The app stores are fundamentally incompatible with the GPL. You may remember how VLC for iOS was pulled from the app store last year for license reasons.
You can't comply with the terms of the GPL nor the LGPL in a closed app store model. On Android you have the option of side-loading, but on iOS (and, I assume, Windows Phone) you'd be limiting yourself to jailbroken devices.
Finally, let me add that this problem has nothing to do with openness, open-source, or fragmentation.
Well it's kind of related to fragmentation, because even if Google fixed all the bugs ever it would mean fuck all as long as the device manufacturers refuse to update their devices.
But it's not even written in what we'd call C, but rather this awful macro-fied monstrosity that makes it resemble LISP a bit because that's what RMS likes. It's no coincidence that many research projects have jumped over to LLVM, stating that the GCC source code is too difficult to work on.
You can go through the GCC development mailing list archives to find many people (including GCC steering committee members) citing RMS explicitly forbidding features that would let GCC be used as part of a proprietary compiler (eg. dumping the internal representation or reading back an IR dump). Since LLVM and Clang started gaining steam a few years ago some of those decisions have been reversed, allowing eg. the plugin system of newer GCC versions.
Why assume the A4 is a dual-core PowerPC when it's built for an OS that restricts the use of multitasking?
Because Occam's razor tells us that this surely must be the case. Of course you put a dual-core processor to churn binary translation into your mobile device!
Are you sure about that? The component costs have come down by a lot since launch (esp. the Blu-ray laser, but also the Cell CPU) and I'd not be surprised at all if they turn a profit nowadays, especially with the Slim. But the big money is certainly in collecting license fees.
Can this actually be verified? The PS2 was initially bundled with Yabasic in some regions in order to circumvent taxes in the UK, but this didn't work and Yabasic was dropped from the package pretty soon.
Thumbs up to this. I wish the whole distro release system would go away. Unless there is a major change coming that will break everything (libc5 -> glibc6-type changes) I should not have to reinstall my system just because I want a new version of some application.
Indeed. For some reason the hot new trend in shit website design is hiding information behind tabs or even better, hidden tabs. For a prime example of this, see Sourceforge. Every time they have redesigned the site they have made it more difficult to use, primarily by hiding all the relevant information in increasingly complex ways. Originally all the relevant info was on one big page and the functionality was in easy and simple menus. In the next design they put all the info in a small box so you couldn't see it all at once but had to scroll the contents and in the current design you can't fucking find anything.
One thing that's completely omitted from the Edge piece is mentioned in IGN's history of Sega:
"We got together with [Sony] and defined what we'd like to see in our next hardware. We had this great idea that it should be a joint SEGA-Sony hardware system. If we had to take a loss on the hardware (which was the norm then), we'd split the loss on the hardware, but we wouldn't split software, so any software they did, they'd get 100% of the profits, and any software we did, we'd get 100% of the profits. It seemed like a fair deal since we were eons ahead of them in terms of software development.
"So we go to Japan, and Sony management liked the idea. Then we went to SEGA, and Nakayama hated the idea. [laughs] So that was the end of that, and the rest is history once again. Those were the specs that became the PlayStation." -- Tom Kalinske
Earlier, Sega of Japan had also shot down Sega of America's proposal to use the SGI chipset that later became the N64.
According to David Shippy's "The Race for a New Game Machine", Sony planned on making a very simple graphics processor themselves and relying on the Cell to do the heavy work, but around mid-2005 they realized they weren't going to be able to make it for the planned Christmas 2005 release.
That said, I do remember reading an interview with Kutaragi where he said they did plan on using a second Cell for graphics at some point but realized it wouldn't work; I assume this was at a very early stage in the project.
Douglas Engelbart did not invent hypertext. Vannevar Bush thought up Memex in 1945, and even Ted Nelson's Project Xanadu was started in 1960. There may well be even earlier examples, but those are two well-known ones that precede Engelbart. He also didn't invent GUIs, that honour at least currently goes to Ivan Sutherland who made Sketchpad in 1963.
AFAIK he also wasn't directly involved in the development of ARPANET, though the first host was running in the Stanford Research Institute's Augmentation Research Center, which he headed.
I don't want to diminish Engelbart's achievements or influence, but credit where credit's due.
X11 is/was often broken and needed XFree86 compiled instead of Apple's X11. This might have been dealt with in all cases now.
You pretty much have to install XQuartz to get X11 programs working nowadays. Even applications not installed via Fink or MacPorts like Gimp needs it. But it sure beats having to compile it yourself.
The rationale for a 64-bit build was a 40% performance improvement.
Ignorance, insane optimism or some single special case application?
But in the Atom SoCs Intel are using PowerVR, which is definitely not opensource-friendly. Until someone buys ImgTec the most you'll ever get is a binary blob driver.
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Why are you not reporting on Sourceforge bundling malware with open-source software?
OpenBSD's malloc has many security features, including use-after-free detection. OpenSSL's custom memory management nullified all that.
The app stores are fundamentally incompatible with the GPL. You may remember how VLC for iOS was pulled from the app store last year for license reasons.
You can't comply with the terms of the GPL nor the LGPL in a closed app store model. On Android you have the option of side-loading, but on iOS (and, I assume, Windows Phone) you'd be limiting yourself to jailbroken devices.
Without the commercial licensing option, Qt isn't an option for mobile development.
Well it's kind of related to fragmentation, because even if Google fixed all the bugs ever it would mean fuck all as long as the device manufacturers refuse to update their devices.
ARM has supported unaligned loads for a while (since ARMv6 I believe).
But it's not even written in what we'd call C, but rather this awful macro-fied monstrosity that makes it resemble LISP a bit because that's what RMS likes. It's no coincidence that many research projects have jumped over to LLVM, stating that the GCC source code is too difficult to work on.
You can go through the GCC development mailing list archives to find many people (including GCC steering committee members) citing RMS explicitly forbidding features that would let GCC be used as part of a proprietary compiler (eg. dumping the internal representation or reading back an IR dump). Since LLVM and Clang started gaining steam a few years ago some of those decisions have been reversed, allowing eg. the plugin system of newer GCC versions.
He will be... remembered.
Yellow Dog still exists.
Why would I want to support content-free filler like that?
Because Occam's razor tells us that this surely must be the case. Of course you put a dual-core processor to churn binary translation into your mobile device!
Are you sure about that? The component costs have come down by a lot since launch (esp. the Blu-ray laser, but also the Cell CPU) and I'd not be surprised at all if they turn a profit nowadays, especially with the Slim. But the big money is certainly in collecting license fees.
Can this actually be verified? The PS2 was initially bundled with Yabasic in some regions in order to circumvent taxes in the UK, but this didn't work and Yabasic was dropped from the package pretty soon.
Thumbs up to this. I wish the whole distro release system would go away. Unless there is a major change coming that will break everything (libc5 -> glibc6-type changes) I should not have to reinstall my system just because I want a new version of some application.
They made one of those vids too.
Indeed. For some reason the hot new trend in shit website design is hiding information behind tabs or even better, hidden tabs. For a prime example of this, see Sourceforge. Every time they have redesigned the site they have made it more difficult to use, primarily by hiding all the relevant information in increasingly complex ways. Originally all the relevant info was on one big page and the functionality was in easy and simple menus. In the next design they put all the info in a small box so you couldn't see it all at once but had to scroll the contents and in the current design you can't fucking find anything.
So it shouldn't have been a problem to apply it to glibc then.
Apple don't use glibc in any of their OSes.
Earlier, Sega of Japan had also shot down Sega of America's proposal to use the SGI chipset that later became the N64.
According to David Shippy's "The Race for a New Game Machine", Sony planned on making a very simple graphics processor themselves and relying on the Cell to do the heavy work, but around mid-2005 they realized they weren't going to be able to make it for the planned Christmas 2005 release.
That said, I do remember reading an interview with Kutaragi where he said they did plan on using a second Cell for graphics at some point but realized it wouldn't work; I assume this was at a very early stage in the project.
Douglas Engelbart did not invent hypertext. Vannevar Bush thought up Memex in 1945, and even Ted Nelson's Project Xanadu was started in 1960. There may well be even earlier examples, but those are two well-known ones that precede Engelbart. He also didn't invent GUIs, that honour at least currently goes to Ivan Sutherland who made Sketchpad in 1963.
AFAIK he also wasn't directly involved in the development of ARPANET, though the first host was running in the Stanford Research Institute's Augmentation Research Center, which he headed.
I don't want to diminish Engelbart's achievements or influence, but credit where credit's due.
You pretty much have to install XQuartz to get X11 programs working nowadays. Even applications not installed via Fink or MacPorts like Gimp needs it. But it sure beats having to compile it yourself.
Ignorance, insane optimism or some single special case application?
But in the Atom SoCs Intel are using PowerVR, which is definitely not opensource-friendly. Until someone buys ImgTec the most you'll ever get is a binary blob driver.