As much as I love the microkernel concept of software development, I think its bunk.
By the time you've added all the facilities and interfaces to your small core to allow for all the modular bits, you've already made it bloated compared to the same software without those options.
Sure, I'm an old *nix geek but I like my software to be relatively single-purpose and therefore easily debugged and defined (but yes I still use PERL).
I like my browser being able to browse the web. I'd prefer to use a video player to watch video, especially considering how often I full-screen it. In fact, its one of the things I love about the Youtube app on Android -- when I click a link to a Youtube video in the browser, it offers to load it in the external application instead.
Sure, we can give tabs process isolation and we can use no-execute flags and memory isolation and virtual machines, but why use all that complexity to implement something that doesn't need to be done?
Linus' infamous comment about microkernels applies I believe.
Apple's own Newton combined most of the same features into such a device years before.
If you need a GSM example, the Palm offerings come to mind.
The IPhone's unique feature was eliminating nearly all input aside from the screen. Mind you they did that on the Newton as well.
The Newton supported gestures, by the way. Some of my fav's were in text editing: stroke upward over a letter to capitalize it. Stroke across the screen below your text to create a new entry. zig-zag over a word to erase it.
No, I don't find the IPhone revolutionary, although I still give them credit for the Newton. I still own working OMPs and MP120s.
My point about mistakes was to justify always reading one's bill. Once one always reads one's bill, one also notices these illegal charges.
In no way did I imply that these types of charges are mistakes, only that since mistakes happen, one should read one's bill. These charges are IMHO illegal and unethical.
One might as well ask the sun not to rise. People are ignorant and know only what they see. The internal workings of the software that runs their daily lives are so far beyond them as to be indistinguishable from magic.
Well said. My complaint is not that users want this or that users don't understand why its a bad idea, but that companies who specialize in offering computer software and related services are offering it to them.
Its akin in my mind to people wanting to paint with mercury and lead in their children's bedrooms because it goes on the wall better. Sure it does, and it may very well kill your child too, so we don't allow it.
We're getting to the point in history where I believe (unfortunately) government intervention will take over where private corporations have failed, and mandates for specific levels of security will be the result. No more wanton sharing of your location is already working its way through the pipeline, and some day it will be cross-site data sharing, data mining of personal email, etc.
And rust me, I agree with your point wholeheartedly. I do computer network security and when I refuse to configure unnecessary wireless APs for customers they get upset with me. When I refuse to let them install a public-facing webserver on their internal database server they get annoyed. And on several occasions I've had to have very long discussions with their security companies for wanting holes punched in the firewall for remote unencrypted access to the office camera system.
Some of us remember when Netscape made a push platform, or when their Java integration platform whose name I forget tried to be a browser OS too.
Internet Explorer took over the desktop and introduced silly web apps on the "live" desktop that have subsequently been replaced by the applets we have today in Win7.
Many of those who agreed with me remember these and other attempts to misuse a protocol or language and try to shoehorn a square peg into a round hole.
HTML is a markup language for text. CSS is an attempt to make it usable in more formatting situations. Javascript is an interpreted scripting language that while it can be hacked into a decent Pacman game isn't even up to par with Java's performance.
PS if I were going to promote a cross-platform bloated mess on your desktop, it would be Java. Its much less limited than HTML+CSS+Javascript, and with Webstart it can even launch remotely.
Actually you got wooshed. Firefox hasn't been tiny in a while. Chrome replaced it in the tiny department. You're a few years late for the unbloated Firefox party. And the joke is, now Chrome is repeating their mistakes. So who's next?
I could draw it out and make it sound pretty, but its stupid nonetheless. Once you've made the browser so big that it encompasses all possible generic operating system needs, it is too bloated and someone else makes a smaller faster better browser.
Operating systems and browsers are two different things.
Now as a work environment, say a desktop interface, browsers have potential, and that's what most people mean, but even there, the security problems of dividing up what is local data and what is remote, what should be executable and what shouldn't becomes a nightmare that is easier to handle when avoided completely.
HTML5 isn't the best way to write any application; that's why almost everyone else who's made an HTML based platform has moved to a native one after the fact. Does HTML need the features necessary to write generic applications? Certainly not. The overloading of protocols (everything as HTTP) and formats (everything as HTML/CSS) is just short sighted laziness.
That would fall under intellectually challenged indeed. The entire concept of licenses is part and parcel of Copyright. Your argument has become silly.
Those fees aren't the mystery fees being described here. Those fees are legal and described in advance.
If you don't get charged the 911 fee, you've got lucky somehow.
These are fees for services you didn't even want or sign up for.
As a slightly different example here, our corporate cell phone bills frequently have charges for calls to our my-5 numbers. We read through the bills every month and call to complain about those. Almost every month they try to bill us for calls that their own service claims are free, which they apologize for on the phone profusely of course.
I might add, I don't understand people who pay their bills without reading them.
The GPL requires Copyright to be enforceable. We all know this.
PS I think you'd find if you looked that those pushing for pro-privacy are not the same users pushing the GPL's enforceability. They're both geek topics, but they don't necessarily overlap as much as you assume.
I'm pro-Copyright within limits (125 years is stupid) and I believe authors should be compensated if that is their desire.
I buy my games and movies when I don't rent, and I use Netflix, not Youtube to watch shows online.
Licenses like the GPL are not auto-enforceable any more than your hypothetical is.
Unfortunately for people who disagree with it, Copyright is.
Redistributing a Copyrighted work is a federal offense in the USA and many other places. If you want a license to redistribute it legally, you must choose to obey the one offered to you.
You would also have to believe that Copyright is invalid. Of course, this would preclude their lawsuit. Assuming they believe in Copyright because of their position on others modifying their products, their ethical view of the GPL is not relevant to the Copyrighted works it covers.
Without some license, you have no rights to reuse someone else's code. Denying the GPL is admitting infringement.
You missed the headmaster's death in the Harry Potter series somehow? Sure, its mostly happy endings but there are some real tragedies in the series as well. On a whole its better than many. Canon or not, Professor X and Jean Grey were both allowed to be destroyed in the third X-men movie as well.
Here's some real numbers for you, from my ISP up here in Canada:
I have the Standard package. Its $47/mo (the pricing on the website "starts" with discounted prices if you take other services). That includes 60GB/mo of usage. Every GB after that costs $1.50 up to $30 max. After the $30 max they may cut you off randomly.
Basic idea being, for up to 60GB/mo I pay $47/mo. For 80GB/mo I pay $77/mo. After 80GB its 'free' but may stop working.
Usage based billing at prices you suggest might be tolerable, but current realities are different. Most people I know aren't willing to pay basically $80/mo for Internet access.
Most every claim on Wikipedia is properly cited. If you can't be bothered to look up those citations, you don't understand what Wikipedia is.
Since you didn't bother, here it is:
^ Kent, Steven L. (2004-02-18). "PlayStation 2 Timeline". GameSpy. IGN. pp. 2. Retrieved 2008-03-03. "1998 – November 27th: Sega initiates the next generation of game consoles by launching Dreamcast in Japan..."
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As much as I love the microkernel concept of software development, I think its bunk.
By the time you've added all the facilities and interfaces to your small core to allow for all the modular bits, you've already made it bloated compared to the same software without those options.
Sure, I'm an old *nix geek but I like my software to be relatively single-purpose and therefore easily debugged and defined (but yes I still use PERL).
I like my browser being able to browse the web. I'd prefer to use a video player to watch video, especially considering how often I full-screen it. In fact, its one of the things I love about the Youtube app on Android -- when I click a link to a Youtube video in the browser, it offers to load it in the external application instead.
Sure, we can give tabs process isolation and we can use no-execute flags and memory isolation and virtual machines, but why use all that complexity to implement something that doesn't need to be done?
Linus' infamous comment about microkernels applies I believe.
Apple's own Newton combined most of the same features into such a device years before.
If you need a GSM example, the Palm offerings come to mind.
The IPhone's unique feature was eliminating nearly all input aside from the screen. Mind you they did that on the Newton as well.
The Newton supported gestures, by the way. Some of my fav's were in text editing: stroke upward over a letter to capitalize it. Stroke across the screen below your text to create a new entry. zig-zag over a word to erase it.
No, I don't find the IPhone revolutionary, although I still give them credit for the Newton. I still own working OMPs and MP120s.
Many many moons ago I seem to recall the documentation saying not to use the passwd function and to use MD5 for password storage anyway.
Allowing the use of single DES should also be considered a security bug.
My point about mistakes was to justify always reading one's bill. Once one always reads one's bill, one also notices these illegal charges.
In no way did I imply that these types of charges are mistakes, only that since mistakes happen, one should read one's bill. These charges are IMHO illegal and unethical.
Well said. My complaint is not that users want this or that users don't understand why its a bad idea, but that companies who specialize in offering computer software and related services are offering it to them.
Its akin in my mind to people wanting to paint with mercury and lead in their children's bedrooms because it goes on the wall better. Sure it does, and it may very well kill your child too, so we don't allow it.
We're getting to the point in history where I believe (unfortunately) government intervention will take over where private corporations have failed, and mandates for specific levels of security will be the result. No more wanton sharing of your location is already working its way through the pipeline, and some day it will be cross-site data sharing, data mining of personal email, etc.
And rust me, I agree with your point wholeheartedly. I do computer network security and when I refuse to configure unnecessary wireless APs for customers they get upset with me. When I refuse to let them install a public-facing webserver on their internal database server they get annoyed. And on several occasions I've had to have very long discussions with their security companies for wanting holes punched in the firewall for remote unencrypted access to the office camera system.
Some of us remember when Netscape made a push platform, or when their Java integration platform whose name I forget tried to be a browser OS too.
Internet Explorer took over the desktop and introduced silly web apps on the "live" desktop that have subsequently been replaced by the applets we have today in Win7.
Many of those who agreed with me remember these and other attempts to misuse a protocol or language and try to shoehorn a square peg into a round hole.
HTML is a markup language for text. CSS is an attempt to make it usable in more formatting situations. Javascript is an interpreted scripting language that while it can be hacked into a decent Pacman game isn't even up to par with Java's performance.
PS if I were going to promote a cross-platform bloated mess on your desktop, it would be Java. Its much less limited than HTML+CSS+Javascript, and with Webstart it can even launch remotely.
Actually you got wooshed. Firefox hasn't been tiny in a while. Chrome replaced it in the tiny department. You're a few years late for the unbloated Firefox party. And the joke is, now Chrome is repeating their mistakes. So who's next?
Chrome was the tiny fast lightweight browser yesterday. I wonder who's next.
The 'browser as an OS' concept is still stupid.
I could draw it out and make it sound pretty, but its stupid nonetheless. Once you've made the browser so big that it encompasses all possible generic operating system needs, it is too bloated and someone else makes a smaller faster better browser.
Operating systems and browsers are two different things.
Now as a work environment, say a desktop interface, browsers have potential, and that's what most people mean, but even there, the security problems of dividing up what is local data and what is remote, what should be executable and what shouldn't becomes a nightmare that is easier to handle when avoided completely.
HTML5 isn't the best way to write any application; that's why almost everyone else who's made an HTML based platform has moved to a native one after the fact. Does HTML need the features necessary to write generic applications? Certainly not. The overloading of protocols (everything as HTTP) and formats (everything as HTML/CSS) is just short sighted laziness.
Please make it stop.
That would fall under intellectually challenged indeed. The entire concept of licenses is part and parcel of Copyright. Your argument has become silly.
Everyone makes mistakes. Assuming there will be no mistakes is at your own peril.
I read all my bills; it only takes a few minutes.
Nobody said anything about abstinence programs. Your assumption is duly noted however.
Those fees aren't the mystery fees being described here. Those fees are legal and described in advance.
If you don't get charged the 911 fee, you've got lucky somehow.
These are fees for services you didn't even want or sign up for.
As a slightly different example here, our corporate cell phone bills frequently have charges for calls to our my-5 numbers. We read through the bills every month and call to complain about those. Almost every month they try to bill us for calls that their own service claims are free, which they apologize for on the phone profusely of course.
I might add, I don't understand people who pay their bills without reading them.
Nothing you've described is disagreeing with the GPL.
All of it is simply disagreement with Copyright.
Copyright prevents you from doing things with GPL'd works, not the GPL. The GPL gives you rights you wouldn't have otherwise had.
The GPL requires Copyright to be enforceable. We all know this.
PS I think you'd find if you looked that those pushing for pro-privacy are not the same users pushing the GPL's enforceability. They're both geek topics, but they don't necessarily overlap as much as you assume.
I'm pro-Copyright within limits (125 years is stupid) and I believe authors should be compensated if that is their desire.
I buy my games and movies when I don't rent, and I use Netflix, not Youtube to watch shows online.
Its akin to someone publishing a book that includes some Shakespeare plays, the Harry Potter series, and their own novels.
They'd be sued for including the Harry Potters without permission, despite having created a new compilation work.
Licenses like the GPL are not auto-enforceable any more than your hypothetical is.
Unfortunately for people who disagree with it, Copyright is.
Redistributing a Copyrighted work is a federal offense in the USA and many other places. If you want a license to redistribute it legally, you must choose to obey the one offered to you.
You would also have to believe that Copyright is invalid. Of course, this would preclude their lawsuit. Assuming they believe in Copyright because of their position on others modifying their products, their ethical view of the GPL is not relevant to the Copyrighted works it covers.
Without some license, you have no rights to reuse someone else's code. Denying the GPL is admitting infringement.
People who don't have money often also do not understand money.
This may or may not be a causal relationship ;-)
You missed the headmaster's death in the Harry Potter series somehow? Sure, its mostly happy endings but there are some real tragedies in the series as well. On a whole its better than many. Canon or not, Professor X and Jean Grey were both allowed to be destroyed in the third X-men movie as well.
On the whole though I agree.
Here's some real numbers for you, from my ISP up here in Canada:
I have the Standard package. Its $47/mo (the pricing on the website "starts" with discounted prices if you take other services). That includes 60GB/mo of usage.
Every GB after that costs $1.50 up to $30 max. After the $30 max they may cut you off randomly.
Basic idea being, for up to 60GB/mo I pay $47/mo. For 80GB/mo I pay $77/mo. After 80GB its 'free' but may stop working.
Usage based billing at prices you suggest might be tolerable, but current realities are different. Most people I know aren't willing to pay basically $80/mo for Internet access.
Anything that does SIP.
Seriously, SIP predates Skype and does voice/video just fine on all platforms, including Android.
Google "SIP for [platform]" for fun.
IE was popular too.
Most every claim on Wikipedia is properly cited. If you can't be bothered to look up those citations, you don't understand what Wikipedia is.
Since you didn't bother, here it is: