Because the scale of making car parts is dwarfed by the scale of making things that people buy more often in life like microwaves, cell phones, an GPUs?
If companies didn't do good R&D, made crap, and then sold it to you for manufacturing and shipping cost, they'd obviously go out of business. I mean, look at GM; they're doing poorly even without selling parts at cost.
The FSF agenda is self-serving in that it forwardly promotes its own ideology without regards to the impacts it has on others who may or may not agree with the FSF agenda. Additionally, it tries to bring GNU/free into the debate when it doesn't necessarily need to be there, only so that it can make statements about the GNU definition of free, and why it thinks people should care.
(I'm not saying people should or should not care, but it's kinda annoying. It's much like if a Audi enthusiast and a Nissan enthusiast were talking about 4-wheel-drive system designs and a third party (like the FSF) chimes in to make a legitimate comment about each, and a speech about why everybody should buy American cars.)
Now, obviously, the FSF isn't the only self-serving organization, since well, capitalism pretty much requires a company like Adobe or Apple to place its own interests pretty darn high in the list in order to make money.
Want an example? How about the FSF open letter to Google to open source VP8? A simple, "hey, we know you bought On2. Can you open source it? Because that would help settle the H264/HTML5 patent issue once and for all, and would let the web have one baseline video standard. That'd make things easier since we can't all pay for H264. That'd be cool." Instead, the FSF goes on for a page making it sound like an epic battle and even a little threatening. To me, the tone is pretty much "Open Source VP8. You know you can turn the tides in industry. Do it. You're either on our side or you're evil." Something like this, could be taken as a bit humorous. Or dramatic. Or a bit of an asshole move. It depends on the reader.
I started reading it and thought it was pretty good until the 2nd paragraph, where I felt it went from "That'd be cool" to "Hey, you can help or cause, or be evil." Is that the right kind of tone for a letter like this?
So here's my comments on John Sullivan's response letter: 1) Yeah, the iPhone App Store isn't GNU/free. We know that already.
2) Steve Jobs wasn't talking about freedom. But John is trying to frame the debate around freedom. Steve Jobs is talking about why people should stop using Flash, and use HTML5 instead.
3) And while re-framing this debate, John says, "And what they are calling freedom isn't freedom at all--it is the ability to control those users." Uh.. John, I think you have it wrong. In fact, searching for the word "freedom" doesn't even appear in Steve's letter. We know you don't like the App Store. But that's not the issue under discussion. This is about Apple versus Adobe with regards to why Apple refuses to allow Flash on devices and why Steve's telling people to use HTML5.
4) Open and free are different. H264 is open. H264 is not free. But H264 is also widely expected to work for most people. Yes, H264 has a patent licensing issue. But that has nothing to do with this debate. It's a completely separate issue.
5) John is attempting to mix arguments from multiple related debates, confusing the issues. Furthermore, John using these debates as a foundation to do promotion for the FSF and the GPL while not actually helping the debate under question. That's an example of "self-serving" without helping find a solution. Here's the debates I see: Flash versus HTML5. H264 versus Theora/VP8/patent-unencumbered. GNU/Free versus proprietary platforms. (iphone OS versus other stuff)
Steve's letter addresses "Flash versus HTML5". I agree with Steve here. Flash should go. HTML5 is better. See how clear I am? Nowhere did I say I supported H264 or Theora or GNU or walled gardens. Between Flash and HTML5, I pick HTML5. And given the FSF's stance, John, you should agree with me and Steve too. Once that's settled, then the other two debates open up.
6) Agree or disagree? "New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind."
Okay, so far MKVs have done pretty well for me. And, I haven't heard any whining about them either as opposed to ogg. Question is, why can't the community simply drop the other containers under contention like (ogm/ogg/etc) and simply use mkv?
Actually, the real solution to the installation process is be like OSX.
Sure there's a few libraries that you link to that are in the OS itself, but statically compile everything non-OS together or distribute them as libraries tied to the application in the application bundle.
This way, there's no DLL hell. It's just, I want this app, and it happens to include everything it needs except the OS itself. When you don't want the app anymore, throw out this app and all the dependencies get deleted too. No garbage left.
Why do I say this? Because while it's typically nice to install something from a one line apt-get call, not everything is available in the repo, and sometimes new libraries that some packages depend on could break other existing apps. In the end, the package manager only tries to hide the fact that there's potential conflicts between all the stuff you may want to install. And now adds a dependency in that your package manager needs to be self-consistent too. A DB in front of a dependency manager.
Sure it saves space, but download disk image and run saves debugging time.
Both RMS and Theo are crazy. But between the two, I think I'd rather cheer on Theo since he's actually getting stuff done. RMS seems to only be preachy. Maybe should title these two, The Cathedral and The Bizarre.
I'm posting from Yokohama (on vacation), and while I agree that chain restaurants are crappy in America, and that America isn't short on good places to eat (Ahh, California, home sweet home)..... the fact is, when I go to Japan and Taiwan and walk around randomly, the chance is higher that any random restaurant I walk into out here is better than any random restaurant I walk into in Cali (within the same price range).
"So, you mean, it's exactly the same as at McDonald's in Japan"...
McDonald's in Japan, KFC in Japan, and KFC in Taiwan all are on a class higher than their ghetto siblings in America. There's a certain amount of pride Asians have in their cooking that I feel provides a social expectation of a higher quality of service when it comes to food... even for an American chain. It's something I didn't really truly believe until I was going to Taiwan a few years ago and one of my friends tells me, "you gotta try the KFC." I'm like, "wtf? KFC? I'm going to Taiwan and over $10 peking duck that's probably better than any in the entire Northern California Bay Area, you want me to try KFC?" In the end I tried it, and it ruined KFC for me forever because in Hsin-chu (Taiwan), there's the best KFC I've ever had. (It's good in Tokyo too, I had to try it once when I wanted a quick snack just to see if it was a anomaly).
I was with a friend in Tokyo one time and we wanted katsu curry. Walked in the first one we could find, and it was so much more flavorful than the majority of places I've had the same dish in Cali. There used to be an awesome place in Mountain View, but the guy closed it because he needed to go back to Japan to take care of his family. There's a branch of a chain restaurant in Cupertino called Curry House, doesn't compete.
America does have assloads of good food. (Want steak? Go to Forbes Mill in Los Gatos.) But for each good restaurant, there's a lot more subpar restaurants compared to Japan and Taiwan. Consequently, people will think America has awful food because the likelihood of getting crap is higher too.
Independently-verifiable conclusions: I've failed at invoking the spirit of Charles Darwin. Since Charles Darwin existed, but invoking the spirit fails, it's highly likely there's no afterlife.
But there's two other things: 1) The PS3 is still Japanese made. And just like for so many of us Americans, that itself is a mark of "likely to be of high quality." Given that it's still lower failure rates than the Xbox supports this. 2) Didn't a Sony exec "graduate" (step down and leave) the company for its suckage?
Being machined from a single slab of aluminum lets you:
1) simplify the assembly (less pieces to put together, less screws to strip/break, less chinese workers needed, and it's easier on the worker too) 2) making the case thinner with the same strength (you know how when you try to screw together pieces of metal of plastic, there's space consumed for a bolt/nut? If the screw loosens, then you lose strength and can potentially snap off the piece in the hole.) 3) better thermal dissipation (Consider this: is a heatsink made of a solid block better or worse than several blocks screwed together?)
These are the reasons I can think of, there could be more. When Apple first started advertising the unibody enclosures, I too was like "uh, why should I care?"
You know what's even funnier? OpenSolaris has a better chance than Linux does since you can use some older Solaris x86 drivers off a CD if they're provided.
Thing is, you don't know for sure if they had the intent to release the source or not. You're simply assuming that they wouldn't have because it forwards your argument.
The article, to me just says that, "When a vendor purchases a design from another company, somebody drops the ball on making sure the new vendor/customer of the design knows to release GPL-licensed source code from that huge mess of a codebase shipped with a design."
As far as I know Android is not a Java platform. It may be backed by a JVM, but is in no way advertised as a Java platform to its users. And therefore, it shouldn't be expected to adhere to J2ME any more than webOS, iPhone OS, or anything else would.
Wrong and wrong again, Linux desktop (as Gnome and KDE) usability and gui design has exceeded MS for the last 4 years of so. And even there the most generic (aka boring) desktops apps are superior either in features (Amarok, K3B...) or simplicity and ease of use (Rhythmbox, Bracero).
Ahem... so uh... where's the proof? Like an actual comparison and explanation? I'm unconvinced.
You mention Compiz. That's almost admitting you missed the question.
Here's the problem: When people discuss the quality of the UI, there's an ambiguity regarding what's being discussed. Some people refer to how usable it is. Some people refer to how pretty/flashy it looks.
Witness the people who theme Windows or Linux to look like OSX. From a screenshot point of view, okay, it looks like OSX. How usable does it feel? Probably still like whatever it used to be.
What I'm trying to say is that, the people who bring up compositing when talking about usability are completely missing the point of the discussion because Compiz/Aero/Quartz are all there to make things look nice. Whether we're talking about screen resolution dialog running off the edges, or whatever, the visual quality of the compositing engine doesn't help make it more usable one bit.
Here's the problem with the majority of desktop environments on Linux. The number of people who work on UIs and are focused on pretty/flashy or "sounds like fun technology to implement" vastly outnumber the people who work on improving usability.
The reason you're not in awe of OSX is because they've succeeded in making sure OSX stays out of your way to the point where you don't really care. To the point where you just do what you're thinking you want to do, and it happens with no blatant screwups. The people who ARE in awe of OSX are typically fanboys of OSX or those few people who have a strong interest in usability.
I'm not sure if it's the ACard unit having a chipset that can't reach 3Gbit/sec or that the 3Gbit/sec spec of SATA includes overhead.
For example, USB2 never reaches half of 480mbit/sec in a benchmark because of overhead. Firewire 400 comes close but I've never seen it get all 400mbit/sec. 1000baseT and 100baseT both haven't ever maxed for me on a benchmark either.
Slashdot Mirror
Because the scale of making car parts is dwarfed by the scale of making things that people buy more often in life like microwaves, cell phones, an GPUs?
If companies didn't do good R&D, made crap, and then sold it to you for manufacturing and shipping cost, they'd obviously go out of business.
I mean, look at GM; they're doing poorly even without selling parts at cost.
Your Google-fu needs training.
http://chandraonline.net/blog/?p=22
There's a jailbroken iPhone using OpenVPN.
The FSF agenda is self-serving in that it forwardly promotes its own ideology without regards to the impacts it has on others who may or may not agree with the FSF agenda. Additionally, it tries to bring GNU/free into the debate when it doesn't necessarily need to be there, only so that it can make statements about the GNU definition of free, and why it thinks people should care.
(I'm not saying people should or should not care, but it's kinda annoying. It's much like if a Audi enthusiast and a Nissan enthusiast were talking about 4-wheel-drive system designs and a third party (like the FSF) chimes in to make a legitimate comment about each, and a speech about why everybody should buy American cars.)
Now, obviously, the FSF isn't the only self-serving organization, since well, capitalism pretty much requires a company like Adobe or Apple to place its own interests pretty darn high in the list in order to make money.
Want an example?
How about the FSF open letter to Google to open source VP8? A simple, "hey, we know you bought On2. Can you open source it? Because that would help settle the H264/HTML5 patent issue once and for all, and would let the web have one baseline video standard. That'd make things easier since we can't all pay for H264. That'd be cool."
Instead, the FSF goes on for a page making it sound like an epic battle and even a little threatening. To me, the tone is pretty much "Open Source VP8. You know you can turn the tides in industry. Do it. You're either on our side or you're evil." Something like this, could be taken as a bit humorous. Or dramatic. Or a bit of an asshole move. It depends on the reader.
I started reading it and thought it was pretty good until the 2nd paragraph, where I felt it went from "That'd be cool" to "Hey, you can help or cause, or be evil." Is that the right kind of tone for a letter like this?
So here's my comments on John Sullivan's response letter:
1) Yeah, the iPhone App Store isn't GNU/free. We know that already.
2) Steve Jobs wasn't talking about freedom. But John is trying to frame the debate around freedom. Steve Jobs is talking about why people should stop using Flash, and use HTML5 instead.
3) And while re-framing this debate, John says, "And what they are calling freedom isn't freedom at all--it is the ability to control those users." Uh.. John, I think you have it wrong. In fact, searching for the word "freedom" doesn't even appear in Steve's letter.
We know you don't like the App Store. But that's not the issue under discussion. This is about Apple versus Adobe with regards to why Apple refuses to allow Flash on devices and why Steve's telling people to use HTML5.
4) Open and free are different. H264 is open. H264 is not free. But H264 is also widely expected to work for most people. Yes, H264 has a patent licensing issue. But that has nothing to do with this debate. It's a completely separate issue.
5) John is attempting to mix arguments from multiple related debates, confusing the issues. Furthermore, John using these debates as a foundation to do promotion for the FSF and the GPL while not actually helping the debate under question. That's an example of "self-serving" without helping find a solution.
Here's the debates I see:
Flash versus HTML5.
H264 versus Theora/VP8/patent-unencumbered.
GNU/Free versus proprietary platforms. (iphone OS versus other stuff)
Steve's letter addresses "Flash versus HTML5". I agree with Steve here. Flash should go. HTML5 is better.
See how clear I am? Nowhere did I say I supported H264 or Theora or GNU or walled gardens. Between Flash and HTML5, I pick HTML5.
And given the FSF's stance, John, you should agree with me and Steve too. Once that's settled, then the other two debates open up.
6) Agree or disagree? "New open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win on mobile devices (and PCs too). Perhaps Adobe should focus more on creating great HTML5 tools for the future, and less on criticizing Apple for leaving the past behind."
Okay, so far MKVs have done pretty well for me. And, I haven't heard any whining about them either as opposed to ogg.
Question is, why can't the community simply drop the other containers under contention like (ogm/ogg/etc) and simply use mkv?
Is there any reason to not choose MKV?
Actually, the real solution to the installation process is be like OSX.
Sure there's a few libraries that you link to that are in the OS itself, but statically compile everything non-OS together or distribute them as libraries tied to the application in the application bundle.
This way, there's no DLL hell. It's just, I want this app, and it happens to include everything it needs except the OS itself. When you don't want the app anymore, throw out this app and all the dependencies get deleted too. No garbage left.
Why do I say this?
Because while it's typically nice to install something from a one line apt-get call, not everything is available in the repo, and sometimes new libraries that some packages depend on could break other existing apps. In the end, the package manager only tries to hide the fact that there's potential conflicts between all the stuff you may want to install. And now adds a dependency in that your package manager needs to be self-consistent too. A DB in front of a dependency manager.
Sure it saves space, but download disk image and run saves debugging time.
Both RMS and Theo are crazy. But between the two, I think I'd rather cheer on Theo since he's actually getting stuff done. RMS seems to only be preachy. Maybe should title these two, The Cathedral and The Bizarre.
That's easy: The Year of Linux on the Desktop.
I'm posting from Yokohama (on vacation), and while I agree that chain restaurants are crappy in America, and that America isn't short on good places to eat (Ahh, California, home sweet home)..... the fact is, when I go to Japan and Taiwan and walk around randomly, the chance is higher that any random restaurant I walk into out here is better than any random restaurant I walk into in Cali (within the same price range).
"So, you mean, it's exactly the same as at McDonald's in Japan"...
McDonald's in Japan, KFC in Japan, and KFC in Taiwan all are on a class higher than their ghetto siblings in America. There's a certain amount of pride Asians have in their cooking that I feel provides a social expectation of a higher quality of service when it comes to food... even for an American chain. It's something I didn't really truly believe until I was going to Taiwan a few years ago and one of my friends tells me, "you gotta try the KFC." I'm like, "wtf? KFC? I'm going to Taiwan and over $10 peking duck that's probably better than any in the entire Northern California Bay Area, you want me to try KFC?" In the end I tried it, and it ruined KFC for me forever because in Hsin-chu (Taiwan), there's the best KFC I've ever had. (It's good in Tokyo too, I had to try it once when I wanted a quick snack just to see if it was a anomaly).
I was with a friend in Tokyo one time and we wanted katsu curry. Walked in the first one we could find, and it was so much more flavorful than the majority of places I've had the same dish in Cali. There used to be an awesome place in Mountain View, but the guy closed it because he needed to go back to Japan to take care of his family. There's a branch of a chain restaurant in Cupertino called Curry House, doesn't compete.
America does have assloads of good food. (Want steak? Go to Forbes Mill in Los Gatos.) But for each good restaurant, there's a lot more subpar restaurants compared to Japan and Taiwan. Consequently, people will think America has awful food because the likelihood of getting crap is higher too.
Independently-verifiable conclusions:
I've failed at invoking the spirit of Charles Darwin. Since Charles Darwin existed, but invoking the spirit fails, it's highly likely there's no afterlife.
Sure, both the PS3 and the Xbox360 suck.
But there's two other things:
1) The PS3 is still Japanese made. And just like for so many of us Americans, that itself is a mark of "likely to be of high quality." Given that it's still lower failure rates than the Xbox supports this.
2) Didn't a Sony exec "graduate" (step down and leave) the company for its suckage?
Being machined from a single slab of aluminum lets you:
1) simplify the assembly (less pieces to put together, less screws to strip/break, less chinese workers needed, and it's easier on the worker too)
2) making the case thinner with the same strength (you know how when you try to screw together pieces of metal of plastic, there's space consumed for a bolt/nut? If the screw loosens, then you lose strength and can potentially snap off the piece in the hole.)
3) better thermal dissipation (Consider this: is a heatsink made of a solid block better or worse than several blocks screwed together?)
These are the reasons I can think of, there could be more. When Apple first started advertising the unibody enclosures, I too was like "uh, why should I care?"
Haha, PPC holdouts for teh win!
I still got a dual G5 as my main machine at home :)
Now that POWER and SPARC probably have limited chances of being the next big arch, my money's on ARM.
When jailbroken, apps can run in the background. The "one-app-at-a-time" thing only applies to normal third party apps from the app store.
I totally agree.
You know what's even funnier? OpenSolaris has a better chance than Linux does since you can use some older Solaris x86 drivers off a CD if they're provided.
No. According to the license it's royalty-free.
On the upside, that becomes a wash when you find out that ink thinned with alcohol works much better than blood thinned with alcohol :)
Thing is, you don't know for sure if they had the intent to release the source or not.
You're simply assuming that they wouldn't have because it forwards your argument.
Not quite sure how that would be the case.
The article, to me just says that, "When a vendor purchases a design from another company, somebody drops the ball on making sure the new vendor/customer of the design knows to release GPL-licensed source code from that huge mess of a codebase shipped with a design."
As far as I know Android is not a Java platform. It may be backed by a JVM, but is in no way advertised as a Java platform to its users. And therefore, it shouldn't be expected to adhere to J2ME any more than webOS, iPhone OS, or anything else would.
Wrong and wrong again, Linux desktop (as Gnome and KDE) usability and gui design has exceeded MS for the last 4 years of so. And even there the most generic (aka boring) desktops apps are superior either in features (Amarok, K3B...) or simplicity and ease of use (Rhythmbox, Bracero).
Ahem... so uh... where's the proof? Like an actual comparison and explanation? I'm unconvinced.
You mention Compiz. That's almost admitting you missed the question.
Here's the problem:
When people discuss the quality of the UI, there's an ambiguity regarding what's being discussed.
Some people refer to how usable it is.
Some people refer to how pretty/flashy it looks.
Witness the people who theme Windows or Linux to look like OSX. From a screenshot point of view, okay, it looks like OSX. How usable does it feel? Probably still like whatever it used to be.
What I'm trying to say is that, the people who bring up compositing when talking about usability are completely missing the point of the discussion because Compiz/Aero/Quartz are all there to make things look nice. Whether we're talking about screen resolution dialog running off the edges, or whatever, the visual quality of the compositing engine doesn't help make it more usable one bit.
Here's the problem with the majority of desktop environments on Linux. The number of people who work on UIs and are focused on pretty/flashy or "sounds like fun technology to implement" vastly outnumber the people who work on improving usability.
The reason you're not in awe of OSX is because they've succeeded in making sure OSX stays out of your way to the point where you don't really care. To the point where you just do what you're thinking you want to do, and it happens with no blatant screwups. The people who ARE in awe of OSX are typically fanboys of OSX or those few people who have a strong interest in usability.
While somebody's at it, mind if I ask that they try OpenSolaris, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD too? :)
.hack//Sign?
Guy makes MMO, uploads his memory to the game, and dies. Leaving a bunch of code that takes on a life of it's own and puts children in a coma.
That actually wasn't all that special.
What was REALLY special was that back then, the Powerbooks can make the ram disk, then select them in Startup Disk and boot off it!
Powerbook 2400c, booted to a desktop off a ramdisk copy of Disk Tools in 2 seconds flat.
I'm not sure if it's the ACard unit having a chipset that can't reach 3Gbit/sec or that the 3Gbit/sec spec of SATA includes overhead.
For example, USB2 never reaches half of 480mbit/sec in a benchmark because of overhead.
Firewire 400 comes close but I've never seen it get all 400mbit/sec.
1000baseT and 100baseT both haven't ever maxed for me on a benchmark either.