jan. 2016. What's that number supposed to prove exactly in relation to the question asked?
You are right, that number is a small fraction of the total Android industry, what was I thinking?
Again, this is neither profit (as in "making money") nor "the industry". Just to make sure you understand: Apple had more revenue on iOS last quarter.
You don't mean "on iOS", you mean from all its operations. Six times as many Android phones are sold as Apple phones, and for more than 1/6th the price. Inescapable conclusion: worldwide Android revenue is considerably more than Apple's revenue. Sure, it's divided up between many companies, and we care about that exactly why? Then there's the trend: Apple volume down ~7%/year while the world phone market increases 4%/year. Oops.
My main concern about this device is that the Intel chip in it - at $281, amounts to 56% of the retail cost. Give me the same thing in ARM please, and pass the savings through.
Extremely shoddy hardware, with the cheapest possible components and glitchy, jerky operation owing to defects in communication between the glitchy slow components and other parts of the hardware.
Haha, you're making that up. It would be bad business for Asus to put out a machine with weak components that break immediately, causing huge return bills and massive hit to reputation. For that reason, the low end is where you will find serious reliability... high return rate would break the business. (BTW, this doesn't apply to Dell, just avoid.)
The dominant fact of life about this form factor is the thermal envelope, which limits the processor clock. Just suck it up... that's the cost of the sexy thin profile.
> Sure they may be based on linux but they do not share the philosophy.
That's an interesting comment. Certainly it doesn't match Stallman's GNU philosophy, but Linus's Linux philosophy
Totally matches Stallman's philosophy. What he cares about is that you can get the source to the code you are running, and the toolchain, rebuild it, change it, and run it on the device. Checkmarks for all on Chromebook. Well, except for the copyleft requirement for making changes to open source code available, which Google does even though not legally required to. Also note that Linus has never been against Stallman's magnum opus, the GPL, only against the FSF, which tends to be grabby about copyright assignment and has a few other annoying habits.
To my surprise, she never had any reason to boot Ubuntu - Chrome was all she needed.
Works for many people, but basically a casual user. No artist would ever be satisfied working in a browser, for example. Sometimes you just need to strip away the crap and use a computer as a computer.
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Before Eclipse became Eclipse it was called Visual Age for Java, implemented in Smalltalk, and it was a joy to use. Capable of some amazing things, like recompiling pieces of a program while running it, and have that all make sense and be natural. When rewritten in Java it became the dreary, plodding thing it is today. Not useless, but soul-sucking. Implementation language had something to do with it? Funny how everything written in Java ends up awkward.
it appears this site has sold its soul to those evil advertisers
What advertisers? Since when does examining the merits of a public domain programming language amount to selling out to advertisers? Seems to me some completely ignorant person got triggered.
Idiocracy is an automation story, not about average human intelligence
You must have slept through most of it. The basic premise is that stupid people reproduce faster.
We need to repeal helmet laws.
Maybe increase the prize pool for X-Games while we're at it.
I suppose that life in the Apple world means being constantly subject to the word farts of your ilk.
The google query libreoffice "smart quotes" leads to a page that says To turn off smart quotes in Libre Office Writer, so that the double quote character is shown in the document as ” — exactly as you typed it — and doesn’t get converted into something curly with the " converted into a right curly quote. And google chooses that for the "snippet" result. Confirmed that my quotes are 0x22, just as I typed them.
I wonder what the Apple cultist fallback is after that one? Hmm, maybe something along the lines of "those grapes were sour anyway".
The Hindenberg used hydrogen. Hydrogen is highly flammable. Helium is not.
Pretty much all the helium airships crashed as well. Maybe not crashed and burned, but well and truly crashed. And some of the hydrogen airships survived until decommissioned. Fire is far from the only enemy of airships.
US Akron and US Macon were blimp aircraft carriers carring multiple planes able to both launch and retrieve.
And both crashed in storms, as will Amazon's hare-brained idea if it ever (ahem) gets off the ground.
So for your wife, the moment when she realizes it isn't a real computer will come later, rather than sooner. But it will come... disconnected from the internet and need to print something perhaps?
Yes, you did your job of spreading stupidity
there becomes increasingly less one can do in *nix
You live on a different planet than I do.
[FSF] continue to make up most of the OS User Space tools
Not even close to true. Just list the packages on a typical Linux system and do some statistical sampling. FSF provides a disproportionately large share of key projects, certainly, like libc, gcc and bash. Thousands of other packages are from all over the map. None of the popular desktop environments are FSF projects, for example.
Stallman was talking about how horrible ChromeOS would be before it was even released.
As is the case more often than not, he's right. A full-blown computer that can only run a browser, feh. Everybody who uses one will run into that limitation sooner or later and complain about it, especially as the devices keep moving closer to the ultrabook form factor. Google is well aware of this and is busy back filling, supporting Android apps and multiple windows for example.
I felt more stupid after reading your post.
Apple's war chest builds up for the long term
More like a horde chest. Tim Cook is too squeamish to use it in any effective way. Meanwhile, Apple's race to the bottom of the market share pile is gathering steam.
Oracle says the Android industry generates $32 billion annually. I say that's an underestimate, and I say enough wishful thinking from bitter Apple groupies.
That's Google's total revenue on Android until Jan. 2016. What's that number supposed to prove exactly in relation to the question asked?
You are right, that number is a small fraction of the total Android industry, what was I thinking?
Again, this is neither profit (as in "making money") nor "the industry". Just to make sure you understand: Apple had more revenue on iOS last quarter.
You don't mean "on iOS", you mean from all its operations. Six times as many Android phones are sold as Apple phones, and for more than 1/6th the price. Inescapable conclusion: worldwide Android revenue is considerably more than Apple's revenue. Sure, it's divided up between many companies, and we care about that exactly why? Then there's the trend: Apple volume down ~7%/year while the world phone market increases 4%/year. Oops.
Totally matches Stallman's philosophy
Not at all. Yes, the client-side is OK, but the server-side (eg Google Docs) is completely closed.
I guess we'd have to ask him. You aren't forced to use Google Docs.
I thought half the point of a Chromebook was that it was supposed to be cheaper than a standard laptop?
This form factor is more like an ultrabook, so compare to that.
It's because the Core M3 in it costs $281.
My main concern about this device is that the Intel chip in it - at $281, amounts to 56% of the retail cost. Give me the same thing in ARM please, and pass the savings through.
Extremely shoddy hardware, with the cheapest possible components and glitchy, jerky operation owing to defects in communication between the glitchy slow components and other parts of the hardware.
Haha, you're making that up. It would be bad business for Asus to put out a machine with weak components that break immediately, causing huge return bills and massive hit to reputation. For that reason, the low end is where you will find serious reliability... high return rate would break the business. (BTW, this doesn't apply to Dell, just avoid.)
The dominant fact of life about this form factor is the thermal envelope, which limits the processor clock. Just suck it up... that's the cost of the sexy thin profile.
If your needs are basic productivity software, email, and web, it's a great option.
And if you want it to be a real computer then put Ubuntu on it. 64 GB of flash is plenty, the SD slot just sweetens the deal.
> Sure they may be based on linux but they do not share the philosophy.
That's an interesting comment. Certainly it doesn't match Stallman's GNU philosophy, but Linus's Linux philosophy
Totally matches Stallman's philosophy. What he cares about is that you can get the source to the code you are running, and the toolchain, rebuild it, change it, and run it on the device. Checkmarks for all on Chromebook. Well, except for the copyleft requirement for making changes to open source code available, which Google does even though not legally required to. Also note that Linus has never been against Stallman's magnum opus, the GPL, only against the FSF, which tends to be grabby about copyright assignment and has a few other annoying habits.
To my surprise, she never had any reason to boot Ubuntu - Chrome was all she needed.
Works for many people, but basically a casual user. No artist would ever be satisfied working in a browser, for example. Sometimes you just need to strip away the crap and use a computer as a computer.