I know it happens all the time.. but I strongly believe that business shouldn't get involved in politics, and politics should not get involved in business.
Because of the strong opposition from especially the USA, Wikileaks has become a political faction (rather than just media)... the line between media and politics is thin anyway.
so, it's a good decision for Amazon to break all ties with Wikileaks. It's just that the timing makes it a political decision in itself. The USA growled so loudly about wikileaks that a lot of organisations that wouldn't care about it now chose that it's wiser to be against wikileaks.
Now everyone will think twice about the fancy sounding "cloud" services and off loading their stuff to them.
The real hit will be e-book services they provide. Nobody would want to be recorded/archived by an entity who disrupts such a publicly known service with a single phone call.
I will be a total troll when I see any open source (in spirit of FSF) uses Amazon services especially s3.
So, if USA growls loudly at BBC, it will also 'become a political faction' and can be cut off from the Internet by all USA ISPs?
BBC is a real interesting entity, they were even blamed by "iron lady" herself for serving enemy interests in _active_ war. E.g. people firing to each other, not cold war BS.
I think USA should consult with UK PM before doing such action. Funny is, it is nearly impossible to "stop" BBC. At last resort, they boot their SW transmitters which were very carefully placed.
Another thing is, we speak about some kind of prestige that actual active enemies of UK, actual terrorists fighting against UK choose for sending their declarations.
If Amazon can handle such a public disaster, what kind of `other favours` can they do or already do behind closed doors?
Let me be more clear. They have a device that is completely closed, even a pdf must pass from device software and mega ironically we already know it is under _their_ control as they could wipe 1984 over there.
For example, I got a French designed e-book reader which is powered by Linux/Open Source and can also do DRM commercial books using Adobe DRM. So, a little company can do it but Amazon can't? Of course that design has a flaw (!), it can't be tracked that easily as there are multiple stores and accepts standard epub.
Also does Amazon "cloud" use any FSF/GPL software? As free software is way more than "saving couple of bucks", GPL software has very specific terms that you can't deny its usage to anyone, including "enemies".
ps to Assange if he reads this: (attempt to) Publish the entire archive in e-book format, via Amazon kindle store. Let people see their real faces, their customers especially.
Its not a warranty issue to remove a removable add in storage.
Well that's the issue, it's NOT supposed to be removable storage. Even if it didn't "break" teh card it still wouldn't be general purpose removable storage. The phone reformats the card along with the internal storage to create a single Volume, kind of like a RAID mirror. Taking out the card would make you lose all your data, on both the card and the internal storage. The only reason it uses an SD card is because it's convenient to build, and it allows the different providers to use whatever size storage they want. In this phone, the SD card it not a user serviceable part.
What they do is what people suggested Symbian do for years. Extend the C: via OS X'es (and others) softraid "Concatenated" disk scheme.
There is a nice (!) side effect of doing it, if one of disks are missing/corrupt from the set, it is not different from removing physical part of a real disk. Obviously you should use mirrored raid disks to build that set. ZFS being able to do such things natively without such weird mad scientist ways was one of the main (if not only) reasons why Apple was interested in ZFS.
Of course, Apple has entirely documented their filesystem even in open source so, the comparison ends there.
Say what now?.... If this is even possible there is something really wrong with the SD card in question...
Say what now?.... If this is even possible there is something really wrong with the SD card in question...
SD cards are designed for FAT16/FAT32 ordinary (human) file usage and sadly exFAT (they didn't get their lesson) formats with ordinary files being added/removed in a "human" basis, not automatic basis.
The trick here is the inner working of FAT where the filesystem is extremely basic and there isn't really much going on chip level when file operations take place. Deleting a file is just removing first letter of filename as far as I remember. It is couple of bytes being overwritten.
What MS did is, put a gigantic file on the memory card, not allowing chips to do their tricks (wear levelling) and add a random (it didn't have to be random!) password to mount it.
Why? Let me tell you why. Media sharing and easy backups on any operating system that reads/writes FAT (read:all). Find a person uses Nokia smart phone (or even S40), from phone's main menu there is "remove memory card" option. Use it, it will eject. That is also the point to guys who claims it is not common to remove memory card. It IS! Put it into a $10 (cheaper exist but dangerous) SD card reader. Click on "Music" directory, start playing the music on your desktop or even other brand phone.
Does your files have issues? E.g. phone reboots while reading a specific file? run chkdsk E: (generally)/f/r . Using OS X and need a backup or even duplicate? Run diskutility (dd on linux) and create image. Suspect there is a virus? Run virus check.
Reading other comments (not yours), I really started to suspect there is really something grey going on with MS Phone 7 PR team...
You know what? If a page takes 200 milliseconds longer to run because JS performance isn't quite as fast who cares?
None of these browser speed wars addresses the problem that when I watch Hulu on machines that aren't top-of-the-line state-of-the-art, the video is jumpy often to the point of unwatchability.
My pipe is fat enough and the computers I'm using can do fullscreen video just fine. It's Flash, especially on Linux, that kills performance. Most video sites still use Flash, as do a lot of those fun little games, etc., and the only only alternative to Flash in most cases is to go without the site or functionality. Flash is what makes web browsing slow. Every other performance issue is like line noise in comparison.
Old times, when some company abandons/will abandon your computer/OS or you can't decide whether to join the herd (windows) or run linux/BSD, you always had Firefox at your mind. You would think it would have Firefox support and would run it one way or another. Now, they dropped PowerPC binaries (because their cool looking addressbar not working) and speak about dropping anything below SSE3. Publicly that is... Code is being infested by completely unportable x86 specific ASM to join cool kids with JS asm acceleration. If they weren't afraid of Win32 users, they would drop X86 32bit in no time because 64bit runs 20% faster!" and they will have great fan feedback from idiots who have no clue about anything other than 64bit is faster. Does Adobe support PowerPC? Yes they do. They have to do massive trickery on OS X (not hacks) but they do. Your Flash is probably slow because it doesn't do GPU decoding. If you use Linux, Adobe has a weird excuse. If you use OS X, they have a very good/justified excuse as Apple refused to add a central GPU decoding framework open to others (not private) until OS X 10.6.3. Running 10.5.8 on a production machine you can't update? Bad luck.
In other news, OS X PowerPC was dropped and there is also a crazy talk about dropping anything=SSE3. They really lost the design philosophy of Firefox or anything Mozilla. What happened to portability especially when nobody likes their mobile offerings? How many times they must learn to think outside X86 PC? Firefox in speed race with a company who controls/knows about every single device they shipped (Apple) and another who can spend couple of billions of dollars in no time without even noticing it (Google). As a person who knows and always respected Mozilla mission, I feel obliged to post this although I know what kind of karma suicide it is. I really wonder what kind of management took over Mozilla. I remember old days these guys spending hours to make it run/compile on OS/2, dead desktop OS, not completely documented and stabilized one like OS X 10.5.8 PPC. What about Atom CPUs Mozilla guys? Drop that too as it will make you score less in couple of benchmarks? I heard netbooks are outfashioned, perhaps you should drop them next to keep yourselves cool (!)
First of all, this is valid for all offerings. If a company claims to ship a website design/rapid development tool, a new codec, a container, check if they offer OS X support. E.g. a Quicktime output codec, Adobe tools plugins, plugins to popular website building tools. If they don't exist, it is safe to ignore.
Next, take OS X as reference as it doesn't have claimed quirks of Linux. Does it have exactly same plugin support? Do users care? I suggest OS X as example because Linux has these great excuses by plugin developers. For example adding DRM, h264 becomes big deal as excuse of lazy developers and clueless companies while Linux users happily installs Adobe Flash plugin which has same potential political issues.
So, World's nr1 designer choice of OS with a huge company and a strict roadmap to rely on doesn't have Silverlight functionality as equal to Windows one. It really required that blog to figure that it is a failed attempt to kill Flash?
I'd be interested to see who would host something like that.
if I had the bandwidth for a good price, I'd consider it.
If Yahoo was run by sane people, instead of issuing halt command, they could keep on hosting it. It wouldn't cost a dime. Or, if they were nice, they could also transfer subdomain to archive.org and donate some machines to carry it. That is in case if they want to play Steve Jobs instead of actually thinking like him. Steve Jobs didn't destroy old macs, he donated them to museum.
It is absolutely static html with very simple cgi scripts (if exists), it doesn't cost anything to host it. That is the part that makes me mad and the fact that trivial to compress them.
For the "blink" tag elite geniuses... Archaeology and history sciences would be in very different place if people from 300-400 years ago were unwise to erase "lame graffiti" all over the historic places. Europeans of dark ages were more clever than today's "it is lame, lets delete it" elite it seems.
Basically, nobody other than Apple has any right to ship a device with an obvious issue. Nokia almost crashed because of underpowered N97. It is just -kind of- being fixed with Nokia N8 and CEO etc. changes. MS gave up the entire Windows Mobile and started from zero with Windows 7. That is the company who is still rumored to keep some code from Windows 95 all the way to Windows 7. If a manufacturer like HTC does ship something buggy/problematic, they have no cult to apologize for them or flame others. Nokia thought it actually had such fan base and saw the sad truth with N97 and hundred billion dollars of lost value. These manufacturers and software vendors (MS Win 7, Symbian, MeeGo) actually knows they will go under if they do same mistake couple of times in row so they could be forced to code/design better.
If I was working at Apple or even boss of it, I would not care that much. Did it flop because of it? No, it basically sold even more after the amazing amount of PR and fan apologies. If you look deeper, the childish removal of Flash, Java etc. It all makes sense when you have 99% of customer base reasoning and actually fighting with other people to defend your decisions. How many iPhones were returned because of antenna issues? Dare to have a guess?
XPS shows everything wrong with MS, even with a rival (!) like Adobe.
They come up with a "document" standard and yet they didn't even ship a viewer (let alone some virtual printer) for OS X. I am not even mentioning Linux support which is big deal on corporate. I don't want to cost anyone their job at that weirdo company so not giving any examples but it seems, they do create a lot of docs on OS X, export to PDF (or PS), re-export to XPS on a Windows machine/bot.
That is supposed to be Microsoft's answer to PDF. Just imagine if XPS really replaced PDF. It wouldn't be a nice day for anyone not using Windows on Desktop/Mobile. I am not even sure if there is an official XPS viewer for Windows 7 Mobile.
I got creative friends and imagine my surprise when I find out about "Expression" software, as I am not in that segment, I asked them and they -too- didn't have a clue about that software. They had a good laugh when they heard they are supposed to use "that thing" (their words) to do work for Silverlight. You know, in dream World of MS (and Ballmer), designers even use MS Visual Studio and OS X using designers install Eclipse to do Silverlight. Yea, right.
I was wondering around on Youtube. Some teen star got amazing amount of views and he is constantly attacked by some self made gang. As there was nothing else to do and Youtube's "live comments" really may look like some genuine sitcom, I kept watching. There were were mysterious people around, who should not be a teen boy stars fans and shouldn't be hanging around on particular video's comments. When I saw one trying to set some deeper conversation with some teen/kid (naturally), I had to say "careful, lots of strange things happening over comments" and that idiot went off. If there were couple of Sheriffs or cops around to figure the same thing (and they are pros, let me remind) and those perverts figured they were probably watching or even setting up traps for them, they wouldn't try to talk some 12 year old girls about their personal life. Let me remind you, these people are mentally sick, they aren't stupid or morons. People always confuse the sick with stupid.
If this thing doesn't run, even without the fancy GPU acceleration on XP, it means the web developers will still develop/test for IE 7/8. So, they won't use any of promised HTML5 features including HTML5/h264 video.
Degrade politely, browser capability detection etc. are meaningless. They don't do it. Basic as that.
If MS really wanted to compete, they would make it compatible with XP. Here comes the never ending saga of IE 7/8 updates/compatibility issues.
Windows 7 seems to look like a poster child for "how portable.NET is". Speak to Windows 6.x users, they are really really frustrated.
Windows 6.5 does multi task, can be developed in any language, it has amazing amount of development options, "deep level running" software such as Antivirus/Firewall are in very mature levels now.
You are right about "newer API and kernel calls" for Desktop operating systems but, lets say you are a guy who just cares about reading/smalltime editing office files, checking IMAP mail, little web browsing, IM. You don't need to "upgrade" (including device) to a new OS. Your device doesn't flip over and die because "windows 7" ships, it keeps operating exactly the same.
What MS did is, act like Apple without being Apple. They called "death" of Windows Mobile 6.5 way too early. Just like the idiot Sony, owning the OS sources, kernel sources, having Nokia there in case something happens declared death/no updates of UIQ3 P1i. It is Sony, MS is not known for abandoning older operating systems and/or breaking compatibility. For example, I was very impressed when "Vista Basic" showed me GPU processing API update (windows platform upgrade) as a free download. That is something Apple would never do.
Of course, MS loves people to call Vista "dead" so they will upgrade to Windows 7 which is absolutely a service pack (just like Snow Leo/Plain Leo). Noticed them not defending Vista on any platform while we users (I use OS X here!) who really knows how latest generation of OS upgrades do?
If I used Windows mobile 6.5 and liked it, I wouldn't be upgrading to Windows 7 anytime soon since it is a damn premature OS compared to Windows Mobile 6.5. Somehow, people think there is some kind of "kill switch" which activates and their phone works worse when major OS upgrade happens. As a Symbian S60 V3 user which would stay on UIQ3 if Sony wasn't that dumb, I disagree.
If you like the OS you use, it can be fixed/secured with vendor updates or even security solutions/utilities, there is absolutely no reason to "upgrade". Especially on mobile operating systems which also requires an entire new device.
Don't forget the genius of killing a full feature mobile OS to compete with Apple iPhone and somehow managing to make iPhone users MAD before you even ship a working device.
"They made a funeral for my beloved mobile phone, lets pre-order their device."
It wouldn't change if the device in question was Symbian or Android. If you want to compete with a platform, don't troll their existing users for God's sake.
Here is just 2 examples which I can give as a Symbian user (so not following rest).
Nimbuzz: XMPP based, ultra reliable multi platform (more like massively multi) application which is famous/popular on almost all mobile platforms. It is clear that Nimbuzz like multi platform apps require significant work to be coded for Windows 7 mobile on a framework which doesn't really exist on any other platform. The usual "code the UI in C++, code the core in ultra portable C" trick doesn't work on Windows 7. Nobody would likely spare time to that unless MS magically manages to grab at least 10% market share. They are big deal since obviously, they have no issues with professional coding _and_ Windows/Microsoft themselves. Thanks to the premature call for EOL Windows mobile 6.5, they also had to declare the support for existing platform will be limited and no updates will be shipped. A great way to deal with people already using/liking MS Mobile Operating systems (yes,they exist).
Mozilla team: Declared they won't be supporting Windows 7 mobile. That is a big deal since we, Symbian users were closely following Mozilla mobile projects and flaming them for years as their actual, working browser shipped for Windows Mobile first. They had their very valid reasons (check below for gcc)
I understand most mobile developers like _standard_ tools, like gcc. They want to be able to use any operating system to develop&test. iPhone requires you XCode on Mac but XCode is still gcc, Apple wasn't stupid to break away from open source/standard toolchain. It is one of reasons why Nokia&partners spent hundreds of millions of dollars to open source Symbian and it is already becoming possible to develop for and even build the entire OS itself with GNU tools.
IMHO large companies/organizations should be watched by independent developers before they gamble their time for Windows Mobile 7 (or whatever Ballmer calls it). If you really want to struggle developing for a strange platform, Symbian^3/Qt could be a nice start.
Of course film industry knows how to record multi channel sound. It was just the horrific abuse of 5.1 sound system when DVDs first started to ship. Obviously, Lucas didn't do it. It was some other films.
With high technology, you can do Avatar 3D or some 3D junk which every thrown thing comes to audience face. That is the difference between current Dolby Digital 5.1 and the early DVD 5.1. Unfortunately, some are really fixated on things like "it is 5.1, so lets put music to right/left surround", "lets use LFE on each door sound" and it doesn't change.
Star Wars (in audio) and Avatar in 3D are great examples how to use the technology, not abuse it. I agree. Or, if you do your job well enough, a Dolby A 2nd generation copy could be called "reference record" to test $100K+ audio systems. I speak about Dark Side of the Moon, Alan Parson.
Everyone in civilized/democratic places, especially large businesses which are RIM's real market are watching these news.
If Blackberry is magically loved in those territories, it means they handed the keys to them and people will immediately think they are _already_ being watched for a long time.
I really think RIM should consider getting OUT of these markets instead of losing the image of secure communications. Once they lose it, it will be like a domino.
Look to Youtube, a certain country said "pull this video, pull that, setup office here, pay taxes". You know what Youtube did? Ignored! Don't they lose money/marketshare? Of course they do.
It is a closed system, that is where they lose. Nokia or Apple can say "hey, they are enabling SSL on IMAP, there is absolutely nothing we can do." RIM, as there is a central server, can't do it.
Remember "our media format does 5.1 sound" war coming from nowhere back in 2003 or so?
I just feel sorry for the artists. I remember Windows Media demos (direct from MS, perhaps they still exist?), Real Player demos and none of them told what the heck I am doing in MIDDLE of an orchestra in stage.
Hollywood has finally figured how to use 5.1 sound, some movies (even Oscar winning) can even sound "almost mono" but music industry could never figure how to use 5.1 sound. Of course, people buying "DTS audio" or "SACD" demanding every instrument coming from different speaker doesn't help.
The real problem is, you can't convince people to change the setup of 5.1 sound system they have nor you can convince them to buy an additional setup just for music. It would look funny too. 5 speakers together at front.
OK, let me put this way. How many billions of dollars does the contact lens industry and advanced laser surgery worth?
Here is the deal. There are people, who does risk their eyes to laser surgery or live the hassle of putting something directly to their eye every morning and take off every night.
So, you are telling me, people hating wearing glasses even while they can't SEE without them will pay thousands of dollars to wear new, absolutely out of style, absolutely heavy glasses to see some demo like movie without a script at their home.
I am all for 3D but, please don't talk about glasses to me. Ask a friend about the horrifying papers they had to sign before getting surgery, just not to wear glasses.
Avatar got such massive success because it was one of the first 3D movies who didn't really exploit 3D in childish way. Cameron used 3D for "depth" and made absolutely sure that it will be a good experience in 2D too.
That is why Avatar Blu-Rays (non 3D) broke sale records and said to be the real take off for Blu Ray. Its DVD sells well too.
Slashdot Mirror
I know it happens all the time.. but I strongly believe that business shouldn't get involved in politics, and politics should not get involved in business.
Because of the strong opposition from especially the USA, Wikileaks has become a political faction (rather than just media)... the line between media and politics is thin anyway.
so, it's a good decision for Amazon to break all ties with Wikileaks. It's just that the timing makes it a political decision in itself.
The USA growled so loudly about wikileaks that a lot of organisations that wouldn't care about it now chose that it's wiser to be against wikileaks.
Now everyone will think twice about the fancy sounding "cloud" services and off loading their stuff to them.
The real hit will be e-book services they provide. Nobody would want to be recorded/archived by an entity who disrupts such a publicly known service with a single phone call.
I will be a total troll when I see any open source (in spirit of FSF) uses Amazon services especially s3.
So, if USA growls loudly at BBC, it will also 'become a political faction' and can be cut off from the Internet by all USA ISPs?
BBC is a real interesting entity, they were even blamed by "iron lady" herself for serving enemy interests in _active_ war. E.g. people firing to each other, not cold war BS.
I think USA should consult with UK PM before doing such action. Funny is, it is nearly impossible to "stop" BBC. At last resort, they boot their SW transmitters which were very carefully placed.
Another thing is, we speak about some kind of prestige that actual active enemies of UK, actual terrorists fighting against UK choose for sending their declarations.
If Amazon can handle such a public disaster, what kind of `other favours` can they do or already do behind closed doors?
Let me be more clear. They have a device that is completely closed, even a pdf must pass from device software and mega ironically we already know it is under _their_ control as they could wipe 1984 over there.
For example, I got a French designed e-book reader which is powered by Linux/Open Source and can also do DRM commercial books using Adobe DRM. So, a little company can do it but Amazon can't? Of course that design has a flaw (!), it can't be tracked that easily as there are multiple stores and accepts standard epub.
Also does Amazon "cloud" use any FSF/GPL software? As free software is way more than "saving couple of bucks", GPL software has very specific terms that you can't deny its usage to anyone, including "enemies".
ps to Assange if he reads this: (attempt to) Publish the entire archive in e-book format, via Amazon kindle store. Let people see their real faces, their customers especially.
Well that's the issue, it's NOT supposed to be removable storage. Even if it didn't "break" teh card it still wouldn't be general purpose removable storage. The phone reformats the card along with the internal storage to create a single Volume, kind of like a RAID mirror. Taking out the card would make you lose all your data, on both the card and the internal storage. The only reason it uses an SD card is because it's convenient to build, and it allows the different providers to use whatever size storage they want. In this phone, the SD card it not a user serviceable part.
What they do is what people suggested Symbian do for years. Extend the C: via OS X'es (and others) softraid "Concatenated" disk scheme.
There is a nice (!) side effect of doing it, if one of disks are missing/corrupt from the set, it is not different from removing physical part of a real disk. Obviously you should use mirrored raid disks to build that set. ZFS being able to do such things natively without such weird mad scientist ways was one of the main (if not only) reasons why Apple was interested in ZFS.
Of course, Apple has entirely documented their filesystem even in open source so, the comparison ends there.
Say what now?.... If this is even possible there is something really wrong with the SD card in question...
Say what now?.... If this is even possible there is something really wrong with the SD card in question...
SD cards are designed for FAT16/FAT32 ordinary (human) file usage and sadly exFAT (they didn't get their lesson) formats with ordinary files being added/removed in a "human" basis, not automatic basis.
The trick here is the inner working of FAT where the filesystem is extremely basic and there isn't really much going on chip level when file operations take place. Deleting a file is just removing first letter of filename as far as I remember. It is couple of bytes being overwritten.
What MS did is, put a gigantic file on the memory card, not allowing chips to do their tricks (wear levelling) and add a random (it didn't have to be random!) password to mount it.
Why? Let me tell you why. Media sharing and easy backups on any operating system that reads/writes FAT (read:all). Find a person uses Nokia smart phone (or even S40), from phone's main menu there is "remove memory card" option. Use it, it will eject. That is also the point to guys who claims it is not common to remove memory card. It IS! Put it into a $10 (cheaper exist but dangerous) SD card reader. Click on "Music" directory, start playing the music on your desktop or even other brand phone.
Does your files have issues? E.g. phone reboots while reading a specific file? run chkdsk E: (generally) /f /r . Using OS X and need a backup or even duplicate? Run diskutility (dd on linux) and create image. Suspect there is a virus? Run virus check.
Reading other comments (not yours), I really started to suspect there is really something grey going on with MS Phone 7 PR team...
You know what? If a page takes 200 milliseconds longer to run because JS performance isn't quite as fast who cares?
None of these browser speed wars addresses the problem that when I watch Hulu on machines that aren't top-of-the-line state-of-the-art, the video is jumpy often to the point of unwatchability.
My pipe is fat enough and the computers I'm using can do fullscreen video just fine. It's Flash, especially on Linux, that kills performance. Most video sites still use Flash, as do a lot of those fun little games, etc., and the only only alternative to Flash in most cases is to go without the site or functionality. Flash is what makes web browsing slow. Every other performance issue is like line noise in comparison.
Old times, when some company abandons/will abandon your computer/OS or you can't decide whether to join the herd (windows) or run linux/BSD, you always had Firefox at your mind. You would think it would have Firefox support and would run it one way or another.
Now, they dropped PowerPC binaries (because their cool looking addressbar not working) and speak about dropping anything below SSE3. Publicly that is...
Code is being infested by completely unportable x86 specific ASM to join cool kids with JS asm acceleration.
If they weren't afraid of Win32 users, they would drop X86 32bit in no time because 64bit runs 20% faster!" and they will have great fan feedback from idiots who have no clue about anything other than 64bit is faster.
Does Adobe support PowerPC? Yes they do. They have to do massive trickery on OS X (not hacks) but they do. Your Flash is probably slow because it doesn't do GPU decoding. If you use Linux, Adobe has a weird excuse. If you use OS X, they have a very good/justified excuse as Apple refused to add a central GPU decoding framework open to others (not private) until OS X 10.6.3. Running 10.5.8 on a production machine you can't update? Bad luck.
In other news, OS X PowerPC was dropped and there is also a crazy talk about dropping anything=SSE3. They really lost the design philosophy of Firefox or anything Mozilla. What happened to portability especially when nobody likes their mobile offerings? How many times they must learn to think outside X86 PC?
Firefox in speed race with a company who controls/knows about every single device they shipped (Apple) and another who can spend couple of billions of dollars in no time without even noticing it (Google).
As a person who knows and always respected Mozilla mission, I feel obliged to post this although I know what kind of karma suicide it is.
I really wonder what kind of management took over Mozilla. I remember old days these guys spending hours to make it run/compile on OS/2, dead desktop OS, not completely documented and stabilized one like OS X 10.5.8 PPC.
What about Atom CPUs Mozilla guys? Drop that too as it will make you score less in couple of benchmarks? I heard netbooks are outfashioned, perhaps you should drop them next to keep yourselves cool (!)
First of all, this is valid for all offerings. If a company claims to ship a website design/rapid development tool, a new codec, a container, check if they offer OS X support. E.g. a Quicktime output codec, Adobe tools plugins, plugins to popular website building tools. If they don't exist, it is safe to ignore.
Next, take OS X as reference as it doesn't have claimed quirks of Linux. Does it have exactly same plugin support? Do users care? I suggest OS X as example because Linux has these great excuses by plugin developers. For example adding DRM, h264 becomes big deal as excuse of lazy developers and clueless companies while Linux users happily installs Adobe Flash plugin which has same potential political issues.
So, World's nr1 designer choice of OS with a huge company and a strict roadmap to rely on doesn't have Silverlight functionality as equal to Windows one. It really required that blog to figure that it is a failed attempt to kill Flash?
Moonlight works ok.
Mono is not at feature parity with Silverlight. I don`t even talk about non existing developer and designer environment for Linux/OS X/BSD.
Even MS admits that Silverlight may not be really cross platform as once envisioned and you Mono/Moonlight/Icaza fans still mention Moonlight.
For industry (if they took SL serious, silverlight is whatever offered at MS Windows Update, which is version 4 or something now.
I'd be interested to see who would host something like that.
if I had the bandwidth for a good price, I'd consider it.
If Yahoo was run by sane people, instead of issuing halt command, they could keep on hosting it. It wouldn't cost a dime.
Or, if they were nice, they could also transfer subdomain to archive.org and donate some machines to carry it. That is in case if they want to play Steve Jobs instead of actually thinking like him. Steve Jobs didn't destroy old macs, he donated them to museum.
It is absolutely static html with very simple cgi scripts (if exists), it doesn't cost anything to host it. That is the part that makes me mad and the fact that trivial to compress them.
For the "blink" tag elite geniuses... Archaeology and history sciences would be in very different place if people from 300-400 years ago were unwise to erase "lame graffiti" all over the historic places. Europeans of dark ages were more clever than today's "it is lame, lets delete it" elite it seems.
Um, more like overexposed to hell. The camera basically can't regulate exposure if that's the case.
I don't think anyone picking up iPhone 4 instead of devices like Nokia N8 does really care about exposure issues.
By N8, I don't really say/buy "omg 12mpixels", I speak about these
http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/11458_Nokia_N8_image_and_video_sampl.php
Basically, nobody other than Apple has any right to ship a device with an obvious issue.
Nokia almost crashed because of underpowered N97. It is just -kind of- being fixed with Nokia N8 and CEO etc. changes.
MS gave up the entire Windows Mobile and started from zero with Windows 7. That is the company who is still rumored to keep some code from Windows 95 all the way to Windows 7.
If a manufacturer like HTC does ship something buggy/problematic, they have no cult to apologize for them or flame others. Nokia thought it actually had such fan base and saw the sad truth with N97 and hundred billion dollars of lost value.
These manufacturers and software vendors (MS Win 7, Symbian, MeeGo) actually knows they will go under if they do same mistake couple of times in row so they could be forced to code/design better.
Fix it before you ship it.
If I was working at Apple or even boss of it, I would not care that much.
Did it flop because of it? No, it basically sold even more after the amazing amount of PR and fan apologies.
If you look deeper, the childish removal of Flash, Java etc. It all makes sense when you have 99% of customer base reasoning and actually fighting with other people to defend your decisions.
How many iPhones were returned because of antenna issues? Dare to have a guess?
XPS shows everything wrong with MS, even with a rival (!) like Adobe.
They come up with a "document" standard and yet they didn't even ship a viewer (let alone some virtual printer) for OS X. I am not even mentioning Linux support which is big deal on corporate. I don't want to cost anyone their job at that weirdo company so not giving any examples but it seems, they do create a lot of docs on OS X, export to PDF (or PS), re-export to XPS on a Windows machine/bot.
That is supposed to be Microsoft's answer to PDF. Just imagine if XPS really replaced PDF. It wouldn't be a nice day for anyone not using Windows on Desktop/Mobile. I am not even sure if there is an official XPS viewer for Windows 7 Mobile.
I got creative friends and imagine my surprise when I find out about "Expression" software, as I am not in that segment, I asked them and they -too- didn't have a clue about that software. They had a good laugh when they heard they are supposed to use "that thing" (their words) to do work for Silverlight. You know, in dream World of MS (and Ballmer), designers even use MS Visual Studio and OS X using designers install Eclipse to do Silverlight. Yea, right.
I was wondering around on Youtube. Some teen star got amazing amount of views and he is constantly attacked by some self made gang. As there was nothing else to do and Youtube's "live comments" really may look like some genuine sitcom, I kept watching.
There were were mysterious people around, who should not be a teen boy stars fans and shouldn't be hanging around on particular video's comments. When I saw one trying to set some deeper conversation with some teen/kid (naturally), I had to say "careful, lots of strange things happening over comments" and that idiot went off.
If there were couple of Sheriffs or cops around to figure the same thing (and they are pros, let me remind) and those perverts figured they were probably watching or even setting up traps for them, they wouldn't try to talk some 12 year old girls about their personal life.
Let me remind you, these people are mentally sick, they aren't stupid or morons. People always confuse the sick with stupid.
If this thing doesn't run, even without the fancy GPU acceleration on XP, it means the web developers will still develop/test for IE 7/8. So, they won't use any of promised HTML5 features including HTML5/h264 video.
Degrade politely, browser capability detection etc. are meaningless. They don't do it. Basic as that.
If MS really wanted to compete, they would make it compatible with XP. Here comes the never ending saga of IE 7/8 updates/compatibility issues.
Windows 7 seems to look like a poster child for "how portable .NET is". Speak to Windows 6.x users, they are really really frustrated.
Windows 6.5 does multi task, can be developed in any language, it has amazing amount of development options, "deep level running" software such as Antivirus/Firewall are in very mature levels now.
You are right about "newer API and kernel calls" for Desktop operating systems but, lets say you are a guy who just cares about reading/smalltime editing office files, checking IMAP mail, little web browsing, IM. You don't need to "upgrade" (including device) to a new OS. Your device doesn't flip over and die because "windows 7" ships, it keeps operating exactly the same.
What MS did is, act like Apple without being Apple. They called "death" of Windows Mobile 6.5 way too early. Just like the idiot Sony, owning the OS sources, kernel sources, having Nokia there in case something happens declared death/no updates of UIQ3 P1i. It is Sony, MS is not known for abandoning older operating systems and/or breaking compatibility. For example, I was very impressed when "Vista Basic" showed me GPU processing API update (windows platform upgrade) as a free download. That is something Apple would never do.
Of course, MS loves people to call Vista "dead" so they will upgrade to Windows 7 which is absolutely a service pack (just like Snow Leo/Plain Leo).
Noticed them not defending Vista on any platform while we users (I use OS X here!) who really knows how latest generation of OS upgrades do?
If I used Windows mobile 6.5 and liked it, I wouldn't be upgrading to Windows 7 anytime soon since it is a damn premature OS compared to Windows Mobile 6.5. Somehow, people think there is some kind of "kill switch" which activates and their phone works worse when major OS upgrade happens. As a Symbian S60 V3 user which would stay on UIQ3 if Sony wasn't that dumb, I disagree.
If you like the OS you use, it can be fixed/secured with vendor updates or even security solutions/utilities, there is absolutely no reason to "upgrade". Especially on mobile operating systems which also requires an entire new device.
Don't forget the genius of killing a full feature mobile OS to compete with Apple iPhone and somehow managing to make iPhone users MAD before you even ship a working device.
"They made a funeral for my beloved mobile phone, lets pre-order their device."
It wouldn't change if the device in question was Symbian or Android. If you want to compete with a platform, don't troll their existing users for God's sake.
Here is just 2 examples which I can give as a Symbian user (so not following rest).
Nimbuzz: XMPP based, ultra reliable multi platform (more like massively multi) application which is famous/popular on almost all mobile platforms. It is clear that Nimbuzz like multi platform apps require significant work to be coded for Windows 7 mobile on a framework which doesn't really exist on any other platform. The usual "code the UI in C++, code the core in ultra portable C" trick doesn't work on Windows 7. Nobody would likely spare time to that unless MS magically manages to grab at least 10% market share. They are big deal since obviously, they have no issues with professional coding _and_ Windows/Microsoft themselves. Thanks to the premature call for EOL Windows mobile 6.5, they also had to declare the support for existing platform will be limited and no updates will be shipped. A great way to deal with people already using/liking MS Mobile Operating systems (yes,they exist).
Mozilla team: Declared they won't be supporting Windows 7 mobile. That is a big deal since we, Symbian users were closely following Mozilla mobile projects and flaming them for years as their actual, working browser shipped for Windows Mobile first. They had their very valid reasons (check below for gcc)
I understand most mobile developers like _standard_ tools, like gcc. They want to be able to use any operating system to develop&test. iPhone requires you XCode on Mac but XCode is still gcc, Apple wasn't stupid to break away from open source/standard toolchain. It is one of reasons why Nokia&partners spent hundreds of millions of dollars to open source Symbian and it is already becoming possible to develop for and even build the entire OS itself with GNU tools.
IMHO large companies/organizations should be watched by independent developers before they gamble their time for Windows Mobile 7 (or whatever Ballmer calls it). If you really want to struggle developing for a strange platform, Symbian^3/Qt could be a nice start.
Of course film industry knows how to record multi channel sound. It was just the horrific abuse of 5.1 sound system when DVDs first started to ship. Obviously, Lucas didn't do it. It was some other films.
With high technology, you can do Avatar 3D or some 3D junk which every thrown thing comes to audience face. That is the difference between current Dolby Digital 5.1 and the early DVD 5.1. Unfortunately, some are really fixated on things like "it is 5.1, so lets put music to right/left surround", "lets use LFE on each door sound" and it doesn't change.
Star Wars (in audio) and Avatar in 3D are great examples how to use the technology, not abuse it. I agree. Or, if you do your job well enough, a Dolby A 2nd generation copy could be called "reference record" to test $100K+ audio systems. I speak about Dark Side of the Moon, Alan Parson.
Everyone in civilized/democratic places, especially large businesses which are RIM's real market are watching these news.
If Blackberry is magically loved in those territories, it means they handed the keys to them and people will immediately think they are _already_ being watched for a long time.
I really think RIM should consider getting OUT of these markets instead of losing the image of secure communications. Once they lose it, it will be like a domino.
Look to Youtube, a certain country said "pull this video, pull that, setup office here, pay taxes". You know what Youtube did? Ignored! Don't they lose money/marketshare? Of course they do.
It is a closed system, that is where they lose. Nokia or Apple can say "hey, they are enabling SSL on IMAP, there is absolutely nothing we can do." RIM, as there is a central server, can't do it.
It is always and always about open standards.
Remember "our media format does 5.1 sound" war coming from nowhere back in 2003 or so?
I just feel sorry for the artists. I remember Windows Media demos (direct from MS, perhaps they still exist?), Real Player demos and none of them told what the heck I am doing in MIDDLE of an orchestra in stage.
Hollywood has finally figured how to use 5.1 sound, some movies (even Oscar winning) can even sound "almost mono" but music industry could never figure how to use 5.1 sound. Of course, people buying "DTS audio" or "SACD" demanding every instrument coming from different speaker doesn't help.
The real problem is, you can't convince people to change the setup of 5.1 sound system they have nor you can convince them to buy an additional setup just for music. It would look funny too. 5 speakers together at front.
OK, let me put this way. How many billions of dollars does the contact lens industry and advanced laser surgery worth?
Here is the deal. There are people, who does risk their eyes to laser surgery or live the hassle of putting something directly to their eye every morning and take off every night.
So, you are telling me, people hating wearing glasses even while they can't SEE without them will pay thousands of dollars to wear new, absolutely out of style, absolutely heavy glasses to see some demo like movie without a script at their home.
I am all for 3D but, please don't talk about glasses to me. Ask a friend about the horrifying papers they had to sign before getting surgery, just not to wear glasses.
Avatar got such massive success because it was one of the first 3D movies who didn't really exploit 3D in childish way. Cameron used 3D for "depth" and made absolutely sure that it will be a good experience in 2D too.
That is why Avatar Blu-Rays (non 3D) broke sale records and said to be the real take off for Blu Ray. Its DVD sells well too.