Anecdotal but I know an older gentleman who I used to help use a computer to scan in old photographs so that he could digitize them for his great-grandchildren. He always named the files and folders using capital letters because he said it made it easier for him to read them.
I wouldn't want to read a full paragraph of capital letters, mostly because my brain isn't trained to parse them very well, but for older people, it may be easier for them to read if all of the letters are capitalized. If I were to move far enough away from my monitor, I suspect that I would still be able to read words in all capitals whereas I would have a more difficult time reading the same sentence if it were properly using lowercase letters.
A good thought and it may be correct for the general population, but in my experience it may not be true for older folks. Older people might actually do better with the capital letters. Might make an interesting study for the transportation department.
Problem is that people get lazy and companies like Google keep gathering and analyzing more and more information. Do you use that handle anywhere else? As soon as that name gets tied to a particular email account they might already have enough information to figure out who you are, but even if they don't they can just see what else is associated with that email address.
You need to be incredibly paranoid in this day and age in order to avoid having something traced back to you. Look at how quickly 4chan can find someone with little more to go on that a youtube video of someone who did something that pissed off the collective users of the site. Computational power keeps getting cheaper and people don't seem to be getting any smarter and it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that in twenty years software will be sophisticated enough to do this by itself.
A basic Google search for that handle turns up a wikipedia user page using the same name. If I cared to I could read your previous posts and wikipedia activity to see if you're both the same person. From there I might find something else that gives me a few clues about your physical location or where you work. Hell, after following one link from the wikipedia page I might have your real name.
I could also be completely wrong and the wikipedia user page isn't you, but if I find something bad enough I could just assume it is you and not give you a job, etc. Hell, if you were bored enough you could probably figure out who I am too. Imagine what kind of resources a government either already has access to or will in the next ten years and even if you're incredibly careful they'll still be able to find you.
Considering it's HR would you actually want them working on the real problems? Given the ineptitude that permeates most HR departments, I'm thankful that they're not actually in charge of anything mission critical.
Another reason to wait is that a lot of games tend to be fairly buggy on release and this can siphon off a lot of joy. I bought Civilization V and while it's not a bad game and I haven't had to deal with crashes, the game balance is horribly off and it doesn't feel as polished as Civ IV with both expansions. I like the direction the game has taken, but it needs a lot of polish and the AI really needs to fixed. The computer is horrible at combat and seems to do other odd things such as acting perfectly friendly after I just finished burning one of their cities to the ground.
I don't think reading reviews bottom-up is the best method though. Just as some people will gush over a game, some have some kind of vendetta against it. I recall reading a review for a generally well-received game that was given an abysmally low score because the author felt that the games plot too closely mirrored a science fiction novel he had read decades ago and that therefore the game was a blatant ripoff. Personally, I prefer reading reviews that focus less on a score and more on talking about the game and comparing it to previous titles from the genre. I think a "buy now, wait a while, rent first, skip" scale would be completely adequate for reviews. A number scale is really meaningless, especially when the review numbers or inflated. For most organs anything less than an 8 means the game is probably not worth buying or even playing.
If this is an argument against completely unregulated actions without any personal consequence, that's fine, but there are plenty of pro-capitalism people who realize that the environment is a shared resource and that no entity should be free to crap all over it. I feel as though you're setting up strawman argument so you can completely dismiss an entire economic model.
There's freedom to do whatever you want without consequences, and there's freedom to do whatever you want so long as you don't step on the freedom of another. There are a lot of us who fall into the later camp and I feel as though comments like this only end up antagonizing myself and people who share my beliefs. I think we both care about the environment so why can't we work together in this regard, even if we may share widely differing opinions in others?
I think the important caveat is that it's only ruined from the perspective of the average Slashdot reader. Based on sales it seems as though the majority of consumers are fine with Steve's way as long as it "just works" or is usable for them. As much as we dislike the closed nature Apple takes in regards to their products, I can't think of another company doing as well in the market and releasing products with the success rate that Apple has in the last decade.
Irrespective of topic, a feasible solution tops a philosophical ideal for the vast majority of the population. In FOSS wants to make gains in any market it needs to release a better solution, and not just for us geeks. It needs to be better for the average person, who by most regards is a complete idiot when it comes to computers. Anything else is just going to result in a product that fits in a rather niche market.
Or they have everything to lose. What are the odds that a application developed using a cross-platform development tool is better than a similar application developed solely for one device? One could view this as cross-platform developers being forced to pick their poison and feeling that their prospects are best if they were to focus development on Android.
There're lies, damned lies, and statistics. Most insidious is the analysis.
It's been said that Apple ships so many devices that it's often able to buy up the entire production capacity for certain components for several months. It's possible that they've cornered the market on 9.7" touch screens and that that iPad has been successful enough that they continue to purchase the growing manufacturing capacity as it becomes available.
Companies want to ship now or as close to it as possible. If there won't be a sizable quantity of 9.7" screens until next spring it's not going to be possible to make a tablet using those dimensions. I haven't tried using a 7" tablet device, but the only difference is that the iPad has an extra 168 pixels, which may make a difference, but how much of one I can't say. It may also make the device somewhat less precise as there's a smaller physical area to register touches on, but that can be compensated for in software and Android has definitely been coming along quite well. How well the QNX works on the BlackBerry tablet is another matter, but it doesn't have to be a huge hurdle.
The processor and RAM are probably the most ambitious I've seen in terms of a tablet so far, but it may not be much better than what future Android tablets or the next generation iPad has by the time this device actually ships. Some of the specs are better than the current iPad, others aren't, and hardware specs aren't always the best indicator of devise usability of usefulness anyhow. The devise isn't even available yet, so it's somewhat useless to try to compare it to the iPad since no one has had extensive hands on with it yet.
They don't own pod, but they do own iPod, which they will probably argue is similar in name and general industry as they product that they allege trademark violation against. I think they may have marketed one of their older iPods as a video iPod when it first got the video capabilities, so it might be fairly easy to say that a consumer might be confused. As for why they don't go after the other companies, it seems fairly obvious from the name and description that these companies aren't releasing anything similar to a PMP. Brand confusion is much less of an issue in these cases.
I don't think Apple will win this one, but it's probably not as clear cut as you make it out to be. Also, companies have to defend their trademark or they risk losing it. I'm surprised Apple's legal team has time for this considering that they've been suing or getting sued by several other companies in the last year or so.
I haven't tried the new IE9, but I hope it turns out alright. I have been interested in their campaign to promote it. They've produced some reallycool websites that show off some creative uses of HTML5.
It seems like too many people get caught up in the video debate and forget about all of the other exciting uses for HTML5. If those are just early examples, I can't wait to see what creative professionals will be able to produce in a few years.
I don't blame them for not branching out into other as it seems as though the audience doesn't care too much about anything new and wants more of the same. That might not be healthy for the industry, but why should a company invest massive amounts in flashy graphics, new tech, and marketing for something that's probably going to flop when they can just push out something using the same engine as their last game, reuse some of the art assets, and have an install base that will probably pick it up without a huge marketing push? If there's money to be made in something new, someone will make it, even if it's not the established players.
Call me more skeptical, but religion will always be around because a lot of people are really stupid and it's easiest to keep them in line with religion or something similar. Really, anything that pits them against some other group and creates and us vs. them mentality. Religion is just one convenient way to do this.
If religion ever does get stamped out it will just be replaced by something else that is virtually indistinguishable from it.
When Microsoft said Linux was using its patents without permission did we just accept it as fact?
Slashdot as a community isn't strictly neutral on a lot of topics. In general we're pretty positive towards Linux and negative towards Microsoft so we'll give Linux the benefit of the doubt (Because we like them and don't trust Microsoft.), but if it were an allegation that Microsoft did something wrong we'd probably just assume it were true, especially given their past, etc. Not everyone would claim this, but the general consensus would probably be against Microsoft. Hell, look at some of the articles dealing with the Hans Reiser murder case. There were a lot of people who defended him or thought there was no way he could have done it, even though a more objective group would have said he's likely guilty.
Google is generally viewed fairly favorably around here. They're a proponent of a lot of open source projects, a lot of/. users own and love their Android phones, and Google has given Microsoft and a few other lesser-liked tech companies a few black eyes in the past so they get to play the white knight around here. Of course sentiment is slowly turning against them as accusations such as this and their back-room net neutrality dealings with Verizon generally go against the feelings of the community.
I wouldn't call it evil as Google probably should have their own interests in mind, but I don't think they can go around proclaiming Android to be a wonderful open platform if there are actually restrictions like this placed on it. I'll reserve passing judgement until more facts come out, but given that a case like this can take several years to resolve I can understand why a lot of people want to form some kind of judgement now. By the time an actual verdict is declared (and assuming that there aren't appeals.) it could be years from now and almost everyone will have forgotten what the hell the case was about.
As much crap as/.'s moderation system gets, it actually tends to be one of the better systems I've seen on the net. First of all, it's highly customizable so if I wanted to I can easily set it to add or remove value from certain types of moderations. I usually bump flamebait and troll up a few pegs just so I can see the posts that do occasionally get unfairly moderated. I can also add other posters I find interesting to a list and bump up their post value so if I'm interested in what they have to say I can always make sure I'll see it.
I also think that the community goes a long way towards making the system work well. Sure there will always be people who abuse the system and moderate posts with which they disagree as flamebait, etc. but the community as a whole does a good job of promoting interesting lines of conversation and for any given topic there are probably a few people in the community who specialize in that area and can provide some excellent commentary.
It's not perfect, but it's probably one of the best systems in actual practice that's currently being used.
This was modded funny, but he's not actually joking. McAfee did have this problem that caused a machine to go into a cycle of continuous reboots. Here's the Slashdot story covering the issue. I remember being on vacation when it happened and the sysadmins saying that it caused all sorts of headaches for them.
McAfee probably has probably caused more problems for us than actual virus infections as well. Not to mention that it's an evil piece of bloatware the slows down machines horrible. By my estimates upgrading our dual-core machines to quad-core machines should result in up to a 3x performance increase. McAfee continues to peg one core and the other three are free to do something useful. The only thing it's really doing is speeding up the heat-death of the universe.
I suggest you watch the talk. It specifically addresses how open source software can make themselves an undesirable target for patent litigation. Essentially it boils down to creating an non-infringing implementation and screaming about it from the rooftops if you get sued. Who the hell wants to draw attention to the fact that there's an easy way around a specific patent if they're the holder? It's much better to threaten litigation and have everyone live in fear than it is to bring it and be wrong.
It honestly wouldn't surprise me if this patent was created to end-around some other existing patent that's also equally silly just so IBM can implement something while keeping the sharks at bay. If you read the actual claims of the patent they're specific enough that they could be avoided fairly trivially, but you might end up stepping on some other patent in the minefield accidentally.
Yeah, software can be reduced to mathematics, but some of it is pretty fucking brilliant. I don't dismiss the thought that software should be completely non-patentable, but I think almost everyone would agree the current situation is entirely out of hand and that some new guidelines should be developed. I don't think that everyone (or necessarily anyone) will be satisfied by software patent reform, but it's hard to imagine an end result worse than the current situation.
I suggest that everyone view this talk regarding patents and open source software. It focuses on how open source developers can maneuver around patents, but also provides a lot of information regarding how patents can be better understood. After viewing this presentation, I've realized how moronic a lot of posts on Slashdot regarding patents truly are.
After watching the video and examining the patent it seems rather trivial to dance around it. It's a completely stupid thing to patent, but it isn't going to impede anyone who develops something similar.
Microsoft sued HTC over the use of MS patents in HTC's mobile phones that were running Android, much the same way that Apple has an ongoing suit against HTC. HTC decided to license the patents from Microsoft so it's likely that Microsoft gets paid for every Android phone that HTC sells. Here is the press release. It's reminiscent of how PC vendors paid Microsoft for every box sold, regardless of whether or not it had Windows installed. Different arrangements, but similar end results.
Some have speculated that depending on the agreements, it could be just as expensive for HTC to ship a phone with Android as it would be for them to ship one with Windows Phone 7. If Android doesn't have a price advantage it may put the two operating systems on more even ground, at least from HTC's perspective.
It wouldn't say spoiled completely, but it seems like the recent surge in desktop-Linux mindshare is mostly an effect of Ubuntu becoming popular. Most consumers don't want a whole lot of choice, they just want something that works. If they can have several choices of things that work, even better, but the Linux community was so fragmented across different distributions for a while that there really weren't any working solutions for a lot of folks.
Yeah you can fix all of these problems if you root the phone, but the average user isn't going to be able to do that. You could also buy an unlocked phone, but I really wonder how many people know these even exist.
What does it say about your company when another company has to clean up your mess while you stand around, thumb up ass, not appearing to be doing anything meaningful?
This has nothing to do about MS being good or evil. They've got a solution to the problem and it's much welcomed. Hopefully Adobe gets this fixed shortly so that people who can't make use of Microsoft's solution don't have to worry about the vulnerability either.
Nah. They just want to spend the next ten years talking about the year of algae in the backyard.
I get the joke, but I think the goals are just to make the information open to anyone who wants to use it. I can't say if it will be effective or not, but it's not a bad ideal.
Actually, Android is already shipping on netbooks. Granted they're referred to as smartbooks when they run a smartphone OS, but the device is basically a netbook that runs Android.
I've never been terribly interested in netbooks and have generally viewed them as rubbish, but I'm genuinely interested in the AC100. I'd need to use one before deciding to buy it, but I view it as a better proposition than any netbook I've seen to date. The newest versions of Android have added a lot of polish and can really run well on hardware that's not overly powerful. I can see smartbooks being incredibly popular, especially if they stick with keeping the profile small.
Android-based solutions are already here. ChromeOS isn't. Google should just axe the project and focus on making Android better for these types of devices rather than trying to have two different operating systems. Any other response just makes it appear as though they're well on the road to becoming more like Microsoft where projects are made in different small fiefdoms within the company and dick-waving contests between the kings result in crap products. Set a company goal and get the whole company behind it.
Slashdot Mirror
That's a Bad Analogy.
Well his user name is BadAnalogyGuy so I suppose that makes sense. Maybe he is a troll, or maybe it's just an attempt at meta-humor.
Perhaps a *WHOOSH* is in order.
Anecdotal but I know an older gentleman who I used to help use a computer to scan in old photographs so that he could digitize them for his great-grandchildren. He always named the files and folders using capital letters because he said it made it easier for him to read them.
I wouldn't want to read a full paragraph of capital letters, mostly because my brain isn't trained to parse them very well, but for older people, it may be easier for them to read if all of the letters are capitalized. If I were to move far enough away from my monitor, I suspect that I would still be able to read words in all capitals whereas I would have a more difficult time reading the same sentence if it were properly using lowercase letters.
A good thought and it may be correct for the general population, but in my experience it may not be true for older folks. Older people might actually do better with the capital letters. Might make an interesting study for the transportation department.
Problem is that people get lazy and companies like Google keep gathering and analyzing more and more information. Do you use that handle anywhere else? As soon as that name gets tied to a particular email account they might already have enough information to figure out who you are, but even if they don't they can just see what else is associated with that email address.
You need to be incredibly paranoid in this day and age in order to avoid having something traced back to you. Look at how quickly 4chan can find someone with little more to go on that a youtube video of someone who did something that pissed off the collective users of the site. Computational power keeps getting cheaper and people don't seem to be getting any smarter and it's not too much of a stretch to imagine that in twenty years software will be sophisticated enough to do this by itself.
A basic Google search for that handle turns up a wikipedia user page using the same name. If I cared to I could read your previous posts and wikipedia activity to see if you're both the same person. From there I might find something else that gives me a few clues about your physical location or where you work. Hell, after following one link from the wikipedia page I might have your real name.
I could also be completely wrong and the wikipedia user page isn't you, but if I find something bad enough I could just assume it is you and not give you a job, etc. Hell, if you were bored enough you could probably figure out who I am too. Imagine what kind of resources a government either already has access to or will in the next ten years and even if you're incredibly careful they'll still be able to find you.
Considering it's HR would you actually want them working on the real problems? Given the ineptitude that permeates most HR departments, I'm thankful that they're not actually in charge of anything mission critical.
And after their software finds that post you probably won't have to worry about being asked to do so either.
/rimshot
Another reason to wait is that a lot of games tend to be fairly buggy on release and this can siphon off a lot of joy. I bought Civilization V and while it's not a bad game and I haven't had to deal with crashes, the game balance is horribly off and it doesn't feel as polished as Civ IV with both expansions. I like the direction the game has taken, but it needs a lot of polish and the AI really needs to fixed. The computer is horrible at combat and seems to do other odd things such as acting perfectly friendly after I just finished burning one of their cities to the ground.
I don't think reading reviews bottom-up is the best method though. Just as some people will gush over a game, some have some kind of vendetta against it. I recall reading a review for a generally well-received game that was given an abysmally low score because the author felt that the games plot too closely mirrored a science fiction novel he had read decades ago and that therefore the game was a blatant ripoff. Personally, I prefer reading reviews that focus less on a score and more on talking about the game and comparing it to previous titles from the genre. I think a "buy now, wait a while, rent first, skip" scale would be completely adequate for reviews. A number scale is really meaningless, especially when the review numbers or inflated. For most organs anything less than an 8 means the game is probably not worth buying or even playing.
If this is an argument against completely unregulated actions without any personal consequence, that's fine, but there are plenty of pro-capitalism people who realize that the environment is a shared resource and that no entity should be free to crap all over it. I feel as though you're setting up strawman argument so you can completely dismiss an entire economic model.
There's freedom to do whatever you want without consequences, and there's freedom to do whatever you want so long as you don't step on the freedom of another. There are a lot of us who fall into the later camp and I feel as though comments like this only end up antagonizing myself and people who share my beliefs. I think we both care about the environment so why can't we work together in this regard, even if we may share widely differing opinions in others?
I think the important caveat is that it's only ruined from the perspective of the average Slashdot reader. Based on sales it seems as though the majority of consumers are fine with Steve's way as long as it "just works" or is usable for them. As much as we dislike the closed nature Apple takes in regards to their products, I can't think of another company doing as well in the market and releasing products with the success rate that Apple has in the last decade.
Irrespective of topic, a feasible solution tops a philosophical ideal for the vast majority of the population. In FOSS wants to make gains in any market it needs to release a better solution, and not just for us geeks. It needs to be better for the average person, who by most regards is a complete idiot when it comes to computers. Anything else is just going to result in a product that fits in a rather niche market.
Or they have everything to lose. What are the odds that a application developed using a cross-platform development tool is better than a similar application developed solely for one device? One could view this as cross-platform developers being forced to pick their poison and feeling that their prospects are best if they were to focus development on Android.
There're lies, damned lies, and statistics. Most insidious is the analysis.
It's been said that Apple ships so many devices that it's often able to buy up the entire production capacity for certain components for several months. It's possible that they've cornered the market on 9.7" touch screens and that that iPad has been successful enough that they continue to purchase the growing manufacturing capacity as it becomes available.
Companies want to ship now or as close to it as possible. If there won't be a sizable quantity of 9.7" screens until next spring it's not going to be possible to make a tablet using those dimensions. I haven't tried using a 7" tablet device, but the only difference is that the iPad has an extra 168 pixels, which may make a difference, but how much of one I can't say. It may also make the device somewhat less precise as there's a smaller physical area to register touches on, but that can be compensated for in software and Android has definitely been coming along quite well. How well the QNX works on the BlackBerry tablet is another matter, but it doesn't have to be a huge hurdle.
The processor and RAM are probably the most ambitious I've seen in terms of a tablet so far, but it may not be much better than what future Android tablets or the next generation iPad has by the time this device actually ships. Some of the specs are better than the current iPad, others aren't, and hardware specs aren't always the best indicator of devise usability of usefulness anyhow. The devise isn't even available yet, so it's somewhat useless to try to compare it to the iPad since no one has had extensive hands on with it yet.
They don't own pod, but they do own iPod, which they will probably argue is similar in name and general industry as they product that they allege trademark violation against. I think they may have marketed one of their older iPods as a video iPod when it first got the video capabilities, so it might be fairly easy to say that a consumer might be confused. As for why they don't go after the other companies, it seems fairly obvious from the name and description that these companies aren't releasing anything similar to a PMP. Brand confusion is much less of an issue in these cases.
I don't think Apple will win this one, but it's probably not as clear cut as you make it out to be. Also, companies have to defend their trademark or they risk losing it. I'm surprised Apple's legal team has time for this considering that they've been suing or getting sued by several other companies in the last year or so.
I haven't tried the new IE9, but I hope it turns out alright. I have been interested in their campaign to promote it. They've produced some really cool websites that show off some creative uses of HTML5.
It seems like too many people get caught up in the video debate and forget about all of the other exciting uses for HTML5. If those are just early examples, I can't wait to see what creative professionals will be able to produce in a few years.
I don't blame them for not branching out into other as it seems as though the audience doesn't care too much about anything new and wants more of the same. That might not be healthy for the industry, but why should a company invest massive amounts in flashy graphics, new tech, and marketing for something that's probably going to flop when they can just push out something using the same engine as their last game, reuse some of the art assets, and have an install base that will probably pick it up without a huge marketing push? If there's money to be made in something new, someone will make it, even if it's not the established players.
Call me more skeptical, but religion will always be around because a lot of people are really stupid and it's easiest to keep them in line with religion or something similar. Really, anything that pits them against some other group and creates and us vs. them mentality. Religion is just one convenient way to do this.
If religion ever does get stamped out it will just be replaced by something else that is virtually indistinguishable from it.
Well the editors did say it was a surreal story.
When Microsoft said Linux was using its patents without permission did we just accept it as fact?
Slashdot as a community isn't strictly neutral on a lot of topics. In general we're pretty positive towards Linux and negative towards Microsoft so we'll give Linux the benefit of the doubt (Because we like them and don't trust Microsoft.), but if it were an allegation that Microsoft did something wrong we'd probably just assume it were true, especially given their past, etc. Not everyone would claim this, but the general consensus would probably be against Microsoft. Hell, look at some of the articles dealing with the Hans Reiser murder case. There were a lot of people who defended him or thought there was no way he could have done it, even though a more objective group would have said he's likely guilty.
/. users own and love their Android phones, and Google has given Microsoft and a few other lesser-liked tech companies a few black eyes in the past so they get to play the white knight around here. Of course sentiment is slowly turning against them as accusations such as this and their back-room net neutrality dealings with Verizon generally go against the feelings of the community.
Google is generally viewed fairly favorably around here. They're a proponent of a lot of open source projects, a lot of
I wouldn't call it evil as Google probably should have their own interests in mind, but I don't think they can go around proclaiming Android to be a wonderful open platform if there are actually restrictions like this placed on it. I'll reserve passing judgement until more facts come out, but given that a case like this can take several years to resolve I can understand why a lot of people want to form some kind of judgement now. By the time an actual verdict is declared (and assuming that there aren't appeals.) it could be years from now and almost everyone will have forgotten what the hell the case was about.
As much crap as /.'s moderation system gets, it actually tends to be one of the better systems I've seen on the net. First of all, it's highly customizable so if I wanted to I can easily set it to add or remove value from certain types of moderations. I usually bump flamebait and troll up a few pegs just so I can see the posts that do occasionally get unfairly moderated. I can also add other posters I find interesting to a list and bump up their post value so if I'm interested in what they have to say I can always make sure I'll see it.
I also think that the community goes a long way towards making the system work well. Sure there will always be people who abuse the system and moderate posts with which they disagree as flamebait, etc. but the community as a whole does a good job of promoting interesting lines of conversation and for any given topic there are probably a few people in the community who specialize in that area and can provide some excellent commentary.
It's not perfect, but it's probably one of the best systems in actual practice that's currently being used.
This was modded funny, but he's not actually joking. McAfee did have this problem that caused a machine to go into a cycle of continuous reboots. Here's the Slashdot story covering the issue. I remember being on vacation when it happened and the sysadmins saying that it caused all sorts of headaches for them.
McAfee probably has probably caused more problems for us than actual virus infections as well. Not to mention that it's an evil piece of bloatware the slows down machines horrible. By my estimates upgrading our dual-core machines to quad-core machines should result in up to a 3x performance increase. McAfee continues to peg one core and the other three are free to do something useful. The only thing it's really doing is speeding up the heat-death of the universe.
I suggest you watch the talk. It specifically addresses how open source software can make themselves an undesirable target for patent litigation. Essentially it boils down to creating an non-infringing implementation and screaming about it from the rooftops if you get sued. Who the hell wants to draw attention to the fact that there's an easy way around a specific patent if they're the holder? It's much better to threaten litigation and have everyone live in fear than it is to bring it and be wrong.
It honestly wouldn't surprise me if this patent was created to end-around some other existing patent that's also equally silly just so IBM can implement something while keeping the sharks at bay. If you read the actual claims of the patent they're specific enough that they could be avoided fairly trivially, but you might end up stepping on some other patent in the minefield accidentally.
Yeah, software can be reduced to mathematics, but some of it is pretty fucking brilliant. I don't dismiss the thought that software should be completely non-patentable, but I think almost everyone would agree the current situation is entirely out of hand and that some new guidelines should be developed. I don't think that everyone (or necessarily anyone) will be satisfied by software patent reform, but it's hard to imagine an end result worse than the current situation.
I suggest that everyone view this talk regarding patents and open source software. It focuses on how open source developers can maneuver around patents, but also provides a lot of information regarding how patents can be better understood. After viewing this presentation, I've realized how moronic a lot of posts on Slashdot regarding patents truly are.
After watching the video and examining the patent it seems rather trivial to dance around it. It's a completely stupid thing to patent, but it isn't going to impede anyone who develops something similar.
Microsoft sued HTC over the use of MS patents in HTC's mobile phones that were running Android, much the same way that Apple has an ongoing suit against HTC. HTC decided to license the patents from Microsoft so it's likely that Microsoft gets paid for every Android phone that HTC sells. Here is the press release. It's reminiscent of how PC vendors paid Microsoft for every box sold, regardless of whether or not it had Windows installed. Different arrangements, but similar end results.
Some have speculated that depending on the agreements, it could be just as expensive for HTC to ship a phone with Android as it would be for them to ship one with Windows Phone 7. If Android doesn't have a price advantage it may put the two operating systems on more even ground, at least from HTC's perspective.
It wouldn't say spoiled completely, but it seems like the recent surge in desktop-Linux mindshare is mostly an effect of Ubuntu becoming popular. Most consumers don't want a whole lot of choice, they just want something that works. If they can have several choices of things that work, even better, but the Linux community was so fragmented across different distributions for a while that there really weren't any working solutions for a lot of folks.
What's going to spoil the Android market is carriers adding tons of shovelware to the phone that can't be uninstalled, locked down the phone so you can't sideload applications, and all the other evil crap that they do.
Yeah you can fix all of these problems if you root the phone, but the average user isn't going to be able to do that. You could also buy an unlocked phone, but I really wonder how many people know these even exist.
What does it say about your company when another company has to clean up your mess while you stand around, thumb up ass, not appearing to be doing anything meaningful?
This has nothing to do about MS being good or evil. They've got a solution to the problem and it's much welcomed. Hopefully Adobe gets this fixed shortly so that people who can't make use of Microsoft's solution don't have to worry about the vulnerability either.
Nah. They just want to spend the next ten years talking about the year of algae in the backyard.
I get the joke, but I think the goals are just to make the information open to anyone who wants to use it. I can't say if it will be effective or not, but it's not a bad ideal.
Actually, Android is already shipping on netbooks. Granted they're referred to as smartbooks when they run a smartphone OS, but the device is basically a netbook that runs Android.
I've never been terribly interested in netbooks and have generally viewed them as rubbish, but I'm genuinely interested in the AC100. I'd need to use one before deciding to buy it, but I view it as a better proposition than any netbook I've seen to date. The newest versions of Android have added a lot of polish and can really run well on hardware that's not overly powerful. I can see smartbooks being incredibly popular, especially if they stick with keeping the profile small.
Android-based solutions are already here. ChromeOS isn't. Google should just axe the project and focus on making Android better for these types of devices rather than trying to have two different operating systems. Any other response just makes it appear as though they're well on the road to becoming more like Microsoft where projects are made in different small fiefdoms within the company and dick-waving contests between the kings result in crap products. Set a company goal and get the whole company behind it.