Forbes straight up admits that it treats Firefox's "Open Link in New Private Window" as an ad blocker. Because Forbes doesn't do privacy, I don't do Forbes.
Cable: Watching Later: INCLUDED - Xfinity TV includes a selection of videos on demand at no additional charge Offline Device Shifting: INCLUDED - Comcast has been advertising that unlike satellite, the Xfinity TV Go app allows downloading DRM copies of on-demand shows to watch later on iPhone, iPad, Android devices with Google Play, and Fire tablets. Live sports: INCLUDED - ESPN, TNT, TBS, NBCSN, FOX Sports, and regional channels Live politics: INCLUDED - C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC, FOX News Channel
Netflix: Subscription: $9.99 plus your ISP's surcharge for not subscribing to the pay TV bundle Offline Device Shifting: NO Live sports: NO Live politics: NO
Oh wait, now the newspapers will claim that screen-reading software is illegal too since it blocks the pictures of the ads.
Then report said newspapers to disability advocates in the appropriate jurisdiction. If worse comes to worst, they'll bring a lawsuit alleging disability discrimination, as the (U.S.) National Federation of the Blind did to Target.
Open source wins by the long game, slowly improving stealing users and lowering the premium they can charge. [...] Paid/proprietary software is so obviously not welcome that only a few have dared try.
Then how would you recommend to fund the production of fully Free games for Linux with production values comparable to the proprietary commercial games that are popular on GOG or Steam? The business model of contributions from enterprise users that use the software works for libraries, but not so much for games for several reasons. For one thing, games aren't specified quite as tightly as libraries. And for another, games are dominated by things other than code.
Yes, but when paradigm changes, some features are lost.
But why does the paradigm change in the first place? If the new paradigm of Android on a laptop is better in some way than X11/Linux on a laptop was (until netbooks were discontinued in 2012), which other improvements make up for the loss of multi-window mode and how? Or is the argument just "it's still manufactured therefore it's under warranty therefore it's better; take what you're given"?
It's absolutely irrelevant that Android runs on Linux. The user isn't exposed to any element of Linux.
Does OS X expose the user to any element of xnu? Probably no more than, say, Xubuntu exposes to Linux. Users of Xubuntu are interacting with Xfce and Gtk+ (in the GUI) and GNU (at the command prompt).
I wonder if that's because Xcode, required for iOS app development, is Mac exclusive. It's the same way more top-ranked Super Smash Bros. players use a Nintendo console than a PlayStation.
If you treat JavaScript as "machine language" to which the client side of a web application is transpiled, how does source-level debugging work?
The same way it does for any language compiled into a machine language.
So how do I attach, say, gdb to the JavaScript virtual machine of Firefox?
Or perhaps you did not mean "The same way" so literally. In that case, what would you describe as the same between debugging a program compiled to a machine language and debugging a program transpiled to JavaScript, and what would you describe as different?
How about Netscape Navigator on today's Websites? I compared my phone to a computer from 10-15 years ago.
A 10-year-old PC would be running Firefox. A 15-year-old PC would be running Firefox after a RAM upgrade; I did exactly that on a Dell PC purchased in the fourth quarter of 2000.
My phone does more than "Desktop" computers from that era.
PCs and Macs from 1987 were doing multi-window multitasking in Windows 2 and MultiFinder. This is a feature that stock Android won't get until N.
people like yourself like to compare today with today [...] Would you rather have a Pentium IV
By "1 GB laptop" I meant a Dell Inspiron mini 1012 purchased in 2010, which runs a traditional Linux desktop environment. It has a 1.6 GHz Atom N450 CPU, which is roughly comparable in performance to a 1.6 GHz Pentium 4 CPU.
The "Year of the Linux Desktop" has already occurred, and it is Android. 90% of what people use Computers for, can be done on Android (running Linux kernel).
For several years, Android was not a desktop-oriented Linux distribution. The stock* operating system forced on users a window management policy of all maximized all the time. Say you're reading a web page, and you want to jot down some notes about it. To do this on current stock Android, you have to switch to the web browser, then switch back to the note-taking application (which completely hides the web page you were looking at), switch back to the web browser (which completely hides the notes you were taking), etc. Though a web browser can run on a phone, as can a note-taking application, and a tablet's display is more than twice as big as that of a phone, current stock Android on a tablet refuses to let the user show them side-by-side. In fact, it was a requirement in the Android CDD that the OS never change the application's window size after installation. (Only CDD-compliant devices are eligible to be shipped with Google Play Store and Google Play Services.) Only very recently was this requirement toned down in the CDD, allowing Remix OS and the forthcoming Android N to begin to work around this.
My current Android phone has more power and Ram than the computers I used 15 years ago, does most if not all of the things those computers and does other things not even thought of.
But how many of those things can it show at once? And why can't the included web browser load more than about three pages in tabs and switch among them without the page reloading (and losing form data) when I return to a tab? I can manage a dozen tabs in Firefox with no reloading on a 1 GB laptop running Xubuntu (a Linux distribution using X11 and Xfce).
* Samsung is not stock. Though some apps included my Galaxy Tab A support Samsung's proprietary multi-window mode, not all apps do, and the ones that don't disappear from Recents when I try to activate multi-window mode. For example, the Stack Exchange app does not.
My whole reply was based on you taking the console, getting it set up to the point where you can do those things, and then not connecting to the Internet to continue doing them.
If you update the system software to the point where you can watch Netflix, but an additional update becomes available later, you'll have to update again in order to continue to watch Netflix. Or if you update the system software to the point where you can watch Blu-ray movies, but an additional update becomes available later, you'll have to update again in order to watch Blu-ray movies released after the update. The complaint as I understand it is the requirement to update the whole system software, not just the Netflix or Blu-ray app, and the time that such a comprehensive update takes to install.
One of the big reasons mobile gaming is taking over is because it's always available. Practically everyone has their own mobile device
By "mobile device" you can't mean a PlayStation Vita, because that's not something that "[p]ractically everyone has". This means you probably mean a touch-controlled device running iOS or Android. One problem with these platforms is that game developers can't rely on the player owning a clip-on gamepad, in turn because the makers of said gamepads appear not to publish sales figures. So games that aren't already point-and-click have to be dumbed down to use touch control, which turns platformers into endless runners. And in part because Android devices reached some countries before Google payment processing did, the mobile audience has developed an expectation of "free to play". But the need to derive revenue from a "free" game has resulted in a proliferation of whale-driven nickel-and-dime game design that makes even basic actions take days and makes a game literally take decades to complete for a free player.
And one of the things I've figured out in the last nine months of being married is that being married means you have to share the TV
Historically, PlayStation consoles' advantage over PC gaming has been ability for multiple players to share a system and monitor by plugging in (or wirelessly pairing) two to four gamepads. The obstacle to couch multiplayer on the PC used to be the requirement of proximity between a TV and the expensive PC usually kept in another room, but Steam Link and falling prices for gaming-capable HTPCs have eroded that.
Right, activities that require access to the Internet, require access to the Internet.
The problems are that 1. streaming a movie requires a comprehensive system update rather than an update to a single movie streaming app, and 2. Blu-ray movies require a comprehensive system update.
I own no PlayStation consoles more recent than PS2 and PSP, so I'm a bit out of the loop:
You don't have to update to play a game or watch a movie. You might have to update if you want to play your game online, but if that's no concern for you, then you can sit there, disconnected, and play whatever game you want with whatever software revision you have.
I thought streaming a movie required connecting to the Internet, which in turn required updating. By "watch a movie", are you referring specifically to DVD/BD?
For that matter, what have they updated previously that removed functionality from their consoles?
In the PlayStation 2 era, it was common for Sony to pull the plug on online matchmaking servers for individual games, even while the games were still being sold in brick-and-mortar stores. I could buy a game new at Meijer, unwrap the shrinkwrap, put the disc in my PS2, attempt to connect, and get DNAS error -103 "This software title is not in service."
The trick is to find something that sucks the least
And nowadays, it's more likely for "something that sucks the least" to be a PC than a PlayStation 3 or PlayStation 4. The biggest advantage of consoles is in the handheld sector, where I have no evidence that clip-on gamepads for phones are outselling even the PlayStation Vita. Without gamepads, phone games tend to be point-and-click nickel-and-dime-fests.
And there's a condition for that condition: buy a house in the service area of a DSL, cable or fiber connection. A lot of especially rural places have only satellite, only cellular, or a choice between satellite and cellular.
if you have content compelling enough to monetize (which is very few sites these days, as they are all click-bait designed to shove ads down your throat), do the fucking leg work to secure a few sponsors for the site
What resources can you recommend for someone looking into getting into ad sales for the first time? Even if you have a platform that lets advertisers upload creative, specify start and end dates for campaigns, and lets the site owner approve them, how is such leg work done? And how can such a platform reassure advertisers that view and click statistics are genuine as opposed to fraudulent?
People who want crap video should have had to opt-in instead of making everyone opt-out.
Defaults ought to meet the preferences of the majority. I imagine that more people want to save money by accepting "crap" video that's still superior to DivX-era torrents than have a philosophical objection to defaulting to said "crap" video.
Slashdot Mirror
No live sports, no live politics, no C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC, FOX News. Definite advantage over cable!
That's fine if you live alone, not so fine if you happen to live with somebody who demands those channels.
Forbes straight up admits that it treats Firefox's "Open Link in New Private Window" as an ad blocker. Because Forbes doesn't do privacy, I don't do Forbes.
RSS includes the headline and perhaps the first sentence, not the entire article, I assume.
Cable:
Watching Later: INCLUDED - Xfinity TV includes a selection of videos on demand at no additional charge
Offline Device Shifting: INCLUDED - Comcast has been advertising that unlike satellite, the Xfinity TV Go app allows downloading DRM copies of on-demand shows to watch later on iPhone, iPad, Android devices with Google Play, and Fire tablets.
Live sports: INCLUDED - ESPN, TNT, TBS, NBCSN, FOX Sports, and regional channels
Live politics: INCLUDED - C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC, FOX News Channel
Netflix:
Subscription: $9.99 plus your ISP's surcharge for not subscribing to the pay TV bundle
Offline Device Shifting: NO
Live sports: NO
Live politics: NO
Oh wait, now the newspapers will claim that screen-reading software is illegal too since it blocks the pictures of the ads.
Then report said newspapers to disability advocates in the appropriate jurisdiction. If worse comes to worst, they'll bring a lawsuit alleging disability discrimination, as the (U.S.) National Federation of the Blind did to Target.
Open source wins by the long game, slowly improving stealing users and lowering the premium they can charge. [...] Paid/proprietary software is so obviously not welcome that only a few have dared try.
Then how would you recommend to fund the production of fully Free games for Linux with production values comparable to the proprietary commercial games that are popular on GOG or Steam? The business model of contributions from enterprise users that use the software works for libraries, but not so much for games for several reasons. For one thing, games aren't specified quite as tightly as libraries. And for another, games are dominated by things other than code.
Yes, but when paradigm changes, some features are lost.
But why does the paradigm change in the first place? If the new paradigm of Android on a laptop is better in some way than X11/Linux on a laptop was (until netbooks were discontinued in 2012), which other improvements make up for the loss of multi-window mode and how? Or is the argument just "it's still manufactured therefore it's under warranty therefore it's better; take what you're given"?
It's absolutely irrelevant that Android runs on Linux. The user isn't exposed to any element of Linux.
Does OS X expose the user to any element of xnu? Probably no more than, say, Xubuntu exposes to Linux. Users of Xubuntu are interacting with Xfce and Gtk+ (in the GUI) and GNU (at the command prompt).
More developers use Macs than Linux.
I wonder if that's because Xcode, required for iOS app development, is Mac exclusive. It's the same way more top-ranked Super Smash Bros. players use a Nintendo console than a PlayStation.
If you treat JavaScript as "machine language" to which the client side of a web application is transpiled, how does source-level debugging work?
The same way it does for any language compiled into a machine language.
So how do I attach, say, gdb to the JavaScript virtual machine of Firefox?
Or perhaps you did not mean "The same way" so literally. In that case, what would you describe as the same between debugging a program compiled to a machine language and debugging a program transpiled to JavaScript, and what would you describe as different?
What do you need a community for? Read the language spec, read the api spec, done.
For helping to clarify things that you failed to understand in said specs, and to help explain practical ramifications of said specs.
I thought the trick for web browsers was to pick your own favorite fucking language, and compile it to JavaScript for deployment?
If you treat JavaScript as "machine language" to which the client side of a web application is transpiled, how does source-level debugging work?
How about Netscape Navigator on today's Websites? I compared my phone to a computer from 10-15 years ago.
A 10-year-old PC would be running Firefox. A 15-year-old PC would be running Firefox after a RAM upgrade; I did exactly that on a Dell PC purchased in the fourth quarter of 2000.
My phone does more than "Desktop" computers from that era.
PCs and Macs from 1987 were doing multi-window multitasking in Windows 2 and MultiFinder. This is a feature that stock Android won't get until N.
people like yourself like to compare today with today [...] Would you rather have a Pentium IV
By "1 GB laptop" I meant a Dell Inspiron mini 1012 purchased in 2010, which runs a traditional Linux desktop environment. It has a 1.6 GHz Atom N450 CPU, which is roughly comparable in performance to a 1.6 GHz Pentium 4 CPU.
The "Year of the Linux Desktop" has already occurred, and it is Android. 90% of what people use Computers for, can be done on Android (running Linux kernel).
For several years, Android was not a desktop-oriented Linux distribution. The stock* operating system forced on users a window management policy of all maximized all the time. Say you're reading a web page, and you want to jot down some notes about it. To do this on current stock Android, you have to switch to the web browser, then switch back to the note-taking application (which completely hides the web page you were looking at), switch back to the web browser (which completely hides the notes you were taking), etc. Though a web browser can run on a phone, as can a note-taking application, and a tablet's display is more than twice as big as that of a phone, current stock Android on a tablet refuses to let the user show them side-by-side. In fact, it was a requirement in the Android CDD that the OS never change the application's window size after installation. (Only CDD-compliant devices are eligible to be shipped with Google Play Store and Google Play Services.) Only very recently was this requirement toned down in the CDD, allowing Remix OS and the forthcoming Android N to begin to work around this.
My current Android phone has more power and Ram than the computers I used 15 years ago, does most if not all of the things those computers and does other things not even thought of.
But how many of those things can it show at once? And why can't the included web browser load more than about three pages in tabs and switch among them without the page reloading (and losing form data) when I return to a tab? I can manage a dozen tabs in Firefox with no reloading on a 1 GB laptop running Xubuntu (a Linux distribution using X11 and Xfce).
* Samsung is not stock. Though some apps included my Galaxy Tab A support Samsung's proprietary multi-window mode, not all apps do, and the ones that don't disappear from Recents when I try to activate multi-window mode. For example, the Stack Exchange app does not.
What kind of dumb OS autoruns anything off of any volume the moment it's connected without any request from the user?
Any OS that trusts a newly connected USB keyboard.
Those things are so cheaply constructed that it is a physical impossibility that they would successfully negotiate a USB data connection.
A Dedicated Charging Port that conforms to the USB Battery Charging specification doesn't need to "successfully negotiate a USB data connection".
Could they move to a country that doesn't have IP laws tied to Italy
If by "IP" you mean copyright, then all WTO members "have IP laws tied to Italy", as the Berne Convention is an essential WTO treaty.
As Anonymous Coward explained, doing so would likely require rewriting the software from scratch.
My whole reply was based on you taking the console, getting it set up to the point where you can do those things, and then not connecting to the Internet to continue doing them.
If you update the system software to the point where you can watch Netflix, but an additional update becomes available later, you'll have to update again in order to continue to watch Netflix. Or if you update the system software to the point where you can watch Blu-ray movies, but an additional update becomes available later, you'll have to update again in order to watch Blu-ray movies released after the update. The complaint as I understand it is the requirement to update the whole system software, not just the Netflix or Blu-ray app, and the time that such a comprehensive update takes to install.
One of the big reasons mobile gaming is taking over is because it's always available. Practically everyone has their own mobile device
By "mobile device" you can't mean a PlayStation Vita, because that's not something that "[p]ractically everyone has". This means you probably mean a touch-controlled device running iOS or Android. One problem with these platforms is that game developers can't rely on the player owning a clip-on gamepad, in turn because the makers of said gamepads appear not to publish sales figures. So games that aren't already point-and-click have to be dumbed down to use touch control, which turns platformers into endless runners. And in part because Android devices reached some countries before Google payment processing did, the mobile audience has developed an expectation of "free to play". But the need to derive revenue from a "free" game has resulted in a proliferation of whale-driven nickel-and-dime game design that makes even basic actions take days and makes a game literally take decades to complete for a free player.
And one of the things I've figured out in the last nine months of being married is that being married means you have to share the TV
Historically, PlayStation consoles' advantage over PC gaming has been ability for multiple players to share a system and monitor by plugging in (or wirelessly pairing) two to four gamepads. The obstacle to couch multiplayer on the PC used to be the requirement of proximity between a TV and the expensive PC usually kept in another room, but Steam Link and falling prices for gaming-capable HTPCs have eroded that.
Right, activities that require access to the Internet, require access to the Internet.
The problems are that 1. streaming a movie requires a comprehensive system update rather than an update to a single movie streaming app, and 2. Blu-ray movies require a comprehensive system update.
I own no PlayStation consoles more recent than PS2 and PSP, so I'm a bit out of the loop:
You don't have to update to play a game or watch a movie. You might have to update if you want to play your game online, but if that's no concern for you, then you can sit there, disconnected, and play whatever game you want with whatever software revision you have.
I thought streaming a movie required connecting to the Internet, which in turn required updating. By "watch a movie", are you referring specifically to DVD/BD?
For that matter, what have they updated previously that removed functionality from their consoles?
In the PlayStation 2 era, it was common for Sony to pull the plug on online matchmaking servers for individual games, even while the games were still being sold in brick-and-mortar stores. I could buy a game new at Meijer, unwrap the shrinkwrap, put the disc in my PS2, attempt to connect, and get DNAS error -103 "This software title is not in service."
The trick is to find something that sucks the least
And nowadays, it's more likely for "something that sucks the least" to be a PC than a PlayStation 3 or PlayStation 4. The biggest advantage of consoles is in the handheld sector, where I have no evidence that clip-on gamepads for phones are outselling even the PlayStation Vita. Without gamepads, phone games tend to be point-and-click nickel-and-dime-fests.
And there's a condition for that condition: buy a house in the service area of a DSL, cable or fiber connection. A lot of especially rural places have only satellite, only cellular, or a choice between satellite and cellular.
if you have content compelling enough to monetize (which is very few sites these days, as they are all click-bait designed to shove ads down your throat), do the fucking leg work to secure a few sponsors for the site
What resources can you recommend for someone looking into getting into ad sales for the first time? Even if you have a platform that lets advertisers upload creative, specify start and end dates for campaigns, and lets the site owner approve them, how is such leg work done? And how can such a platform reassure advertisers that view and click statistics are genuine as opposed to fraudulent?
Let's try this again:
People who want crap video should have had to opt-in instead of making everyone opt-out.
Defaults ought to meet the preferences of the majority. I imagine that more people want to save money by accepting "crap" video that's still superior to DivX-era torrents than have a philosophical objection to defaulting to said "crap" video.