It's very important to me to be able to fuck off from my job. I skip out early, I take days off, I ignore phone calls after hours. As long as I get the job done during the day, I don't care what people think. I am a slacker, and I enjoy it. Life's too short to fret over the grindstone. Don't take life too seriously!
As noted in the release notes, FreeBSD 9.0 includes Clang/LLVM, the goal is to be rid of all GPL dependencies by version 10.0. At the 2011 LLVM Developers' meeting, Brooks Davis covered the effort in bringing in LLVM for 9.0 and the work remaining for 10.0 to replace GCC. The move was originally intended for 9.0, but there wasn't enough time to get it all done, particularly due to the thousands of pieces of software in the ports tree that still require work. GPLv3 is cited as the catalyst for all this, for preventing cooperation between free and proprietary software sectors.
There is no fragmentation problem with Android. It's always been something that Apple fanbois have used to attack Android for being less homogenous.
Is that so? Then maybe you can explain to the Galaxy S and Tab buyers why they won't be getting Ice Cream Sandwich.
The fact though is that Google provides the tools for developers to handle the variations in screen size and such and in practice developers don't seem to be having too much trouble with the fragmentation issue.
True early on some features wouldn't be supported on older versions of Android, but the same is true with iOS, Apple adds new features and doesn't necessarily port them to old iPhones.
While not every feature gets back ported, the 2.5-year-old iPhone 3GS can run the latest version of iOS. The problem is that carriers aren't interested in doing support; they want to sell new phone models every six months.
One reason to criticize Android fragmentation is that it becomes less accurate to lump Android phones together under the same moniker. They are effectively customized operating systems based on Android and running varying software versions and hardware capabilities (e.g., the Kindle Fire). This impedes third-party developers by increasing support costs, and it contributes to customer confusion.
In other words, it's not that people are saying there should be no differences between platforms. It's just that if there is a platform, it's not good to have what amounts to mass deregulation and chaos within that platform if you want it to be a long-term success that competes with something like iOS.
Absurd. Android's fragmentation looks like this. It's not reduced at all, nor do you explain how it's reduced. To the contrary, the business model for many of these companies is not to support a model of phone with updates but instead make you buy a new model six months later. That's why top-selling Samsung phones that are only months old won't get Android 4.0.
You state that Google "actually removes fragmentation" because they give away a free OS, but you don't explain how that is true. We're not seeing what you are claiming should be happening--what we're seeing is that each company is doing exactly what Schmidt is describing, customizing the OS with their own software and selling phones with large differences in hardware capability. That is the fragmentation.
Your premise is based on the idea that everybody is selling stock Android phones. Motorola Mobility's CEO explained at CES that carriers don't want stock Android phones because they don't make a profit. He said, "Verizon and AT&T don't want seven stock ICS devices on their shelves...The vast majority of the changes we make to the OS are to meet the requirements that carriers have."
There is no reduction in fragmentation; the exact opposite is true.
From a developer perspective, the problem is the increase in support and testing required for devices with varying capabilities and software versions. One of the big appeals of console gaming for developers is the static nature of the platforms.
From a user perspective, making people sift through technical specs and operating system versions to determine which phone or tablet they should get is a bad customer experience. Only techies care about specs. It's also missing the point of this new mobile OS paradigm, which was to get away from the headaches of PC specs and maintenance and deliver a seamless, worry-free experience. Critics use tired cliches like "walled garden" to describe it, but it's really just the appliance computing mindset that this industry has been heading toward for decades and only now has been able to embrace due to a confluence of capable hardware and software.
Manufacturers competing on their "view of innovation"--which apparently means junkware like TouchWiz--is precisely what is fragmenting the platform. Schmidt seems to believe that by reframing it with a feel-good word like innovation, he can successfully claim that it's somehow the opposite of fragmentation. The differentiation and and in-fighting between manufacturers and devices is the fragmentation. Nothing he stated refutes the claim that the platform is fragmented; he's just describing the fragmentation in a different way.
NPD now says that iOS has officially closed the gap with Android in U.S. marketshare since the release of the iPhone 4S, so these issues are having a real effect on the platform. According to NPD's report, 150 Android handsets can't beat three old iPhone models. What's happening here is that Android phones catered to techies and budget buyers, but with the iPhone 3GS now free on contract, Apple now has budget buyers covered--and there are way more of them than there are techies.
Android phones originally looked like this. Jobs-era Apple spent its existence putting out products that do things in ways others didn't do before. It doesn't really matter if some cross-armed haters don't want to admit that. The history of the last 15 years speaks for itself.
Won't happen. Bashers really believe that Apple just sits around, inventing absolutely nothing, selling overpriced shiny baubles. In their view, all technology is the same, and Apple just makes products whose ideas are all entirely obvious, despite the fact that no one did things that way before. They hate Apple for being popular and widely credited for industry trends.
I'm not trying to get anyone onto any bandwagon. I'm merely pointing out that the GPL copyrights code in such a way that users are guaranteed access to source, and without copyright law, the GPL can no longer legally enforce that guarantee. You would no longer be legally guaranteed access to Red Hat's kernel changes or the code to some commercial utility based on open source.
Source access is the primary point of the GPL's existence. Without the GPL, companies could use GPL code in commercial products without giving you access to source changes.
Lord of the Rings is a long, dense epic that I always plan to read "sometime" but never get around to because it's practically a quest itself just to read the damn thing.
Apparently, moderators and Tolkien fans alike are upset that I'm apparently criticizing the book without having read it completely. I have read the books, and what I was saying is that I keep meaning to read it again but never get around to it. I should have been clearer. That said, I'm not sure why that would even matter, because if someone started reading something and didn't like it enough to finish it completely, that doesn't mean the criticism is invalid.
Sigh...I have read the books. I even read the Silmarillion, which is practically biblical in its density. What I was saying is that I keep planning to re-read them each year but never get it done.
I obviously should have been much clearer since several people are assuming I haven't read the books, and apparently I'm now getting downmodded for it.
That, despite mostly being a discussion of writing that was not available for the Nobel Committee to consider in 1961 since The Silmarillion was not published until 1977, well after Tolkien's death in 1973.
I was discussing Lord of the Rings, not The Silmarillion, which was brought up because LOTR is intended as a continuation of that legendarium.
And despite the poster admitting that he had not read the books that were published and available for the committee to judge at the time JRR was nominated for the Nobel.
I have read the books. I read them years ago, and I own almost all of Tolkien's published works, from the Silmarillion to the Children of Hurin. What I was saying is that I every year I mean to re-read them, and I never get around to it because they're so long and dense.
So, I would say instead that when a commentator that has not read the relevant books and talks instead about material that was not yet published is modded as insightful, then you know that slashdot is dead.
Since I have read the books, and the material I was talking about was obviously LOTR and not the Silmarillion, I honestly have no idea what you're complaining about nor why you are the one who now has the +5, while the OP is getting downmods.
I have to make the same point I always make in these articles (by the way, isn't this like the third Pirate Party submission in the last month?)--if you do away with copyright laws, you do away with the GPL. The GPL is a copyright license that requires copyright law to have any legal power over what people do with GPL code. Go ahead and take a look at how many times the term copyright appears in the GPL:
- "'The Program' refers to any copyrightable work licensed under this License. Each licensee is addressed as 'you'. 'Licensees' and 'recipients' may be individuals or organizations." - "All rights granted under this License are granted for the term of copyright on the Program, and are irrevocable provided the stated conditions are met." - "However, nothing other than this License grants you permission to propagate or modify any covered work. These actions infringe copyright if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or propagating a covered work, you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so."
And so on. Without copyright laws, the GPL is powerless.
The problem is that a very large amount of people don't do what you would consider "real work"--they only want to check email, browse YouTube, and visit Facebook, and they only have PCs because it was the only way they could do those things previously. Michael Dell has a vested interest in telling people that PCs will rule forever, but I have to tell you, having a portable computer that you don't have to spend hours of maintenance on every week is really, really nice, especially in bed or on the couch.
There's an emotional attachment to Android in certain tech communities because it runs Linux and it's from Google. It's been positioned as an open alternative, which taps into that desire to feel like a freedom fighter battling against evil closed corporations. A lot of the ideals that Android has been marketed with not so coincidentally align with the stereotypical desires of communities like Slashdot.
Certainly, there's an emotional attachment to Apple products from its fans, but they've spent so many years as underdogs that they don't obsess over marketshare numbers the way Android fans do. Their smugness comes from a "quality over quantity" mindset. Marketshare is relatively unimportant when it comes to determining the success of a product, but it gets fetishized around here like crazy.
I'm not sure that iPhone users are sitting back eating popcorn anymore.
My remark was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but why wouldn't they be? The iPhone 4S has been the top selling handset for months, and iOS sees much more third-party developer support--developer support for Android actually decreased in 2011. And iOS is the #1 mobile OS on the web, which suggests a large portion of Android users are budget buyers who aren't even using their smartphones as smartphones.
I don't say all this to further more smartphone OS wars but to point out that the stereotypical image of Android as some all-devouring conquerer isn't accurate. When iPads and iPods are counted, iOS actually has more total marketshare--for whatever marketshare is worth in terms of "victory", which isn't as much as Slashdotters think.
He was a historical linguist. That doesn't necessarily make him good at accessible writing, just like someone who studies music theory doesn't necessarily write popular music.
I actually thought that part was kind of cool, the way the forest subtly steered the hobbits toward Old Man Willow. Bombadil was easier to swallow when I viewed him as some sort of divine enigma or weird forest spirit. Where I start to run out of steam is in the Two Towers, when humans begin to dominate the story.
I find it disturbing that you critique LOTR the way you have, yet admit you've not read them.
I have read them. What I meant is that I always plan to read it again but never get through it, mostly due to time. I don't think it's there's really that much of a comprehension requirement in the writing--it's just dense, often stoic, and filled with terrain descriptions that can make it relatively unapproachable when it comes to casual reading.
Actor Christopher Lee apparently reads it every year. Jesus.
John Gruber asked an interesting question in response to this: Has any single PC vendor ever controlled that much of the Windows market? It's going to be very interesting to see how Android vendors respond to Google entering the handset market. It can't be good for the platform to have vendors forking the operating system just to snipe at each other. It's already fragmented enough with TouchWiz and all the other junkware, and popular phones that are months old don't even get major updates. This kind of unregulated chaos is exactly what so many critics predicted; it may even be an opportunity for Microsoft to win some Windows Phone deals as carriers decide they don't want to run a competing vendor's operating system. Whatever happens this year, I'm sure iPhone users will grab the popcorn and enjoy the show.
I can understand that criticism, actually. As the story progresses beyond the hobbit-focused beginning and begins to link with the Silmarillion, the style of writing and characterization becomes more archaic, in the vein of the kind of ancient heroic epics that Tolkien studied, like Beowulf. There's also an enormous focus on the description of landscapes, which can become repetitive, and the constant unexplained references in foreign languages can feel wearisome and arbitrary if you're not already familiar with any of it.
The Silmarillion was written as a mythological history for England, starting with the fall of Númenor, analogous to the myth of Atlantis, and growing from there as Tolkien kept adding to it. The Hobbit, however, was an unrelated story that was later linked to the existing mythology, and if I had to decide, I'd say I'm a bigger fan of the Hobbit because of its lighter tone and sense of adventure. It feels more fun and relatable to me. Lord of the Rings is a long, dense epic that I always plan to read "sometime" but never get around to because it's practically a quest itself just to read the damn thing.
Ridiculous. Microsoft has been the subject of antitrust regulation for the last 10 years, especially in the EU, and the only product Apple arguably could have been accused of having a monopoly on was portable music players, where there were plenty of competitors in the market.
Honestly, your post comes off as sour grapes. Should Google be exempt from these investigations just because you don't like Microsoft and Apple?
Slashdot Mirror
It's very important to me to be able to fuck off from my job. I skip out early, I take days off, I ignore phone calls after hours. As long as I get the job done during the day, I don't care what people think. I am a slacker, and I enjoy it. Life's too short to fret over the grindstone. Don't take life too seriously!
As noted in the release notes, FreeBSD 9.0 includes Clang/LLVM, the goal is to be rid of all GPL dependencies by version 10.0. At the 2011 LLVM Developers' meeting, Brooks Davis covered the effort in bringing in LLVM for 9.0 and the work remaining for 10.0 to replace GCC. The move was originally intended for 9.0, but there wasn't enough time to get it all done, particularly due to the thousands of pieces of software in the ports tree that still require work. GPLv3 is cited as the catalyst for all this, for preventing cooperation between free and proprietary software sectors.
Is that so? Then maybe you can explain to the Galaxy S and Tab buyers why they won't be getting Ice Cream Sandwich.
Third-party developer support for Android declined by a third in 2011.
While not every feature gets back ported, the 2.5-year-old iPhone 3GS can run the latest version of iOS. The problem is that carriers aren't interested in doing support; they want to sell new phone models every six months.
One reason to criticize Android fragmentation is that it becomes less accurate to lump Android phones together under the same moniker. They are effectively customized operating systems based on Android and running varying software versions and hardware capabilities (e.g., the Kindle Fire). This impedes third-party developers by increasing support costs, and it contributes to customer confusion.
In other words, it's not that people are saying there should be no differences between platforms. It's just that if there is a platform, it's not good to have what amounts to mass deregulation and chaos within that platform if you want it to be a long-term success that competes with something like iOS.
Absurd. Android's fragmentation looks like this. It's not reduced at all, nor do you explain how it's reduced. To the contrary, the business model for many of these companies is not to support a model of phone with updates but instead make you buy a new model six months later. That's why top-selling Samsung phones that are only months old won't get Android 4.0.
You state that Google "actually removes fragmentation" because they give away a free OS, but you don't explain how that is true. We're not seeing what you are claiming should be happening--what we're seeing is that each company is doing exactly what Schmidt is describing, customizing the OS with their own software and selling phones with large differences in hardware capability. That is the fragmentation.
Your premise is based on the idea that everybody is selling stock Android phones. Motorola Mobility's CEO explained at CES that carriers don't want stock Android phones because they don't make a profit. He said, "Verizon and AT&T don't want seven stock ICS devices on their shelves...The vast majority of the changes we make to the OS are to meet the requirements that carriers have."
There is no reduction in fragmentation; the exact opposite is true.
From a developer perspective, the problem is the increase in support and testing required for devices with varying capabilities and software versions. One of the big appeals of console gaming for developers is the static nature of the platforms.
From a user perspective, making people sift through technical specs and operating system versions to determine which phone or tablet they should get is a bad customer experience. Only techies care about specs. It's also missing the point of this new mobile OS paradigm, which was to get away from the headaches of PC specs and maintenance and deliver a seamless, worry-free experience. Critics use tired cliches like "walled garden" to describe it, but it's really just the appliance computing mindset that this industry has been heading toward for decades and only now has been able to embrace due to a confluence of capable hardware and software.
Manufacturers competing on their "view of innovation"--which apparently means junkware like TouchWiz--is precisely what is fragmenting the platform. Schmidt seems to believe that by reframing it with a feel-good word like innovation, he can successfully claim that it's somehow the opposite of fragmentation. The differentiation and and in-fighting between manufacturers and devices is the fragmentation. Nothing he stated refutes the claim that the platform is fragmented; he's just describing the fragmentation in a different way.
NPD now says that iOS has officially closed the gap with Android in U.S. marketshare since the release of the iPhone 4S, so these issues are having a real effect on the platform. According to NPD's report, 150 Android handsets can't beat three old iPhone models. What's happening here is that Android phones catered to techies and budget buyers, but with the iPhone 3GS now free on contract, Apple now has budget buyers covered--and there are way more of them than there are techies.
Looks like I'm outed.
Android phones originally looked like this. Jobs-era Apple spent its existence putting out products that do things in ways others didn't do before. It doesn't really matter if some cross-armed haters don't want to admit that. The history of the last 15 years speaks for itself.
Won't happen. Bashers really believe that Apple just sits around, inventing absolutely nothing, selling overpriced shiny baubles. In their view, all technology is the same, and Apple just makes products whose ideas are all entirely obvious, despite the fact that no one did things that way before. They hate Apple for being popular and widely credited for industry trends.
I'm not trying to get anyone onto any bandwagon. I'm merely pointing out that the GPL copyrights code in such a way that users are guaranteed access to source, and without copyright law, the GPL can no longer legally enforce that guarantee. You would no longer be legally guaranteed access to Red Hat's kernel changes or the code to some commercial utility based on open source.
Source access is the primary point of the GPL's existence. Without the GPL, companies could use GPL code in commercial products without giving you access to source changes.
Apparently, moderators and Tolkien fans alike are upset that I'm apparently criticizing the book without having read it completely. I have read the books, and what I was saying is that I keep meaning to read it again but never get around to it. I should have been clearer. That said, I'm not sure why that would even matter, because if someone started reading something and didn't like it enough to finish it completely, that doesn't mean the criticism is invalid.
Sigh...I have read the books. I even read the Silmarillion, which is practically biblical in its density. What I was saying is that I keep planning to re-read them each year but never get it done.
I obviously should have been much clearer since several people are assuming I haven't read the books, and apparently I'm now getting downmodded for it.
I was discussing Lord of the Rings, not The Silmarillion, which was brought up because LOTR is intended as a continuation of that legendarium.
I have read the books. I read them years ago, and I own almost all of Tolkien's published works, from the Silmarillion to the Children of Hurin. What I was saying is that I every year I mean to re-read them, and I never get around to it because they're so long and dense.
Since I have read the books, and the material I was talking about was obviously LOTR and not the Silmarillion, I honestly have no idea what you're complaining about nor why you are the one who now has the +5, while the OP is getting downmods.
I have to make the same point I always make in these articles (by the way, isn't this like the third Pirate Party submission in the last month?)--if you do away with copyright laws, you do away with the GPL. The GPL is a copyright license that requires copyright law to have any legal power over what people do with GPL code. Go ahead and take a look at how many times the term copyright appears in the GPL:
- "'The Program' refers to any copyrightable work licensed under this License. Each licensee is addressed as 'you'. 'Licensees' and 'recipients' may be individuals or organizations."
- "All rights granted under this License are granted for the term of copyright on the Program, and are irrevocable provided the stated conditions are met."
- "However, nothing other than this License grants you permission to propagate or modify any covered work. These actions infringe copyright if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or propagating a covered work, you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so."
And so on. Without copyright laws, the GPL is powerless.
The problem is that a very large amount of people don't do what you would consider "real work"--they only want to check email, browse YouTube, and visit Facebook, and they only have PCs because it was the only way they could do those things previously. Michael Dell has a vested interest in telling people that PCs will rule forever, but I have to tell you, having a portable computer that you don't have to spend hours of maintenance on every week is really, really nice, especially in bed or on the couch.
There's an emotional attachment to Android in certain tech communities because it runs Linux and it's from Google. It's been positioned as an open alternative, which taps into that desire to feel like a freedom fighter battling against evil closed corporations. A lot of the ideals that Android has been marketed with not so coincidentally align with the stereotypical desires of communities like Slashdot.
Certainly, there's an emotional attachment to Apple products from its fans, but they've spent so many years as underdogs that they don't obsess over marketshare numbers the way Android fans do. Their smugness comes from a "quality over quantity" mindset. Marketshare is relatively unimportant when it comes to determining the success of a product, but it gets fetishized around here like crazy.
My remark was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but why wouldn't they be? The iPhone 4S has been the top selling handset for months, and iOS sees much more third-party developer support--developer support for Android actually decreased in 2011. And iOS is the #1 mobile OS on the web, which suggests a large portion of Android users are budget buyers who aren't even using their smartphones as smartphones.
I don't say all this to further more smartphone OS wars but to point out that the stereotypical image of Android as some all-devouring conquerer isn't accurate. When iPads and iPods are counted, iOS actually has more total marketshare--for whatever marketshare is worth in terms of "victory", which isn't as much as Slashdotters think.
He was a historical linguist. That doesn't necessarily make him good at accessible writing, just like someone who studies music theory doesn't necessarily write popular music.
I actually thought that part was kind of cool, the way the forest subtly steered the hobbits toward Old Man Willow. Bombadil was easier to swallow when I viewed him as some sort of divine enigma or weird forest spirit. Where I start to run out of steam is in the Two Towers, when humans begin to dominate the story.
I have read them. What I meant is that I always plan to read it again but never get through it, mostly due to time. I don't think it's there's really that much of a comprehension requirement in the writing--it's just dense, often stoic, and filled with terrain descriptions that can make it relatively unapproachable when it comes to casual reading.
Actor Christopher Lee apparently reads it every year. Jesus.
John Gruber asked an interesting question in response to this: Has any single PC vendor ever controlled that much of the Windows market? It's going to be very interesting to see how Android vendors respond to Google entering the handset market. It can't be good for the platform to have vendors forking the operating system just to snipe at each other. It's already fragmented enough with TouchWiz and all the other junkware, and popular phones that are months old don't even get major updates. This kind of unregulated chaos is exactly what so many critics predicted; it may even be an opportunity for Microsoft to win some Windows Phone deals as carriers decide they don't want to run a competing vendor's operating system. Whatever happens this year, I'm sure iPhone users will grab the popcorn and enjoy the show.
I can understand that criticism, actually. As the story progresses beyond the hobbit-focused beginning and begins to link with the Silmarillion, the style of writing and characterization becomes more archaic, in the vein of the kind of ancient heroic epics that Tolkien studied, like Beowulf. There's also an enormous focus on the description of landscapes, which can become repetitive, and the constant unexplained references in foreign languages can feel wearisome and arbitrary if you're not already familiar with any of it.
The Silmarillion was written as a mythological history for England, starting with the fall of Númenor, analogous to the myth of Atlantis, and growing from there as Tolkien kept adding to it. The Hobbit, however, was an unrelated story that was later linked to the existing mythology, and if I had to decide, I'd say I'm a bigger fan of the Hobbit because of its lighter tone and sense of adventure. It feels more fun and relatable to me. Lord of the Rings is a long, dense epic that I always plan to read "sometime" but never get around to because it's practically a quest itself just to read the damn thing.
Ridiculous. Microsoft has been the subject of antitrust regulation for the last 10 years, especially in the EU, and the only product Apple arguably could have been accused of having a monopoly on was portable music players, where there were plenty of competitors in the market.
Honestly, your post comes off as sour grapes. Should Google be exempt from these investigations just because you don't like Microsoft and Apple?