Hmmm, good point, I jumped to a conclusion there. But I'd be surprised if they ripped the AJAX stuff out of Safari. I doubt the gain would be worth the cost. I mean, it's just DOM (they're going to have that anyway), JavaScript (again), and XmlHttpRequest. Taking out the latter wouldn't buy you much of anything, but would degrade the browser significantly. (FWIW, the Opera browser in the Nokia 770 runs Google Maps just fine.)
The browser is (some version of) Safari, and given the Google Maps integration, clearly has full AJAX capabilities. There's a lot you can do with that without Java. But sadly also some things you (probably) can't, like say writing an Ogg Vorbis player...;-)
...and he sure as hell has spent more time thinking about this than I have. And yet, I still think this is very much the wrong move. Look at the success Nokia is having with the 770 and soon the 800. I will go so far as to say the only reason that device is successful is they were smart enough to build it on Linux (Debian), release an API (for the bits they even needed to do the API for -- e.g., their customised window manager), and foster a development community. That was just effing smart. Instead of the device having very limited functionality, it has -- with very little effort -- a rich set of open source software available for it. Sure, some of that's going to crash it, but there are clear distinctions between Nokia-tested and certified software and the things you download from Joe Blogg's website, and You Are Warned every time you install something. I just wish they'd put a phone module in it, but it can bluetooth to my phone, so...
As for the bit about Cingular's network going down: Bullshit. (Pardon my English.) Do an API to the phone functionality it provides, test that, and that's an end to it. If the network's that delicate, that's a useful thing to know and fix, because sure as heck someone will take advantage of it (using something other than an iPhone) otherwise.
This has the feel of something being forced by the phone companies, even if Apple is historically fairly closed (OS/X being the big -- and welcome -- exception). And yet, frankly, this is going to be the Must Have Item for a large number of high-quality customers (Christmas 2007, start saving now kids), what network can afford not to support it?
These are devices that need to work, and you can't do that if you load any software on them.
I have a 770. First off, it's brilliant device, I love it. Definitely using it on my next long-haul flight rather than the built-in video players on airplanes. (I wouldn't use the built in video player, but mplayer has been ported to it and plays 400x240 movies full screen [hardware pixel doubling to fill the 800x480 display] at full fps, 128k audio, and about 500k video. Very watchable, and a full-length movie fits on a 1GB MMC with plenty of room left over for a couple of TV shows.) And of course there are various PIM style apps available for it over at maemo.org, not to mention VNC, xterm, ssh,...
From what information we currently have (including the pics and video referenced above), I have to say I think they've addressed several of the biggest issues with the unit, specifically:
Moved the ports to the side - on the 770, they're on the bottom, which is a problem if (say) you're plugging the 770 into an external amplifier to play some tunes, and want to put it on its stand so you can see what's playing. You have to put it up right at the edge of a book or something so the audio (and, frequently, power) connections coming out the bottom have room to protrude. Dumb. And fixed with the 800.
Faster processor. Yum. The 770 definitely has speed issues depending on what you ask it to do.
More built-in flash RAM -- excellent.
Built-in stand. Very good idea. The little stand that comes with the 770 is fine, but not convenient to use. Looks like the built-in stand has at least two different tilts, as well, which is good.
Stereo speakers built in. Very nice, the poor little one in the 770 does surprisingly well, so I'm guessing the 800 sounds pretty good (for what it is).
Built in webcam. Excellent. Now it's a videophone!
From the good close look we get at the connectors in the video nursegirl linked to, the USB connector is still unpowered. Frankly, I'm not sure how big an issue this really is. Yes, it means you can't use your existing USB keys with it even if you had an adapter cable, which -- true -- is less than ideal. In terms of other devices, you wouldn't want to power an external keyboard of the poor little 770's battery -- you're better off getting a little portable Bluetooth keyboard. I haven't felt the lack of the power on the USB port yet.
Looks like a great upgrade, good to see Nokia thought it was worth pursuing the product line... I hope the next focus is on software -- improving the handwriting recognition, doing some Nokia-tested and certified PIM apps (calendar, etc.), improving the little desktop area, etc. Doing this device with Linux, documenting the API, and fostering a development community were all masterstrokes, but you can't leave everything to the community, too many users won't be able to handle the complexity (not to mention that, er, some ports are done better than others...).
TFA is quite short on screenshots (and the video is essentially just talking head), but you can find quite good ones here and here (the latter is a slideshow). (Note: I haven't read those articles, just went looking for pretty pictures of O2007.) Looks good, be interesting to see how it works for us keyboard-intensive people (although I, for one, will be really glad to stop typing "Alt+O / p / Alt+P / Alt+X / Enter" to make a paragraph keep with next. (Years ago I gave that its own toolbar button, but I use other people's machines too often...)
Right on, Brother. Better machines for punching the paper to avoid Florida-style fiascos? Absolutely. Better machines to count the paper? Absolutely. Machines to tally the votes as we go and then cross-check the paper so they can flag up boxes of votes that go missing? Sure, provided we keep that data well under wraps until the polling stations are closed. But machines to replace the paper? No, sorry, not a good idea. I don't think the people pushing this stuff understand just how deeply many normal, everyday people mistrust technology -- not to mention the companies behind the technology. And this from a technophile who makes his living from hi-tech.
...the CEO of the company who provides said...systems is also a major contributor to one of the political parties and who GUARANTEES DELIVERING A VICTORY TO THAT PARTY...
Whoa, I've clearly been sleeping under a rock. (No, seriously.) Who was this?
I do hope you're right, but even that only eliminates a couple of those costs. Concentrating on one of them: ATI's still going to be spending more (and therefore charging more), as will many other hardware makers. (They've already commented on the amount they've had to spend on lawyers to put the various licensing arrangements they need to have in place.) Audio cards, video cards, motherboards with any on-board audio or video capability, all will be more expensive than they would otherwise have been, and that's the tip of the iceberg. And it'll be interesting to see how much hardware is obsoleted by Vista purely for DRM-compliance (rather than the typical performance) reasons.
Scenario: Medical imaging, displaying a scan on PC which uses a year-old DVI output (no HDCP). Operator fires up image, and opens a DRM'd ebook or other DRM-encumbered content to reference some information relevant to evaluating the scan. The DVI display is degraded by the PVP-OPM constrictor, because Vista sees DRM'd visual content going out over a non-DRM display (DVI w/o HDCP). Hopefully, the operator understands this and closes the ebook/whatever before reading the scan. Cost impact? Cost of prematurely-replacing hardware (video card and monitor -- possibly more -- so they're DVI+HDCP-compliant), cost of retraining operators to ensure they're aware of the issue, cost of management time spent planning for this, cost of technical support time spent diagnosing intermittent display problems until the issue is well-understood, etc., etc. Not to mention that the new hardware will be more expensive (see ATI's PowerPoint slides from WinHEC '05).
(Guttman's example was playing DRM'd audio to drown out background noise in the office environment, but I suspect Vista's smart enough not to downgrade the video because of DRM'd audio content.)
No, the sky's not falling. And yes, FUD doesn't only flow from Redmond. But Vista genuinely is set to cause quite a lot of additional costs and loss of productivity at several levels, because a small number of large influential content providers are successfully dictating it and Microsoft, Intel, and others are going along.
Guttman says that the specs on this constitute the "longest suicide note in history". We'll see.
Microsoft (and other software companies, but MS gets the most attention for it) spent years working under the paradigm where making things more convenient and/or more powerful for the user was the most important thing you could do to get people to use and buy your product.
<<Brrrraaaaaap!>> I'm sorry, that's the wrong answer. It's been several years since 1997. Please accept this lovely eggtimer as a consolation present as you leave the stage...
It wasn't their copyright term they were trying to extend...
Re:Verizon makes this mistake all the time.
on
Verizon Can't Do Math
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
The problem with them admitting defeat and actually charging the rate they've been speaking is that it makes them liable to charge the quoted rate to everyone else.
Not at all. They can credit him the full use of data in Canada on his recent trip (generously declining his offer to pay the correct $0.71) purely as a customer retention move. They can also choose to "clarify" how they express the rate in future (I've given them several suggestions in a comment on his blog) to avoid customers "misunderstanding" the rate. Neither of which (IANAL) means they have to refund everyone else who claims they called in and got that rate quoted to them. And indeed, that's my prediction of how this will turn out.
And really, getting code loaded like that is not a difficult thing to do.
It's easy (in the context of attacking a computer via a media file) to load code into a data segment, sure. But not into a text (code) segment. So the jump instruction does a local jump to -- oops, access violation.
It is truly amazing, though, that six-seven years after Microsoft really started talking big about dealing with their security problems, they still haven't managed to complete a code review to deal with buffer overrun vulnerabilities. I'm sympathetic to their massive codebase, but in many cases finding buffer overrun vulnerabilities is trained monkey work -- and Microsoft has the money to contract a large number of monkeys, train them, and sic 'em on the code. Sure, there's also a lot of work there for skilled programmers and even engineers -- a lot of their stuff is written in languages like C and C++ where you can pass a buffer to a method without its bounding information -- but surely they could have the monkeys at least flag up what the more skilled people need to look at. It's been a long time, guys. Lots of code, sure, but lots of years, too.
I've lost the ability to record FM on my Creative Zen with my last firmware update... ostensibly, though I can't confirm it because of industry pressure on Creative -- it was one of the features I bought it for.
They put it back. Not as good as not having removed it, of course, but at least they didn't have to get sued before restoring it.
People seem to be thinking that this is eitherFUDor the claims are true. It's probably both.
First off, it's blatant and obvious FUD. They're being deliberately vague about what IP is infringed, and by which open source project and/or component of Linux, and talking about being "willing" to cut deals with other Linux distros than SUSE. No question that "willing" means "if we can find a reasonable business to target, you'll be hearing from our lawyers" and that that is meant to feed into people's decisions when looking at basing a product or service on Linux and hopefully drive them to make a different choice. They're not required to say what's being infringed or why until/unless they slap someone with a cease and desist, and so they're not. FUD, and no mistake.
But that doesn't mean it isn't also true. As an early commenter pointed out, there are lots and lots of software patents out there and Microsoft has a bunch of 'em. It's easy to infringe software patents without knowing you're doing so, and even open review won't catch all of this stuff. Under the current law, Microsoft has an absolute right to pursue a license fee from anyone using techniques they had the lawyers and money to patent, and in the absense of that fee being paid to file a court action.
So for Microsoft, this could well be a big win: FUD, plus the bonus of possible license fees or at least making the open source people waste a lot of time trying to figure out the whats, wheres, and hows of the infringement. They get a two-fer on this one.
So what's next? Ideally, a good faith letter to Microsoft from (say) RedHat or some other well-funded distro asking for the details of the alleged infringement, saying that they're eager not to infringe other peoples' software patents and also stating clearly that all information provided will be released to the community so the community can correct the infringement where possible. I suspect Microsoft won't provide the information unless given a confidentiality guarantee by the distro people, which if they're smart they will not be willing to provide. Consequently, if Microsoft later files a court case, they'll be required to list all infringements in the public record of the case -- and the judge in the case will see that the distro made a good faith attempt to avoid infringement prior to litigation, which will argue in favor of giving them a generous amount of time to cease and desist.
...spending so much time online has created a whole new set of social problems.
No. We have the same social problems we've always had. We're just seeing them in these new places we've created.
We've always had anonymous gangs.
We've always had mob culture.
We've always had people reacting by suppressing expression and freedom.
(I feel like David Byrne.)
Same as it ever was.
Same as it ever was.
Same as it ever was.
The good news is that the people who've been studying human behavior in "the real world" are now waking up to the fact that the internet is also "the real world." The separation was always artificial, and it's ending.
No. The Census counts people who live in the United States, not just citizens. "Population" (in this context) is the number of inhabitants in a country or region.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmm, good point, I jumped to a conclusion there. But I'd be surprised if they ripped the AJAX stuff out of Safari. I doubt the gain would be worth the cost. I mean, it's just DOM (they're going to have that anyway), JavaScript (again), and XmlHttpRequest. Taking out the latter wouldn't buy you much of anything, but would degrade the browser significantly. (FWIW, the Opera browser in the Nokia 770 runs Google Maps just fine.)
The browser is (some version of) Safari, and given the Google Maps integration, clearly has full AJAX capabilities. There's a lot you can do with that without Java. But sadly also some things you (probably) can't, like say writing an Ogg Vorbis player... ;-)
...and he sure as hell has spent more time thinking about this than I have. And yet, I still think this is very much the wrong move. Look at the success Nokia is having with the 770 and soon the 800. I will go so far as to say the only reason that device is successful is they were smart enough to build it on Linux (Debian), release an API (for the bits they even needed to do the API for -- e.g., their customised window manager), and foster a development community. That was just effing smart. Instead of the device having very limited functionality, it has -- with very little effort -- a rich set of open source software available for it. Sure, some of that's going to crash it, but there are clear distinctions between Nokia-tested and certified software and the things you download from Joe Blogg's website, and You Are Warned every time you install something. I just wish they'd put a phone module in it, but it can bluetooth to my phone, so...
As for the bit about Cingular's network going down: Bullshit. (Pardon my English.) Do an API to the phone functionality it provides, test that, and that's an end to it. If the network's that delicate, that's a useful thing to know and fix, because sure as heck someone will take advantage of it (using something other than an iPhone) otherwise.
This has the feel of something being forced by the phone companies, even if Apple is historically fairly closed (OS/X being the big -- and welcome -- exception). And yet, frankly, this is going to be the Must Have Item for a large number of high-quality customers (Christmas 2007, start saving now kids), what network can afford not to support it?
VMWare Server is free (as in beer). It's not open (free as in freedom), granted, but it's free.
I have a 770. First off, it's brilliant device, I love it. Definitely using it on my next long-haul flight rather than the built-in video players on airplanes. (I wouldn't use the built in video player, but mplayer has been ported to it and plays 400x240 movies full screen [hardware pixel doubling to fill the 800x480 display] at full fps, 128k audio, and about 500k video. Very watchable, and a full-length movie fits on a 1GB MMC with plenty of room left over for a couple of TV shows.) And of course there are various PIM style apps available for it over at maemo.org, not to mention VNC, xterm, ssh, ...
From what information we currently have (including the pics and video referenced above), I have to say I think they've addressed several of the biggest issues with the unit, specifically:
From the good close look we get at the connectors in the video nursegirl linked to, the USB connector is still unpowered. Frankly, I'm not sure how big an issue this really is. Yes, it means you can't use your existing USB keys with it even if you had an adapter cable, which -- true -- is less than ideal. In terms of other devices, you wouldn't want to power an external keyboard of the poor little 770's battery -- you're better off getting a little portable Bluetooth keyboard. I haven't felt the lack of the power on the USB port yet.
Looks like a great upgrade, good to see Nokia thought it was worth pursuing the product line... I hope the next focus is on software -- improving the handwriting recognition, doing some Nokia-tested and certified PIM apps (calendar, etc.), improving the little desktop area, etc. Doing this device with Linux, documenting the API, and fostering a development community were all masterstrokes, but you can't leave everything to the community, too many users won't be able to handle the complexity (not to mention that, er, some ports are done better than others...).
TFA is quite short on screenshots (and the video is essentially just talking head), but you can find quite good ones here and here (the latter is a slideshow). (Note: I haven't read those articles, just went looking for pretty pictures of O2007.) Looks good, be interesting to see how it works for us keyboard-intensive people (although I, for one, will be really glad to stop typing "Alt+O / p / Alt+P / Alt+X / Enter" to make a paragraph keep with next. (Years ago I gave that its own toolbar button, but I use other people's machines too often...)
Right on, Brother. Better machines for punching the paper to avoid Florida-style fiascos? Absolutely. Better machines to count the paper? Absolutely. Machines to tally the votes as we go and then cross-check the paper so they can flag up boxes of votes that go missing? Sure, provided we keep that data well under wraps until the polling stations are closed. But machines to replace the paper? No, sorry, not a good idea. I don't think the people pushing this stuff understand just how deeply many normal, everyday people mistrust technology -- not to mention the companies behind the technology. And this from a technophile who makes his living from hi-tech.
Whoa, I've clearly been sleeping under a rock. (No, seriously.) Who was this?
I do hope you're right, but even that only eliminates a couple of those costs. Concentrating on one of them: ATI's still going to be spending more (and therefore charging more), as will many other hardware makers. (They've already commented on the amount they've had to spend on lawyers to put the various licensing arrangements they need to have in place.) Audio cards, video cards, motherboards with any on-board audio or video capability, all will be more expensive than they would otherwise have been, and that's the tip of the iceberg. And it'll be interesting to see how much hardware is obsoleted by Vista purely for DRM-compliance (rather than the typical performance) reasons.
I think you didn't read Guttman's article.
Scenario: Medical imaging, displaying a scan on PC which uses a year-old DVI output (no HDCP). Operator fires up image, and opens a DRM'd ebook or other DRM-encumbered content to reference some information relevant to evaluating the scan. The DVI display is degraded by the PVP-OPM constrictor, because Vista sees DRM'd visual content going out over a non-DRM display (DVI w/o HDCP). Hopefully, the operator understands this and closes the ebook/whatever before reading the scan. Cost impact? Cost of prematurely-replacing hardware (video card and monitor -- possibly more -- so they're DVI+HDCP-compliant), cost of retraining operators to ensure they're aware of the issue, cost of management time spent planning for this, cost of technical support time spent diagnosing intermittent display problems until the issue is well-understood, etc., etc. Not to mention that the new hardware will be more expensive (see ATI's PowerPoint slides from WinHEC '05).
(Guttman's example was playing DRM'd audio to drown out background noise in the office environment, but I suspect Vista's smart enough not to downgrade the video because of DRM'd audio content.)
No, the sky's not falling. And yes, FUD doesn't only flow from Redmond. But Vista genuinely is set to cause quite a lot of additional costs and loss of productivity at several levels, because a small number of large influential content providers are successfully dictating it and Microsoft, Intel, and others are going along.
Guttman says that the specs on this constitute the "longest suicide note in history". We'll see.
Oh please, this was so settled back on stardate 42523.7 (aka 02/13/1989).
It's a question of intent. The judges wrote:
The same cannot be said of Google.(IANAL)
"One moment, please hold for the Prime Minister"
(pause)
"Hello, Mr. Stallman? I understand you have some experience applying political pressure to closed-source vendors, I wonder if..."
It wasn't their copyright term they were trying to extend...
Not at all. They can credit him the full use of data in Canada on his recent trip (generously declining his offer to pay the correct $0.71) purely as a customer retention move. They can also choose to "clarify" how they express the rate in future (I've given them several suggestions in a comment on his blog) to avoid customers "misunderstanding" the rate. Neither of which (IANAL) means they have to refund everyone else who claims they called in and got that rate quoted to them. And indeed, that's my prediction of how this will turn out.
It's easy (in the context of attacking a computer via a media file) to load code into a data segment, sure. But not into a text (code) segment. So the jump instruction does a local jump to -- oops, access violation.
It is truly amazing, though, that six-seven years after Microsoft really started talking big about dealing with their security problems, they still haven't managed to complete a code review to deal with buffer overrun vulnerabilities. I'm sympathetic to their massive codebase, but in many cases finding buffer overrun vulnerabilities is trained monkey work -- and Microsoft has the money to contract a large number of monkeys, train them, and sic 'em on the code. Sure, there's also a lot of work there for skilled programmers and even engineers -- a lot of their stuff is written in languages like C and C++ where you can pass a buffer to a method without its bounding information -- but surely they could have the monkeys at least flag up what the more skilled people need to look at. It's been a long time, guys. Lots of code, sure, but lots of years, too.
Apparently not!
Not to mention, how will they store the IMs done via Meebo?
They put it back. Not as good as not having removed it, of course, but at least they didn't have to get sued before restoring it.
That probably explains why Bram Cohen is (probably) parting company with BitTorrent, Inc...
From 2Prong's main page (warning, don't click that):
Oh, thank you, thank you so much for mucking about with my clipboard without my permission.
People seem to be thinking that this is either FUD or the claims are true. It's probably both.
First off, it's blatant and obvious FUD. They're being deliberately vague about what IP is infringed, and by which open source project and/or component of Linux, and talking about being "willing" to cut deals with other Linux distros than SUSE. No question that "willing" means "if we can find a reasonable business to target, you'll be hearing from our lawyers" and that that is meant to feed into people's decisions when looking at basing a product or service on Linux and hopefully drive them to make a different choice. They're not required to say what's being infringed or why until/unless they slap someone with a cease and desist, and so they're not. FUD, and no mistake.
But that doesn't mean it isn't also true. As an early commenter pointed out, there are lots and lots of software patents out there and Microsoft has a bunch of 'em. It's easy to infringe software patents without knowing you're doing so, and even open review won't catch all of this stuff. Under the current law, Microsoft has an absolute right to pursue a license fee from anyone using techniques they had the lawyers and money to patent, and in the absense of that fee being paid to file a court action.
So for Microsoft, this could well be a big win: FUD, plus the bonus of possible license fees or at least making the open source people waste a lot of time trying to figure out the whats, wheres, and hows of the infringement. They get a two-fer on this one.
So what's next? Ideally, a good faith letter to Microsoft from (say) RedHat or some other well-funded distro asking for the details of the alleged infringement, saying that they're eager not to infringe other peoples' software patents and also stating clearly that all information provided will be released to the community so the community can correct the infringement where possible. I suspect Microsoft won't provide the information unless given a confidentiality guarantee by the distro people, which if they're smart they will not be willing to provide. Consequently, if Microsoft later files a court case, they'll be required to list all infringements in the public record of the case -- and the judge in the case will see that the distro made a good faith attempt to avoid infringement prior to litigation, which will argue in favor of giving them a generous amount of time to cease and desist.
No. We have the same social problems we've always had. We're just seeing them in these new places we've created.
We've always had anonymous gangs.
We've always had mob culture.
We've always had people reacting by suppressing expression and freedom.
(I feel like David Byrne.)
The good news is that the people who've been studying human behavior in "the real world" are now waking up to the fact that the internet is also "the real world." The separation was always artificial, and it's ending.
No. The Census counts people who live in the United States, not just citizens. "Population" (in this context) is the number of inhabitants in a country or region.