> It was one egg-in-face moment when Microsoft announced that Google doesn't guarantee your data is stored locally, then realized the same applied to it.
You can stay off the cloud with Microsoft Office and run your own Sharepoint, Exchange for collaboration. Google doesn't offer such a solution. So I don't know what's the egg-in-face about it.
When Vista came out I bought an iMac. When Windows 8 comes out, I'm buying a Raspberry Pi.
Why would Windows 8 cause you to stop using your iMac? Are you saying that if Windows 8 never ships you'll never buy a Raspberry Pi? If you're currently on an iMac, why does a release of Windows affect your purchasing decisions at all?
Because it's the in thing on Slashdot to slag on MS and makes you look cool to the crowd and gets you karma. I automatically tune out when I see 'M$' because I know it's a lame kid trying to look cool and logic won't apply.
>which it probably is, on the basis that it's so unpopular that no one as yet has cared enough to crack it
Netflix moves a huge amount of video on the web, so I doubt it's that unpopular. Most people seem to be accessing it on their TVs, XBoxes and Roku style set top boxes though.
On top of that, who wants to rip Netflix streams when you can get way better quality on the Bittorrent version?
>Last I checked, IE was steadily losing market share despite being the default browser on 90+ percent of computers sold so obviously people do care about alternative as I highly doubt 50 percent of the market (people not using IE) can all be described as techies.
90+ percent? No way. First, in Europe, there's the browser ballot. Second, Google pays OEMs a pretty penny to ship Chrome on their PCs.
Not to mention that Google pays to get Chrome bundled with a lot of software, like Flash,Acrobat, Skype(till MS bought it) etc. A lot of non techie people's computers that I ahd installed Firefox on suddenly started using Chrome. When I asked they said they didn't install it. I guess this explains why Chrome is taking away browser share from FF too(just geeks doesn't explain it).
> Also, many iPhone jailbreaks have been done through browser exploits and since there isn't any real alternative on iOS, the situation of only having Safari and Safari skinned browsers is actually worse for security.
>Not only that but Chrome books actually has a trivial way for you to "hack" the device itself (you open the battery and flip a switch) which would allow you to install whatever you want on it.
Flipping that switch does not allow you to install native programs on you Chrome OS, it just allows you to load a different OS.
From their docs:
Show a scary warning that its software cannot be trusted, since a command line shell is enabled (press Ctrl-D or wait 30 seconds to dismiss). Erase all personal data on the "stateful partition" (i.e., user accounts and settings - no worries, though, since all data is in the cloud!). Make you wait between 5 and 10 minutes while it erases the data.
>Can you even imagine Apple or Microsoft providing consumers with that same option for any device they sell? No.
Last I heard you could dual boot any PCs or Macbooks to Linux or Windows without having to erase your OS X/Windows data.
Locking down the system removes a lot of incentive for making the alternative app in the first place.
Where can you get Firefox for your jailbroken iPad? (I do know there was a preliminary attempt at a port for Cydia, but it has since been abandoned due to lack of interest).
My iPhone lets me choose from Safari and dozens of different skins of Safari
Not just that but I heard Apple is going to open up iOS to Android magazine apps. For the first time, iOS users will be allowed to read about alternative platforms!
>Google is a far more serious threat to open computer systems than any other company, including Apple, Microsoft and IBM.
Not to say that they wouldn't do it if they could, I doubt that, just because Chromebooks suck. They sold very few and they were a huge flop.
"In June 2011, Acer and Samsung launched their Chromebooks ahead of other PC brand vendors, but by the end of July, Acer had reportedly only sold 5,000 units and Samsung was said to have had even lower sales than Acer, according to sources from the PC industry
No wonder Firefox is more worried about Windows RT. They think that the Microsoft tablets are going to sell in good numbers.
Actually, there's something to be said of Microsoft accusing google of being a "monopoly" and abusing, search, etc when microsoft is doing the *same* thing.
Not that it's mentioned anywhere.
What? I know you like to shit on Microsoft in every comment but what are you even blathering about? The integration with Bing search? You think Google will allow integration with Google search?
Where is the cake for Google, Microsoft? You love to send one to Mozilla every so often, why not Google? Look at how far they have come! Isn't it amazing? Wittle Goog all growed up!
What? No cake policy? Aw, you're just no fun now.
They stopped sending cakes to Mozilla when they switched to the fast release model for Firefox, once they realized that they were spending a million a quarter on cakes because of a Firefox version coming out every time someone sneezed.
How can Microsoft leverage desktop(which derives all it's power from Win32 apps like AutoCAD and Photoshop) when NONE of the ten million programs that currently run on Windows 7 will run on Windows RT ?
You mean if I don't like IE10 on my WinRT tablet I can't just go buy an iPad bundled with Safari?
Likewise, if I didn't like IE on my Windows 98 box, I could have just bought a Mac or a UNIX workstation. The U.S. government didn't see it that way.
Or you could have installed Netscape like I and a lot of others did. But Apple is totally banning any another browser engine from running at all. This is way worse than with Microsoft and Windows 98.
>First part of the definition of monopoly power is market share large enough to control the market. Within monopoly power, the consumer must not have suitable alternatives and the barrier to entry must be sufficiently high to preclude competition. This is not the tablet situation. You can get all sorts of different tablets today including Windows ones.
So Apple does not have monopoly power in tablets but Microsoft has?
Slashdot Mirror
Gimme a fucking break. What a load of horseshit.
Really? Read this from 2002 http://epic.org/privacy/consumer/microsoft/palladium.html
Apple basically implemented that in iOS.
> It was one egg-in-face moment when Microsoft announced that Google doesn't guarantee your data is stored locally, then realized the same applied to it.
You can stay off the cloud with Microsoft Office and run your own Sharepoint, Exchange for collaboration. Google doesn't offer such a solution. So I don't know what's the egg-in-face about it.
When Vista came out I bought an iMac.
When Windows 8 comes out, I'm buying a Raspberry Pi.
Why would Windows 8 cause you to stop using your iMac? Are you saying that if Windows 8 never ships you'll never buy a Raspberry Pi? If you're currently on an iMac, why does a release of Windows affect your purchasing decisions at all?
Because it's the in thing on Slashdot to slag on MS and makes you look cool to the crowd and gets you karma. I automatically tune out when I see 'M$' because I know it's a lame kid trying to look cool and logic won't apply.
"From what I understand, the actual minds at Netflix wanted a Linux product, "
IF it's on Android, it's on linux. It's trivial to move it over to the Linux platform and into a XBMC plugin.
It is the CEO of Netflix that hates Linux and linux users. Otherwise he would green light a XBMC plugin.
No,it was because RMS warned Hastings that he would bite him if DRM'ed streams ever came to Linux.
>which it probably is, on the basis that it's so unpopular that no one as yet has cared enough to crack it
Netflix moves a huge amount of video on the web, so I doubt it's that unpopular. Most people seem to be accessing it on their TVs, XBoxes and Roku style set top boxes though.
On top of that, who wants to rip Netflix streams when you can get way better quality on the Bittorrent version?
>Last I checked, IE was steadily losing market share despite being the default browser on 90+ percent of computers sold so obviously people do care about alternative as I highly doubt 50 percent of the market (people not using IE) can all be described as techies.
90+ percent? No way. First, in Europe, there's the browser ballot. Second, Google pays OEMs a pretty penny to ship Chrome on their PCs.
Not to mention that Google pays to get Chrome bundled with a lot of software, like Flash,Acrobat, Skype(till MS bought it) etc. A lot of non techie people's computers that I ahd installed Firefox on suddenly started using Chrome. When I asked they said they didn't install it. I guess this explains why Chrome is taking away browser share from FF too(just geeks doesn't explain it).
> Also, many iPhone jailbreaks have been done through browser exploits and since there isn't any real alternative on iOS, the situation of only having Safari and Safari skinned browsers is actually worse for security.
How many exploits? A couple many many years ago?
All mobile browsers, save for WP7, are WebKit.
Posted from my N9, using webkit.
There's Fennec from Mozilla, but yes, point taken.
>Not only that but Chrome books actually has a trivial way for you to "hack" the device itself (you open the battery and flip a switch) which would allow you to install whatever you want on it.
Flipping that switch does not allow you to install native programs on you Chrome OS, it just allows you to load a different OS.
From their docs:
Show a scary warning that its software cannot be trusted, since a command line shell is enabled (press Ctrl-D or wait 30 seconds to dismiss).
Erase all personal data on the "stateful partition" (i.e., user accounts and settings - no worries, though, since all data is in the cloud!).
Make you wait between 5 and 10 minutes while it erases the data.
>Can you even imagine Apple or Microsoft providing consumers with that same option for any device they sell? No.
Last I heard you could dual boot any PCs or Macbooks to Linux or Windows without having to erase your OS X/Windows data.
Locking down the system removes a lot of incentive for making the alternative app in the first place.
Where can you get Firefox for your jailbroken iPad? (I do know there was a preliminary attempt at a port for Cydia, but it has since been abandoned due to lack of interest).
My iPhone lets me choose from Safari and dozens of different skins of Safari
Not just that but I heard Apple is going to open up iOS to Android magazine apps. For the first time, iOS users will be allowed to read about alternative platforms!
>Google is a far more serious threat to open computer systems than any other company, including Apple, Microsoft and IBM.
Not to say that they wouldn't do it if they could, I doubt that, just because Chromebooks suck. They sold very few and they were a huge flop.
"In June 2011, Acer and Samsung launched their Chromebooks ahead of other PC brand vendors, but by the end of July, Acer had reportedly only sold 5,000 units and Samsung was said to have had even lower sales than Acer, according to sources from the PC industry
No wonder Firefox is more worried about Windows RT. They think that the Microsoft tablets are going to sell in good numbers.
Looks like you're the one spinning the story. The Microsoft blog post linked is from March 18 2012.
http://windowsteamblog.com/ie/b/ie/archive/2012/03/18/understanding-browser-usage-share-data.aspx
Actually, there's something to be said of Microsoft accusing google of being a "monopoly" and abusing, search, etc when microsoft is doing the *same* thing.
Not that it's mentioned anywhere.
What? I know you like to shit on Microsoft in every comment but what are you even blathering about? The integration with Bing search? You think Google will allow integration with Google search?
Photosynth lives on as a popular iOS app and on the web.
This is a research project, nothing like Google Wave or even Ping. Not everything that is researched needs to be a successful product.
Also, note to posters who keep calling bonch a MS shill, he's nothing like one. He's actually a anti-MS, anti-Google, pro-Apple shill.
Where is the cake for Google, Microsoft?
You love to send one to Mozilla every so often, why not Google? Look at how far they have come! Isn't it amazing? Wittle Goog all growed up!
What? No cake policy? Aw, you're just no fun now.
They stopped sending cakes to Mozilla when they switched to the fast release model for Firefox, once they realized that they were spending a million a quarter on cakes because of a Firefox version coming out every time someone sneezed.
I believe the same would hold for Chrome as well.
Poe's law states that you can't really tell the difference between someone being serious and a troll.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Poe's_Law
Relax, your parent poster was wrong. He's showing a screenshot of a different query.
"Best smartphone" vs. "Best cellphone ever".
The screenshot shows an answer for the "Best smartphone" which always came up with the joke.
If you had asked it for 'Best Cellphone ever' you used to get the Lumia, but Apple switched it a couple of days ago.
Different queries and they did change the answer recently.
How can Microsoft leverage desktop(which derives all it's power from Win32 apps like AutoCAD and Photoshop) when NONE of the ten million programs that currently run on Windows 7 will run on Windows RT ?
That's because Secure Boot is only a problem on Windows RT and not Windows 8.
iPad ships with a locked bootloader too.
Opera Mini runs on iPad because it runs Javascript on Opera's servers. It can also work in Windows RT if Opera ports it. It's a very limited browser.
Opera Mobile/Firefox/Chrome will only work on Android tablets because it executes Javascript on the device itself.
You seem to have an acute and chronic version of this:
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/09/07/25/1757253/linus-calls-microsoft-hatred-a-disease
You mean if I don't like IE10 on my WinRT tablet I can't just go buy an iPad bundled with Safari?
Likewise, if I didn't like IE on my Windows 98 box, I could have just bought a Mac or a UNIX workstation. The U.S. government didn't see it that way.
Or you could have installed Netscape like I and a lot of others did. But Apple is totally banning any another browser engine from running at all. This is way worse than with Microsoft and Windows 98.
>First part of the definition of monopoly power is market share large enough to control the market. Within monopoly power, the consumer must not have suitable alternatives and the barrier to entry must be sufficiently high to preclude competition. This is not the tablet situation. You can get all sorts of different tablets today including Windows ones.
So Apple does not have monopoly power in tablets but Microsoft has?
>They don't make a general purpose tablet.
>The tablets WinRT is going on WILL be general purpose tablets.
What's the distinction between Windows RT tablets and iPad that makes on general purpose and the other not?
Care to elaborate?