The complaint here seems to be that Google isn't putting in enough work to merge their Linux kernel changes into the mainline
Then they won't be merged.
I find it somewhat disingenuous to slap down an open source contributor for failing to do our work for us.
Whoever picks it up and puts it into the kernel becomes the maintainer. And no one is responsible for the code but the author or whomever he delegates. It is not "our work," if Google wants it in the kernel they (or someone they designate) has to put in the effort to get it in and keep it up to date. Every other company that contributes code does this, why is Google special?
And how is Android not open? The entire thing is FOSS.
I wondered that myself when looking into the N900, and the explanation as to why Android is not open is because while it is Open Source, it does not have an open community.
If you look at the OHA FAQ, they explain why an open platform is good for everyone EXCEPT the end-user. Unless you mistake who your customer is, you'd realize that the end-user's input is just as important as those who apply your OS to their device. Both the OHA and the cell vendors make that mistake, as the OHA thinks the user of Android is the handset maker, who themselves think their customer is the carrier. The only true customer is the person who pays for and uses the device in the end, and they should be able to have input into their device and its OS should they care.
an entire generation has grown up without constant hijackings, that says something
I know, before it was CARNAGE! Every week a new hijacking! The chance of getting caught in one was so high that people were terrified to fly.
Or you could say that we've expended TRILLIONS cutting an already rare event down to a couple fucked up, failed attempts and achieved nothing but a boondoggle for fake security and trampling on our rights.
You know what it says? It says we're fucking stupid.
Boy, they certainly had me fooled. Last I looked, poverty was still the rule of the day in both China and India and it didn't appear to be vanishing too quickly. But the rich are very quickly getting richer, that much is for sure.
On the other hand, toxic waste and industrial pollution has skyrocketed in both nations (China moreso than India.)
$54,000 is still an unreasonable amount for downloading a few songs
I know it, it is, but that's not what the $54,000 is for. It was for uploading. It has nothing to do with the retail prices of the songs and everything to do with the statues regarding penalties for infringement.
I suppose if you had read the comments before posting, you would have seen this already.
to compile a program to run inder GDB you are assumed to be using C/C++ and the GCC compiler from the command line ie.
As if Visual Studio can debug GCC generated binaries.
Sorry, misinterpreted that. You are assumed to be using a GCC generated binary, which means you'll be using a language that is available via the GNU Compiler Collection. If you're using C#, Java, Python or Ruby you'll use the debugging facilities supplied by those languages. You seem to mistake the unified UI of VS for using the same debugger on multiple languages.
I had KGDB going in less than a day, and the total debugging time has by far eclipsed the setup time. And I don't use GDB directly, I use DDD, which is a graphical frontend to GDB that makes setting breakpoints trivial.
to compile a program to run inder GDB you are assumed to be using C/C++ and the GCC compiler from the command line ie.
As if Visual Studio can debug GCC generated binaries.
There is more but it also assumes the command line is in use or you are somehow a guru at configuring the IDE of your choice.
So setting compiler options in your GUI (assuming you have one) makes you a guru? Hell, knowing how to use your compiler makes you a guru?
For utility and ease of development Visual Studio is still tops.
Sounds more like a crutch for people who don't know or refuse to learn. I can understand wrapping up features in a nice GUI, but to claim that knowing what those nice GUI options actually translate to shouldn't be "guru level" knowledge.
It makes me wonder if you've ever explored the development tools available on Linux, or if the concept of a console scares you.
Can you edit and continue when working with C++ or C#?
While it is an interesting feature, changing code at runtime always seemed suspect to me. I don't know if it's possible at all in Linux, and I know it's not possible in Windows if you're targeting a 64-bit platform.
Anyone that claims they aren't hasn't bothered to use the tools available to them. It's entirely possible to get equivalent context-awareness going in VIM/Emacs, but since they aren't packaged as a whole people write them off as being "obsolete" or somesuch nonsense.
Get a real kernel debugger INTO the linux kernel. DO it now
Last I looked KGDB worked quite well, and it behaves in a very similar fashion to Windows when being debugged.
Between Redhat's Insight tool and DDD, it's already well hidden behind UIs. Sure they aren't shiny and glossy with anti-aliased type, but they do the exact same job that the VS debugger does with allowing you to step through the code.
In fact, there's nothing special I've seen in Visual Studio's debugging that couldn't be done with DDD.
It's not implying anything of the sort. It's making the point that DivX was so popular, even Sony (who loves creating proprietary, Sony-only formats) added support for it to the PS3.
I think that calling AVI obsolete at this point is very premature.
Hardly, AVI was obsolete ages ago. Remember, this is the container format that was used at the very start of Video for Windows. The most common codec back then was Intel's Indeo codec, which Microsoft just deactivated.
AVI, MKV, MP4, OGG are just containers. Some are simply not worth maintaining due to their age.
Apparently people cannot read. These vulnerabilities are two years old. The companies have been notified and their response is not to fix the security hole but to ignore the reports entirely.
If you knew the inevitable result of every notification you gave to developers was to be ignored and have nothing come of the 3 months (or longer) you gave them, would you bother trying again, or just consider the goodwill pointless and get right down to the business of forcing them to fix their screwups?
And I hear people claim Firefox crashes all the time and uses ungodly amounts of RAM, yet I never see these issues.
I'm inclined to believe most quirky behavior like what you describe is the result of PEBCAK and the system it's running on, and not some flaw in the code.
Why not a PC app? Potential for compromise. A keyfob removes all question.
And why not educate users? Because blizzard doesn't have the time or money to deal with angry children who refuse to remember a random 8 character password. Never mind people who do have a good password and log on via their friends compromised system.
The iPod Touch is also considerably simpler, since instead of having an entire cellular baseband on its board (usually requiring an additional processor, RAM, flash memory and antenna, it simply has a socket for more NAND.
They're also less likely to sell at the volume a stand alone mp3 player will sell. That price is not unusual, the Nokia N900 is $550-$650 and had nary a hope of being subsidized in the US.
And no, you don't get a reduced price if you bring your phone. But that's not a good argument for agreeing to being locked in by a 2-year contract.
For one thing, no iMac available from Apple at this point is less than $1000, nor does HP have an all-in-one that equals the lowest-end iMac. Not to mention that Apple has OS X as a selling point.
Look more closely. I'm starting to see more Heros, myTouches, and DROIDs out there. The catch is that they don't stand out nor are they all the same shape like the iPhone is.
What I don't see much of are Windows Mobile devices. For as popular as WinMo fans make them out to be, they either don't stand out at all, are heavily masked by HTC and the like, or really aren't that common. Maybe a combination of those.
Apple's price premium can easily be pointed to via their industrial design, which for Dell, HP, et. al. is mostly an afterthought. Combine this with OS X, Safari, iTunes, most of which is paid for by their hardware sales and an explanation for the premium is easily found. I even own a 2006 MacBook, and its easily paid for itself regardless of any premium.
That said, I got my first smartphone (if you can call it that) recently and went with the Nokia N900. Apple is good, but they can't cover -all- bases.
So a Linux-based device using X that supports both Qt and GTK2 toolkits is somehow a dead-end OS?
a fully programmable Android device
If and only if you root the thing. I would be surprised, seeing as how it is (optionally) subsidized by T-Mobile, if the Nexus One did not also require being rooted.
buy a lot more applications
All the applications I really need are available under the GPL already, and can be ported to the N900 with far less effort than it would take to port them to the iPhone or Android. Unless you are suggesting that only software you have to pay for is worthwhile.
What about the N900, the OpenMoko, and any rooted iPhone/Android device?
All of them give you root-level access to the device. The point is that OP's suggestion that for a provider to disallow a fully open phone they would have to disallow all unlocked (and unknown) devices.
You can be quite sure that you will face serious fines if you use an unlicensed radio device.
Assuming it causes undue interference and broadcasts with too much power. By your logic isn't the Gnu Software Radio project wholly illegal?
- OpenMoko was open down to the interface between the Applications processor and Baseband, which were attached over USB link (I believe, some are RS-232.) - GSM patents are preventing an open source firmware, since they're all done in software as it is. - Selling directly to the true customers is why I'm buying an N900.
The only legal eagles in this to worry about are the FCC, who generally don't care unless you're causing interference.
Sure they would, if they sold directly to their REAL customers, the end-user who uses the damn thing.
The TelCo's will only go so far before they say ( and rightly so ) stop, this has to be locked down, we cannot risk the entire cell ecosystem on a phone that can be completely modified to do anything.
This is entirely false. If it were true, then there is no way GSM providers would ever allow an unlocked device on their network. After all, there's no way they could ever be certain about such a device. And the only thing preventing a GSM baseband is patents.
To allow a completely open source re-programmable phone is to invite disaster.
Is it? I suppose to allow any fully open source, reprogrammable computer on the internet is an invitation to disaster. And yet the least open source of OSes, Windows, causes the most havoc. What's your logic in this?
If your phone can screw up the towers, then there's something wrong with the towers. Eventually they will ignore your device, if it persists the company will register an FCC complaint. You aren't going to knock out a tower because of bad programming, at worst your phone will be ignored, and if you're unlucky you'll see a bunch of minutes or data billed on your account because it bugged out (after the battery dies in a flash.)
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Then they won't be merged.
Whoever picks it up and puts it into the kernel becomes the maintainer. And no one is responsible for the code but the author or whomever he delegates. It is not "our work," if Google wants it in the kernel they (or someone they designate) has to put in the effort to get it in and keep it up to date. Every other company that contributes code does this, why is Google special?
I wondered that myself when looking into the N900, and the explanation as to why Android is not open is because while it is Open Source, it does not have an open community.
If you look at the OHA FAQ, they explain why an open platform is good for everyone EXCEPT the end-user. Unless you mistake who your customer is, you'd realize that the end-user's input is just as important as those who apply your OS to their device. Both the OHA and the cell vendors make that mistake, as the OHA thinks the user of Android is the handset maker, who themselves think their customer is the carrier. The only true customer is the person who pays for and uses the device in the end, and they should be able to have input into their device and its OS should they care.
I know, before it was CARNAGE! Every week a new hijacking! The chance of getting caught in one was so high that people were terrified to fly.
Or you could say that we've expended TRILLIONS cutting an already rare event down to a couple fucked up, failed attempts and achieved nothing but a boondoggle for fake security and trampling on our rights.
You know what it says? It says we're fucking stupid.
Boy, they certainly had me fooled. Last I looked, poverty was still the rule of the day in both China and India and it didn't appear to be vanishing too quickly. But the rich are very quickly getting richer, that much is for sure.
On the other hand, toxic waste and industrial pollution has skyrocketed in both nations (China moreso than India.)
I know it, it is, but that's not what the $54,000 is for. It was for uploading. It has nothing to do with the retail prices of the songs and everything to do with the statues regarding penalties for infringement.
I suppose if you had read the comments before posting, you would have seen this already.
Sorry, misinterpreted that. You are assumed to be using a GCC generated binary, which means you'll be using a language that is available via the GNU Compiler Collection. If you're using C#, Java, Python or Ruby you'll use the debugging facilities supplied by those languages. You seem to mistake the unified UI of VS for using the same debugger on multiple languages.
I had KGDB going in less than a day, and the total debugging time has by far eclipsed the setup time. And I don't use GDB directly, I use DDD, which is a graphical frontend to GDB that makes setting breakpoints trivial.
As if Visual Studio can debug GCC generated binaries.
So setting compiler options in your GUI (assuming you have one) makes you a guru? Hell, knowing how to use your compiler makes you a guru?
Sounds more like a crutch for people who don't know or refuse to learn. I can understand wrapping up features in a nice GUI, but to claim that knowing what those nice GUI options actually translate to shouldn't be "guru level" knowledge.
It makes me wonder if you've ever explored the development tools available on Linux, or if the concept of a console scares you.
While it is an interesting feature, changing code at runtime always seemed suspect to me. I don't know if it's possible at all in Linux, and I know it's not possible in Windows if you're targeting a 64-bit platform.
Why would interoperability between SCMs be useful?
But they're the project leader. They're calling the shots so you use what they specify. If you want to use something else, it's on you.
Anyone that claims they aren't hasn't bothered to use the tools available to them. It's entirely possible to get equivalent context-awareness going in VIM/Emacs, but since they aren't packaged as a whole people write them off as being "obsolete" or somesuch nonsense.
Last I looked KGDB worked quite well, and it behaves in a very similar fashion to Windows when being debugged.
You mean GDB? What "new things" could be added?
Between Redhat's Insight tool and DDD, it's already well hidden behind UIs. Sure they aren't shiny and glossy with anti-aliased type, but they do the exact same job that the VS debugger does with allowing you to step through the code.
In fact, there's nothing special I've seen in Visual Studio's debugging that couldn't be done with DDD.
It does? I've dropped .mp4 files on Windows Media Player and until I installed an actual codec they wouldn't play.
But by all means, what am I missing?
It's not implying anything of the sort. It's making the point that DivX was so popular, even Sony (who loves creating proprietary, Sony-only formats) added support for it to the PS3.
Hardly, AVI was obsolete ages ago. Remember, this is the container format that was used at the very start of Video for Windows. The most common codec back then was Intel's Indeo codec, which Microsoft just deactivated.
AVI, MKV, MP4, OGG are just containers. Some are simply not worth maintaining due to their age.
Apparently people cannot read. These vulnerabilities are two years old. The companies have been notified and their response is not to fix the security hole but to ignore the reports entirely.
If you knew the inevitable result of every notification you gave to developers was to be ignored and have nothing come of the 3 months (or longer) you gave them, would you bother trying again, or just consider the goodwill pointless and get right down to the business of forcing them to fix their screwups?
And I hear people claim Firefox crashes all the time and uses ungodly amounts of RAM, yet I never see these issues.
I'm inclined to believe most quirky behavior like what you describe is the result of PEBCAK and the system it's running on, and not some flaw in the code.
Why not a PC app? Potential for compromise. A keyfob removes all question.
And why not educate users? Because blizzard doesn't have the time or money to deal with angry children who refuse to remember a random 8 character password. Never mind people who do have a good password and log on via their friends compromised system.
The iPod Touch is also considerably simpler, since instead of having an entire cellular baseband on its board (usually requiring an additional processor, RAM, flash memory and antenna, it simply has a socket for more NAND.
They're also less likely to sell at the volume a stand alone mp3 player will sell. That price is not unusual, the Nokia N900 is $550-$650 and had nary a hope of being subsidized in the US.
And no, you don't get a reduced price if you bring your phone. But that's not a good argument for agreeing to being locked in by a 2-year contract.
Are you copypastaing from somewhere?
For one thing, no iMac available from Apple at this point is less than $1000, nor does HP have an all-in-one that equals the lowest-end iMac. Not to mention that Apple has OS X as a selling point.
Look more closely. I'm starting to see more Heros, myTouches, and DROIDs out there. The catch is that they don't stand out nor are they all the same shape like the iPhone is.
What I don't see much of are Windows Mobile devices. For as popular as WinMo fans make them out to be, they either don't stand out at all, are heavily masked by HTC and the like, or really aren't that common. Maybe a combination of those.
Apple's price premium can easily be pointed to via their industrial design, which for Dell, HP, et. al. is mostly an afterthought. Combine this with OS X, Safari, iTunes, most of which is paid for by their hardware sales and an explanation for the premium is easily found. I even own a 2006 MacBook, and its easily paid for itself regardless of any premium.
That said, I got my first smartphone (if you can call it that) recently and went with the Nokia N900. Apple is good, but they can't cover -all- bases.
So a Linux-based device using X that supports both Qt and GTK2 toolkits is somehow a dead-end OS?
If and only if you root the thing. I would be surprised, seeing as how it is (optionally) subsidized by T-Mobile, if the Nexus One did not also require being rooted.
What about the N900, the OpenMoko, and any rooted iPhone/Android device?
All of them give you root-level access to the device. The point is that OP's suggestion that for a provider to disallow a fully open phone they would have to disallow all unlocked (and unknown) devices.
Assuming it causes undue interference and broadcasts with too much power. By your logic isn't the Gnu Software Radio project wholly illegal?
To clarify some stuff:
- OpenMoko was open down to the interface between the Applications processor and Baseband, which were attached over USB link (I believe, some are RS-232.)
- GSM patents are preventing an open source firmware, since they're all done in software as it is.
- Selling directly to the true customers is why I'm buying an N900.
The only legal eagles in this to worry about are the FCC, who generally don't care unless you're causing interference.
Sure they would, if they sold directly to their REAL customers, the end-user who uses the damn thing.
This is entirely false. If it were true, then there is no way GSM providers would ever allow an unlocked device on their network. After all, there's no way they could ever be certain about such a device. And the only thing preventing a GSM baseband is patents.
Is it? I suppose to allow any fully open source, reprogrammable computer on the internet is an invitation to disaster. And yet the least open source of OSes, Windows, causes the most havoc. What's your logic in this?
If your phone can screw up the towers, then there's something wrong with the towers. Eventually they will ignore your device, if it persists the company will register an FCC complaint. You aren't going to knock out a tower because of bad programming, at worst your phone will be ignored, and if you're unlucky you'll see a bunch of minutes or data billed on your account because it bugged out (after the battery dies in a flash.)