Within a few months, Cortex-A8 based processors are going to be low end.
they could just as well do this on existing Symbian devices.
It is cheaper to utilize components that are getting outside development than ones requiring you do all the work internally. That's why they merged Maemo into MeeGo (long term planning, really) and why they seem to be transitioning the low end to Linux.
Only question is if they'll drag Aegis over to the low end and cripple the systems even more severely than iOS and Android.
No company could ever legally negotiate the deal you described above
Indeed, it is best left unspoken lest regulators have evidence later on.
take off your tinfoil hat and get real.
Yet Nokia, a company with some management issues, gets an ex-Microsoft CEO and suddenly burns down everything they had invested in, in exchange for a dependency on a company known to destroy "partners."
$1 Billion
A CEO and pocket change compared to what it would cost to actually buy Nokia.
The utter insanity of decisions coming out of that company now just suggest to me that there's a ton of politics, back and forth, and infighting, and that there's no unified leadership in the company. After all, suddenly this when Elop showed slides basically saying "within a few years anything not Microsoft will be gone."
I believe that Microsoft can do whatever they want with Nokia.
The board chose a CEO who did nothing visible, then forced Nokia into dependence on Microsoft. The shareholders reacted by selling madly. I don't know what Nokia's goals are aside from selling phones, but they don't seem to be reacting fast enough (especially with Elop pulling a multi-Osborne at the start of the year.)
So yeah, I expect that if MS tells Nokia to marginalize or kill something off, they'll try as hard as they can to do so. Elop has to stay on good terms with them or he'll ride Nokia into the gutter.
Funny, they work fine here on Nightly (and on my work laptop, which runs 7 now.) Somehow I doubt it's actually broken and the lot of you have something fucked on your PCs.
And it's still a great browser. I updated Nightly to 10 earlier today and a couple of my addons were disabled due to the version number not having been updated, so I installed the Add-on Compatibility reporter and re-enabled them. They work fine.
AdBlock+ and NoScript have not once ceased functioning or been disabled, despite my having gone from 4 to 5 to Beta to Nightly, and without any updates the disabled ones work fine with the reporter activating them. And not once have I noticed a break in any of the sites I use.
So yeah, it's still a great browser. Much ado about nothing, IMO.
Given that Nokia has gone this direction, is there anything that has the N900's featureset/openness?
Unfortunately, not thus far. Everything else out there seems to be Android laden, or otherwise locked down or missing features. I have yet to come across anything that includes 32GB of storage AND an SD card slot, let alone running an environment that offers a standard Linux userspace that is readily available.
There might be hope, what with Nvidia releasing hardfp drivers for MeeGo (which could be repurposed) but even that's been tossed into churn. Maybe if Samsung offers some way to get something like MeeGo going on their devices, there will be something to move to.
This is not open source, however. Stuff like this is developed entirely behind closed doors by Google, then by Samsung, then by Samsung in cooperation with AT&T, and the source for this is likely unavailable.
It's called "patent indemnification," which they insist that vendors must have. Yes, effectively "patent violation insurance" to keep other companies off your back. Granted it's not entirely "liability insurance" but it's a step towards the state where you cannot develop software independently, but instead must be under the thumb of some larger corporation (or somehow have millions in insurance) to write and distribute software.
Then you haven't used a laptop or desktop from a major vendor, whose BIOS contains usually no useful settings of note. Redhat is absolutely right to be worried that laptop vendors will ship systems without any interface to disable this, especially if they brand the machine a "Windows 8" machine and do the bare minimums to meet that logo requirement.
..It's the OEM's. Nowhere does Microsoft mandate that OEMs must remove the option to disable UEFI secure boot, only that it's enabled by default.
Which is a great dodge. Then they can apply quiet, behind the scenes pressure to remove the option. Some vendors omit options regardless (like disabling VT-x.)
It also doesn't state that you can only ship Microsoft's keys. Why is it Microsoft's responsibility to get keys other than its own installed?
Yep, we're heading into THOSE days where only a select handful of operating systems are allowed to boot. If we're lucky, we'll be able to boot Fedora and Ubuntu. Gentoo users? Fuck you.
This whole thing stinks of misinformation and FUD. The OEMs are the ones you want to pressure, not Microsoft.
Do you seriously think that users can pressure OEMs harder than MS can? MS can kill their business overnight, and I don't doubt they've learned a LOT about how to act in unethical manner even under the eye of the DoJ. No, this is MS pursuing something and, much like Apple, hoping the inertia of the masses who don't care can overwhelm the complaints of the minority that understand why such unilateral, non-disablable lock down is bad.
People are fighting so aggressively to defend MS, but in a few years we may wish for the day when we didn't have to violate the DMCA and ACTA to run whatever OS we choose on our systems.
I know how to download vmware player to run the things I want to run in a virtual machine and I greatly desire to have a secure underpinning to my OS. Thanks.
That's nice. I hope you only like ever running Windows natively, and having to always put Linux in a VM.
It's unlikely to be for anything else. Not that this is particularly innovative, but they want to have a government enforced monopoly on the concept to secure it exclusively for their own mobile OS.
AFAIK, none of them are rated yet for over a million writes, so they are bound to fail at some point.
That rating, mind you, is per cell. Virtually all SSDs do some form of wear leveling and are over-provisioned to ensure that no one erase block gets worn out early. And the "backup plan" is pretty much the same as for a regular hard drive: duplicates on RAID for reliability and backups for failure recovery.
I could write a program that would break an SSD quickly
Sure, you can deliberately and forcefully break an SSD. But the amount of IO required to do so tends to go above and beyond what even the average enthusiast will do. And if your typical IO pattern is one that will break an SSD, then you should plan for it and determine if the speedup is worth the cost.
Slashdot Mirror
Within a few months, Cortex-A8 based processors are going to be low end.
It is cheaper to utilize components that are getting outside development than ones requiring you do all the work internally. That's why they merged Maemo into MeeGo (long term planning, really) and why they seem to be transitioning the low end to Linux.
Only question is if they'll drag Aegis over to the low end and cripple the systems even more severely than iOS and Android.
Indeed, it is best left unspoken lest regulators have evidence later on.
Yet Nokia, a company with some management issues, gets an ex-Microsoft CEO and suddenly burns down everything they had invested in, in exchange for a dependency on a company known to destroy "partners."
A CEO and pocket change compared to what it would cost to actually buy Nokia.
The utter insanity of decisions coming out of that company now just suggest to me that there's a ton of politics, back and forth, and infighting, and that there's no unified leadership in the company. After all, suddenly this when Elop showed slides basically saying "within a few years anything not Microsoft will be gone."
I believe that Microsoft can do whatever they want with Nokia.
The board chose a CEO who did nothing visible, then forced Nokia into dependence on Microsoft. The shareholders reacted by selling madly. I don't know what Nokia's goals are aside from selling phones, but they don't seem to be reacting fast enough (especially with Elop pulling a multi-Osborne at the start of the year.)
So yeah, I expect that if MS tells Nokia to marginalize or kill something off, they'll try as hard as they can to do so. Elop has to stay on good terms with them or he'll ride Nokia into the gutter.
Funny, they work fine here on Nightly (and on my work laptop, which runs 7 now.) Somehow I doubt it's actually broken and the lot of you have something fucked on your PCs.
And it's still a great browser. I updated Nightly to 10 earlier today and a couple of my addons were disabled due to the version number not having been updated, so I installed the Add-on Compatibility reporter and re-enabled them. They work fine.
AdBlock+ and NoScript have not once ceased functioning or been disabled, despite my having gone from 4 to 5 to Beta to Nightly, and without any updates the disabled ones work fine with the reporter activating them. And not once have I noticed a break in any of the sites I use.
So yeah, it's still a great browser. Much ado about nothing, IMO.
Unfortunately, not thus far. Everything else out there seems to be Android laden, or otherwise locked down or missing features. I have yet to come across anything that includes 32GB of storage AND an SD card slot, let alone running an environment that offers a standard Linux userspace that is readily available.
There might be hope, what with Nvidia releasing hardfp drivers for MeeGo (which could be repurposed) but even that's been tossed into churn. Maybe if Samsung offers some way to get something like MeeGo going on their devices, there will be something to move to.
This is not open source, however. Stuff like this is developed entirely behind closed doors by Google, then by Samsung, then by Samsung in cooperation with AT&T, and the source for this is likely unavailable.
My point was that there's no point to building it yourself, when they're doing it anyway (and giving you an auto-upgrade path.)
No need, Nightly happily updates itself whenever it finds a newer version.
Because it gives Slashdot a way to garner page hits from the inevitable Firefox hatefest.
They already have the beginnings in place.
It's called "patent indemnification," which they insist that vendors must have. Yes, effectively "patent violation insurance" to keep other companies off your back. Granted it's not entirely "liability insurance" but it's a step towards the state where you cannot develop software independently, but instead must be under the thumb of some larger corporation (or somehow have millions in insurance) to write and distribute software.
Yeah, because a nerd would never care about politics that may affect them.
Barnes and Noble is currently fighting MS in court, even if they aren't a smartphone vendor.
You spam that blog constantly. Is it yours?
Then you haven't used a laptop or desktop from a major vendor, whose BIOS contains usually no useful settings of note. Redhat is absolutely right to be worried that laptop vendors will ship systems without any interface to disable this, especially if they brand the machine a "Windows 8" machine and do the bare minimums to meet that logo requirement.
Which is a great dodge. Then they can apply quiet, behind the scenes pressure to remove the option. Some vendors omit options regardless (like disabling VT-x.)
Yep, we're heading into THOSE days where only a select handful of operating systems are allowed to boot. If we're lucky, we'll be able to boot Fedora and Ubuntu. Gentoo users? Fuck you.
Do you seriously think that users can pressure OEMs harder than MS can? MS can kill their business overnight, and I don't doubt they've learned a LOT about how to act in unethical manner even under the eye of the DoJ. No, this is MS pursuing something and, much like Apple, hoping the inertia of the masses who don't care can overwhelm the complaints of the minority that understand why such unilateral, non-disablable lock down is bad.
People are fighting so aggressively to defend MS, but in a few years we may wish for the day when we didn't have to violate the DMCA and ACTA to run whatever OS we choose on our systems.
Except that this is for the Windows 8 Logo. Many motherboards come with the Windows 8 Logo. I see nothing that restricts this to system builders.
That's nice. I hope you only like ever running Windows natively, and having to always put Linux in a VM.
Broken system maybe? Or maybe you're reading the numbers wrong.
What does "about:memory" say?
Why the hell would Mozilla use Microsoft's Javascript interpreter? Are people just making shit up these days?
How is he out of touch with reality? Really, an explanation would be handy to go with the accusation.
It's unlikely to be for anything else. Not that this is particularly innovative, but they want to have a government enforced monopoly on the concept to secure it exclusively for their own mobile OS.
Depends on your perspective then, I suppose. Inexpensive for a server isn't exactly inexpensive for the average home user.
SSDs aren't exactly inexpensive, are they?
Perhaps I wasn't clear: you'd keep copies on a RAID made of regular disks.
That rating, mind you, is per cell. Virtually all SSDs do some form of wear leveling and are over-provisioned to ensure that no one erase block gets worn out early. And the "backup plan" is pretty much the same as for a regular hard drive: duplicates on RAID for reliability and backups for failure recovery.
Sure, you can deliberately and forcefully break an SSD. But the amount of IO required to do so tends to go above and beyond what even the average enthusiast will do. And if your typical IO pattern is one that will break an SSD, then you should plan for it and determine if the speedup is worth the cost.