In the case of AMD (unlike intel), they simply were not able to undertake the R&D Spending of producing an ultra-low-power X-86 chip for mobile applications (on top of R&Ding and producing their desktop and server bread and butter).
But ATi in the early to mid '00s had a very promising mobile graphics R&D group and products. This was sold to Qualcomm by Hector Ruiz, and became the basis of the Adreno Graphics unit in all Qualcomm chips... This stuff goes toe to toe with Mali, Imagination and Vivante... So, it was a strong foundation.
So yeah, both companies droped the ball on Mobile.
The market for AMD GPUs for mining may perhaps dry out, because, just as so many cryptocurrencies since BitCoin, the arms race make it move from CPU->GPU->FPGA->ASICs...
Also, in some other cryptocurrencies, were the dominant factor is memory size, at some point you need to go from unisocket home rigs to multisocket server rigs, to thaurus interconnects...
That means that, for any new cryptocurrency, once it explodes, it moves from small time miners to Industrial/Profesional setups.
What is expected is that this will happen to Etherium in the next year.
Having said that, I do think that the report from the pirate working at Morgan S is just greatly exagerated... IMHO
1.) There is pent up demand from gamers for AMD Graphics chips, that may, more or less, offset the decrease in demand for mining. 2.) New cryptocurrencies flourish everywhere, and the GPUs will be able to mine (for a while) the newer ones, so, while demand from mining will ebb and flow, will not simply dry-out. 3.) Even if the X-86 microprocesor market as a whole shrinks, that does not mean that Zen related products can not grow, specially since those offer a better performance/$ (performance/$/watt, which is relevant in big datacenters and laptops, is a more diffcult thing to meassure).
The only thing on which I kinda-sorta agree, is that demands for consoles with AMD chips will slow down a little... I can not foresee many people changing their Xbox-one for an XBox-One-X (scorpio) or changing their PS4 for a PS4+... And now the switch makes nintendo sligtly more competitive than in the Wii-U times...
Am I bullish on AMD? No? But that does not mean they can not do well. And I hope they do well.
Deutsche Telekom (Parent company of T-Mobile USoA) has been trying to get rid of T-Mobile USoA for years (lustres, maybe even decades)...
That's why these news about mergers in the Cell-Comm industry always involves T-Mobile as One of the actors.
And while is true that the company went public when it reverse-merged with MetroPCS, the germans have not been able to get rid of it selling shares in the Opent Market.
At this time, the Germans should realize that this repeated efforts to sell T-Mobile to another Cell-Comm concern is not the path forward, and instead knock the Door of Spectrum/charter or Comcast and merge (with one of them, although Comcas and Charter have a strange agreement regarding Cell-Com services), to be a Wireless+Cable+Wireline Concern. To sweeten the deal, they may make a pure stock merger. This will dilute ownership for them, allowing for an easier selling of shares in the open market.
And now, a little MBA FanFic: 1.) A meger between T-Mobile and a Big CableCo will force Sprint to merge with the other. 2.) The merged entity resulting from Charter will, sooner or later, knock on the door of CBS/Viacom to Acquire the CW + some other table scraps. 3.) The two merged entities will race to merge/acquire Dish.
At that point, we will end up 4 comparable giants in the Wireless+Wireline+Cable+DTH+Content, but instead of being equal in every dimension, will be bigger in some, and smaller in others...
Then we would see a little bit more competition from these oligopolies... Trying to leverage their strengths in one dimension to capture customers to reinforce their weaker dimensions...
It was never just for graphics cards. It's a replacement for the PCI bus. It just happened to also replace AGP, which was a dedicated graphics port. It's commonly used for network cards, audio cards, storage (NVMe is PCIe), etc. Thunderbolt is PCIe + DisplayPort
Amen to that viperidaenz... And that's on yer punny desktops and Laptops.
Please do not get me started on what can be done with PCIe on my servers, including but not limited to 40G and 100G Eth cards, 32G Fibrechannel cards, 50Gbps infiniband cards, SAS RAID Cards for booting, and mezzanine cards Galore in Blade servers....
Checking a.c or.h file to clarify something, or checking and quick changing a config file, or checking a document or making a quick memo in Libreoffice, or quick answering an email in Thunderbird, or quick testing a website with desktop Mozila while conmuting or taking a break in the coffe shop... count me in!!!
the posibilites are endless.
It would be mighty fine that all my environment is with me all the time, and in my pocket, not in a magical cloud, were you live and die by the quality of the connectivity... and connectivity is not always so great...
With a good MDM, this could be great. You get to the office, dock to a 24 in (dual) Monitor setup, and booom! all the paper/doc/email/sap pushing is done from the phone, and backups go to the enterprise backup solution.
You get home, dock and boooom! balance+knox make sure that what you do in the work partition (like a late night email answer) stays in the work partition, and what you do in the home partition (say, erase the red eye and apply filters to the weekend pictures of the children and share them with gramma) stays in the home partition and gets backed up to your very own nas.
This may be golden for a great % of my workloads. Leaving the workstation only for simulators, VMs, and Games.
Once a great approach is identified, bake it in all browsers.
A monolytic company (and specially one like google, which lives of adds) is not the best blace to come with a solution, let alone a great overall solution
Well, in a reasonably quality article (on windows central), linked from the Crappy article linked on the front page of Slashdot (as ussual), they had the info for DD-WRT and LEDE (OpenWRT). It turns out that the Source has been modified already, but no firmware images produced yet.
After all, microsoft already has full control of the OS layer, no intermediaries required.
If Microsoft wants to spy on you, they will spy on you, no matter what antivirus you use. So, if you stick to Windows defender, there is one less vector for others to spy on you (because, once you start using windows as your OS, you cede control to Microsoft to potentialy spy on you).
Windows Defender (or Microsoft security essentials, if that's how you roll) are free (as in beer), have decent detection capabilities, does not suck resources like crazy, is updated by the same means of your OS, and is acepted by certifiying agencies in regulated industries (like PCI for credit cards).
Of course, in an ideal world we would all use linux and ClamAV, but this is not an ideal world, some people like their linux, I use a mac, some people like linux but are forced, for one reason or another, to use windows...
So, if you want or need windows, stick with Windows Defender...
Microsoft is already spying you at the OS level, they gain nothing spying on you on the AntiVirus level.
Also, Windows defender is free, and complies with "certification" requirements (like PCI).
Now, for Mac and Linux (where you should be running an Antivirus anyway) the choices are more complicated. You could go with ClamAV, but that may pose problems for "certification", or go with a commercial vendor, with all the caveats that entails.
Who seriously runs AOSP without gapps, which are trivial to download and install on any device with a functional recovery?
No one runs an AOSP whitout gapps. Even my lowly Blackberry has most of gapps enabled (thank you very, very much mr "cobalt232")
But no big handset manufacturer could include it in the box, and no APP manufacturer can claim support of gapps on AOSP without exposing itself to all sort of strong (and, dare I say, justified) ligtigation from Alphabet/Google.
See, for example, Amazon Fire Tablets, or, for that matter, Blackberry BBOS 10.2.x and up. No gapps in the box. No support for gapps, only third party hacks. Good yes, but "non-supported".
Same for app makers, some, like instagram, even go to great lenghts to check that you are running on propper android, and refuse to do so if not, even if the phone has android compatibility + gapps
You see, Android and AOSP are different enough, that AOSP qualifies as a third OS all into itself. AOSP is a very fragmented third OS (API wise) and playing catchup with Google's Android Proper, since the only commonality (APP wise) is in some APIs that are delerict and whose advanced functionality migrated long ago to GooglePlayStore/Services APIs. Android can run most APPs that AOSP can run, but AOSP can not run some of android's APPs, due to the use of APIs and Services tied to propiertary parts of Android
But AOSP is very big in places Like South East Asia and LatAm (where the growth is baby!), also, in places where Google services and APPs are not available, or are not the most popular. Also, some big players (like Amazon in it's tablets) have embraces AOSP.
Currently, AOSP has a 26% market share (bigger than iOS'), iOS has a 18% market share and Google's Android has something like 55% of the 3223 Million Smartphones currently in active use worldwide...
If anything has a chance to suceed in the short and medium term to fight the duopoly of Android/iOS, is a broad agreement among players for a sort of universal API to challenge the GooglePlayStore/Services APIs that are present in android but not on AOSP.
This comment is brought you by a Cellular Operator Engineer, Manager and technical trainer in LatAm rocking a Blackberry Q10 with BBOS 10.3.3.
Instead of complaining do as follows: 1.) Invent some amazing stuff, or write the great american novel. 2.) Make a shitload of money. 3.) When you die, set up a foundation to recognize human achievement, scientific ones in particular, with better citeria than the novel.
See? Is not that hard. You can do it. Focus your energy in these 3 simple steps, instead of using it to complain about what dear old anachronistic Alfred did way back when....
PS: For those who did RTFA (the vast majority), Ed Yong is the author of TFA in The Atlantic.
In the times of yore, the Nokia NMS2000 had a button to refresh from the network elements. It was in a right click, per NE and you had to be a admin to use it. But it was there*... very hard to press, otherwise, the guys in the night shift would play to see who can saturate the digital X.25 links to the BSCs faster;-)... but it was there.
There are reasons to hide the button, some are aestethic, as the poster said, othersare to avoid an inadverted DDoS by your own users by casually all pressing the button at the same time. There may be other reasons still to make ith harder to press that button.
So yes, hide the button if you like, either to make your app nicer, or to prevent it to be pressed for no good reason (sort of like important buttons covered in acrilic or glass), but leave the capability to refresh there...
* I had to create a special admin user for the NOC Technicians to use that refresh button. It was in a sealed envelope, and everyday I checked the envelope was not opened. Each guard change had to check that they received the envelope still sealed, and reflect that on the logbook, otherwise, they would be responsible for anything that admin user did, as reflected in the syslog logfiles. And the envelope could only be opened under my direct orders. Of 2 years being the admin of the NMS, only once we had to open the envelope. The poor tech asked me three times if I was sure I wanted him to open the envelope and write that on the logbook, such was his amazement... Fairly low tech technique, but efective nonetheless...
There are behemoths in that space Like Samsung, Huawei, Ericsson and Nokia (the telco Equipment maker formerly known as Nokia-Siemens-Motorola[Telco]-Alcatel-Lucent) that can not be arsed to sell their patents.
Also, many of the patents that came from Motorola, or could come from HTC are for 2G and 3G tech. But those will stop being relevant by 2020 or 2025 when those networks are shut down in favour of 4G and 5G Frequency refarming...
Yes, very likely HTC has some interesting patents in Cellphones (2/3/4G and SW), and some other areas (perhaps VR), but not enough to be "Vastly Dominant".
The relationship between Handset makers and Google is a very tense one, to say the least.
That's why things like TouchWiz (Samsung), EMUI (Huawei), LGUX (LG) and other "Non-Stock android" UI still exist. Yes, those were necesities when Android's UI was primitive, and not to the liking of certain markets (Like South-East Asia, for instance).
If one of the big guys breaks up with google and slaps their UI on top of AOSP, or Bada, or BB10, the users would be none the wiser. Especialy in markets like India or Chine, were the dominant services are NOT Google's.
At the same time, google tries to move forward the ecosystem, both in terms of hardware capabilities (AR is the latest example), and in therms of Software updates... Sometimes, they try the carrot, sometimes the stick. After google got the Motorola patents, they used motorola for a while as one of the Sticks. Now, they need another stick... Enter HCT.
Alphabet will slurp any patents and interesting tech that HTC may have.
The phone division will make a couple of interesting handsets (the reference designs will still be awarded in a kinda-sorta-of-round-robin-fashion to partners like LG, Samsun, Lenovo, HTC itself, etc.), with very-close-to-stock-Android, and decent update cycles too. And after a few years, will be sold to some emerging handset maker in China or India, which is in the Top 10 global handset maker chart, but only by virtue of the sales in their home market, which needs a globaly recognized brand to help their internationalization (TCL owning the Alcatel, BlackBerry and Palm brands is a good example).
Then, after a few years, when Google needs another stick, they will buy yet another formerly great handset maker with a recognizable brand, and repeat the cycle...
English is not my first language. Is Spanish (I also speak french). Did you saw how I spelled detective in the original post? Well: I'm slightly dislexic (very slightly, people would not know if I did not point it out). I have an essential tremor. And, I have the bad habit of not proof-reading when I post to forums or personal stuff. Only for serious work.
And yet, with all those handicaps, I was able to score 296/300 in my first try at the ToEFL in 2005
How was your DELE? Do you speak any language other than English?
And, aside from my bad grammar? Any opinion on the ACTUAL CONTENT [caps intended] of the post?
You know, the actual IDEAS [caps intended]? I guess a guy who like you read the elements of style many times, and has such a mastery of English can overcome my bad use of capitalization and grasp the ideas and analyze them well enough to make a significant contrubution to the discussion...
Let your ideas and discernment capacity shine, and be your presentation card.
PS: Quile likely, there are more mistakes in this post. That is to be expected. Sorry.
My FOSS days started in 1995 with FreeBSD, and then in 1996 with Linux (Slackware Unleashed, I forget the Version) in the University, then I was a firm proponent on the server side... I've been hearing about the linux desktop for a loooong time...
But, that was 22 years ago. Nowadays, in a production desktop, I have some requirements, which are quite different from the requirements on a Phone, or a Kiosk, or a retail point, or a computer for Kids/Schools:
* I want the power of an OpenSource Unix (Darwin) under the Hood, wrapped in a slick GUI (sadly, propiertary) that makes my workflow Easier and does not change all of the sudden (BTW, Ubuntians, how's the Transition from MIR/Unity to Wayland GNOME going?).
* Also, is nice if the Hardware in which that software resides is well built, and all the drivers play nice (granted, thanks to things like Dell's project MIR, this is easier nowadays with Linux too). I have stuff to do. Playing decetvive with drivers and libraries was entertaining in 2002 (last time I did that). Nowadays, not so much, quite the contrary, very, very frustrating!!!
* Also, I want commonly used productivity Software available, no matter if it is FOSS or Closed. The dektop/laptop is a TOOL for Production, I want to use the most suitable tools to do my work. For instance, when I was teaching at the university, I did Everything using LibreOffice (for MAC). When I started doing technical training for Telco OpenStack Cloud (Huawei's Flavour) and Hadoop/Spark/Storm (Nokia's CEMoD 16), I pretty much had to use Office. otherwise, the powerpoints would loose all formatting, and it would take ages to fix that (and no one paid me to fix it), Macros in the Excel report sheets would be borked. Also, many iLO/IPIMI/Javascript crap would not work on Linux... You get the drift.
* But, from time to time I have to unwind. I want the available games in steam for my machine to cont in the Thousands, not in the hundreds...
* Speaking of telco clouds: What do you think those clouds used? If you guessed KVM, Redhat, CentOS, SuSE, Apache, Puppet, MariaDB, Postgres, yarn, etc, you are right, come collect your prize. The requirements for servers are different than from desktop, which in turn are different from cellphones, which in turn are different from kids/school computers, which in turn are different from... you get the idea!!!
Now, these are the reasons why he did it. Having said that, the irony does not escape me that, he being a top dog in a linux company, he should "Eat his own dog food". Even microsoft eats their own dog food.
But, this being The Linux Foundation, and not The GNU/Linux foundation, or the FOSS foundation: how much of FOSS is "his own dog food". Certainly the linux kernel is. But neither X-free86 nor Wayland seems to be part of his dog food. Nor are KDE/GNOME/Enligthment/all other window environments out there. Is Pulseaudio/ALSA part of his dog food? What about security practices like demanding the root PW for changing the timezone or adding a printer from school? So, If the guy used a MAC with OSX instead of linux, can you blame him? perhaps a little bit, yes. If he also used PowerPoint or Keynote instead of LibreOffice, can you blame him? In my oppinion, no way!!!!
Do not believe me, well, perhaps this guy who was using a macbook on 2012 (with linux), that does not like GNOME 3 and maybe, just maybe, knows a thing or two about linux (certainly he knows more about linux than me and you), can enlighten you all, even more than I can, on why some people preffer MACs to Linux and WinPCs. Please read his rant on the link...
Unlike in the cases of Cortana and Siri, you can change Alexa's Name to a number of pre-defined alternative names (currently 4, pettition amazon for more).
While I concur with people saying that this technology has security implications and is best avoided, I sugest changing the wake voice command (name) of your smart speaker as a way to lower this type of pranks.
Then use an Apple supplied USB 2.0 PD Chargers that came with the larger iPods. Either one that you have thee laying around, or one off of eBay.
I have one in my hand right now rated for 10Watts. White (of balls), slightly scratched. It even comes with the detachable wall plug à-la laptop poweer adapter... (I am not selling it BTW)
But this is not-news. I bet that when the phones finally come out in late oct or early nov, the fast charging power adpater will be included in the box in most (if not all) the models that support fast charging...
Much ado about nothing Mountains out of molehills storms in teapots clickbait
The advice I gave was for the general WinPho population, and not specific to your situation. Specific advice for you:
If your phone came with Win10 (I am assuming you are ussing the latest stable version, and not some insider preview) and you are having problems conecting to Wifi, and is under warranty, then is a Warranty issue (since microsoft swears there is no wifi problems for the model).
Contact seller and/or manufacturer as appropiate for a repair/replacement. Then use as I detalied in 1.) as winpho10 is still supported with security patches until next year.
Other thing you can try (if and only if you are out of warranty) is different beta builds of WinPho10 (insider previews), to see if any of those solves the WiFi issue you are experiencing.
If the phone is out of warranty, and trying differnt insider preview builds does not solve the wifi issue, then you have many possible uses as I detailed in 2.) a.) - k.), some need WiFi, others not so much, just decide on one, and move on. One I forgot to mention was:
Slashdot Mirror
In the case of AMD (unlike intel), they simply were not able to undertake the R&D Spending of producing an ultra-low-power X-86 chip for mobile applications (on top of R&Ding and producing their desktop and server bread and butter).
But ATi in the early to mid '00s had a very promising mobile graphics R&D group and products. This was sold to Qualcomm by Hector Ruiz, and became the basis of the Adreno Graphics unit in all Qualcomm chips... This stuff goes toe to toe with Mali, Imagination and Vivante... So, it was a strong foundation.
So yeah, both companies droped the ball on Mobile.
The market for AMD GPUs for mining may perhaps dry out, because, just as so many cryptocurrencies since BitCoin, the arms race make it move from CPU->GPU->FPGA->ASICs ...
Also, in some other cryptocurrencies, were the dominant factor is memory size, at some point you need to go from unisocket home rigs to multisocket server rigs, to thaurus interconnects...
That means that, for any new cryptocurrency, once it explodes, it moves from small time miners to Industrial/Profesional setups.
What is expected is that this will happen to Etherium in the next year.
Having said that, I do think that the report from the pirate working at Morgan S is just greatly exagerated... IMHO
1.) There is pent up demand from gamers for AMD Graphics chips, that may, more or less, offset the decrease in demand for mining.
2.) New cryptocurrencies flourish everywhere, and the GPUs will be able to mine (for a while) the newer ones, so, while demand from mining will ebb and flow, will not simply dry-out.
3.) Even if the X-86 microprocesor market as a whole shrinks, that does not mean that Zen related products can not grow, specially since those offer a better performance/$ (performance/$/watt, which is relevant in big datacenters and laptops, is a more diffcult thing to meassure).
The only thing on which I kinda-sorta agree, is that demands for consoles with AMD chips will slow down a little... I can not foresee many people changing their Xbox-one for an XBox-One-X (scorpio) or changing their PS4 for a PS4+... And now the switch makes nintendo sligtly more competitive than in the Wii-U times...
Am I bullish on AMD? No? But that does not mean they can not do well. And I hope they do well.
It wasan FDR card, and I got the speed wrong. Since the error is close (but not exactly) 10%, is withing acceptable range ;-) :-P
Deutsche Telekom (Parent company of T-Mobile USoA) has been trying to get rid of T-Mobile USoA for years (lustres, maybe even decades)...
That's why these news about mergers in the Cell-Comm industry always involves T-Mobile as One of the actors.
And while is true that the company went public when it reverse-merged with MetroPCS, the germans have not been able to get rid of it selling shares in the Opent Market.
At this time, the Germans should realize that this repeated efforts to sell T-Mobile to another Cell-Comm concern is not the path forward, and instead knock the Door of Spectrum/charter or Comcast and merge (with one of them, although Comcas and Charter have a strange agreement regarding Cell-Com services), to be a Wireless+Cable+Wireline Concern. To sweeten the deal, they may make a pure stock merger. This will dilute ownership for them, allowing for an easier selling of shares in the open market.
And now, a little MBA FanFic:
1.) A meger between T-Mobile and a Big CableCo will force Sprint to merge with the other.
2.) The merged entity resulting from Charter will, sooner or later, knock on the door of CBS/Viacom to Acquire the CW + some other table scraps.
3.) The two merged entities will race to merge/acquire Dish.
At that point, we will end up 4 comparable giants in the Wireless+Wireline+Cable+DTH+Content, but instead of being equal in every dimension, will be bigger in some, and smaller in others...
Then we would see a little bit more competition from these oligopolies... Trying to leverage their strengths in one dimension to capture customers to reinforce their weaker dimensions...
One can only hope.
It was never just for graphics cards. It's a replacement for the PCI bus. It just happened to also replace AGP, which was a dedicated graphics port.
It's commonly used for network cards, audio cards, storage (NVMe is PCIe), etc.
Thunderbolt is PCIe + DisplayPort
Amen to that viperidaenz... And that's on yer punny desktops and Laptops.
Please do not get me started on what can be done with PCIe on my servers, including but not limited to 40G and 100G Eth cards, 32G Fibrechannel cards, 50Gbps infiniband cards, SAS RAID Cards for booting, and mezzanine cards Galore in Blade servers....
Checking a .c or .h file to clarify something, or checking and quick changing a config file, or checking a document or making a quick memo in Libreoffice, or quick answering an email in Thunderbird, or quick testing a website with desktop Mozila while conmuting or taking a break in the coffe shop... count me in!!!
the posibilites are endless.
It would be mighty fine that all my environment is with me all the time, and in my pocket, not in a magical cloud, were you live and die by the quality of the connectivity... and connectivity is not always so great...
With a good MDM, this could be great. You get to the office, dock to a 24 in (dual) Monitor setup, and booom! all the paper/doc/email/sap pushing is done from the phone, and backups go to the enterprise backup solution.
You get home, dock and boooom! balance+knox make sure that what you do in the work partition (like a late night email answer) stays in the work partition, and what you do in the home partition (say, erase the red eye and apply filters to the weekend pictures of the children and share them with gramma) stays in the home partition and gets backed up to your very own nas.
This may be golden for a great % of my workloads. Leaving the workstation only for simulators, VMs, and Games.
Let a hundred extensions bloom!
Let extension developers deal with the problem.
Once a great approach is identified, bake it in all browsers.
A monolytic company (and specially one like google, which lives of adds) is not the best blace to come with a solution, let alone a great overall solution
Yup, what about them?
Well, in a reasonably quality article (on windows central), linked from the Crappy article linked on the front page of Slashdot (as ussual), they had the info for DD-WRT and LEDE (OpenWRT). It turns out that the Source has been modified already, but no firmware images produced yet.
Now, is just wait and see.
Here is the more decent article:
https://www.windowscentral.com...
After all, microsoft already has full control of the OS layer, no intermediaries required.
If Microsoft wants to spy on you, they will spy on you, no matter what antivirus you use. So, if you stick to Windows defender, there is one less vector for others to spy on you (because, once you start using windows as your OS, you cede control to Microsoft to potentialy spy on you).
Windows Defender (or Microsoft security essentials, if that's how you roll) are free (as in beer), have decent detection capabilities, does not suck resources like crazy, is updated by the same means of your OS, and is acepted by certifiying agencies in regulated industries (like PCI for credit cards).
Of course, in an ideal world we would all use linux and ClamAV, but this is not an ideal world, some people like their linux, I use a mac, some people like linux but are forced, for one reason or another, to use windows...
So, if you want or need windows, stick with Windows Defender...
Microsoft is already spying you at the OS level, they gain nothing spying on you on the AntiVirus level.
Also, Windows defender is free, and complies with "certification" requirements (like PCI).
Now, for Mac and Linux (where you should be running an Antivirus anyway) the choices are more complicated. You could go with ClamAV, but that may pose problems for "certification", or go with a commercial vendor, with all the caveats that entails.
Your choice.
This is fake news.
The "tunnels for floods" is a cover up.
The real reason for the network of tunnels is to provide hidden burial places for Akira and Galatea.
Nuff' said!
Who seriously runs AOSP without gapps, which are trivial to download and install on any device with a functional recovery?
No one runs an AOSP whitout gapps. Even my lowly Blackberry has most of gapps enabled (thank you very, very much mr "cobalt232")
But no big handset manufacturer could include it in the box, and no APP manufacturer can claim support of gapps on AOSP without exposing itself to all sort of strong (and, dare I say, justified) ligtigation from Alphabet/Google.
See, for example, Amazon Fire Tablets, or, for that matter, Blackberry BBOS 10.2.x and up. No gapps in the box. No support for gapps, only third party hacks. Good yes, but "non-supported".
Same for app makers, some, like instagram, even go to great lenghts to check that you are running on propper android, and refuse to do so if not, even if the phone has android compatibility + gapps
Is called AOSP.
You see, Android and AOSP are different enough, that AOSP qualifies as a third OS all into itself. AOSP is a very fragmented third OS (API wise) and playing catchup with Google's Android Proper, since the only commonality (APP wise) is in some APIs that are delerict and whose advanced functionality migrated long ago to GooglePlayStore/Services APIs. Android can run most APPs that AOSP can run, but AOSP can not run some of android's APPs, due to the use of APIs and Services tied to propiertary parts of Android
But AOSP is very big in places Like South East Asia and LatAm (where the growth is baby!), also, in places where Google services and APPs are not available, or are not the most popular. Also, some big players (like Amazon in it's tablets) have embraces AOSP.
Currently, AOSP has a 26% market share (bigger than iOS'), iOS has a 18% market share and Google's Android has something like 55% of the 3223 Million Smartphones currently in active use worldwide...
If anything has a chance to suceed in the short and medium term to fight the duopoly of Android/iOS, is a broad agreement among players for a sort of universal API to challenge the GooglePlayStore/Services APIs that are present in android but not on AOSP.
This comment is brought you by a Cellular Operator Engineer, Manager and technical trainer in LatAm rocking a Blackberry Q10 with BBOS 10.3.3.
http://communities-dominate.bl...
Instead of complaining do as follows:
1.) Invent some amazing stuff, or write the great american novel.
2.) Make a shitload of money.
3.) When you die, set up a foundation to recognize human achievement, scientific ones in particular, with better citeria than the novel.
See? Is not that hard. You can do it. Focus your energy in these 3 simple steps, instead of using it to complain about what dear old anachronistic Alfred did way back when....
PS: For those who did RTFA (the vast majority), Ed Yong is the author of TFA in The Atlantic.
Those "archeologists" were not present there.
That "surveyer" was only part of a conspiracy to surpress the truth about our ancient overlords.
No ammount of "evidence" will change that.
I still can not conceive how that could be done by mere humans, therefore: Aliens!
Anything and everything else is all fake news.
... But make it certain is there
In the times of yore, the Nokia NMS2000 had a button to refresh from the network elements. It was in a right click, per NE and you had to be a admin to use it. But it was there*... very hard to press, otherwise, the guys in the night shift would play to see who can saturate the digital X.25 links to the BSCs faster ;-)... but it was there.
There are reasons to hide the button, some are aestethic, as the poster said, othersare to avoid an inadverted DDoS by your own users by casually all pressing the button at the same time. There may be other reasons still to make ith harder to press that button.
So yes, hide the button if you like, either to make your app nicer, or to prevent it to be pressed for no good reason (sort of like important buttons covered in acrilic or glass), but leave the capability to refresh there...
* I had to create a special admin user for the NOC Technicians to use that refresh button. It was in a sealed envelope, and everyday I checked the envelope was not opened. Each guard change had to check that they received the envelope still sealed, and reflect that on the logbook, otherwise, they would be responsible for anything that admin user did, as reflected in the syslog logfiles. And the envelope could only be opened under my direct orders. Of 2 years being the admin of the NMS, only once we had to open the envelope. The poor tech asked me three times if I was sure I wanted him to open the envelope and write that on the logbook, such was his amazement... Fairly low tech technique, but efective nonetheless...
News at 11
Not really.
There are behemoths in that space Like Samsung, Huawei, Ericsson and Nokia (the telco Equipment maker formerly known as Nokia-Siemens-Motorola[Telco]-Alcatel-Lucent) that can not be arsed to sell their patents.
Also, many of the patents that came from Motorola, or could come from HTC are for 2G and 3G tech. But those will stop being relevant by 2020 or 2025 when those networks are shut down in favour of 4G and 5G Frequency refarming...
Yes, very likely HTC has some interesting patents in Cellphones (2/3/4G and SW), and some other areas (perhaps VR), but not enough to be "Vastly Dominant".
The relationship between Handset makers and Google is a very tense one, to say the least.
That's why things like TouchWiz (Samsung), EMUI (Huawei), LGUX (LG) and other "Non-Stock android" UI still exist. Yes, those were necesities when Android's UI was primitive, and not to the liking of certain markets (Like South-East Asia, for instance).
If one of the big guys breaks up with google and slaps their UI on top of AOSP, or Bada, or BB10, the users would be none the wiser. Especialy in markets like India or Chine, were the dominant services are NOT Google's.
At the same time, google tries to move forward the ecosystem, both in terms of hardware capabilities (AR is the latest example), and in therms of Software updates... Sometimes, they try the carrot, sometimes the stick. After google got the Motorola patents, they used motorola for a while as one of the Sticks. Now, they need another stick... Enter HCT.
Alphabet will slurp any patents and interesting tech that HTC may have.
The phone division will make a couple of interesting handsets (the reference designs will still be awarded in a kinda-sorta-of-round-robin-fashion to partners like LG, Samsun, Lenovo, HTC itself, etc.), with very-close-to-stock-Android, and decent update cycles too. And after a few years, will be sold to some emerging handset maker in China or India, which is in the Top 10 global handset maker chart, but only by virtue of the sales in their home market, which needs a globaly recognized brand to help their internationalization (TCL owning the Alcatel, BlackBerry and Palm brands is a good example).
Then, after a few years, when Google needs another stick, they will buy yet another formerly great handset maker with a recognizable brand, and repeat the cycle...
In fairness, he never said it was the year of the linux laptop and a desktop would have been too large to bring in for a presentation.
Please, mod this guy up as funny! Really!
English is not my first language. Is Spanish (I also speak french).
Did you saw how I spelled detective in the original post? Well: I'm slightly dislexic (very slightly, people would not know if I did not point it out).
I have an essential tremor.
And, I have the bad habit of not proof-reading when I post to forums or personal stuff. Only for serious work.
And yet, with all those handicaps, I was able to score 296/300 in my first try at the ToEFL in 2005
How was your DELE? Do you speak any language other than English?
And, aside from my bad grammar? Any opinion on the ACTUAL CONTENT [caps intended] of the post?
You know, the actual IDEAS [caps intended]? I guess a guy who like you read the elements of style many times, and has such a mastery of English can overcome my bad use of capitalization and grasp the ideas and analyze them well enough to make a significant contrubution to the discussion...
Let your ideas and discernment capacity shine, and be your presentation card.
PS: Quile likely, there are more mistakes in this post. That is to be expected. Sorry.
My FOSS days started in 1995 with FreeBSD, and then in 1996 with Linux (Slackware Unleashed, I forget the Version) in the University, then I was a firm proponent on the server side... I've been hearing about the linux desktop for a loooong time...
But, that was 22 years ago. Nowadays, in a production desktop, I have some requirements, which are quite different from the requirements on a Phone, or a Kiosk, or a retail point, or a computer for Kids/Schools:
* I want the power of an OpenSource Unix (Darwin) under the Hood, wrapped in a slick GUI (sadly, propiertary) that makes my workflow Easier and does not change all of the sudden (BTW, Ubuntians, how's the Transition from MIR/Unity to Wayland GNOME going?).
* Also, is nice if the Hardware in which that software resides is well built, and all the drivers play nice (granted, thanks to things like Dell's project MIR, this is easier nowadays with Linux too). I have stuff to do. Playing decetvive with drivers and libraries was entertaining in 2002 (last time I did that). Nowadays, not so much, quite the contrary, very, very frustrating!!!
* Also, I want commonly used productivity Software available, no matter if it is FOSS or Closed. The dektop/laptop is a TOOL for Production, I want to use the most suitable tools to do my work. For instance, when I was teaching at the university, I did Everything using LibreOffice (for MAC). When I started doing technical training for Telco OpenStack Cloud (Huawei's Flavour) and Hadoop/Spark/Storm (Nokia's CEMoD 16), I pretty much had to use Office. otherwise, the powerpoints would loose all formatting, and it would take ages to fix that (and no one paid me to fix it), Macros in the Excel report sheets would be borked. Also, many iLO/IPIMI/Javascript crap would not work on Linux... You get the drift.
* But, from time to time I have to unwind. I want the available games in steam for my machine to cont in the Thousands, not in the hundreds...
* Speaking of telco clouds: What do you think those clouds used? If you guessed KVM, Redhat, CentOS, SuSE, Apache, Puppet, MariaDB, Postgres, yarn, etc, you are right, come collect your prize. The requirements for servers are different than from desktop, which in turn are different from cellphones, which in turn are different from kids/school computers, which in turn are different from ... you get the idea!!!
Now, these are the reasons why he did it. Having said that, the irony does not escape me that, he being a top dog in a linux company, he should "Eat his own dog food". Even microsoft eats their own dog food.
But, this being The Linux Foundation, and not The GNU/Linux foundation, or the FOSS foundation: how much of FOSS is "his own dog food". Certainly the linux kernel is. But neither X-free86 nor Wayland seems to be part of his dog food. Nor are KDE/GNOME/Enligthment/all other window environments out there. Is Pulseaudio/ALSA part of his dog food? What about security practices like demanding the root PW for changing the timezone or adding a printer from school? So, If the guy used a MAC with OSX instead of linux, can you blame him? perhaps a little bit, yes. If he also used PowerPoint or Keynote instead of LibreOffice, can you blame him? In my oppinion, no way!!!!
Do not believe me, well, perhaps this guy who was using a macbook on 2012 (with linux), that does not like GNOME 3 and maybe, just maybe, knows a thing or two about linux (certainly he knows more about linux than me and you), can enlighten you all, even more than I can, on why some people preffer MACs to Linux and WinPCs. Please read his rant on the link...
http://www.zdnet.com/article/l...
Unlike in the cases of Cortana and Siri, you can change Alexa's Name to a number of pre-defined alternative names (currently 4, pettition amazon for more).
While I concur with people saying that this technology has security implications and is best avoided, I sugest changing the wake voice command (name) of your smart speaker as a way to lower this type of pranks.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help...
I want Apple
Then use an Apple supplied USB 2.0 PD Chargers that came with the larger iPods. Either one that you have thee laying around, or one off of eBay.
I have one in my hand right now rated for 10Watts. White (of balls), slightly scratched. It even comes with the detachable wall plug à-la laptop poweer adapter... (I am not selling it BTW)
But this is not-news. I bet that when the phones finally come out in late oct or early nov, the fast charging power adpater will be included in the box in most (if not all) the models that support fast charging...
Much ado about nothing
Mountains out of molehills
storms in teapots
clickbait
You name it...
The advice I gave was for the general WinPho population, and not specific to your situation. Specific advice for you:
If your phone came with Win10 (I am assuming you are ussing the latest stable version, and not some insider preview) and you are having problems conecting to Wifi, and is under warranty, then is a Warranty issue (since microsoft swears there is no wifi problems for the model).
Contact seller and/or manufacturer as appropiate for a repair/replacement. Then use as I detalied in 1.) as winpho10 is still supported with security patches until next year.
Other thing you can try (if and only if you are out of warranty) is different beta builds of WinPho10 (insider previews), to see if any of those solves the WiFi issue you are experiencing.
If the phone is out of warranty, and trying differnt insider preview builds does not solve the wifi issue, then you have many possible uses as I detailed in 2.) a.) - k.), some need WiFi, others not so much, just decide on one, and move on. One I forgot to mention was:
L.) Cheapo eReader.
Good luck