Are these guys stone mad? I'd hate to be at the mercy of the dreaded NO CARRIER message while writing some stuff. I totally don't get this obsession with doing everything through a browser when locally run stuff is much faster, more reliable and you don't need to block the ads.
But if you're trying to appeal to the hip metrosexual expensive coffee drinking iPhone using crowd then by all means use web apps exclusively, preferably from a Mac
The future is web based. Endless bloat, inefficient javascript and the latency of accessing remote systems. Why will people accept such a system? because a lot of people never learned to use a desktop, they learned how to use a web browser. Anything outside the web browser looks complicated to them.
There is also the fact that web-based is the new way of making money from software. No piracy since its mostly server-side, lace it with ads and nobody complains about adware. Give it a few years and ads will no longer be served up by dedicated domains you can easily block.
If client side desktop computing is to survive the interface has to become more iPhony. Ordinary folk love the touchy feeley colourful, childish looking animated interface of the iPhone so the future is in projects like Hildon. I personally hate the iPhone's interface but thats alright, if its Linux or BSD I'll just install a minimalist window manager which there should always be plenty of.
the iphone's interface is fairly limited in what it can do. no background apps for example, its oversimplified for the sake of bringing it to the mass market of people who wouldn't buy expensive phones otherwise. Shiny effects for the "wow factor" but I don't need those.
Imagine if instead of some fancy scrolling or drop-down effect the phone did absolutely nothing for the same length of time as the effect would take. It would probably make you angry because it slows you down. An effect is similar - like a window redraw you have to wait until it's complete before you can continue. I would rather have things respond instantly - i don't like fooling myself. Its electronics and should concentrate on doing everything fast rather than trying to emulate the mechanical limitations of real life.
Touch screen is also a hugely overrated input mechanism - touch screens have been around for decades and if they were really that great there would be no mouse and keyboard now. Even if your user interface is completely optimised for the touch screen it will still be slower and less precise than using a mouse, touch-pad or clitmouse.
The USA is a vast land with lots of empty space where as England has around 80 million people shoved into a tiny space, lots of cramped little towns and therefore its easier and cheaper to install a high-speed network. Korea is similar - 80% mountain and then lots of very densely populated towns filled with apartment blocks that are worth bringing FTTH services to.
Its all a trade off really, you can live in a densely populated region with no space and have fast internet or live in the country side where there is plenty of space, cheap land and unpolluted air and put up with slow DSL or wireless unless you have the money to lease 200Mbits of capacity from a satellite.
The good news for all you yanks stuck with 'slow' connections is that most Brits won't be able to get it either. Cable isn't available in any of the slightly rural places (Even inside the M25!) and all their traffic is analysed by MI5, MI6, The cops, the local council or any other government agency who wants to dig up dirt on them.
Why don't they just make an operating system that is nothing more than a browser? No command line, traditional kernel, file system just a browser written in assembly and a SQLite database that stores all the browser settings and maybe a few small files like your credit card details on a small SSD.
If they do this, then maybe just maybe your "netbook" will be able to load the bloated sites of the interweb in 2 years time
I would have done all my tests through VNC in the toilet while reading the answers I scribbled onto the wall the day before
Yea i know i could just store them on my computer but that doesn't have the same rebellious effect as defacing the walls with them
ya see that way I would have got into a posh college and I'd be surrounded by people with iPhones and doing hot chicks with preppy clothes and messy hair who drink expensive coffee.
The fact that these guys actually exist make me glad i'm not on facebook. Ya know facebook pretends to care about privacy all that but how can they keep that up when they have 150 paid staff who'se job it is to snoop through your stuffs?
there are so many other low-powered devices that will do so much more. like you could probably mod a router to run rtorrent and plenty of NAS already have torrent support. i have rtorrent running off a pico-itx board that also hosts my website,email,ftp,ssh,gopher,xmpp, a few python socket servers for random crap and if i had a script that would make me appear to be logged in on all those social networking sites 25/7 it would run this too.
having something that only supports bittorrent seems pretty limiting when you can have a fully featured unix CLI-based machine with plenty of room for expansion. but i said the same thing about a device that would "only play mp3's" in 2000
Great, this will add more auto-loading bloat to the web. Soon even your netbook will need a Core 3 Octo and 80GB of RAM to get by without crashing.
Its disappointing to see a company that has sworn by minimalism since 1998 now going out of its way to make the web altogether more bloated. Of course they are trying to topple client-side computing and therefore Microsoft by rewriting the world in JavaScript
Having everything web-based is just the new way of making money from software. If a fat client had Google ads on the side people would dismiss it as adware, if there were no ads they'd just pirate it. if they want web applications to catch on 3D support is a must. I'd say by the time Google are finished trying to extend HTTP/HTML and JavaScript it will be such a mess that it won't be worth using anymore.
Really google should write a good client for remotely run applications rather than trying to extend web browsers to do it because browsers are by their design a piss-poor choice for any of the slightly more complicated applications
Except SMS is actually limited to 160 7-bit characters. or less if you use unicode. Most phones have a standardised feature to string multiple SMS together into one. So twitter can't even be used to send a full-sized SMS, pfft
Since everyone is getting rid of DRM anyway would it not be a good idea to drop the SD standard altogether and continue where MMC left off? a bit like the way Sony are getting rid of MagicGate
SD is just a RIAA-approved version of MMC with extra DRM features added. Maybe I'm just a bitter old sod but I find this continuation of the SD standard and it's DRM suspicious, perhaps they are waiting for a good time to re-introduce DRM on a massive scale and since every SD card ever made already supports it they will have no problem implementing it
I bet most the supposedly hardcore RIAA-hater nutjobs don't even realise SD has the built in DRM. They have been selling DRM-enabled cards for about 10 years now and just because the SD DRM hasn't seen any widespread use nobody batts an eyelid.
If you go in saying you won't compete with any of the traditional broadband providers you are likely to have a lot less trouble gaining licenses and that sort of thing. This goes for any country that's ruled by lobbyists.
If you go in saying you want to destroy AT&T and Comcast you will have every legislator, regulator and special interest group going out of their way to make life hard for you.
I did see some oddball manufacturer's "netbook" (a type of laptop formerly known as a subnotebook or UMPC before the Web 2.0 craze) in the Car phone warehouse lately. So its probably more like 97 or 96%.
And I HATE web apps with a vile and bitter passion. Because there is nothing quite like the inefficiency of sending a bunch of text mostly redundant to a server in another continent & waiting for a reply.
The main reason people use web apps these days is because they are too damn lazy to close / minimise that damned browser and open something else
I did not buy this fancy Dual Core(tm) thing so I could use a web app. I want it to be good and responsive, not waiting for a reply from a server across the pond.
This is great for the likes of vodafone who charge outrageous amounts for 'mobile data' since its now illegal to just use the wifi on my phone to connect to a nearby house and get my emails. IF they send out the message that it is illegal to use open wifi I'm sure plenty of law obiding suckers will sign up with vodafone for a data plan.
If I use someone elses bandwidth, they don't have a download limit and their line wasn't saturated they havn't "lost" anything. so what are they complaining about? Its unlicensed spectrum. if my signal falls onto their router they can't complain about it.
Slashdot Mirror
Are these guys stone mad? I'd hate to be at the mercy of the dreaded NO CARRIER message while writing some stuff. I totally don't get this obsession with doing everything through a browser when locally run stuff is much faster, more reliable and you don't need to block the ads.
But if you're trying to appeal to the hip metrosexual expensive coffee drinking iPhone using crowd then by all means use web apps exclusively, preferably from a Mac
The future is web based. Endless bloat, inefficient javascript and the latency of accessing remote systems. Why will people accept such a system? because a lot of people never learned to use a desktop, they learned how to use a web browser. Anything outside the web browser looks complicated to them.
There is also the fact that web-based is the new way of making money from software. No piracy since its mostly server-side, lace it with ads and nobody complains about adware. Give it a few years and ads will no longer be served up by dedicated domains you can easily block.
If client side desktop computing is to survive the interface has to become more iPhony. Ordinary folk love the touchy feeley colourful, childish looking animated interface of the iPhone so the future is in projects like Hildon. I personally hate the iPhone's interface but thats alright, if its Linux or BSD I'll just install a minimalist window manager which there should always be plenty of.
the iphone's interface is fairly limited in what it can do. no background apps for example, its oversimplified for the sake of bringing it to the mass market of people who wouldn't buy expensive phones otherwise. Shiny effects for the "wow factor" but I don't need those.
Imagine if instead of some fancy scrolling or drop-down effect the phone did absolutely nothing for the same length of time as the effect would take. It would probably make you angry because it slows you down. An effect is similar - like a window redraw you have to wait until it's complete before you can continue. I would rather have things respond instantly - i don't like fooling myself. Its electronics and should concentrate on doing everything fast rather than trying to emulate the mechanical limitations of real life.
Touch screen is also a hugely overrated input mechanism - touch screens have been around for decades and if they were really that great there would be no mouse and keyboard now. Even if your user interface is completely optimised for the touch screen it will still be slower and less precise than using a mouse, touch-pad or clitmouse.
If the same kind trend applies for Windows there will likely be a large percentage of people using it in 2099
The USA is a vast land with lots of empty space where as England has around 80 million people shoved into a tiny space, lots of cramped little towns and therefore its easier and cheaper to install a high-speed network. Korea is similar - 80% mountain and then lots of very densely populated towns filled with apartment blocks that are worth bringing FTTH services to.
Its all a trade off really, you can live in a densely populated region with no space and have fast internet or live in the country side where there is plenty of space, cheap land and unpolluted air and put up with slow DSL or wireless unless you have the money to lease 200Mbits of capacity from a satellite.
The good news for all you yanks stuck with 'slow' connections is that most Brits won't be able to get it either. Cable isn't available in any of the slightly rural places (Even inside the M25!) and all their traffic is analysed by MI5, MI6, The cops, the local council or any other government agency who wants to dig up dirt on them.
she's real alright. just not her tits
Why don't they just make an operating system that is nothing more than a browser? No command line, traditional kernel, file system just a browser written in assembly and a SQLite database that stores all the browser settings and maybe a few small files like your credit card details on a small SSD.
If they do this, then maybe just maybe your "netbook" will be able to load the bloated sites of the interweb in 2 years time
soon slashdot users will be harvested for their ink :)
I would have done all my tests through VNC in the toilet while reading the answers I scribbled onto the wall the day before
Yea i know i could just store them on my computer but that doesn't have the same rebellious effect as defacing the walls with them
ya see that way I would have got into a posh college and I'd be surrounded by people with iPhones and doing hot chicks with preppy clothes and messy hair who drink expensive coffee.
The fact that these guys actually exist make me glad i'm not on facebook. Ya know facebook pretends to care about privacy all that but how can they keep that up when they have 150 paid staff who'se job it is to snoop through your stuffs?
I'll have to upgrade to gigabit ethernet to get that last megabit out of it :)
there are so many other low-powered devices that will do so much more. like you could probably mod a router to run rtorrent and plenty of NAS already have torrent support. i have rtorrent running off a pico-itx board that also hosts my website,email,ftp,ssh,gopher,xmpp, a few python socket servers for random crap and if i had a script that would make me appear to be logged in on all those social networking sites 25/7 it would run this too.
having something that only supports bittorrent seems pretty limiting when you can have a fully featured unix CLI-based machine with plenty of room for expansion. but i said the same thing about a device that would "only play mp3's" in 2000
Great, this will add more auto-loading bloat to the web. Soon even your netbook will need a Core 3 Octo and 80GB of RAM to get by without crashing.
Its disappointing to see a company that has sworn by minimalism since 1998 now going out of its way to make the web altogether more bloated. Of course they are trying to topple client-side computing and therefore Microsoft by rewriting the world in JavaScript
Having everything web-based is just the new way of making money from software. If a fat client had Google ads on the side people would dismiss it as adware, if there were no ads they'd just pirate it. if they want web applications to catch on 3D support is a must. I'd say by the time Google are finished trying to extend HTTP/HTML and JavaScript it will be such a mess that it won't be worth using anymore.
Really google should write a good client for remotely run applications rather than trying to extend web browsers to do it because browsers are by their design a piss-poor choice for any of the slightly more complicated applications
Except SMS is actually limited to 160 7-bit characters. or less if you use unicode. Most phones have a standardised feature to string multiple SMS together into one. So twitter can't even be used to send a full-sized SMS, pfft
Those HP Logo's could have been solar cells and it would have actually got to 60 rather than close to it
Since everyone is getting rid of DRM anyway would it not be a good idea to drop the SD standard altogether and continue where MMC left off? a bit like the way Sony are getting rid of MagicGate
SD is just a RIAA-approved version of MMC with extra DRM features added. Maybe I'm just a bitter old sod but I find this continuation of the SD standard and it's DRM suspicious, perhaps they are waiting for a good time to re-introduce DRM on a massive scale and since every SD card ever made already supports it they will have no problem implementing it
I bet most the supposedly hardcore RIAA-hater nutjobs don't even realise SD has the built in DRM. They have been selling DRM-enabled cards for about 10 years now and just because the SD DRM hasn't seen any widespread use nobody batts an eyelid.
I wonder what these 'substances' that are so abundant in Gaza are normally used for.
If you go in saying you won't compete with any of the traditional broadband providers you are likely to have a lot less trouble gaining licenses and that sort of thing. This goes for any country that's ruled by lobbyists. If you go in saying you want to destroy AT&T and Comcast you will have every legislator, regulator and special interest group going out of their way to make life hard for you.
I did see some oddball manufacturer's "netbook" (a type of laptop formerly known as a subnotebook or UMPC before the Web 2.0 craze) in the Car phone warehouse lately. So its probably more like 97 or 96%.
I've had 4 hard drives fail on me in the past year and a half so I for one welcome our new SSD-based overlords
My laptop and server already run off SSD and with any decent bit of wear-leveling it is near impossible to wear out a SSD.
And I HATE web apps with a vile and bitter passion. Because there is nothing quite like the inefficiency of sending a bunch of text mostly redundant to a server in another continent & waiting for a reply.
The main reason people use web apps these days is because they are too damn lazy to close / minimise that damned browser and open something else
I did not buy this fancy Dual Core(tm) thing so I could use a web app. I want it to be good and responsive, not waiting for a reply from a server across the pond.
I don't believe in Santa anyway
I first thought it said 25 years of pron
Isn't UCLA the place where that kid got tasered 6 times by a cop?
This is great for the likes of vodafone who charge outrageous amounts for 'mobile data' since its now illegal to just use the wifi on my phone to connect to a nearby house and get my emails. IF they send out the message that it is illegal to use open wifi I'm sure plenty of law obiding suckers will sign up with vodafone for a data plan.
If I use someone elses bandwidth, they don't have a download limit and their line wasn't saturated they havn't "lost" anything. so what are they complaining about? Its unlicensed spectrum. if my signal falls onto their router they can't complain about it.