nokia, as much as 4 years ago, released a wonderful GNU/Linux/X11 phone, the n900, and was hot developing a replacement n950, and n9 phones, which would take linux phones to the next level.
unlocked bootloader, easy to root as installing an app, debian based maemo OS, that was closed to debian than ubuntu, and ran unmolested debian binaries, and shipped with both Qt and GTK libraries which would run existing Qt and GTK apps. Its desktop was open source, and found its way back into debian and other distro repos.
anything that ran on your linux desktop could run, although from a UI/UX standpoint, it was better if you "hildonized", or re-wrote the GUI for a small touch screen, for easiest usage.
Now, after taking microsoftie Steve Elop on board, he shit canned this wonderful project to announce an all windows line up from nokia.
Except it was more like a death march than a "wonderful project", and it was hopelessly late in what really matters: providing a viable smartphone platform. Running Debian binaries is cool, but it does not by itself bring in revenue.
The complaint is that they killed off Meego to get a couple bucks in a deal that is now killing them. It does not matter if MS or Google or Apple gave them the money, what matters is Nokia is dying from this deal.
Why, they seem to have been doing relatively well, judging by the last quarter. And because you have a perverse love for MeeGo (sorry, I'm a survivor) means providing 3D models is a lame move?
We have the monitor sitting where it does because it is easy and non-stressful to look at. You keep your neck in a neutral position and can see what you are doing.
I don't get why people are wound up in false dichotomies when thinking about Windows 8 UI (which they clearly haven't tried with a touchscreen). I don't think anybody seriously wants to use touch on large vertical monitors. You can still use the mouse or, arguably faster, keyboard shortcuts. On laptops and the Surface, however, the screen is positioned close to the keyboard. And then there is this ridiculous mental picture of people staring at the screen while continuously holding their hands in front of it. You really can't see how this works, have never used a tablet?
Assume you are google. You obviously test your services for compatibility on some devices and you figure out that maps is basically unusable for a specific user group, which is less than 3.5 percent of all your users. They give negative feedback since they believe they device froze or something, and are as noisy as 20% percent of the other users. Now you decide to place some sign wich says:"sorry doesnt work right now." I think there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
I think so too. Unfortunately, they didn't do that. They just redirect Windows Phone users to www.google.com with no explanation why.
Even if it were true, shutting out users with a blind redirect is still a dick move. Couldn't they just put up a notice, similar to what they do to peddle Chrome to the GMail users browsing with Firefox?
I remember blackboards. Teacher would stand in front of the blackboard, spend maybe thirty seconds scribbling something, wipe her hands, then wander around the room for two or three minutes, while blathering away on the importance of what she just wrote. Then, she would return to the blackboard, blather for another minute and a half, turn around, and write something new up there.
That corresponds to how people use touchscreen gestures on a desktop/laptop. You don't touch the screen all the time, just reach every now and then.
Well, then we are back to my original reply: could you provide some proof as to why any free software application, should someone create one, would be rejected? IIRC they only ban GPL3 and similarly overreaching licenses, and understandably so.
It's not totally simple. The biggest snafu with time on Windows Phone 7 has been unreliable setting of time zone based on network-provided time. Apparently it guesses the time zone locality out of the network-provided time zone offset and maybe the MCC of the network, and sometimes the guess turns out wrong. Many Finnish users were royally pissed when their phones were set to the Jordanian time zone and, as the result of the different DST regime there, went off DST weeks ahead of schedule.
If Microsoft wants the full power of Android, they are free to create their own Android phone,
So the ability to access the full YouTube feature set is now inextricably linked to Android? Someone please, call the antitrust authorities, I think we have a strong case here.
Microsoft had reached the point in 1990s where it had enough power and now that others wanted to play with its toys he said "meh, I'm going home, you can't have them". Consumers will decide if that is good or not. Us techies can only watch and cry for the abstract concept of justice.
See, I replaced Google with Microsoft. We all know how it worked out for them.
I thought for the last several decades computing has been evolving towards the user not having to do arcane tedious shit in order to get things done. But yeah, there are people who edit their files with ed...
With MTP you have to make sure your device is recognized by libmtp, which means recompiling or adding info.
Meaning, your lousy implementation of MTP is somehow the problem of the protocol?
I ought to have been more specific, too: pure storage devices can still be usefully exposed via block-level mass storage, at the innate cost of lesser portability and flexibility. For smart devices, exposing internally used partitions at block level via USB is an unnecessary pain in the ass.
1. It needs to cache, somehow. Using tab-completion with an mtp-mounted device is PAINFUL. I can use tab completion with network shares, so why not with MTP - both have the same concurrency issues.
Sounds like an implementation issue. I don't think caching belongs in the wire protocol anyhow.
2. It needs to be dumber, or at least make that configurable. If I copy a file into a directory, I want the file to go into THAT directory. I don't care if I'm putting music in a pictures directory. I don't care if the driver doesn't understand the video codec. JUST COPY THE FILE!
True, they've made some concessions to "smart" devices that use peculiar media-specific storage schemes. I'm not sure it's necessarily bad, but it does not map well to generic file operations. In fact, I don't think an MTP device is even required to have a general-purpose filesystem.
Huh... it's still standard enough that all of my linux devices can sync to it... along with my Android devices.
By this measure, MS Office file formats are "standard enough" since I can work with them on all my Linux devices.
USB mass storage an anachronism? Definitely showing the lace of your shill bloomers. It's a useful tool, one that should be standard across the board.
Right... Please persuade everybody to use a standard filesystem when formatting the devices, which are pointlessly exposed at the block level. Apart from some neckbeards represented in this thread, somehow they all insist on an antiquated, proprietary Microsoft design from the 1990s.
The button is a linked to a keyboard action (more or less), and you should be able to change keyboard actions...
I'm not defending the dedicated Bing button (though in general hardware button customization is a gimmick), just pointing out it's not a protocol lockdown that GP made it out to be.
Try to plug your devices into a Mac, for example, to understand what I'm talking about.
Extfs may not be optimal for all flash drives, either. With MTP, the device implementation is free to choose the underlying filesystem, as it should have been from the get go.
It's not an engineering problem, stupid. There is already Metrotube with its reverse-engineered implementation. Microsoft needs an officially supported application, guaranteed not to break whenever Google decides to change things on the server side.
What on Earth are you talking about? Skype is absolutely proprietary, and it shows in their third-party embedding kit for Linux. Microsoft did open, or at least fully documented, things before the Skype purchase, and hardly any of those has anything to do with Skype. If anything, Skype is set to replace some more open things, such as XMPP integration of Messenger service.
I'm sorry, but accessible mass storage is an anachronism?
A file-based access protocol, such as MTP, is not. The USB mass storage profile, block device level access which basically forces the media to be formatted as FAT to be interoperable, is.
Maybe, just maybe, Microsoft shouldn't be complaining so much when they block or use non-standard protocols on their devices, in particular WP ones:
- Skydrive, the more or less standard way to get stuff in and out of Windows Phones, doesn't implement WebDAV in a open manner, making it difficult to use with Linux or BSD;
I'll give you that. Meanwhile, enjoy your Google Drive over WebDAV... oh, you don't have that either.
- The hardware search button in Windows Phone is tied to bing, and users can't change it;
The button is not a "protocol". Anyone is free to implement third-party search apps, admittedly without the extra convenience of the dedicated button. Moreover, Google can be used as the search provider in the browser.
- Windows Phone doesn't support standard protocols (standard MTP, USB file access) to access its filesystem, so it doesn't play well with Linux or BSD;
Windows Phone 8 does support standard MTP? USB mass storage is an anachronysm.
WP7 skype was utterly terrible as well. You couldn't even receive calls on it when it wasn't on foreground. It seems more an issue of actual incompetence then intentional malice.
Um, could a competent software team at Skype (which is still NOT Microsoft, organizationally) have whipped the platform into something it cannot officially do? I doubt it. You'd better bash them for not being able yet to ship a release for WP8, where it can receive calls on the background.
You can use Google search with an app if you like.
There's more: you can also set up Google to be the default search fallback invoked via browser's URI bar. No luck with the hardware search button, but that provides much more than web search, so the deep integration with Bing services is partly justified.
Who is this "we"? IE 10 is a fairly standards-compatible browser. You can use Google search with an app if you like. And what is "not trusted" compared to the other major mobile platforms, especially with the non-removable crapware that Android OEMs pile on top of Google's ever-helpful user data collection platform?
Slashdot Mirror
nokia, as much as 4 years ago, released a wonderful GNU/Linux/X11 phone, the n900, and was hot developing a replacement n950, and n9 phones, which would take linux phones to the next level.
unlocked bootloader, easy to root as installing an app, debian based maemo OS, that was closed to debian than ubuntu, and ran unmolested debian binaries, and shipped with both Qt and GTK libraries which would run existing Qt and GTK apps. Its desktop was open source, and found its way back into debian and other distro repos.
anything that ran on your linux desktop could run, although from a UI/UX standpoint, it was better if you "hildonized", or re-wrote the GUI for a small touch screen, for easiest usage.
Now, after taking microsoftie Steve Elop on board, he shit canned this wonderful project to announce an all windows line up from nokia.
Except it was more like a death march than a "wonderful project", and it was hopelessly late in what really matters: providing a viable smartphone platform. Running Debian binaries is cool, but it does not by itself bring in revenue.
The complaint is that they killed off Meego to get a couple bucks in a deal that is now killing them. It does not matter if MS or Google or Apple gave them the money, what matters is Nokia is dying from this deal.
Why, they seem to have been doing relatively well, judging by the last quarter. And because you have a perverse love for MeeGo (sorry, I'm a survivor) means providing 3D models is a lame move?
They just gave the stray users who've been using Google Maps on Windows Phone another reason to switch to Here Maps.
We have the monitor sitting where it does because it is easy and non-stressful to look at. You keep your neck in a neutral position and can see what you are doing.
I don't get why people are wound up in false dichotomies when thinking about Windows 8 UI (which they clearly haven't tried with a touchscreen).
I don't think anybody seriously wants to use touch on large vertical monitors. You can still use the mouse or, arguably faster, keyboard shortcuts. On laptops and the Surface, however, the screen is positioned close to the keyboard. And then there is this ridiculous mental picture of people staring at the screen while continuously holding their hands in front of it. You really can't see how this works, have never used a tablet?
Assume you are google. You obviously test your services for compatibility on some devices and you figure out that maps is basically unusable for a specific user group, which is less than 3.5 percent of all your users. They give negative feedback since they believe they device froze or something, and are as noisy as 20% percent of the other users. Now you decide to place some sign wich says:"sorry doesnt work right now." I think there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
I think so too. Unfortunately, they didn't do that. They just redirect Windows Phone users to www.google.com with no explanation why.
Even if it were true, shutting out users with a blind redirect is still a dick move. Couldn't they just put up a notice, similar to what they do to peddle Chrome to the GMail users browsing with Firefox?
I remember blackboards. Teacher would stand in front of the blackboard, spend maybe thirty seconds scribbling something, wipe her hands, then wander around the room for two or three minutes, while blathering away on the importance of what she just wrote. Then, she would return to the blackboard, blather for another minute and a half, turn around, and write something new up there.
That corresponds to how people use touchscreen gestures on a desktop/laptop. You don't touch the screen all the time, just reach every now and then.
Well, then we are back to my original reply: could you provide some proof as to why any free software application, should someone create one, would be rejected? IIRC they only ban GPL3 and similarly overreaching licenses, and understandably so.
It's not totally simple. The biggest snafu with time on Windows Phone 7 has been unreliable setting of time zone based on network-provided time. Apparently it guesses the time zone locality out of the network-provided time zone offset and maybe the MCC of the network, and sometimes the guess turns out wrong. Many Finnish users were royally pissed when their phones were set to the Jordanian time zone and, as the result of the different DST regime there, went off DST weeks ahead of schedule.
If Microsoft wants the full power of Android, they are free to create their own Android phone,
So the ability to access the full YouTube feature set is now inextricably linked to Android?
Someone please, call the antitrust authorities, I think we have a strong case here.
Microsoft had reached the point in 1990s where it had enough power and now that others wanted to play with its toys he said "meh, I'm going home, you can't have them". Consumers will decide if that is good or not. Us techies can only watch and cry for the abstract concept of justice.
See, I replaced Google with Microsoft. We all know how it worked out for them.
Doesn't matter, can mount.
I thought for the last several decades computing has been evolving towards the user not having to do arcane tedious shit in order to get things done. But yeah, there are people who edit their files with ed...
With MTP you have to make sure your device is recognized by libmtp, which means recompiling or adding info.
Meaning, your lousy implementation of MTP is somehow the problem of the protocol?
I ought to have been more specific, too: pure storage devices can still be usefully exposed via block-level mass storage, at the innate cost of lesser portability and flexibility. For smart devices, exposing internally used partitions at block level via USB is an unnecessary pain in the ass.
1. It needs to cache, somehow. Using tab-completion with an mtp-mounted device is PAINFUL. I can use tab completion with network shares, so why not with MTP - both have the same concurrency issues.
Sounds like an implementation issue. I don't think caching belongs in the wire protocol anyhow.
2. It needs to be dumber, or at least make that configurable. If I copy a file into a directory, I want the file to go into THAT directory. I don't care if I'm putting music in a pictures directory. I don't care if the driver doesn't understand the video codec. JUST COPY THE FILE!
True, they've made some concessions to "smart" devices that use peculiar media-specific storage schemes. I'm not sure it's necessarily bad, but it does not map well to generic file operations. In fact, I don't think an MTP device is even required to have a general-purpose filesystem.
Huh... it's still standard enough that all of my linux devices can sync to it... along with my Android devices.
By this measure, MS Office file formats are "standard enough" since I can work with them on all my Linux devices.
USB mass storage an anachronism? Definitely showing the lace of your shill bloomers. It's a useful tool, one that should be standard across the board.
Right... Please persuade everybody to use a standard filesystem when formatting the devices, which are pointlessly exposed at the block level. Apart from some neckbeards represented in this thread, somehow they all insist on an antiquated, proprietary Microsoft design from the 1990s.
The button is a linked to a keyboard action (more or less), and you should be able to change keyboard actions...
I'm not defending the dedicated Bing button (though in general hardware button customization is a gimmick), just pointing out it's not a protocol lockdown that GP made it out to be.
Try to plug your devices into a Mac, for example, to understand what I'm talking about.
Extfs may not be optimal for all flash drives, either. With MTP, the device implementation is free to choose the underlying filesystem, as it should have been from the get go.
It's not an engineering problem, stupid.
There is already Metrotube with its reverse-engineered implementation.
Microsoft needs an officially supported application, guaranteed not to break whenever Google decides to change things on the server side.
What on Earth are you talking about? Skype is absolutely proprietary, and it shows in their third-party embedding kit for Linux.
Microsoft did open, or at least fully documented, things before the Skype purchase, and hardly any of those has anything to do with Skype.
If anything, Skype is set to replace some more open things, such as XMPP integration of Messenger service.
I'm sorry, but accessible mass storage is an anachronism?
A file-based access protocol, such as MTP, is not.
The USB mass storage profile, block device level access which basically forces the media to be formatted as FAT to be interoperable, is.
Don't bother, there is at least one application that proves the GP is full of shit.
Microsoft won't allow free YouTube player replacements in their app store
Source?
Maybe, just maybe, Microsoft shouldn't be complaining so much when they block or use non-standard protocols on their devices, in particular WP ones:
- Skydrive, the more or less standard way to get stuff in and out of Windows Phones, doesn't implement WebDAV in a open manner, making it difficult to use with Linux or BSD;
I'll give you that. Meanwhile, enjoy your Google Drive over WebDAV... oh, you don't have that either.
- The hardware search button in Windows Phone is tied to bing, and users can't change it;
The button is not a "protocol". Anyone is free to implement third-party search apps, admittedly without the extra convenience of the dedicated button. Moreover, Google can be used as the search provider in the browser.
- Windows Phone doesn't support standard protocols (standard MTP, USB file access) to access its filesystem, so it doesn't play well with Linux or BSD;
Windows Phone 8 does support standard MTP?
USB mass storage is an anachronysm.
WP7 skype was utterly terrible as well. You couldn't even receive calls on it when it wasn't on foreground. It seems more an issue of actual incompetence then intentional malice.
Um, could a competent software team at Skype (which is still NOT Microsoft, organizationally) have whipped the platform into something it cannot officially do? I doubt it. You'd better bash them for not being able yet to ship a release for WP8, where it can receive calls on the background.
You can use Google search with an app if you like.
There's more: you can also set up Google to be the default search fallback invoked via browser's URI bar.
No luck with the hardware search button, but that provides much more than web search, so the deep integration with Bing services is partly justified.
Who is this "we"?
IE 10 is a fairly standards-compatible browser. You can use Google search with an app if you like. And what is "not trusted" compared to the other major mobile platforms, especially with the non-removable crapware that Android OEMs pile on top of Google's ever-helpful user data collection platform?