I was under the impression that this unlock was only for devices sold direct from HTC, which excludes pretty much every HTC device in the US. Has this changed?
No, something that is Apple-exclusive that leaves people without iPhones unable to communicate with iPhone users without using (rape-worthy) text messages.
Remember that Apple loves proprietary things. FaceTime, dock connector, this service...
. Google provides them, and I'd assume any licensee would just point to that if asked for the code (if they don't already make it freely available themselves. Can a redistributor just point to the original source under the GPL if they don't modify it? I assume they can). AFAIK most licensees don't modify the GPL portions of the code, only the front-end etc. which are licensed under Apache.
Virtually every Android device provider touches the kernel, as they have to integrate their board support files and hardware drivers. Many of these vendors sit on their ass and take ages to release their kernels, well after the devices have landed in people's hands. So not only do they not at all cooperate with the kernel community (which is why all these devices rot with old kernel versions) nor with the wider Linux community (which is why any non-Android install is a dirty hack instead of a clean setup) but they violate the GPL for a significant span of time until they release their sources.
My understanding is that the tablet vendors are by far the worst.
The newest field of personal computing rapidly becoming a closed, user-hostile space with a slew of incompatible devices whose hardware and software are totally controlled by the vendor. It's Apple and Microsoft's dream come true: The fully controlled, fully DRM'd, user-does-what-we-say experience.
And we've seen so many times how manufacturers like to think they still somehow can tell you how you are and aren't allowed to use the product you purchased from them. (they want to sell it to you, but not really sell, as in, it's your property to do with as you please) God I hate that.
Oh, don't you dare criticize companies like that. You'll enrage some Apple fan!
Virtually all instances of this program are tied to vendors you see commonly in Best Buy and the like. Mostly it is targeted at people who wouldn't dare overclock themselves or run non-Windows systems.
I imagine that by virtue of installing Linux on any of the systems in question, or dabbling with various overclocking tools, you could trivially enable the "features" being sold here. It makes sense, especially if it's tied to the motherboard.
I think the next version of Android... Ice Cream Sandwich is going to be fully vetted for patent claims.
This is impossible. There is not enough time or money to sift through all of the thousands upon thousands of software patents out there and say "our software does not violate this" to the satisfaction of everyone involved. Even if you do come to that conclusion, the patent holder could disagree and take you to court anyway, where you have to fight until the judge can say "no it doesn't violate the patent."
The N9 was "running" MeeGo when it was due to be released in September 2010.
No, it wasn't. Then as now it was running Harmattan, which had been in planning since 2009. MeeGo was barely out of the gate in early 2010 and ticking with Xorg by September 2010. But I don't get your point regarding swap, and I doubt you can make it either.
The MeeGo base it was standing on had to be thrown away. These one step forward two steps back manoeuvres take time to execute.
I see you stating conjecture as fact. Do you have any evidence for the wild claims you are making?
the changed higher ups changed direction one too many times with the dropping of Maemo for MeeGo.
The introduction of MeeGo had no impact. If it did, the N9 would be running MeeGo, instead it runs a descendant of Maemo with Qt APIs which were planned since 2009. It likely would have been delayed further had they switched to MeeGo proper, but the bureaucracy internal to the company is to blame for the N9 and N950's extreme lateness.
Key takeaway is that hiring open source evangelists to design a mobile OS(i.e Meego) failed
I don't think that's the key takeaway. The key takeaway is that Nokia had a winner on their hands but their own internal battles kept it from ever getting the focus it needed until now. Harmattan is the end result that finally had them taking what was growing since 2005 and turned it into a smartphone OS. It should have been done years ago, but it was never allowed to happen.
Your point comes across as someone looking for something to point at and blame on FOSS.
After the board realized that, they jettisoned the CEO and brought in Elop to get alternatives.
Actually, it sounded like they wanted different management who could cut through the stupid bureaucracy, not a wholesale abandonment of everything that made them what they were. But it looks like that bureaucracy was retained and the software outsourced.
Blackberry, HP and Google told him to take a hike so the only credible option left was WP7.
Wait, do you have inside information no one else does? Links?
What causes hesitation among commercial app developers is the absolutely atrocious state of application distribution and dependency resolution. Every distribution has their own package format (or at the very least, different package names and content) and a different set of dependencies are required for every single one.
But why should these projects go out of their way to make life easier for proprietary software vendors? Why?
It's just not practical to target Linux as a commercial developer
Despite the fact that many vendors DO target Linux? Can you name anyone who has shied away due to the issues you describe?
It's not enough to say "Linux Compatible" right now. App developers must choose between GNOME or KDE or even just X.
It's not like having the libraries for both on your system is a huge space cost. And, quite frankly, no one does "just X" these days.
At one point, this competitive growth was a great thing... one was better than the other which would in turn make changes and improvements to surpass the first. But I think we have matured to a point where this is no longer a productive thing as it stands now, I believe it is causing hesitation among commercial app developers.
So what you're saying is that, despite the fact that proprietary vendors are NOT hesitating, that open source and free software projects need to STOP what they're doing for the sake of proprietary vendors. No. That's what Redhat, et. al. do. That's what an Ubuntu LTS is for. The greater community and the projects that distros are built upon should not be forced to bend to the desires of proprietary software vendors.
The Linux kernel sure as hell doesn't wait. And it's no worse off for it (even if you want to claim it is.)
It feels like the Gnome people are holing themselves up in their bunker. Reading Dirk Hohndel's thread on G+ was quite enlightening, especially regarding the behavior of the Gnome community. People who like Gnome 3 actively attack and bash people who don't, and those inside the community are keeping mum for fear of being attacked in a similar manner.
After hearing this I put Fedora 15 with Gnome 3 in a VM, and immediately I'm put off by some of the changes, here's just a few in my experience:
- The desktop itself is no longer yours. It no longer responds to right clicks, and you cannot place anything on it. The "Desktop" folder in your home directory is blithely ignored. - The Applications menu no longer responds to right clicks, immediately executing the application or, if opening a sub menu, closing the submenu. If you click on a submenu when it is open, it will switch from "hover to open" to "click and hold to open." There are also no configuration options for the menu. - The panel at the top is unresponsive to right clicks except in certain areas, and elements cannot be moved. There is no configuration for it that is obvious, and as a result it is stuck colored black. - The system menu is gone completely, and the username menu cannot be removed or altered. - The concept of altering the theme seems to have been eliminated as well. - Easy access to language configurations (how do I set my input method editors?) seems to have been hidden. This may be a Fedora thing, but even under F14 with Gnome 2 it was easy. - Huge amounts of dead space in the title bar, menus, and toolbars. - Can't drag windows to the edges of the workspace to move it. - gconf-editor is gone entirely, probably to keep us dirty proles from altering the configuration.
And I'm just getting started. I imagine I could find more infuriating things given time, however the glaring issues and general hostility of the setup would probably push me to switch to KDE or something (unsurprisingly, the work machines I use all run Ubuntu 10.10 at the newest.)
It's one thing to have pared down defaults, but to gut a system's capabilities and deny users the means to regain those options just tears away at the usability of a system. That capability has always been a hallmark of Linux desktop environments, even if the usability needed work. But instead of fixing the usability, they just decided to cripple the system.
Except when it doesn't. And no one can fix it because it wasn't designed for the hardware models we have today.
It makes sense to replace it only if you replace it with something *better*, which is different from *shinier*. Dropping pretty basic features like network transparency because it doesn't make sense on tablets, or for n00bs, or etc is bad engineering, bad philosophy, and bad karma.
Then perhaps people should step up and lead the charge in the opposite direction instead of sitting back and bitching.
You should not condition the capabilities of a system on the capabilities of its least experienced users.
Funny, that's what GNOME3 is doing but I don't see that happening with Wayland. I suggest getting off your ass and making a point (since the only point being made in this thread is network transparency) about it.
wahhh, I want them to work for me on my pet project even if they're disinterested!
There has to be a stable alternative to the crazy shenanigans going on with Gnome, KDE, Wayland and Ubuntu folks.
Because, of course, rendering subsystems for which your entire counter-argument amounts to "fuck them, I don't want that!" has a whole lot in common with the many and varied criticisms of Gnome 3 and Unity.
As far as I can tell, anyone who's backing Wayland has no actual concrete complaints about X, they just feel the need to rewrite everything from scratch (a common problem, unfortunately). Furthermore, in all I've read about Wayland, it doesn't bring anything to the table except fewer features and newer (buggier) code.
I suppose that means that the guys behind Wayland, that is to say many of the people behind Xorg, have no valid or concrete complaints. Is it that they don't, you haven't looked, or you disagree with their complaints?
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I was under the impression that this unlock was only for devices sold direct from HTC, which excludes pretty much every HTC device in the US. Has this changed?
No, something that is Apple-exclusive that leaves people without iPhones unable to communicate with iPhone users without using (rape-worthy) text messages.
Remember that Apple loves proprietary things. FaceTime, dock connector, this service...
No, we don't need companies battling things out in court. We need to change the laws so that routes for scams like this are eliminated wholesale.
Virtually every Android device provider touches the kernel, as they have to integrate their board support files and hardware drivers. Many of these vendors sit on their ass and take ages to release their kernels, well after the devices have landed in people's hands. So not only do they not at all cooperate with the kernel community (which is why all these devices rot with old kernel versions) nor with the wider Linux community (which is why any non-Android install is a dirty hack instead of a clean setup) but they violate the GPL for a significant span of time until they release their sources.
My understanding is that the tablet vendors are by far the worst.
It is, which is why there is still no proper equivalent of AdBlock Plus or NoScript in Chrome, and at the rate things are going there never will be.
It's quite terrible, really.
The newest field of personal computing rapidly becoming a closed, user-hostile space with a slew of incompatible devices whose hardware and software are totally controlled by the vendor. It's Apple and Microsoft's dream come true: The fully controlled, fully DRM'd, user-does-what-we-say experience.
I wish they'd do more to keep open and Free Software more litigation free. Not everyone is an Android fan.
You sound as if you've never looked at the root Makefile...
Oh, don't you dare criticize companies like that. You'll enrage some Apple fan!
Virtually all instances of this program are tied to vendors you see commonly in Best Buy and the like. Mostly it is targeted at people who wouldn't dare overclock themselves or run non-Windows systems.
I imagine that by virtue of installing Linux on any of the systems in question, or dabbling with various overclocking tools, you could trivially enable the "features" being sold here. It makes sense, especially if it's tied to the motherboard.
This is impossible. There is not enough time or money to sift through all of the thousands upon thousands of software patents out there and say "our software does not violate this" to the satisfaction of everyone involved. Even if you do come to that conclusion, the patent holder could disagree and take you to court anyway, where you have to fight until the judge can say "no it doesn't violate the patent."
No, it wasn't. Then as now it was running Harmattan, which had been in planning since 2009. MeeGo was barely out of the gate in early 2010 and ticking with Xorg by September 2010. But I don't get your point regarding swap, and I doubt you can make it either.
I see you stating conjecture as fact. Do you have any evidence for the wild claims you are making?
I suppose that's the big hill to climb. In the mobile space, any device that's over 2 years and still in use is a lost sale.
Or worse, has the temerity to consider a non-Apple solution!
Apple fans can go on and on about their stuff, but dare suggest something not from them, Google, or MS and you get chewed out.
The introduction of MeeGo had no impact. If it did, the N9 would be running MeeGo, instead it runs a descendant of Maemo with Qt APIs which were planned since 2009. It likely would have been delayed further had they switched to MeeGo proper, but the bureaucracy internal to the company is to blame for the N9 and N950's extreme lateness.
I don't think that's the key takeaway. The key takeaway is that Nokia had a winner on their hands but their own internal battles kept it from ever getting the focus it needed until now. Harmattan is the end result that finally had them taking what was growing since 2005 and turned it into a smartphone OS. It should have been done years ago, but it was never allowed to happen.
Your point comes across as someone looking for something to point at and blame on FOSS.
Actually, it sounded like they wanted different management who could cut through the stupid bureaucracy, not a wholesale abandonment of everything that made them what they were. But it looks like that bureaucracy was retained and the software outsourced.
Wait, do you have inside information no one else does? Links?
You assume it will be available via retail channels. Elop is gunning hard to make sure the N9 is difficult to get.
Yeah, don't buy the device that readily acknowledges you as the owner, buy the one that presumes you are a hostile to be contained.
GlobalFoundries is used by AMD exclusively for their CPUs. I expect this memory venture is likely resale of someone else's DRAM.
But why should these projects go out of their way to make life easier for proprietary software vendors? Why?
Despite the fact that many vendors DO target Linux? Can you name anyone who has shied away due to the issues you describe?
It's not like having the libraries for both on your system is a huge space cost. And, quite frankly, no one does "just X" these days.
So what you're saying is that, despite the fact that proprietary vendors are NOT hesitating, that open source and free software projects need to STOP what they're doing for the sake of proprietary vendors. No. That's what Redhat, et. al. do. That's what an Ubuntu LTS is for. The greater community and the projects that distros are built upon should not be forced to bend to the desires of proprietary software vendors.
The Linux kernel sure as hell doesn't wait. And it's no worse off for it (even if you want to claim it is.)
It feels like the Gnome people are holing themselves up in their bunker. Reading Dirk Hohndel's thread on G+ was quite enlightening, especially regarding the behavior of the Gnome community. People who like Gnome 3 actively attack and bash people who don't, and those inside the community are keeping mum for fear of being attacked in a similar manner.
After hearing this I put Fedora 15 with Gnome 3 in a VM, and immediately I'm put off by some of the changes, here's just a few in my experience:
- The desktop itself is no longer yours. It no longer responds to right clicks, and you cannot place anything on it. The "Desktop" folder in your home directory is blithely ignored.
- The Applications menu no longer responds to right clicks, immediately executing the application or, if opening a sub menu, closing the submenu. If you click on a submenu when it is open, it will switch from "hover to open" to "click and hold to open." There are also no configuration options for the menu.
- The panel at the top is unresponsive to right clicks except in certain areas, and elements cannot be moved. There is no configuration for it that is obvious, and as a result it is stuck colored black.
- The system menu is gone completely, and the username menu cannot be removed or altered.
- The concept of altering the theme seems to have been eliminated as well.
- Easy access to language configurations (how do I set my input method editors?) seems to have been hidden. This may be a Fedora thing, but even under F14 with Gnome 2 it was easy.
- Huge amounts of dead space in the title bar, menus, and toolbars.
- Can't drag windows to the edges of the workspace to move it.
- gconf-editor is gone entirely, probably to keep us dirty proles from altering the configuration.
And I'm just getting started. I imagine I could find more infuriating things given time, however the glaring issues and general hostility of the setup would probably push me to switch to KDE or something (unsurprisingly, the work machines I use all run Ubuntu 10.10 at the newest.)
It's one thing to have pared down defaults, but to gut a system's capabilities and deny users the means to regain those options just tears away at the usability of a system. That capability has always been a hallmark of Linux desktop environments, even if the usability needed work. But instead of fixing the usability, they just decided to cripple the system.
Except when it doesn't. And no one can fix it because it wasn't designed for the hardware models we have today.
Then perhaps people should step up and lead the charge in the opposite direction instead of sitting back and bitching.
Funny, that's what GNOME3 is doing but I don't see that happening with Wayland. I suggest getting off your ass and making a point (since the only point being made in this thread is network transparency) about it.
Because, of course, rendering subsystems for which your entire counter-argument amounts to "fuck them, I don't want that!" has a whole lot in common with the many and varied criticisms of Gnome 3 and Unity.
I suppose that means that the guys behind Wayland, that is to say many of the people behind Xorg, have no valid or concrete complaints. Is it that they don't, you haven't looked, or you disagree with their complaints?