Actually that attitude was exactly the reason why I never even considered going into games development. I refuse to work in an industry which has a history of abusing its own employees up to levels where it becomes dangerous for your live.
Besides that google is paying the phone companies part of the ad revenue back, not costing a dime is a big deal compared to 50$ per phone Microsoft charges for WinCE
Seriously, you don't know what you guys are missing with Nokia/Symbian phones.
-Media players play DRM free files.
My android phone plays it checked
-Easy 802.11 access/use
My Android phone does that, checked
-Decent 'office' application. Opens my text files, that's all I care about.
My android phone does that, checked
-SMTP support. I know they HAD crackberry support on my old communicator. I assume it's still available.
Android phone does it, checked
-Apps for a sysadmin.
I have a bash and root access, is that enough?
-Solid mobile java support
I have that... checked
-GPS, directions, and all that. However, you need windows as an intermediary between the phone and nokia's maps.
I am using an offline navigation software, however the integrated GPS could be better... So I have that, checked;-)
-Symbian is years ahead of Apple or Google's OS. Multiple apps open at the same time, global cut + paste.
I assume later model phones will do all of this too. It's just that Nokia appears to have a very hard time in the U.S.
Ahem, my android phone has cut and paste multiasking etc... You have not given me any convincing argument why I should move over to symbian;-) Especially since I hate Nokia and what they did in Bochum and now Romania...
There are two problems, first Googles solution needs at least an online connection if you have to move away from the propost road (rerouting) while this might be feasable for the USA, in Europe it is not, because you can run into a roaming problem that way, especially if you are outside of your country (which happens a lot here) Secondly, most phones simply have lousy GPS receivers, period! My HTC Hero looses GPS signal as soon as I am in a forest, enter dense fog or similar situations, my Tomtom works reliably in any of those cases. So PNAs have their merits, I also thought so a while ago that I wont need a separate PNA anymore, until I was stranded in the "Pampa" low on fuel trying to find the next gas station, and ending up at an end of a road... I then pulled out my PNA and it reliably routed me to the next gas station.
Why should they it is very convenient to partner with google, it does not cost them a dime, and you get the added services, like search, maps, mail etc... on the phone. No one else so far has those services written for Android.
Yes thanks for the clarification analysts (anal is in front of the word) are not the brightest people on the planet, and I wonder if any of those really ever had a look who was behind android. Google does most of the grunt work but the code base is basically written under the umbrella of the OHSA Google just provides additionally to that the programs which hook into their services.
I just wonder what will happen when archeologists in a few thousand years will dig up that pile of garbage... They probably will think we worshipped a weird idol there and that was its ceremonial hill...
Actually you cannot blame everything regarding U9 on EA (and also not everything from U8). The jumping which made the initial U8 so lousy was simply that Garriot wanted to have more jump and run elements in there and the missing content was ort of additional packs (since they worked out so well for U7). Problem simply was the everyone hated the jumping, Origin fixed that in the first patch. The missing content never appeared because EA axed further works on the game due to the financial dive it caused. As for U9 if you have followed the game then you would know there was a lack of direction. The early version was supposed to be sort of an U7 with a top down 3d engine underneath, then a programmer played with the camera Garriot saw that (according to some interviews I read back then) then suddenly it had to be full 3d with all consequences at a time where no one has done that before and no one really had the hardware to do it decently. Then the game constantly was on and off in EAs and also Garriots attention etc... it was sort of an endless story until EA had enough and gave it a last chance (after 5-6 years of on and off development) U9 could have been good, and turned out to be lets say too much ahead of its time and mediocre in many ways, but only blaming EA is wrong in this case.
Actually the first U8 patch fixed the jumping... U8 did not really drive the series into the ground although it was somewhat of a letdown compared to the older parts. Ultima simply had the problem that U7 was so groundbreaking that it became hard to top that.
Actually Star Trek A Final Unity was awesome, also add to that the really amazing new Batman Darkham Asylum, and add to the list the Original Hitchhikers guide game as well as the Blade Runner game done I think by either Interplay or Westwood. I also thought the first Dune game was quite good (although I am pretty alone in this) and Dune 2 is mostly a classic because it single handedly redefined the genre of RTS by laying out all concepts which still exist nowadays within one game. There are probably others for instance like the old Interplay TOS games, but this list instantly comes to my mind.
I think the formula to producing good movie based games is that it should not be a tie in to an existing movie, but let the developers free hand and enough time to create a gaming concept. All the examples I mentioned were not time limited tie ins but developed with a license but no actual movie date in mind. I think it is mostly the tie in games which suck (and Disney has done its fair share to cause that as well as the ET game) the reason is, that they are usually developed in a hurry mostly by just adjusting an existing engine to the movie characters.
It single handedly killed one of the most beloved franchises in computer gaming history (that and EA that is who still has not figured out which gem they had bought with the Ultima franchise)
Actually it is not just Tomb Raider Legend, every Tomb Raider so far, done by Crystal Dynamics is very good and among the best in the series, too bad that the series itself has been drained to death, so CD does not get the rewards they should for reviving the series in this excellent manner.
There are problems with mpeg4 as well, the licensing forbids to host videos bigger than 10 minutes on the web unless you pay big $$$ to the patent holders (the mpeg consortium) one of the reasons why Youtube has the 10 minute limit on uploaded video files.
Javascript has bigger problems, and the hotspot problems are exaggerated, basically every JIT has that problem, as I said, this is a problem which is overestimated, first you have to trigger a memory overflow in the VM secondly, you have a string length check at every string you pass third, if you can reach the bytecode level you can inject code directly, but normally you cannot reach it due to sandboxing happening. This is a way better security model than any C program has, but I never said it was entirely secure. But even then the VM runs in user space normally so you have to break through that as well. But there are easier things to target than to target an Applet and try to break out of the sandbox by corrupting the VM and then trying to root the underlying machine. Simply hack the IE in any incarnation less effort, same result and a bigger audience.
Javascript however has bigger issues due to its dynamic nature, eval, you can replace entire functions on the fly in running code by just changing the prototype level etc... but again all this comes down to the point on how do you break out of the VM. Java in this regard is probably more secure than most other VMs due to its 13 years of existence and opensource nature by now. In Javascript it depends on the implementation and I assume again the IE implementation is the one easiest to hack.
Mod that parent up, this is one of the reasons why Firefox is not rolled out on many corporations, that and the missing easy hooks into Windows AD which makes single singone solutions IE only...
You overestimate the problem in java, Java is not C in this regard, true there are String constants in the code, but the code itself runs in VM which makes it hard to break out and reach the system and secondly Strings overflows are impossible, this is a C phenomenon, so even you alter the strings on bytecode level, what do you achieve with it in the end, you just altered a constant, but you cannot push any code on this level causing any overflow. But if you reach the bytecode level nothing prevents you from placing your own code anyway, so the discussion ends there because then you can alter your program on the fly.
I see it that way as well, first of all the first reports from Mexico were horrendous, secondly, no one really could say at that time, that the flu would fizzle out in its strenght. (Probably there was some resistance to the virus in other parts of the world, I assume the 1918 flu had to do with it, people nowadays living still have some kind of genetic resistance against that strain)
The funny thing is from all people I know only one person really got the flu really hard, and coincidentally that person is a mexican, but he had to spend several weeks in the hospital. The WHO acted wisely and politics did as well, no need to search for a scapegoat now because we did not get yet another pandemic illness with a death toll in millions/billions...
The links are less a problem, this works well, it can be interpolated, but the bigger issue is the text input, where the droid fortunately has a hardware keyboard.
Actually ARMs Cortex already will be produced with the GlobalFoundrys 28nm process, this was one of the big news of the CES this year. That is the advantage of having a low transistor count and many manufacturers, you always can move to the best one and you wont have to fight so hard to get to smaller structures. By the time Intel is on 32 nm we probably will see a 2-4 Ghz cortex A10 with 28 nm and less power consumption than the best A9 today running circles again around Intels Low End offerings.
Intel cannot win this by legal means if they rely on their x86 garbage! ARM has 20 years of low power - good performance experience which Intel never had!
Actually I dont find that funny, because it is true. For the first time in 20 years we finally have the possibility to bury the overloaded awful power consuming x86 garbage in a future segment of computing without too much hurt and yet again it seems that we cannot do it entirely for the sake of filling the pockets of a handful of people. ARM has one of the best instruction sets ever created for a computer, it is probably the best power saving processor architecture in existence, yet Intel wants again to bury better competition for the sake of another pocket filling market they can dominate with their utter garbage. I hope they wont get very far this time, since their usual advantage is not there.
In my opinion Intel is worse than Microsoft ever was (but not as bad as Monsanto), but my opinion does not count!
Actually there are not too many banks which use Applets nowadays, and it comes down to porting the Applet API, Android already has most of Javas APIs underneath (only swing is left outside mostly which can be cross ported) since it runs most of its infrastructure on java. You the rest comes down to delivering the drivers and having the usb port to outgoing mode switched, the printer drivers are in linux so you have a higher chance to get them there than on WinCE which does not have any printing infrastructure, or older Windows versions which dont even be able to run decently on any phone thanks to their mouse centric ui which does not fit properly thanks to missing layout management mechanisms. So again where is the point in x86 for a phone? You loose WinCE binary compatibility, Android binary compatiility in some cases, and iPhone binary compatibility and you gain higher battery drainage than on ARM, and equal to worse speeds than a decent Cortex A9 can do.
Well lets say it that way, ARM has way less transistors and the instruction set is very compact, they design their chipsets that way that you can use older fabs, but yet still you can shrink them, the cortex A9 will be produced in ranges from 40nm to 28nm so Intel does not have the advantage there. It is even worse, Intel can only do a power reduction by changing the fab process and yet they still are not at the performace/watt levels ARM provides on 40-60nm, now that ARM is moving downwards into the 28nm and 32nm area (Globalfoundries will do that) it will look even worse. Intel I assume hopes to push into the market by their strong foot in the third party vendor area where they can apply pressure over Netbooks and PCs (you wont sell one of our handheld processors, oops there goes your pricing advantage in buying the x86 of the year for your PCs). Time will tell how good that will work out. But I assume Intel will have a hard time matching ARM.
I personally think that in the mobile space there is another factor, there is no need for x86 compatibility whatsoever more for the ARM compatibility since lots of CE programs are binary only. So we have a clean table, and unless Intel pulls out dirty tricks from their heat (by forcing the third partys to use their junk) I cannot see how they even can gain any ground there.
Actually the flicking is a thing of getting used to, at first you are annoyed after a while you wont notice anymore, the bigger problem is the contrast, or lack thereof, paper quality is a lie, the contrast you get is more along the lines of 100 year old newspaper with aging ink. Still good enough, but the media was writing garbage on global scale about the contrast, it does not even come close to a real book.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually that attitude was exactly the reason why I never even considered going into games development.
I refuse to work in an industry which has a history of abusing its own employees up to levels where it becomes dangerous for your live.
Besides that google is paying the phone companies part of the ad revenue back, not costing a dime is a big deal compared to 50$ per phone Microsoft charges for WinCE
Seriously, you don't know what you guys are missing with Nokia/Symbian phones.
-Media players play DRM free files.
My android phone plays it checked
-Easy 802.11 access/use
My Android phone does that, checked
-Decent 'office' application. Opens my text files, that's all I care about.
My android phone does that, checked
-SMTP support. I know they HAD crackberry support on my old communicator. I assume it's still available.
Android phone does it, checked
-Apps for a sysadmin.
I have a bash and root access, is that enough?
-Solid mobile java support
I have that... checked
-GPS, directions, and all that. However, you need windows as an intermediary between the phone and nokia's maps.
I am using an offline navigation software, however the integrated GPS could be better... ;-)
So I have that, checked
-Symbian is years ahead of Apple or Google's OS. Multiple apps open at the same time, global cut + paste.
I assume later model phones will do all of this too. It's just that Nokia appears to have a very hard time in the U.S.
Ahem, my android phone has cut and paste multiasking etc... ;-)
You have not given me any convincing argument why I should move over to symbian
Especially since I hate Nokia and what they did in Bochum and now Romania...
There are two problems, first Googles solution needs at least an online connection if you have to move away from the propost road (rerouting) while this might be feasable for the USA, in Europe it is not, because you can run into a roaming problem that way, especially if you are outside of your country (which happens a lot here)
Secondly, most phones simply have lousy GPS receivers, period! My HTC Hero looses GPS signal as soon as I am in a forest, enter dense fog or similar situations, my Tomtom works reliably in any of those cases.
So PNAs have their merits, I also thought so a while ago that I wont need a separate PNA anymore, until I was stranded in the "Pampa" low on fuel trying to find the next gas station, and ending up at an end of a road... I then pulled out my PNA and it reliably routed me to the next gas station.
Why should they it is very convenient to partner with google, it does not cost them a dime, and you get the added services, like search, maps, mail etc... on the phone.
No one else so far has those services written for Android.
Yes thanks for the clarification analysts (anal is in front of the word) are not the brightest people on the planet, and I wonder if any of those really ever had a look who was behind android.
Google does most of the grunt work but the code base is basically written under the umbrella of the OHSA Google just provides additionally to that the programs which hook into their services.
I just wonder what will happen when archeologists in a few thousand years will dig up that pile of garbage...
They probably will think we worshipped a weird idol there and that was its ceremonial hill...
Actually you cannot blame everything regarding U9 on EA (and also not everything from U8). The jumping which made the initial U8 so lousy was simply that Garriot wanted to have more jump and run elements in there and the missing content was ort of additional packs (since they worked out so well for U7). Problem simply was the everyone hated the jumping, Origin fixed that in the first patch. The missing content never appeared because EA axed further works on the game due to the financial dive it caused. As for U9 if you have followed the game then you would know there was a lack of direction. The early version was supposed to be sort of an U7 with a top down 3d engine underneath, then a programmer played with the camera Garriot saw that (according to some interviews I read back then) then suddenly it had to be full 3d with all consequences at a time where no one has done that before and no one really had the hardware to do it decently. Then the game constantly was on and off in EAs and also Garriots attention etc... it was sort of an endless story until EA had enough and gave it a last chance (after 5-6 years of on and off development)
U9 could have been good, and turned out to be lets say too much ahead of its time and mediocre in many ways, but only blaming EA is wrong in this case.
Actually the first U8 patch fixed the jumping...
U8 did not really drive the series into the ground although it was somewhat of a letdown compared to the older parts. Ultima simply had the problem that U7 was so groundbreaking that it became hard to top that.
Actually Star Trek A Final Unity was awesome, also add to that the really amazing new Batman Darkham Asylum, and add to the list the Original Hitchhikers guide game as well as the Blade Runner game done I think by either Interplay or Westwood.
I also thought the first Dune game was quite good (although I am pretty alone in this) and Dune 2 is mostly a classic because it single handedly redefined the genre of RTS by laying out all concepts which still exist nowadays within one game.
There are probably others for instance like the old Interplay TOS games, but this list instantly comes to my mind.
I think the formula to producing good movie based games is that it should not be a tie in to an existing movie, but let the developers free hand and enough time to create a gaming concept. All the examples I mentioned were not time limited tie ins but developed with a license but no actual movie date in mind. I think it is mostly the tie in games which suck (and Disney has done its fair share to cause that as well as the ET game) the reason is, that they are usually developed in a hurry mostly by just adjusting an existing engine to the movie characters.
It single handedly killed one of the most beloved franchises in computer gaming history (that and EA that is who still has not figured out which gem they had bought with the Ultima franchise)
Actually it is not just Tomb Raider Legend, every Tomb Raider so far, done by Crystal Dynamics is very good and among the best in the series, too bad that the series itself has been drained to death, so CD does not get the rewards they should for reviving the series in this excellent manner.
There are problems with mpeg4 as well, the licensing forbids to host videos bigger than 10 minutes on the web unless you pay big $$$ to the patent holders (the mpeg consortium) one of the reasons why Youtube has the 10 minute limit on uploaded video files.
Javascript has bigger problems, and the hotspot problems are exaggerated, basically every JIT has that problem, as I said, this is a problem which is overestimated, first you have to trigger a memory overflow in the VM secondly, you have a string length check at every string you pass third, if you can reach the bytecode level you can inject code directly, but normally you cannot reach it due to sandboxing happening. This is a way better security model than any C program has, but I never said it was entirely secure.
But even then the VM runs in user space normally so you have to break through that as well. But there are easier things to target than to target an Applet and try to break out of the sandbox by corrupting the VM and then trying to root the underlying machine. Simply hack the IE in any incarnation less effort, same result and a bigger audience.
Javascript however has bigger issues due to its dynamic nature, eval, you can replace entire functions on the fly in running code by just changing the prototype level etc... but again all this comes down to the point on how do you break out of the VM. Java in this regard is probably more secure than most other VMs due to its 13 years of existence and opensource nature by now. In Javascript it depends on the implementation and I assume again the IE implementation is the one easiest to hack.
Mod that parent up, this is one of the reasons why Firefox is not rolled out on many corporations, that and the missing easy hooks into Windows AD which makes single singone solutions IE only...
You overestimate the problem in java, Java is not C in this regard, true there are String constants in the code, but the code itself runs in VM which makes it hard to break out and reach the system and secondly Strings overflows are impossible, this is a C phenomenon, so even you alter the strings on bytecode level, what do you achieve with it in the end, you just altered a constant, but you cannot push any code on this level causing any overflow.
But if you reach the bytecode level nothing prevents you from placing your own code anyway, so the discussion ends there because then you can alter your program on the fly.
I see it that way as well, first of all the first reports from Mexico were horrendous, secondly, no one really could
say at that time, that the flu would fizzle out in its strenght. (Probably there was some resistance to the virus
in other parts of the world, I assume the 1918 flu had to do with it, people nowadays living still have
some kind of genetic resistance against that strain)
The funny thing is from all people I know only one person really got the flu really hard, and coincidentally that person
is a mexican, but he had to spend several weeks in the hospital.
The WHO acted wisely and politics did as well, no need to search for a scapegoat now because we did not
get yet another pandemic illness with a death toll in millions/billions...
The links are less a problem, this works well, it can be interpolated, but the bigger issue is the text input, where the droid fortunately has a hardware keyboard.
here is the link http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/News/ARM-and-AMD-spinoff-Globalfoundries-partner/
Actually ARMs Cortex already will be produced with the GlobalFoundrys 28nm process, this was one of the big news of the CES this year. That is the advantage of having a low transistor count and many manufacturers, you always can move to the best one and you wont have to fight so hard to get to smaller structures. By the time Intel is on 32 nm we probably will see a 2-4 Ghz cortex A10 with 28 nm and less power consumption than the best A9 today running circles again around Intels Low End offerings.
Intel cannot win this by legal means if they rely on their x86 garbage!
ARM has 20 years of low power - good performance experience which Intel never had!
Actually I dont find that funny, because it is true. For the first time in 20 years we finally have the possibility to bury the overloaded awful power consuming x86 garbage in a future segment of computing without too much hurt and yet again it seems that we cannot do it entirely for the sake of filling the pockets of a handful of people.
ARM has one of the best instruction sets ever created for a computer, it is probably the best power saving processor architecture in existence, yet Intel wants again to bury better competition for the sake of another pocket filling market they can dominate with their utter garbage. I hope they wont get very far this time, since their usual advantage is not there.
In my opinion Intel is worse than Microsoft ever was (but not as bad as Monsanto), but my opinion does not count!
Actually there are not too many banks which use Applets nowadays, and it comes down to porting the Applet API, Android already has most of Javas APIs underneath (only swing is left outside mostly which can be cross ported)
since it runs most of its infrastructure on java.
You the rest comes down to delivering the drivers and having the usb port to outgoing mode switched, the printer drivers are in linux so you have a higher chance to get them there than on WinCE which does not have any printing infrastructure, or older Windows versions which dont even be able to run decently on any phone thanks to their mouse centric ui which does not fit properly thanks to missing layout management mechanisms.
So again where is the point in x86 for a phone? You loose WinCE binary compatibility, Android binary compatiility in some cases, and iPhone binary compatibility and you gain higher battery drainage than on ARM, and equal to worse speeds than a decent Cortex A9 can do.
Well lets say it that way, ARM has way less transistors and the instruction set is very compact, they design their chipsets that way that you can use older fabs, but yet still you can shrink them, the cortex A9 will be produced in ranges from 40nm to 28nm so Intel does not have the advantage there. /watt levels ARM provides on 40-60nm, now that ARM is moving downwards into the 28nm and 32nm area (Globalfoundries will do that) it will look even worse.
It is even worse, Intel can only do a power reduction by changing the fab process and yet they still are not at the performace
Intel I assume hopes to push into the market by their strong foot in the third party vendor area where they can apply pressure over Netbooks and PCs (you wont sell one of our handheld processors, oops there goes your pricing advantage in buying the x86 of the year for your PCs). Time will tell how good that will work out.
But I assume Intel will have a hard time matching ARM.
I personally think that in the mobile space there is another factor, there is no need for x86 compatibility whatsoever more for the ARM compatibility since lots of CE programs are binary only.
So we have a clean table, and unless Intel pulls out dirty tricks from their heat (by forcing the third partys to use their junk) I cannot see how they even can gain any ground there.
Actually the flicking is a thing of getting used to, at first you are annoyed after a while you wont notice anymore, the bigger problem is the contrast, or lack thereof, paper quality is a lie, the contrast you get is more along the lines of 100 year old newspaper with aging ink.
Still good enough, but the media was writing garbage on global scale about the contrast, it does not even come close to a real book.