I addressed protecting from asteroids... (and "rogue black hole" is such a remote possibility to be really insignificant - we are quite sure how small the chances of them disrupting star systems are, there are too many old binary star systems for that to be a threat; and direct impact is whole lot of orders of magnitude lower than that)
It's one thing to dream about it, but another thing to actually do it (or work towards some goal in a sensible way). We won't be able for a long time. OK, thousands of individuals, to carry on the species, might be doable - within the confines of our system; but in this case it's better in almost all cases to simply save millions underground. If outside the system - we aren't going anywhere without new physics, even something as fundamental as the basic structure not surviving the journey / containers leaking everything stored inside will stop us. The only plausible scenario with a tech that's certainly within our reach is a colonization using embryos. But in this case nobody would be strictly "saved" anyway (as far as perceptions of people are concerned - even "those will be our children" probably would hardly work, such biological drives work mostly on the basis of "now and here"), giving huge problems with motivating people towards that goal (and there would be surely so called "moral issues" in sending (and training for it, perfecting how those surrogate mother robots work) such automated ships routinely, which would be required for them to succeed; NVM that one every decade or two would be still a very severe strain on the resources of humanity)
NASA and ESA don't have "proper"(*) funding because doing most things is space is not viable in comparison with doing them here; sad, sure, but was really the point.
And we do have the capability of manned crafts leaving LEO - Russia has few decades of experience operating a manned vehicle essentially capable of beyond-LEO operation. Hell, if you have 100 million bucks you can have a ride (those are people responsible so far for all private orbital spaceflight, except the first one to Mir around 1990). Doesn't seem to be much of a rush.
(*) issue here isn't "proper" as far as roughly defined current goals go - I agree that NASA and ESA should get more funding towards them, especially since that's rather easy. But the issue here was about vastly different goals.
Is it "hurts" or just "changes"? Perhaps even for the better. If devs just target common, affordable machines...I don't see a problem with that.
Especially since, as far as I am concerned, PC gaming never went away - Galciv2, Sins of Solar Empire, soon Elemental; all great and that's just a single producer. All with "weak" gfx (great one, really, just not via brute force route)
What, now it's suddenly "not enough shiny"? (I really don't get it - I also like proper console games, and heard way too many times that PC games are better because they're "deep"...so which one is it?)
That has all changed recently. It's all about Qt - one of the nicest things to develop in (probably the nicest for C++), freely available tools (also Ovi Store, basically, apart from small one-time payment meant to ward off random people probably), just this one environment.
Forcing some things was good when those device resources were much more scarce than now.
That's not really true. If you want to write something now (especially something which will be payed for), there's not much point in not using the Qt route (which gives access to all the newish devices anyway, last 2-3 years)
That means you target mostly just Qt. On very few resolutions (and you know, keyboard layouts are standardized; why candybar/slider/et al would matter much?)
And Qt, which you can use already, is one of the nicest C++ variants imaginable.
Anyway, the "hoops" seemed to be mostly about insisting (forcing...) on "code with discipline" for mobile platform. To use less power and stay stable. It's a platform which can run "user OS" and telephony stack on the same core (hence making large number of Symbian devices possible in the first place; and why they will be fine for mainstream), it couldn't have been much different. Look how large part of Google I/O Android sessions is about power management, asynchronous programming and performance. How new versions try hard to improve on those areas. Symbian had it decently covered for some time now, and using much older tech.
"Low end" is not very meaningful in this case (and such timeframe) anyway. S30 is it now, S40 will be soon; For Symbian to go to "low" there'd need to be yet another massive shift (Morph?;) ). And anyway, Nokia seems to be doing not bad with brining the world lots of affordable devices.
Qt is really the only choice, the preferred way forward now (with bindings to almost whatever high-level language you want). But since you had problems with Qt Creator...uhm, wow.
Your slice of dev world might be not the rule. And BTW, bada OS will be big - Samsung seems to want to put it on the huge middle-segment they have. I wouldn't be too surprised if in two years or so bada will be fighting for top spot.
It's really mostly just "Nokia" anyway. Or S60, IIRC what is used on the box, etc. - so there's a good chance it might be S^3 or S^4, I guess (and Symbian was around for quite a while before Nokia had direct control over it)
Yeah, OS X. Or, in some other OSes, only when iTunes is installed. It's still quite castrated if only because of that.
WiFi hotspot for some other device is often handy. Even more handy would be accessing the web also via BT connection made available by some other device (remember, iPod Touch + "feature phone" could be easily made very close to "smartphone" iPhone experience, with probably much more reliable phone functionality and much cheaper; probably why Apple won't allow it)
PS. "Bam"? You could at least try to preserve appearances;p
Weight balance will probably continue killing that for a long time. I wondered once about lightweight aerogels, with air (carefully) evacuated and providing support for a thin membrane sprung on the surface of the structure; maybe at least something like that would be light enough...
Heh, not only more than "more then android and iphone combined", actually more than RIM and iPhone combined, the 2nd and 3rd (at this point); and actually still on the verge of selling more than next three (RIM, iPhone, Android) combined. All in market reports; but go ahead and "call bullshit."
Sure, Symbian is only a small part (around 20%) of what Nokia sells, but that together with its dominating position is only a sign of how huge Nokia is - they sell annually an order of magnitude more phones than the total number of iPhones ever made.
Those $$$ reflect also feelings and expectations of "investors" (which is frawned by/. in other cases...oh well). But ignore things like Nokia actually owning all if their (over a dozen) manufacturing facilities (most of them not in China, half of them in the EU, one even quite close to Cupertino...), massive R&D (you have again no idea what you're talking about here, stuff like Webkit is nowhere near the same league; and some are possibly freeriding on this R&D, we'll see how this case ends up), or that Nokia contributing greatly to close to 5 billion mobile subscribers is a monumental shift for humanity (one which will also give great opportunities for "investment"). A shift many companies don't care about, openly stating they target only "premium" people living in "premium" places.
Is that way other manufacturers are introducing new devices?
Nokia has the largest, by far, share of mobile phone sales. That stems also from their (yes, their own) manufacturing facilities and distribution channels; such things are what gives them long-term strength, basically independent from the OS used.
It's just that Nokia thinks S40 - Symbian - MeeGo lineup will work best; now, I would be surprised if it won't ultimately work, but even if there was some major failure of higher segments of that strategy - they are not dependent on it. Their real asset is somewhere else.
Sort of. It's clear (Apple said so themselves!) that iPhone targets only "premium" people living in "premium" places.
Meanwhile Nokia sells annually an order of magnitude more mobile phones than Apple has ever produced; Nokia contributes greatly to the world having close to 5 billion mobile subsribers by now (for many of them, first practical means of communication) - that's a monumental shift for humanity. Apple isn't interested in contributing to it much (what, with ~1%?), perhaps is even freeriding (we'll see how that dispute ends up)
UIQ is also among the assets of Symbian foundation. "Over the years" Nokia had much less control over the OS BTW; the issue was mostly inertia of S60 - which had good concepts for a few years.
Symbian generally still has many. Look how many Android Goggle I/O sessions are about power management, asynchronous programming and performance. Thing Symbian has covered for some time now; which will still allow to give smartphones to much larger part of the world. Smartphones which should be quite nice, too, considering Qt and S^4 UI concepts.
Call me baffled - first you write that "the phone is a goner", that people "want a personal computer that fits in their pocket and happens to be able to do phone stuff"...and then you seem to see it as a thing working against Symbian, which gives them just that?
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What's stopping you from using other software? It's, you know, a smartphone; that's the point behind it.
Opera Mini is nice for touchscreen devices now; and speeds up also the perceptual speed of the connection as a bonus.
I addressed protecting from asteroids... (and "rogue black hole" is such a remote possibility to be really insignificant - we are quite sure how small the chances of them disrupting star systems are, there are too many old binary star systems for that to be a threat; and direct impact is whole lot of orders of magnitude lower than that)
It's one thing to dream about it, but another thing to actually do it (or work towards some goal in a sensible way). We won't be able for a long time. OK, thousands of individuals, to carry on the species, might be doable - within the confines of our system; but in this case it's better in almost all cases to simply save millions underground. If outside the system - we aren't going anywhere without new physics, even something as fundamental as the basic structure not surviving the journey / containers leaking everything stored inside will stop us. The only plausible scenario with a tech that's certainly within our reach is a colonization using embryos. But in this case nobody would be strictly "saved" anyway (as far as perceptions of people are concerned - even "those will be our children" probably would hardly work, such biological drives work mostly on the basis of "now and here"), giving huge problems with motivating people towards that goal (and there would be surely so called "moral issues" in sending (and training for it, perfecting how those surrogate mother robots work) such automated ships routinely, which would be required for them to succeed; NVM that one every decade or two would be still a very severe strain on the resources of humanity)
NASA and ESA don't have "proper"(*) funding because doing most things is space is not viable in comparison with doing them here; sad, sure, but was really the point.
And we do have the capability of manned crafts leaving LEO - Russia has few decades of experience operating a manned vehicle essentially capable of beyond-LEO operation. Hell, if you have 100 million bucks you can have a ride (those are people responsible so far for all private orbital spaceflight, except the first one to Mir around 1990). Doesn't seem to be much of a rush.
(*) issue here isn't "proper" as far as roughly defined current goals go - I agree that NASA and ESA should get more funding towards them, especially since that's rather easy. But the issue here was about vastly different goals.
"Few"? What are you missing? (well, specific games might be the only group; though Ovi Maps Racing is gorgeous - now, if it only had zombies... ;p )
Since there's a big chance you like Qt (hey, one of the cutest C++ environments around), perhaps Symbian is nice now after all?
Plus many bindings for those who don't know C++. And...Qt sort of gives some of the managed environment advantages.
Is it "hurts" or just "changes"? Perhaps even for the better. If devs just target common, affordable machines...I don't see a problem with that.
Especially since, as far as I am concerned, PC gaming never went away - Galciv2, Sins of Solar Empire, soon Elemental; all great and that's just a single producer. All with "weak" gfx (great one, really, just not via brute force route)
What, now it's suddenly "not enough shiny"? (I really don't get it - I also like proper console games, and heard way too many times that PC games are better because they're "deep"...so which one is it?)
That has all changed recently. It's all about Qt - one of the nicest things to develop in (probably the nicest for C++), freely available tools (also Ovi Store, basically, apart from small one-time payment meant to ward off random people probably), just this one environment.
Forcing some things was good when those device resources were much more scarce than now.
(also, S40?...)
That's not really true. If you want to write something now (especially something which will be payed for), there's not much point in not using the Qt route (which gives access to all the newish devices anyway, last 2-3 years)
That means you target mostly just Qt. On very few resolutions (and you know, keyboard layouts are standardized; why candybar/slider/et al would matter much?)
And Qt, which you can use already, is one of the nicest C++ variants imaginable.
Anyway, the "hoops" seemed to be mostly about insisting (forcing...) on "code with discipline" for mobile platform. To use less power and stay stable. It's a platform which can run "user OS" and telephony stack on the same core (hence making large number of Symbian devices possible in the first place; and why they will be fine for mainstream), it couldn't have been much different.
Look how large part of Google I/O Android sessions is about power management, asynchronous programming and performance. How new versions try hard to improve on those areas. Symbian had it decently covered for some time now, and using much older tech.
"Low end" is not very meaningful in this case (and such timeframe) anyway. S30 is it now, S40 will be soon; For Symbian to go to "low" there'd need to be yet another massive shift (Morph? ;) ). And anyway, Nokia seems to be doing not bad with brining the world lots of affordable devices.
Yeah, I guess that's why SE introduced those models just recently, in the process shifting from their own UIQ to latest S60v5/S^1...
Uhm, Qt is fine also for merely newish Symbian devices (last 2-3 years, basically); that's still much greater numbers than anything else.
Qt is really the only choice, the preferred way forward now (with bindings to almost whatever high-level language you want).
But since you had problems with Qt Creator...uhm, wow.
Bang for the buck is a powerful thing. With offline capability not being just some bonus.
Your slice of dev world might be not the rule. And BTW, bada OS will be big - Samsung seems to want to put it on the huge middle-segment they have. I wouldn't be too surprised if in two years or so bada will be fighting for top spot.
Might be best now to just target Symbian Qt (with Nokia doing even new LGPL'd Qt Python bindings)
S40 is not Symbian; makes one wonder who much you really tried developing for the latter.
And just use Qt... http://qt.nokia.com/products/platform/symbian/ (also, the dev site was overhauled)
It's really mostly just "Nokia" anyway. Or S60, IIRC what is used on the box, etc. - so there's a good chance it might be S^3 or S^4, I guess (and Symbian was around for quite a while before Nokia had direct control over it)
Yeah, OS X. Or, in some other OSes, only when iTunes is installed.
It's still quite castrated if only because of that.
WiFi hotspot for some other device is often handy. Even more handy would be accessing the web also via BT connection made available by some other device (remember, iPod Touch + "feature phone" could be easily made very close to "smartphone" iPhone experience, with probably much more reliable phone functionality and much cheaper; probably why Apple won't allow it)
PS. "Bam"? You could at least try to preserve appearances ;p
Weight balance will probably continue killing that for a long time. I wondered once about lightweight aerogels, with air (carefully) evacuated and providing support for a thin membrane sprung on the surface of the structure; maybe at least something like that would be light enough...
That would be fine if GP said "The reason that no one talks about Symbian in the US is that no one gives a fuck about it there" (or "here", whatever)
Heh, not only more than "more then android and iphone combined", actually more than RIM and iPhone combined, the 2nd and 3rd (at this point); and actually still on the verge of selling more than next three (RIM, iPhone, Android) combined.
All in market reports; but go ahead and "call bullshit."
Sure, Symbian is only a small part (around 20%) of what Nokia sells, but that together with its dominating position is only a sign of how huge Nokia is - they sell annually an order of magnitude more phones than the total number of iPhones ever made.
Those $$$ reflect also feelings and expectations of "investors" (which is frawned by /. in other cases...oh well). But ignore things like Nokia actually owning all if their (over a dozen) manufacturing facilities (most of them not in China, half of them in the EU, one even quite close to Cupertino...), massive R&D (you have again no idea what you're talking about here, stuff like Webkit is nowhere near the same league; and some are possibly freeriding on this R&D, we'll see how this case ends up), or that Nokia contributing greatly to close to 5 billion mobile subscribers is a monumental shift for humanity (one which will also give great opportunities for "investment"). A shift many companies don't care about, openly stating they target only "premium" people living in "premium" places.
Is that way other manufacturers are introducing new devices?
Nokia has the largest, by far, share of mobile phone sales. That stems also from their (yes, their own) manufacturing facilities and distribution channels; such things are what gives them long-term strength, basically independent from the OS used.
It's just that Nokia thinks S40 - Symbian - MeeGo lineup will work best; now, I would be surprised if it won't ultimately work, but even if there was some major failure of higher segments of that strategy - they are not dependent on it. Their real asset is somewhere else.
Sort of. It's clear (Apple said so themselves!) that iPhone targets only "premium" people living in "premium" places.
Meanwhile Nokia sells annually an order of magnitude more mobile phones than Apple has ever produced; Nokia contributes greatly to the world having close to 5 billion mobile subsribers by now (for many of them, first practical means of communication) - that's a monumental shift for humanity. Apple isn't interested in contributing to it much (what, with ~1%?), perhaps is even freeriding (we'll see how that dispute ends up)
UIQ is also among the assets of Symbian foundation. "Over the years" Nokia had much less control over the OS BTW; the issue was mostly inertia of S60 - which had good concepts for a few years.
Symbian generally still has many. Look how many Android Goggle I/O sessions are about power management, asynchronous programming and performance. Thing Symbian has covered for some time now; which will still allow to give smartphones to much larger part of the world. Smartphones which should be quite nice, too, considering Qt and S^4 UI concepts.
Call me baffled - first you write that "the phone is a goner", that people "want a personal computer that fits in their pocket and happens to be able to do phone stuff"...and then you seem to see it as a thing working against Symbian, which gives them just that?