Expensive residential on-campus dorms exist at many Australian unis to cater for (a) internationals (b) interstaters (c) country kids (d) rich city kids whose parents want them out of home (e) not so rich city kids whose parents want them to fully experience campus life.
Trinity is merely offering a carrot for students - the cost of lodging would dwarf the price of an iPad. With free wifi, it makes sense to subsidise everyone with a free iPad. To en masse 'think different' here means looking down on your "povo" living-at-home classmates who are stuck with a used 3yo toshiba satellite, if they carry a laptop at all.
Any bet half these pads get stolen, broken or mislaid by the end of first semester?
'gadget based' a mistake? This isn't about the desktop. iOS and Android dominate phones and tablets. Netbooks running Windows are yesterday's technology.
So, MS announces Windows 8 for ARM. This is the concept UI for capacitive touchscreens. Expect the same old Explorer shell for desktop 'power users'.
further sensationalist headlines undermine the motivation for the icedrobot project which is to liberate android not from Oracle but from smartphones. i.e. to run android apps on any touchscreen enabled OS
yes but the point is you're still running an application vm (dalvik) inside a platform vm (virtualbox). Fine for desktop class machines but not suitable for webos/bada/meego phones (At least until the cortex a15 brings hardware assisted virtualization) The ultimate goal is just to run android apps within the native desktop atop standard java (hotspot), with gpu accelerated backends for win32, x11, osx, directfb (webos). i.e. like any ordinary swing/swt application. Mono (ikvm - which targets openjdk) might be a good single vm for webos et al to run both android and wp7 apps - pity about the lawyers (google, ms, oracle all unhappy!)
Yes, a more accurate comparison would be the forthcoming Eee Pad Slider. It's like an iPad but slides out to a physical keyboard - with a similar price tag due to the constraints you mentioned.
Netbooks are evolving. Capacitive touchscreens will become standard within a year or so. Some will have optional keyboards. Some will run Android. Some will run Windows 8 for ARM or even x86. Some will dual boot into 'desktop' Linux.
I read Slashdot on the bus too! Not sure I'd want an iPad though. It's a 2 handed device. With a phone I can sip coffee in one hand and peruse websites in the other. Or squish up when a portly passenger sits beside.
The iPhone4's 326ppi may be excessive but the more common 480x800 would seem a nice balance for one-handed operation.
photoshop on a smartphone? That's crazy talk, you'd need a 64bit supercomputer for that!:-) I don't know what extreme performance office suite you've been running but for most folks a dual core 1ghz cpu is more than adequate. And using a lot less power than those P4 desktops running office 2003 that dominated corporate workplaces within living memory.
they can easily delay the release 6 months to allow manufacturers to port their drivers
I thought we were talking about updating existing hardware to a new release. In other words, the drivers are already written.
PC operating systems like Windows and Ubuntu just include drivers for every piece of hardware they can
These operating systems are released in binary form for generic hardware. The process of building a release for a specific device ought to be much simpler. The hardware is known exactly in advance. A device manufacturer can submit a hardware profile to a buildbot and an image can be built on the fly - unique to that hardware profile.
Where drivers can't be submitted upstream in source form, binary blobs can be linked as part of the build process. e.g. Nokia's xorg drivers that dynamically build a kernel module.
This process can be automated via continuous integration. Nightly builds, regression tests, deploying updates over the air. Using a mixture of physical devices submitted to Google's build cloud and manufacturers submitting hardware emulation profiles to qemu.
Where a vendor wants to lock down the device to a custom experience, that ought to be part of the build process too, even. Custom shells, look and feels, custom apps can all be added to the nightly build by linking against Google's ever evolving API and notifying the vendor of breakage - well in advance of an official release.
With an automated process, vendor QA can download releases at frequent intervals. As a release nears and the bugs have been progressively eliminated, we're talking days and weeks not months. New devices naturally take time but for upgrades from one release to the next, it's not rocket science.
dell doesn't have an OS but this may see its deployment of Ubuntu ramp up. A while ago they released some machines using intel and were condemned for the embedded powervr graphics that isn't foss friendly. Go amd - problem gone.
With Nokia's departure. the focus changes. Intel isn't concerned about creating a market to compete with handset platforms modelled on app stores such as ios and android. Rather, they're resting control away from Windows. The best way to do that? Woo free software programmers.There are hundreds, if not thousands, of Qt 'apps' for KDE just waiting to be given a touchscreen makeover. So courting 'mobile developers' and their $2.99 apps for a 3.6" screen shouldn't hurt Intel's Atom tablets to the extent it would Nokia.
'linux' the kernel is, i'm sure, meeting HP's obligations under the GPL. I think what's meant is the userland running above, in the same way google can license dalvik & other stuff as apache.
I won't speculate on what RIM are doing behind closed doors but I suggest you read up on IcedRobot, announced this week by a handful of IcedTea/OpenJDK enthusiasts. Mario Torre specifically mentions replacing Dalvik with OpenJDK's Hotspot VM, targetting QNX and, yes, decompiling Dalvik to standard JVM bytecode.
Java SE is heavier than Java ME but for the current generation of 800+Mhz CPUs, it's less of a burden. Of course the Java ME APIs would need to be emulated for 'legacy' blackberry apps but if the QNX-based Blackberry OS represents a paradigm shift, legacy support mightn't be such a priority.
Nokia made all the right noises - adopting Linux, modernizing their UI with Qt. But the Trolltech acquisition was 2 1/2 years ago - they've yet to release a single phone (scheduled for Symbian^4) which uses Qt exclusively.
But Maemo 6 was never released and instead resources were diverted into keeping Symbian on life-support.
The idea was funded with pizza for Symbian Foundation employees in their spare time. I have grave doubts they'll produce anything now (a) Symbian is dead (or at least confined to a dungeon within Nokia) (b) The free pizza ran out
Slashdot Mirror
Expensive residential on-campus dorms exist at many Australian unis to cater for (a) internationals (b) interstaters (c) country kids (d) rich city kids whose parents want them out of home (e) not so rich city kids whose parents want them to fully experience campus life.
Trinity is merely offering a carrot for students - the cost of lodging would dwarf the price of an iPad. With free wifi, it makes sense to subsidise everyone with a free iPad. To en masse 'think different' here means looking down on your "povo" living-at-home classmates who are stuck with a used 3yo toshiba satellite, if they carry a laptop at all.
Any bet half these pads get stolen, broken or mislaid by the end of first semester?
Android 2.2 for i386
Lucas is recasting Ashton Kutcher in the role as a romantic interest for Queen Amidala.
Didn't that die a month ago? :-) In any case, for Android there's FDroid which shows only FOSS applications.
'gadget based' a mistake? This isn't about the desktop. iOS and Android dominate phones and tablets. Netbooks running Windows are yesterday's technology.
So, MS announces Windows 8 for ARM. This is the concept UI for capacitive touchscreens. Expect the same old Explorer shell for desktop 'power users'.
further sensationalist headlines undermine the motivation for the icedrobot project which is to liberate android not from Oracle but from smartphones. i.e. to run android apps on any touchscreen enabled OS
yes but the point is you're still running an application vm (dalvik) inside a platform vm (virtualbox). Fine for desktop class machines but not suitable for webos/bada/meego phones (At least until the cortex a15 brings hardware assisted virtualization) The ultimate goal is just to run android apps within the native desktop atop standard java (hotspot), with gpu accelerated backends for win32, x11, osx, directfb (webos). i.e. like any ordinary swing/swt application.
Mono (ikvm - which targets openjdk) might be a good single vm for webos et al to run both android and wp7 apps - pity about the lawyers (google, ms, oracle all unhappy!)
Yes, a more accurate comparison would be the forthcoming Eee Pad Slider. It's like an iPad but slides out to a physical keyboard - with a similar price tag due to the constraints you mentioned.
Netbooks are evolving. Capacitive touchscreens will become standard within a year or so. Some will have optional keyboards. Some will run Android. Some will run Windows 8 for ARM or even x86. Some will dual boot into 'desktop' Linux.
I read Slashdot on the bus too! Not sure I'd want an iPad though. It's a 2 handed device. With a phone I can sip coffee in one hand and peruse websites in the other. Or squish up when a portly passenger sits beside.
The iPhone4's 326ppi may be excessive but the more common 480x800 would seem a nice balance for one-handed operation.
Me neither but maybe he has an app for multi-touch mathematical equation editing!
photoshop on a smartphone? That's crazy talk, you'd need a 64bit supercomputer for that! :-)
I don't know what extreme performance office suite you've been running but for most folks a dual core 1ghz cpu is more than adequate. And using a lot less power than those P4 desktops running office 2003 that dominated corporate workplaces within living memory.
I thought we were talking about updating existing hardware to a new release. In other words, the drivers are already written.
These operating systems are released in binary form for generic hardware. The process of building a release for a specific device ought to be much simpler. The hardware is known exactly in advance. A device manufacturer can submit a hardware profile to a buildbot and an image can be built on the fly - unique to that hardware profile.
Where drivers can't be submitted upstream in source form, binary blobs can be linked as part of the build process. e.g. Nokia's xorg drivers that dynamically build a kernel module.
This process can be automated via continuous integration. Nightly builds, regression tests, deploying updates over the air. Using a mixture of physical devices submitted to Google's build cloud and manufacturers submitting hardware emulation profiles to qemu.
Where a vendor wants to lock down the device to a custom experience, that ought to be part of the build process too, even. Custom shells, look and feels, custom apps can all be added to the nightly build by linking against Google's ever evolving API and notifying the vendor of breakage - well in advance of an official release.
With an automated process, vendor QA can download releases at frequent intervals. As a release nears and the bugs have been progressively eliminated, we're talking days and weeks not months. New devices naturally take time but for upgrades from one release to the next, it's not rocket science.
you forgot QNX. Rim saw the writing on the wall and are fighting back
dell doesn't have an OS but this may see its deployment of Ubuntu ramp up.
A while ago they released some machines using intel and were condemned for the embedded powervr graphics that isn't foss friendly. Go amd - problem gone.
which is why the Android model of open source is fundamentally broken, imho. But then it was never about the customer.
Intel doesn't make phone CPUs. They do make Atom, however.
With Nokia's departure. the focus changes. Intel isn't concerned about creating a market to compete with handset platforms modelled on app stores such as ios and android.
Rather, they're resting control away from Windows. The best way to do that? Woo free software programmers.There are hundreds, if not thousands, of Qt 'apps' for KDE just waiting to be given a touchscreen makeover.
So courting 'mobile developers' and their $2.99 apps for a 3.6" screen shouldn't hurt Intel's Atom tablets to the extent it would Nokia.
'linux' the kernel is, i'm sure, meeting HP's obligations under the GPL.
I think what's meant is the userland running above, in the same way google can license dalvik & other stuff as apache.
I won't speculate on what RIM are doing behind closed doors but I suggest you read up on IcedRobot, announced this week by a handful of IcedTea/OpenJDK enthusiasts. Mario Torre specifically mentions replacing Dalvik with OpenJDK's Hotspot VM, targetting QNX and, yes, decompiling Dalvik to standard JVM bytecode.
Java SE is heavier than Java ME but for the current generation of 800+Mhz CPUs, it's less of a burden. Of course the Java ME APIs would need to be emulated for 'legacy' blackberry apps but if the QNX-based Blackberry OS represents a paradigm shift, legacy support mightn't be such a priority.
Why on earth would they want that? There's serious money to be made on expensive data plans.
Well I don't. But as a layman...
Nokia made all the right noises - adopting Linux, modernizing their UI with Qt. But the Trolltech acquisition was 2 1/2 years ago - they've yet to release a single phone (scheduled for Symbian^4) which uses Qt exclusively.
But Maemo 6 was never released and instead resources were diverted into keeping Symbian on life-support.
Qt is cross platform, so more of a business decision that a technical one.
MS will be hoping an app store for .Net can rival those for ios and android, so Qt apps don't fit into that equation.
Not really. HTC, Samsung, Motorola etc all have established brands in the Android space. Nokia would become just another vendor.
WP7 is a long way back in terms of market penetration. Behind Android, iPhone, Blackberry, even Symbian at this point. MS needs a big vendor.
The idea was funded with pizza for Symbian Foundation employees in their spare time. I have grave doubts they'll produce anything now
(a) Symbian is dead (or at least confined to a dungeon within Nokia)
(b) The free pizza ran out
Weren't they quoted as saying they'd release at least one *device*? If so, sounds more likely to be an iPad competitor, not necessarily a phone.