Market dominance snowballs in this kind of situations, as we regrettably know from the Windows story.
There's a key difference. Android's source are available for anyone to use. (Only the Google-branded experience is protected).
And as a consequence of the above, it's possible to find solutions to run Android apps on other platforms too. (Though it helps to have a Linux kernel, as Microsoft failed attemps at Android on Windows Phone (that morphed into WSL) has shown. So Android apps on iOS might by a tiny bit more complicated than Android apps on Sailfish OS)
The first iPhone wasn't even designed with possibility to run 3rd party Apps. And though the kernel was multi-tasking, it wasn't doing multi-tasking with apps. More starting/stoping them as needed like PalmOS did decades before.
On the other hand, Android was an over inflated clone of the typical Java middleware found on most feature phones at the time which all had the possibility to install crappy 3rd party Java ME apps and games as a key feature. Android just managed to : - distanciate themself from the Java scene (both to avoid potential suits down the line, and to avoid the (justified) "crappy apps" reputation of JavaME) - make the end product suck A LOT LESS than any of the Java ME crap.
(Yes I hate Java ME. I had a PalmOS PDA. You could *really* se the difference in quality of native PalmOS games and apps, and the average crap available on my PDA's IBM Java ME implementation).
The original iPhone in 2007 was the first true smartphone.
Nope, there was already a budding PDAs (personnal digital assistant) market going for years.
Since the 90s there has been things like Psion (running EPOC, grand father of Symbian) Or later things like Palm (managing to reach success, born out of the massive flop of Apple's Newton).
Some (as early as Handsrping's also-running-PalmOS Visor - which eventually got bought by Palm and gave the Centro line) where also featuring phone functionnality.
(Though Psion could get modems or wifi Compact cards, I haven't heard of any of their digital assistant being usable as a phone. The closest to it being Communicator by Nokia. Basically a Psion-like-ish clam-shell design, with a nokia phone bolted on the outside. You could use the phone to call, the PDA could see and use the phone like a modem, but both were separate devices sharing the same shell. Handspring were really visionary with their Visor).
iPhone was simply Apple's finally successive attempt at doing the same, (after their previous fiasco with the Newton). Their only advantage being simply the same as the iPod: - nothing new, even a technological set-back (the capacitive "fingers only, no stylus needed" touch screen being the only novelty) - huge logistics and production chains - massive marketing campaign with deep pockets for budget - and consequence of the previous one, managing to explain to everyone's grandma why they definitely need a pocket computer. - and a huge fan base that is going to buy it, on the only ground there's an Apple logo on it, even before thinking if it's useful to them. (That helps spreading something new before it really catches on)
Photoshop? Are you sober? Can you see anyone... a.n.y.o.n.e. doing image editing on a phone?
On the phone screen? No. Nope nobody.
But using the phone once docked to a screen + mouse + keyboard setup ? (Using anything like MHL's microUSB-to-HDMI and/or Display port over USB3 on the USB-C connector and/or plain normal bluetooth wireless for the input devices ?) Sure, it's a possible use.
Or connecting the tablet to a keyboard? (either dock-style keyboard, like asus transformer and microsoft sufrace, or simply USB OTG or bluetooth) again it's possible.
Lite laptops connected to data servers are the way, with phones for all the convenience of phones.
And that lite laptop could as weel be a tablet docked to a keyboard or a phone connecter to a bigger screen.
People want reliable first and then cheap.
I regret to inform you that *geeks* want reliable first and then cheap. Random Joe 6-pack wants as cheap as possible, and then loudly comply about the quality he got (he got what he paid for). That explains the popularity of cheap chines noName tablets.
Its like writing software on a phone or writing a term paper on a phone. It's as easy to do as cooking a turkey in a microwave oven. No one does it because that's not the best use of the device. Photoshop on a phone. Lite laptops connected to data servers are the way, with phones for all the convenience of phones. People want reliable first and then cheap. If its not reliable, then they let the phone face get smashed or drop the phone in the toilet. No loss. After that they want cheap. Microsoft failed miserably on the first, Apple failed on the second (sometimes the phone really does accidentally fall in the toilet and gorilla glass doesn't last forever: when you need a new phone and you are looking at the same features for hundreds less, hundreds less wins).
Now can that java layer be fixed to provide better access for high end games and be an extension to a more typical Linux distribution like Ubuntu, to provide greater access to interactive content.
You don't need to fix the java layer. You don't even need the games to target android. Linux is a complex and flexible beast (chroot, containers, etc.) There are already platforms out there where the android userland is co-sharing the phone with another userland.
e.g.: Jolla's Sailfish OS is a full blown GNU/Linux platform, using a QML interface on Wayland. Still it also has Alien Dalvik, a port of the android machine and userspace so you can tap into the android echo system and run most of its games an apps. (the community edition of Sailfish OS has SFDroid that similarily runs Sailfish OS alongside Cyanogen mod).
And if you look closely, platform like Valve's Steam also bring in their own userland (so closed source Linux games can target a predefined set of libraries and version prodivded by steam, instead of whatever happens to be provided on that Linux distribution).
So it might be that in the future, an Android Tablet is the "default" platform.
Want to play real, desktop-level games ? Install Steam, it will provide a full blown environment with all the low-level access that your games will need (well as long as the functionnality is supported by your hardware and kernel drivers). Also plug-in a controller in the OTG USB port (or more likely, given the tendency of current home consoles, bluetooth-sync a wireless one)
Want to do serious buniness work on your tablet ? Once you've solved your keyboard needs (again, I suspect bluetooth will be more popular than OTG. Except maybe for dock-keyboards), environment like Fedoras/Red Hat's Flatpack or Ubuntu's Snap got you covered. They'll come with the base library (more or less), and the rest will be packaged together with the LibreOffice.org flat pak you're installing.
Enjoy your hardware that is simultaneously running Linux/Android, and Linux/GNU (with 2 different providers for the GNU part).
The only limitations are: - hardware. you need beefier tablet that can actually be used this way. But hardware constructors are comming this way. - UI integration. The device's main UI need to beautifully integrate Android base apps, with Steam Games and FlatpPak/Snap office software, with all software looking like first class citizen and easy switching from on to the other, no matter which userland is used by which software. - vendors that actually attemps such devices.
But the base message is that, a single convergent OS, à la Microsoft Windows for Surface, isn't needed that much. Linux is a convergent kernel, and using several userlands depending on usage pattern is okay.
We should have red pools and purple pools as well {...} and pinks
You joke, but there *are* actually red algae that could give warm colours to pool watter. It's just about waiting that the correct olympic blunders happens....
Oh, common, you forgot to jump on the (full GNU-) Linux bandwagon:
BRING BACK MEEGO/MEAMO/SAILFISH OS.
Nokia has already spent tons of money to finance the R&D behing the platform, back when it was called Meego/Maemo. They spent money on severance package when they let said R&D team go, that helped them to bootstrap Jolla and rebrand the platform as Sailfish OS.
Nokia has already financed a good successor for their Symbian platform.
Jolla is good at making a nice OS (their Sailfish OS interface rocks, and it *does* support Android apps, one of the major ecosystems on the market - unlike Microsoft's piece of poo*). Jolla isn't very good at organising hardware themselves (see Jolla Tablet fiasco, see shortage Jolla C phone shortages), and are looking to license to 3rd party hardware manufacturer (see Intex, Turing phone, upcoming official port of SFOS on Fairphone 2, etc.)
Nokia could find a nice solution together with Jolla to get a nice/newer/better OS (and common, anything is better than stay with Microsoft or beating the Symbian dead horse), that would be a nice answer to competitor Samsung's interest in using their Tizen platform (their own full GNU/Linux platform with MeeGo ancestry) on smartphones.
----
*: well at least their abandoned Android-App-on-Windows project gave us WSL, so we shouldn't be complaining that much.
im pretty sure the person spending 10 minutes to fill a tank can go 2 or 3x's the distance you can on a full nights charge.
They *could* go 2x-3x the distance, but in practice they don't.
The whole point of the study mentioned here, was to gather and integrate the necessary statistical data to reach the conclusion that in practice, 90% of the time, the people with the gas car have the theoretical capacity to do 2x-3x the same distance in one single go, but instead split the distance in several "small go"s, and tank again 3-4 days later.
In 90% of the cases, the extra driving range that the gas car offers is complete waste. It's only purpose is to space apart the necessary trips to the gas station. Trips that aren't necessary for an electric car that can be left (depending on availability) either charging overnight at home, or charging the whole day at work, or charging a couple of hours at an electric charger on the parking lot of the grocery store/shopping mall/food court/cinema plex/sports arena/etc. or left charging 30-45minute on a highway's rest area during the coffee-/lunch- break that the driver is supposed to take after each batch of 1-2 hours of continuous driving.
Or in other words: gas cars have ranges that are much longer than what is actually needed 90% of time. Electrical cars have range that already covers those times. We just need to put electrical plugs everywhere (as it is already starting to be the case in several european countries).
What constitutes 'bad habits'? Is it a bad habit to work 10 hours a day in an office to 'get ahead' and neglect other parts of life?
It happens that medecine has a very clear definition of 'bad habits' and 'addiction': it starts at the point where the "bad habit" takes over your life, where it prevents you to lead a normal life, where it takes so much place that it is detrimental to the rest of your life. (with a bunch of technical questions that can help pin-point existing problems...)
So to go back to your exemple: - is the Raid Leader happy with his life? is he able to find a balance he's comfortable with between his passion and his life? is he able to function normally? (keep hygiene, health, etc.) (able to keep a job, even a shitty one, as long as he can cover his needs and is happy with his life)
- and about the "career person" might be happy with his life. he might also be so obessed with work that he fucks up his life. There's a name for that "workaholic".
It's all about balance. In my previous post, I wasn't saying that playing games a lot isn't bad (just like binge watching a season from time to time isn't bad either). It's being unable to stop playing games (or stop watching movies) to the point that it ruins one's life that is problematic and a bad habit.
You don't think they have implemented that as a translation layer in the NT kernel?
Not according to their docs and blog posts.
NT kernel is horribly complicated beasts. It can exports its internal as different sets of API.
The idea back then was:
- to allow multiple sets of API Back then the idea was to support win32 *and* OS/2 both at the same time (this one is defunct nowadays). Then UNIX came. And now WSL)
- so they can freely hack the internals without being held back by an API model That's the situation with WSL. Because proc forking sucks under Windows, whereas it comes more or less for free under Linux, Microsoft has come with a new feature they call Pico thread, which is even lighter than linux at multiple-process (but is worse at isolating/compartimentalizinge - no big deal for a feature which targets developpers, not end-users). These Pico threads aren't exposer in the current Win64 and Win32 apis. But these pico threads are what is exposed to make processes in WSL.
So the route is not Linux -> translated into Win32, but directly Linux -> NT kernel, skip the intermediate translation layer.
Cygwin on the other hand is entirely implemented as a user-space component. It runs to user space, and translate POSIX calls to Win32 calls. (And you could run Cygwin on top of any Win32 provider. Like order versions of Windows, or like Wine - like done for testing). (Whereas for WSL you need a very specific version of the Windows 10 kernel that actually feature that extra Linux-like minimal API that isn't available anywhere else).
Well, it is MS with their massively bloated kernel API, so maybe they did do it natively and since it is closed-source, we may never know.
how do I know that my browser is not doing bad things behind my back? I have a browser open all the time, as do most. that, alone, makes this idea super stupid.
Are you familiar with FireFox's pop-ups "the website http:///{whatever}.com has requested access to your webcam/your microphone/your localisation/streaming your desktop/etc." ?
Webapps in your browser can already get access to your microphone or stream a video of your desktop. But 99% of the regular pages don't need it. So, the default behaviour is that the few 1% webapps that need special access to some hardware need to first ask for it and a pop-up asks you if you grant access to it.
A local.html file on your computer used as a webinterface to your thermostat ? Sure, grant it the permission.
Your health insurance company asking bluetooth access to your fitness monitoring device ? You'll probably think first about it.
Facebook asking bluetooth access to your insulin pump ? HELL, NO !!!! Thus you'll probably get a new type of pop-up showing up whenever a javascript code wants to get access some bluetooth device and you'll decide if you grant access to it.
The alternative being that your smart home devices/your heart rate monitor/security video surveillance camera/any other gizmo gets IoT enabled and uploads all its data to an even less secure cloud server that your controlling app or webapp must talk to.
It's either direct link to remote control your gizmo. Or remote control with a round-trip over internet.
I really prefer the first route, because it means that some body is going to reverse engineer it and release an opensource library that can talk to your gizmo to, all from the security of you own home server, without relying on any 3rd party or cloud component.
The current "suit" is for the other kind of trailer lies.
I'm thinking of the movies where there are about 1-2 minutes of gut-busting scenes in the trailer, then you watch the movie only to find out that those 1-2 minutes were all the worthwhile comedy content in the whole movie.
In this case, you whatch the movie and don't even see those 1-2 minutes from the trailer that were worthwhile. Because, by the time the executives are done meddling with the movie, those scenes didn't even make it to the final cut that was released in theater.
And it would have nearly cost them as much to only obtain the *electro-mecanical* guts from Chinese (i.e.: physical lock + motors + power stage), hire some cryptography master student for an internship to write actually competent security code, and flash and solder some ATMega or other pico controller themselves.
It would be both way much more secure. And they could proudly write some "assembled in USA" sticker on the box, knowing that they keep some jobs inland (the master student writing the picocontroller code and the assembly line that assembles the chinese electromecanical part and the picocontroller).
It would cost a little bit more, but they have good marketing arguments to make up for it (security and keeping jobs).
Still, they didn't do it. They went instead for the cheap lazy shitty route.
...I was just nitpicking about small minutes details.
having Linux user-space components running on top of a translation layer is not new either. Cygwin has been doing it for ages.
Ubuntu on Windows doesn't run atop a translation layer. There's no "in between" layer, it's the NT kernel that exports a few extra API calls. It's first class citizens just like Win32 or the old Unix interface, not a translation layer like Cygwin, Mingw.
And Cygwin has been offering way much more for ages (complete POSIX). WSL is more comparable to Mingw (which is the bare strict minimum subset of POSIX to get basic software to compile in Windows - just like WSL is a bare strict minimum of Linux API calls to get basic ELFs to run in Windows)
Cygwin is a userspace library that translates nearly whole POSIX API to win32 API calls. WSL is simply Windows' own kernel offering directly a new API, in addition to Win32/Win64/etc. much like Microsoft's older Unix subsystem for Windows.
The size is also different. Cygwin features nearly the whole POSIX.
WSL is just about the strict minimum subset of Linux API calls so you can run a few Ubuntu elfs unmodified. It's just so you can test some code locally before deploying it on a Linux cloud.
You'll get the ability to load ELFs, and some very limited network and filesystem access. And that's it. Nothing fancy.
It only understands a very limited subset of all the API calls offered by the Linux kernel. Just barely enough so you install ubuntu and test some linux code before deploying on a Linux powered cloud.
Some limited network is as best as you could get. Nothing much fancy beyond that. You could run Apache or SSH but don't set your hopes to high (not even NFS). Completely forget any hope about keyloggers, reflashing firmware using linux sysadmin tools, etc.
No it's not the whole POSIX interface (that used to exist and be called something along the lines like "Unix Services for Windows", but got in practice over taken in popularity by Cygwin - a translation layer between POSIX source code and regular Win32 interface).
WSL implements only a very small subset of Linux kernel's API calls. Just barely enough to get some Ubuntu user space running, so you can still use Windows to write and test your code before deploying to some Linux cloud. (instead of using Mac OS X or a real Linux desktop or a VM like everybody else.
There currently nearly no filesystem support (except for the special drivers that Microsoft has written to support passing Windows's local drivers under Linux). There is very limited network support (you can run apache and even SSH. But forget about NFS) There's no media at all (no X. no audio. no USBHID/libinput. nowayland/DRM/Mesa hardware/Whatever. no nothing. Its main purpose is to test linux code before deploying to the cluster, so don't expect anything fancy). No even fabric dummy drivers (that's a bit limiting for the intended purpose...) Nothing from the Linux kernel internals (no scheduler, etc.)
So maybe with some extensive hacking you could write a zombie node that can take part in some mass spamming or DDOS. (Basically, anything that you could implement as a not so fancy network daemon under any other OS). But that's about it. Don't except to circumvent some Windows protection by calling into WSL, it has no access to anything low-level. (e.g.: Forget about trying to reflash the firmware using some linux sysadmins tools under WSL, or making some advanced stealth keylogger)
In the world of TV, you also have people who only casually watch some movie from time to time. You also have people who follow their favourite TV shows and discuss the next morning what was on yesterday's GoT episode, but beside that have a pretty normal life. And binge watchers who feel the need to watch all the episode of all seasons of some show they've discovered on Netflix. To they point that they don't even go out of their home. (And binge watching, and raid players are like binge drinking. It's okay to waste a week-end from time to time because you're catching up a series/play a 36-hours raid/are fucked up like a piece of shit. It's not okay when you can't even hold a job because of your bad habit).
There are relatively few online games which involve "solving puzzles to move to the next level". I can think of a handful; Portal 2, for instance.
and the huge mass of MMORPGs and the like.
They require some reading skill (gotta see if there's something of interest in all those dialogs. Like some quest clue, etc.) They require also some basic math (quickly making estimations about all the characters' stats everywhere). Okay, it's REALLY not as complex as the puzzle solving you're thinking about, but it's enough to encourage a bit of reading and writing, and that is the markers in PISA that are reported in the summary.
So according to that interpretation, as long as the kid doesn't have some problems/pathology that turn them into MMORPG addicts, playing MMORPG would give them opportunity the exercise a bit their reading and basic math, hence the higher score.
Of course, as the summary points out, it could pretty well the opposite: kids which are better achiever and quicker learner finish their homework earlier and get more playtime.
And of course, it could be something completely different : the set of intellectual abilities that make them good at school, happen to be also a good set of skill to find exploits and way to game the system as much as possible, hence more time also spent trying to find a good winning strategy, or writting a good editor/hack/trainer ( <- my own personal case).
I am not willing to pay or put up with the inconvenience of perfect physical security for my home.
The thing is, perfect smart lock (I mean, at least perfect on the software side) are technically possible. There are modern cryptographic method that could work very well in this situation.
The smartlock makers where simply too lazy to even try it. And that's sad.
Just write your password down and keep it at home somewhere.
Which is 100% guaranteed to be the exact place you'll be when the allergy kicks-in (doktor's tip: usually most of the seasonal allergies happen outdoor. There are very few allergen that vary seasonally found indoor) or any of the other problems that can render your iris suddenly unusable.
Or keep it in your password manager.
I just hope for you that yours isn't *in* said protected smartphone (though it's a good choice: it's something that you carry around) But on your laptop. Or securely synced over the cloud to most of your computers.
If someone steals your phone, even the cops, they won't have that password.
No, but both can already have a copy of your iris.
For thieves, it's simply called "a not too blurry photo of your face" (Common, who are you kidding? Most cheap fingerprint readers can be defeated simply by scotch tape. And the protection added against such exploit can simply be circumvented by heating the scotch tape. Do you really think that mass produced Iris scanner - a.k.a. the cheapest infrared camera they can get their hand on - is going to be *that* good ? propably heating a bit a blck-and-white hires laser print of somebody's iris is all it's going to take...)
For cops, its holding "your eyes forcibly open while holding your phone in front of your face". (Hey, you didn't answer any question, you didn't even communicate : it's not violating your fifth amendment any more that taking your fingerprints / your DNA sample is)
Don't worry, you'll probably be able to fall back to using your secure password.
You know, the thing that look like base64-encodednoise from/dev/random... that you've completely forgotten about because you've always used the iris function right up until the bd conjunctivitis that started this morning.
Or the long password which is basically just two words followed by a number and even a "!" For good measure (hey, they asked to use a special). You know it's a good one because the 3 websites where you use it showed you a green bar in their security meter. (What you don't know, is that 2 of these website got their DB hacked, they only used salted SHA-1 (hey, but it's salted) and your password is among the 75% of the million hash leak that got bruteforced within the first 2 days, because it's such a common pattern)
I guess the real problem will be compatibility with MS Office. Microsoft will do their best to make that as hard as they can I would think.
The problem is that Microsoft can't actually do that much: - Their "Office XML" is supposed to be a standard too (like Open Document) and they are supposed to follow their own standard (although for a very long time their own office suite wasn't actually compliant with their own standard that they've published. And still this standard is an horrible mess leaving much potential holes for abuse).
But in my experience (user of this suite for ~15 years - since StarOffice started to become opensource) compatibility has progressed a lot.
In the past few years:.docx (Word XML) files (and even older.doc plain Word) tend to open flawlessly in LibreOffice Writer. (Save the very rare slight mis-alignement of one embed object OLE/COM). Most actual differences come from: - missing font libraries. (But most modern Linux distribution feature scripts to download most common fonts) - (with older.doc version) page-setting weirdness that is printer-driver dependent (Yes. Actually. Try changing the printer you're targeting in "print setup..." in older versions of Word, the page layout will subtly change). - (Sadly, still happening. Luckily, not a lot) the original layout is an absolute clusterfuck (like indentations and centering done with "space bar") As I said, they are very rare..xlsx (Excel XML) files (and even older.xls plain Excel) have never failed me in LibreOffice Calc. Including all the formulas that they contains. (only complex scripts written in VBA have given me problems).
And with this, nearly everything I encounter at work seems to be okay, so I can be productive under Linux for the past few years.
On the other hand, presentation (.pptx and.ppt) seem to be a hit-and-miss with LibreOffice Impress. Simple presentations seem to work. Specially when done correctly (elements are correctly connected together)
But lots of document have weird layouts (all the text is in the same box, and relies on empty row to make room for pictures. Arrows and boxes were just put as-is and then align approximately by keyboard, etc.) and these convert badly.
Luckily for me, lots of people export them to PDF.
If the password is sufficiently complex, and the system uses properly salted hashes, then it is infeasible to crack remotely via brute-forcing the password database.
That's the theory. What the practice (analysis of million of leaked passwords from databases) has shown:
passwords are rarely really complex (as in: something that looks like base64-encoded output of/dev/random) even if you skip the most stupid and obvious ("password", "123456", etc.) the rest tend to use some common pattern (five letters capitalized, followed by 2 digits, then a "!" at the end. Like "Denver14!") and/or very short combination of dictionnary words and modifier (company + season + year + "!" : "AcmeSummer14!") things which can be correctly prioritized in a (semi) brute force
same about storage. in theory special key-derivation function - that are designed on purpose to be slow and have high ressource usage to discourage bruteforcing - should be used, like PBKDF-2, Scrypt, or Argon2. in practice a simple hash will be used (something like SHA-1 or worse MD-5) - that are designed to run as fast as possible even on small form factor hardware like smartcards. You're lucky if the developer didn't forget to put an actually useful salt (a random one per user).
So in practice, when a DB gets busted somewhere (like they do on a weekly basis) in a matter of hours to a couple of days max, something like 75% of passwords are cracked. And out of those millions of users, some might be re-using password on other sites. Like corporate, like financial, like on a critical service like mail used for password recovery or OAuth/OpenID provider.
Maybe you're among the remaining 25% who let their cat choose (= "walk") an actualy password and store it in their keychain(*). But there are going several thousands of users who are utterly busted.
(*): That's a joke. Cats walking on keyboards aren't actually random but produce very specific patterns. There was experimental software mentionned a couple of years ago on/. that could distinguish human and feline typer and ignore the later. That means they produce patterns which can be fed into special purpose brute forcers./dev/random + base64 is the closest to something safe-ish.
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Market dominance snowballs in this kind of situations, as we regrettably know from the Windows story.
There's a key difference.
Android's source are available for anyone to use. (Only the Google-branded experience is protected).
And as a consequence of the above, it's possible to find solutions to run Android apps on other platforms too.
(Though it helps to have a Linux kernel, as Microsoft failed attemps at Android on Windows Phone (that morphed into WSL) has shown.
So Android apps on iOS might by a tiny bit more complicated than Android apps on Sailfish OS)
The first iPhone wasn't even designed with possibility to run 3rd party Apps.
And though the kernel was multi-tasking, it wasn't doing multi-tasking with apps. More starting/stoping them as needed like PalmOS did decades before.
On the other hand, Android was an over inflated clone of the typical Java middleware found on most feature phones at the time which all had the possibility to install crappy 3rd party Java ME apps and games as a key feature.
Android just managed to :
- distanciate themself from the Java scene (both to avoid potential suits down the line, and to avoid the (justified) "crappy apps" reputation of JavaME)
- make the end product suck A LOT LESS than any of the Java ME crap.
(Yes I hate Java ME. I had a PalmOS PDA. You could *really* se the difference in quality of native PalmOS games and apps, and the average crap available on my PDA's IBM Java ME implementation).
The original iPhone in 2007 was the first true smartphone.
Nope, there was already a budding PDAs (personnal digital assistant) market going for years.
Since the 90s there has been things like Psion (running EPOC, grand father of Symbian)
Or later things like Palm (managing to reach success, born out of the massive flop of Apple's Newton).
Some (as early as Handsrping's also-running-PalmOS Visor - which eventually got bought by Palm and gave the Centro line) where also featuring phone functionnality.
(Though Psion could get modems or wifi Compact cards, I haven't heard of any of their digital assistant being usable as a phone.
The closest to it being Communicator by Nokia. Basically a Psion-like-ish clam-shell design, with a nokia phone bolted on the outside. You could use the phone to call, the PDA could see and use the phone like a modem, but both were separate devices sharing the same shell.
Handspring were really visionary with their Visor).
iPhone was simply Apple's finally successive attempt at doing the same, (after their previous fiasco with the Newton).
Their only advantage being simply the same as the iPod:
- nothing new, even a technological set-back (the capacitive "fingers only, no stylus needed" touch screen being the only novelty)
- huge logistics and production chains
- massive marketing campaign with deep pockets for budget
- and consequence of the previous one, managing to explain to everyone's grandma why they definitely need a pocket computer.
- and a huge fan base that is going to buy it, on the only ground there's an Apple logo on it, even before thinking if it's useful to them. (That helps spreading something new before it really catches on)
Photoshop? Are you sober? Can you see anyone... a.n.y.o.n.e. doing image editing on a phone?
On the phone screen? No. Nope nobody.
But using the phone once docked to a screen + mouse + keyboard setup ?
(Using anything like MHL's microUSB-to-HDMI and/or Display port over USB3 on the USB-C connector and/or plain normal bluetooth wireless for the input devices ?)
Sure, it's a possible use.
Or connecting the tablet to a keyboard?
(either dock-style keyboard, like asus transformer and microsoft sufrace, or simply USB OTG or bluetooth)
again it's possible.
Lite laptops connected to data servers are the way, with phones for all the convenience of phones.
And that lite laptop could as weel be a tablet docked to a keyboard or a phone connecter to a bigger screen.
People want reliable first and then cheap.
I regret to inform you that *geeks* want reliable first and then cheap.
Random Joe 6-pack wants as cheap as possible, and then loudly comply about the quality he got (he got what he paid for). That explains the popularity of cheap chines noName tablets.
Its like writing software on a phone or writing a term paper on a phone. It's as easy to do as cooking a turkey in a microwave oven. No one does it because that's not the best use of the device. Photoshop on a phone. Lite laptops connected to data servers are the way, with phones for all the convenience of phones. People want reliable first and then cheap. If its not reliable, then they let the phone face get smashed or drop the phone in the toilet. No loss. After that they want cheap. Microsoft failed miserably on the first, Apple failed on the second (sometimes the phone really does accidentally fall in the toilet and gorilla glass doesn't last forever: when you need a new phone and you are looking at the same features for hundreds less, hundreds less wins).
Now can that java layer be fixed to provide better access for high end games and be an extension to a more typical Linux distribution like Ubuntu, to provide greater access to interactive content.
You don't need to fix the java layer. You don't even need the games to target android.
Linux is a complex and flexible beast (chroot, containers, etc.)
There are already platforms out there where the android userland is co-sharing the phone with another userland.
e.g.: Jolla's Sailfish OS is a full blown GNU/Linux platform, using a QML interface on Wayland.
Still it also has Alien Dalvik, a port of the android machine and userspace so you can tap into the android echo system and run most of its games an apps.
(the community edition of Sailfish OS has SFDroid that similarily runs Sailfish OS alongside Cyanogen mod).
And if you look closely, platform like Valve's Steam also bring in their own userland (so closed source Linux games can target a predefined set of libraries and version prodivded by steam, instead of whatever happens to be provided on that Linux distribution).
So it might be that in the future, an Android Tablet is the "default" platform.
Want to play real, desktop-level games ? Install Steam, it will provide a full blown environment with all the low-level access that your games will need (well as long as the functionnality is supported by your hardware and kernel drivers).
Also plug-in a controller in the OTG USB port (or more likely, given the tendency of current home consoles, bluetooth-sync a wireless one)
Want to do serious buniness work on your tablet ? Once you've solved your keyboard needs (again, I suspect bluetooth will be more popular than OTG. Except maybe for dock-keyboards), environment like Fedoras/Red Hat's Flatpack or Ubuntu's Snap got you covered.
They'll come with the base library (more or less), and the rest will be packaged together with the LibreOffice.org flat pak you're installing.
Enjoy your hardware that is simultaneously running Linux/Android, and Linux/GNU (with 2 different providers for the GNU part).
The only limitations are:
- hardware. you need beefier tablet that can actually be used this way. But hardware constructors are comming this way.
- UI integration. The device's main UI need to beautifully integrate Android base apps, with Steam Games and FlatpPak/Snap office software, with all software looking like first class citizen and easy switching from on to the other, no matter which userland is used by which software.
- vendors that actually attemps such devices.
But the base message is that, a single convergent OS, à la Microsoft Windows for Surface, isn't needed that much.
Linux is a convergent kernel, and using several userlands depending on usage pattern is okay.
We should have red pools and purple pools as well { ...} and pinks
You joke, but there *are* actually red algae that could give warm colours to pool watter.
It's just about waiting that the correct olympic blunders happens....
Oh, common, you forgot to jump on the (full GNU-) Linux bandwagon:
BRING BACK MEEGO/MEAMO/SAILFISH OS.
Nokia has already spent tons of money to finance the R&D behing the platform, back when it was called Meego/Maemo.
They spent money on severance package when they let said R&D team go, that helped them to bootstrap Jolla and rebrand the platform as Sailfish OS.
Nokia has already financed a good successor for their Symbian platform.
Jolla is good at making a nice OS (their Sailfish OS interface rocks, and it *does* support Android apps, one of the major ecosystems on the market - unlike Microsoft's piece of poo*).
Jolla isn't very good at organising hardware themselves (see Jolla Tablet fiasco, see shortage Jolla C phone shortages), and are looking to license to 3rd party hardware manufacturer (see Intex, Turing phone, upcoming official port of SFOS on Fairphone 2, etc.)
Nokia could find a nice solution together with Jolla to get a nice/newer/better OS (and common, anything is better than stay with Microsoft or beating the Symbian dead horse), that would be a nice answer to competitor Samsung's interest in using their Tizen platform (their own full GNU/Linux platform with MeeGo ancestry) on smartphones.
----
*: well at least their abandoned Android-App-on-Windows project gave us WSL, so we shouldn't be complaining that much.
im pretty sure the person spending 10 minutes to fill a tank can go 2 or 3x's the distance you can on a full nights charge.
They *could* go 2x-3x the distance, but in practice they don't.
The whole point of the study mentioned here, was to gather and integrate the necessary statistical data to reach the conclusion that in practice, 90% of the time, the people with the gas car have the theoretical capacity to do 2x-3x the same distance in one single go, but instead split the distance in several "small go"s, and tank again 3-4 days later.
In 90% of the cases, the extra driving range that the gas car offers is complete waste. It's only purpose is to space apart the necessary trips to the gas station.
Trips that aren't necessary for an electric car that can be left (depending on availability) either charging overnight at home, or charging the whole day at work, or charging a couple of hours at an electric charger on the parking lot of the grocery store/shopping mall/food court/cinema plex/sports arena/etc. or left charging 30-45minute on a highway's rest area during the coffee-/lunch- break that the driver is supposed to take after each batch of 1-2 hours of continuous driving.
Or in other words: gas cars have ranges that are much longer than what is actually needed 90% of time. Electrical cars have range that already covers those times. We just need to put electrical plugs everywhere (as it is already starting to be the case in several european countries).
What constitutes 'bad habits'? Is it a bad habit to work 10 hours a day in an office to 'get ahead' and neglect other parts of life?
It happens that medecine has a very clear definition of 'bad habits' and 'addiction':
it starts at the point where the "bad habit" takes over your life, where it prevents you to lead a normal life, where it takes so much place that it is detrimental to the rest of your life.
(with a bunch of technical questions that can help pin-point existing problems...)
So to go back to your exemple:
- is the Raid Leader happy with his life? is he able to find a balance he's comfortable with between his passion and his life? is he able to function normally? (keep hygiene, health, etc.) (able to keep a job, even a shitty one, as long as he can cover his needs and is happy with his life)
- and about the "career person" might be happy with his life. he might also be so obessed with work that he fucks up his life. There's a name for that "workaholic".
It's all about balance.
In my previous post, I wasn't saying that playing games a lot isn't bad (just like binge watching a season from time to time isn't bad either).
It's being unable to stop playing games (or stop watching movies) to the point that it ruins one's life that is problematic and a bad habit.
You don't think they have implemented that as a translation layer in the NT kernel?
Not according to their docs and blog posts.
NT kernel is horribly complicated beasts.
It can exports its internal as different sets of API.
The idea back then was:
- to allow multiple sets of API
Back then the idea was to support win32 *and* OS/2 both at the same time (this one is defunct nowadays). Then UNIX came. And now WSL)
- so they can freely hack the internals without being held back by an API model
That's the situation with WSL. Because proc forking sucks under Windows, whereas it comes more or less for free under Linux, Microsoft has come with a new feature they call Pico thread, which is even lighter than linux at multiple-process (but is worse at isolating/compartimentalizinge - no big deal for a feature which targets developpers, not end-users). These Pico threads aren't exposer in the current Win64 and Win32 apis. But these pico threads are what is exposed to make processes in WSL.
So the route is not Linux -> translated into Win32, but directly Linux -> NT kernel, skip the intermediate translation layer.
Cygwin on the other hand is entirely implemented as a user-space component. It runs to user space, and translate POSIX calls to Win32 calls.
(And you could run Cygwin on top of any Win32 provider. Like order versions of Windows, or like Wine - like done for testing).
(Whereas for WSL you need a very specific version of the Windows 10 kernel that actually feature that extra Linux-like minimal API that isn't available anywhere else).
Well, it is MS with their massively bloated kernel API, so maybe they did do it natively and since it is closed-source, we may never know.
how do I know that my browser is not doing bad things behind my back? I have a browser open all the time, as do most. that, alone, makes this idea super stupid.
Are you familiar with FireFox's pop-ups "the website http:///{whatever}.com has requested access to your webcam/your microphone/your localisation/streaming your desktop/etc." ?
Webapps in your browser can already get access to your microphone or stream a video of your desktop.
But 99% of the regular pages don't need it.
So, the default behaviour is that the few 1% webapps that need special access to some hardware need to first ask for it and a pop-up asks you if you grant access to it.
A local .html file on your computer used as a webinterface to your thermostat ? Sure, grant it the permission.
Your health insurance company asking bluetooth access to your fitness monitoring device ? You'll probably think first about it.
Facebook asking bluetooth access to your insulin pump ? HELL, NO !!!!
Thus you'll probably get a new type of pop-up showing up whenever a javascript code wants to get access some bluetooth device and you'll decide if you grant access to it.
The alternative being that your smart home devices/your heart rate monitor/security video surveillance camera/any other gizmo gets IoT enabled and uploads all its data to an even less secure cloud server that your controlling app or webapp must talk to.
It's either direct link to remote control your gizmo.
Or remote control with a round-trip over internet.
I really prefer the first route, because it means that some body is going to reverse engineer it and release an opensource library that can talk to your gizmo to, all from the security of you own home server, without relying on any 3rd party or cloud component.
The current "suit" is for the other kind of trailer lies.
I'm thinking of the movies where there are about 1-2 minutes of gut-busting scenes in the trailer, then you watch the movie only to find out that those 1-2 minutes were all the worthwhile comedy content in the whole movie.
In this case, you whatch the movie and don't even see those 1-2 minutes from the trailer that were worthwhile.
Because, by the time the executives are done meddling with the movie, those scenes didn't even make it to the final cut that was released in theater.
And it would have nearly cost them as much to only obtain the *electro-mecanical* guts from Chinese (i.e.: physical lock + motors + power stage),
hire some cryptography master student for an internship to write actually competent security code,
and flash and solder some ATMega or other pico controller themselves.
It would be both way much more secure.
And they could proudly write some "assembled in USA" sticker on the box, knowing that they keep some jobs inland (the master student writing the picocontroller code and the assembly line that assembles the chinese electromecanical part and the picocontroller).
It would cost a little bit more, but they have good marketing arguments to make up for it (security and keeping jobs).
Still, they didn't do it. They went instead for the cheap lazy shitty route.
...I was just nitpicking about small minutes details.
having Linux user-space components running on top of a translation layer is not new either. Cygwin has been doing it for ages.
Ubuntu on Windows doesn't run atop a translation layer. There's no "in between" layer, it's the NT kernel that exports a few extra API calls. It's first class citizens just like Win32 or the old Unix interface, not a translation layer like Cygwin, Mingw.
And Cygwin has been offering way much more for ages (complete POSIX).
WSL is more comparable to Mingw (which is the bare strict minimum subset of POSIX to get basic software to compile in Windows - just like WSL is a bare strict minimum of Linux API calls to get basic ELFs to run in Windows)
There are a few differences.
Cygwin is a userspace library that translates nearly whole POSIX API to win32 API calls.
WSL is simply Windows' own kernel offering directly a new API, in addition to Win32/Win64/etc. much like Microsoft's older Unix subsystem for Windows.
The size is also different.
Cygwin features nearly the whole POSIX.
WSL is just about the strict minimum subset of Linux API calls so you can run a few Ubuntu elfs unmodified.
It's just so you can test some code locally before deploying it on a Linux cloud.
You'll get the ability to load ELFs, and some very limited network and filesystem access. And that's it. Nothing fancy.
It doesn't have hardware access.
It only understands a very limited subset of all the API calls offered by the Linux kernel.
Just barely enough so you install ubuntu and test some linux code before deploying on a Linux powered cloud.
Some limited network is as best as you could get. Nothing much fancy beyond that.
You could run Apache or SSH but don't set your hopes to high (not even NFS).
Completely forget any hope about keyloggers, reflashing firmware using linux sysadmin tools, etc.
So is it essentially a new POSIX interface?
No it's not the whole POSIX interface (that used to exist and be called something along the lines like "Unix Services for Windows", but got in practice over taken in popularity by Cygwin - a translation layer between POSIX source code and regular Win32 interface).
WSL implements only a very small subset of Linux kernel's API calls.
Just barely enough to get some Ubuntu user space running, so you can still use Windows to write and test your code before deploying to some Linux cloud.
(instead of using Mac OS X or a real Linux desktop or a VM like everybody else.
There currently nearly no filesystem support (except for the special drivers that Microsoft has written to support passing Windows's local drivers under Linux).
There is very limited network support (you can run apache and even SSH. But forget about NFS)
There's no media at all (no X. no audio. no USBHID/libinput. nowayland/DRM/Mesa hardware/Whatever. no nothing. Its main purpose is to test linux code before deploying to the cluster, so don't expect anything fancy).
No even fabric dummy drivers (that's a bit limiting for the intended purpose...)
Nothing from the Linux kernel internals (no scheduler, etc.)
So maybe with some extensive hacking you could write a zombie node that can take part in some mass spamming or DDOS.
(Basically, anything that you could implement as a not so fancy network daemon under any other OS).
But that's about it. Don't except to circumvent some Windows protection by calling into WSL, it has no access to anything low-level.
(e.g.: Forget about trying to reflash the firmware using some linux sysadmins tools under WSL, or making some advanced stealth keylogger)
And that's a very good example.
In the world of TV, you also have people who only casually watch some movie from time to time.
You also have people who follow their favourite TV shows and discuss the next morning what was on yesterday's GoT episode, but beside that have a pretty normal life.
And binge watchers who feel the need to watch all the episode of all seasons of some show they've discovered on Netflix. To they point that they don't even go out of their home.
(And binge watching, and raid players are like binge drinking.
It's okay to waste a week-end from time to time because you're catching up a series/play a 36-hours raid/are fucked up like a piece of shit.
It's not okay when you can't even hold a job because of your bad habit).
There are relatively few online games which involve "solving puzzles to move to the next level". I can think of a handful; Portal 2, for instance.
and the huge mass of MMORPGs and the like.
They require some reading skill (gotta see if there's something of interest in all those dialogs. Like some quest clue, etc.)
They require also some basic math (quickly making estimations about all the characters' stats everywhere).
Okay, it's REALLY not as complex as the puzzle solving you're thinking about, but it's enough to encourage a bit of reading and writing, and that is the markers in PISA that are reported in the summary.
So according to that interpretation, as long as the kid doesn't have some problems/pathology that turn them into MMORPG addicts, playing MMORPG would give them opportunity the exercise a bit their reading and basic math, hence the higher score.
Of course, as the summary points out, it could pretty well the opposite: kids which are better achiever and quicker learner finish their homework earlier and get more playtime.
And of course, it could be something completely different :
the set of intellectual abilities that make them good at school, happen to be also a good set of skill to find exploits and way to game the system as much as possible, hence more time also spent trying to find a good winning strategy, or writting a good editor/hack/trainer ( <- my own personal case).
I am not willing to pay or put up with the inconvenience of perfect physical security for my home.
The thing is, perfect smart lock (I mean, at least perfect on the software side) are technically possible.
There are modern cryptographic method that could work very well in this situation.
The smartlock makers where simply too lazy to even try it.
And that's sad.
Just write your password down and keep it at home somewhere.
Which is 100% guaranteed to be the exact place you'll be when the allergy kicks-in (doktor's tip: usually most of the seasonal allergies happen outdoor. There are very few allergen that vary seasonally found indoor) or any of the other problems that can render your iris suddenly unusable.
Or keep it in your password manager.
I just hope for you that yours isn't *in* said protected smartphone (though it's a good choice: it's something that you carry around)
But on your laptop. Or securely synced over the cloud to most of your computers.
If someone steals your phone, even the cops, they won't have that password.
No, but both can already have a copy of your iris.
For thieves, it's simply called "a not too blurry photo of your face"
(Common, who are you kidding? Most cheap fingerprint readers can be defeated simply by scotch tape. And the protection added against such exploit can simply be circumvented by heating the scotch tape.
Do you really think that mass produced Iris scanner - a.k.a. the cheapest infrared camera they can get their hand on - is going to be *that* good ? propably heating a bit a blck-and-white hires laser print of somebody's iris is all it's going to take...)
For cops, its holding "your eyes forcibly open while holding your phone in front of your face".
(Hey, you didn't answer any question, you didn't even communicate : it's not violating your fifth amendment any more that taking your fingerprints / your DNA sample is)
Don't worry, you'll probably be able to fall back to using your secure password.
You know, the thing that look like base64-encodednoise from /dev/random... that you've completely forgotten about because you've always used the iris function right up until the bd conjunctivitis that started this morning.
Or the long password which is basically just two words followed by a number and even a "!" For good measure (hey, they asked to use a special). You know it's a good one because the 3 websites where you use it showed you a green bar in their security meter.
(What you don't know, is that 2 of these website got their DB hacked, they only used salted SHA-1 (hey, but it's salted) and your password is among the 75% of the million hash leak that got bruteforced within the first 2 days, because it's such a common pattern)
I guess the real problem will be compatibility with MS Office. Microsoft will do their best to make that as hard as they can I would think.
The problem is that Microsoft can't actually do that much:
- Their "Office XML" is supposed to be a standard too (like Open Document) and they are supposed to follow their own standard (although for a very long time their own office suite wasn't actually compliant with their own standard that they've published. And still this standard is an horrible mess leaving much potential holes for abuse).
But in my experience (user of this suite for ~15 years - since StarOffice started to become opensource) compatibility has progressed a lot.
In the past few years: .docx (Word XML) files (and even older .doc plain Word) tend to open flawlessly in LibreOffice Writer. .doc version) page-setting weirdness that is printer-driver dependent (Yes. Actually. Try changing the printer you're targeting in "print setup..." in older versions of Word, the page layout will subtly change). .xlsx (Excel XML) files (and even older .xls plain Excel) have never failed me in LibreOffice Calc.
(Save the very rare slight mis-alignement of one embed object OLE/COM).
Most actual differences come from:
- missing font libraries. (But most modern Linux distribution feature scripts to download most common fonts)
- (with older
- (Sadly, still happening. Luckily, not a lot) the original layout is an absolute clusterfuck (like indentations and centering done with "space bar")
As I said, they are very rare.
Including all the formulas that they contains. (only complex scripts written in VBA have given me problems).
And with this, nearly everything I encounter at work seems to be okay, so I can be productive under Linux for the past few years.
On the other hand, presentation (.pptx and .ppt) seem to be a hit-and-miss with LibreOffice Impress.
Simple presentations seem to work.
Specially when done correctly (elements are correctly connected together)
But lots of document have weird layouts (all the text is in the same box, and relies on empty row to make room for pictures. Arrows and boxes were just put as-is and then align approximately by keyboard, etc.)
and these convert badly.
Luckily for me, lots of people export them to PDF.
If the password is sufficiently complex, and the system uses properly salted hashes, then it is infeasible to crack remotely via brute-forcing the password database.
That's the theory.
What the practice (analysis of million of leaked passwords from databases) has shown:
passwords are rarely really complex (as in: something that looks like base64-encoded output of /dev/random)
even if you skip the most stupid and obvious ("password", "123456", etc.)
the rest tend to use some common pattern (five letters capitalized, followed by 2 digits, then a "!" at the end. Like "Denver14!")
and/or very short combination of dictionnary words and modifier (company + season + year + "!" : "AcmeSummer14!")
things which can be correctly prioritized in a (semi) brute force
same about storage.
in theory special key-derivation function - that are designed on purpose to be slow and have high ressource usage to discourage bruteforcing - should be used, like PBKDF-2, Scrypt, or Argon2.
in practice a simple hash will be used (something like SHA-1 or worse MD-5) - that are designed to run as fast as possible even on small form factor hardware like smartcards. You're lucky if the developer didn't forget to put an actually useful salt (a random one per user).
So in practice, when a DB gets busted somewhere (like they do on a weekly basis) in a matter of hours to a couple of days max, something like 75% of passwords are cracked.
And out of those millions of users, some might be re-using password on other sites. Like corporate, like financial, like on a critical service like mail used for password recovery or OAuth/OpenID provider.
Maybe you're among the remaining 25% who let their cat choose (= "walk") an actualy password and store it in their keychain(*).
But there are going several thousands of users who are utterly busted.
(*): That's a joke. Cats walking on keyboards aren't actually random but produce very specific patterns. There was experimental software mentionned a couple of years ago on /. that could distinguish human and feline typer and ignore the later. That means they produce patterns which can be fed into special purpose brute forcers. /dev/random + base64 is the closest to something safe-ish.