For using the computer more as a commodity tool for email/word processing/video watching etc Windows still is better presented and more importantly doesnt break grotesquely with every new update that appears like Ubuntu does (and yes I'm looking at 9.10) Until Linux, or more strictly I suppose GNOME/KDE etc get over this then I suspect that further adoption of linux on the desktop will stall.
That's something that a lot of people seem to miss.
If you need to get at internals, Linux is the choice. If you want a workhorse back-end system, Linux is the choice. If you want a desktop with great cutting-edge features, Linux is the way to go - KDE betas are best for that;). On the other hand -- if you want a desktop system that stays out of your way, Just Works, and requires little maintenance beyond letting an auto updater do its thing... Windows or OSX are your only real options.
When I use my computer to get a task done, my time is valuable - and I increasingly resent time I am forced to spend fixing or working around issues that are not immediately germane to the task at hand. That task might be browsing the web, editing a document, writing code, watching a video, debugging, etc. I have consistently found that I can't simply do that on the various flavors of linux - there's always something that seems to need adjusting, or stops working correctly, or doesn't work at all.
The problem is that people will often start blaming at this point, when they hear these statements. They'll say, "It's nvidia's fault for not doing X" or "it's your fault because you didn't do Y" or "it's the upstream maintainer's fault because he didn't do Z". Which is, unfortunately, completely missing the point: when you are using a system to get a task done, fault does not matter.
I, as a user of a product, want to simply use the product -- and spend zero time hunting down answers that I shouldn't need to concern myself with.
As a developer and a tinkerer I understand why doing this is necessary, and can even enjoy it sometimes. But as an end user, I experience a ridiculous level of frustration and exasperation when I need to devote MY time to working around somebody ELSE's issue - no matter whether we're talking about operating system, development tool chain, pc games, the amazingly badly designed FIOS TV interface, or anything else.
In recent years, I also find that the desktops are experimenting with increasingly weird crap - things that are both fun and frustrating. (Fun because they look like good concepts. Frustrating because the deviation from the familiar means less time Just Working even as I enjoy playing with them.) I will keep trying every few months, and I certainly have more than my fair share of back end linux servers and dual boot desktop systems - but for the forseeable future, Linux just isn't there.
I can't take seriously anything that begins with the blanket statement "competition is never for good". If he'd said, "Sometimes competition isn't the best thing for consumers" or even "forced competition is never for the good" I could have gone along with it. But to say it's never good without actually explaining it or anything to back it up... either no foundation in reality or joking.
My point is that he was able to take those steps in the first place because of how small apple's customer base was. If they had MS's install base at that time, it could never have happened.
I very much appreciate your concern about having choices, which is one of the good things that I love about all things OSS. But my bigger concern has to do with OSS efforts being diluted by forks and people doing very similar things separately.
I think this is similar to the kind of thinking that leaves RIAA execs believing that if people didn't pirate, they would suddenly start buying albums.
Maybe the things are similar to you and me - but obviously not to the people doing it, or there wouldn't be any debate. And the blessing and curse of OSS is that no one entity has the option of saying "No, your way is worse, we're using mine." While sometimes frustrating, that's also a Good Thing.
Apple (dare I say it) markets to an even less tech-savvy demographic than MS, and they've rarely ever had "misses" as painful as some of the MS ones.
Not that I'm an MS hater, mind- they've produced some good nuggets over the years. It'd be much easier to like them if it weren't for all the evil.
It's the difference between having an established market and custom-building a market. When you're a small player (10% now, 0% at start) you can afford to take some chances and break away from established ways of doing things . You don't really have that option when you're a big player, not without alienating a significant portion of your customer base.
Enjoy your fantasy land - let me know when you're willing to return to the same reality the rest of us share:)
Seriously, I agree - it would be great if things worked that way. But unfortunately, an extremely small minority of people standing around saying, "That makes no sense. Use your own brain and figure this out - what proof was offered to support this claim of pedophilia?" doesn't do a whole lot to change ingrained cultural values.
It's the disadvantage of not being king of a sovereign nation that only grants citizenship to those of a certain intellectual and emotional maturity.
More than that - 71% of 635 apps on Android and iPhone is NOT the same as 71% of Android apps or even 71% of apps period. TFS and TFA both gloss over the fact that this is 71% of a very small sampling -- which may or may not have been specifically targeted based on functionality and features. TFA also does not discuss how the scan was able to identify OSS production by looking at compiled, stripped down, and signed (and possibly encrypted) binaries.
Hmm, something's fishy here... oh, wait. I see. It's right there in TFA:
OpenLogic sells a product called the OLEX App Store Edition which provides tooling that can be used by developers to do a self-service scan on their apps prior to submitting to the app store and by app stores to track open source compliance.
How convenient! A one-company study -- using undisclosed methodology -- draws broad and irrational conclusions that suggest that people really need to buy its products and services. Amazing!
In an objective world where everybody has a high IQ and is not afraid to use it -- yeah, completely harmless. In the real world, not so much... In such a case, it has nothing to do with the accused's response or lack thereof. The accusation itself does serious harm to reputation at minimum; and can lead to financial and physical harm in the longer term.
There are plenty of laws about libel and slander that do that far better than I can. In a very broad sense I would say that harm be financial or to reputation. If statements are demonstrably true - then you can say them all you want. If not, and you state them as fact instead of opinion... well, you can still say them if you want to, but there are consequences for doing so.
Again, nobody is saying that they can't say these things. Only saying things that cause measurable harm to others carries consequences. I don't see anything in that amendment that is incompatible with this concept - do you? (Let's also not get into how it says CONGRESS shall pass no law...)
IANAL but my understanding is that you can state your opinion as much you want. It's when you present damaging lies as facts that you get into trouble... "I think Joe is a wife beater" vs. "Joe beats his wife."
Those anonymous pamphlets were NOT personal attacks on individuals. They made a case for independence; and they criticized government actions and policies.
Alternatively, I guess we can all just say whatever we want about anyone without consequence to ourselves - no matter the harm it does to the individual targeted. That's the true benefit of freedom of speech.
How so? When your free speech causes actual damages to someone (or in the case of threats - potential damage), it's gone beyond free speech and into the realm of "libel" (as we're talking about written speech) Come to think of it, I didn't see anything in the Bill of Rights which guarantees that exercising your freedom of speech be without consequence.
Irony would have applied only if it were not expected that the FP be an anonymous one. In this situation, it was both expected and logical Therefore it is with no sense of irony that I say: "irony fail".
You could put the high or a higher standard first, but you would have to fund it
OK: have the applicants pay for the needed experts. After all, the idea of a patent is to let the inventor profit. The inventor cannot afford it? That's what banks are for. If the idea is good, he can get a loan based on his future profit. Or get a venture capitalist to fund him.
You realize the most VC's are just loan sharks of the startup world, don't you?
Another possibility would be to have those who have successfully obtained a patent and are not actively licensing it under reasonable terms pay an annual penalty. This penalty would be used to fund the expert assistance required to maintain a manageable patent system. This has three advantages: it ensures fewer garbage patents are allowed into this system; it discourages people and companies from sitting on patents; and it encourages availability of the patented technology.
Further - it wouldn't make a process that's already too expensive for the independent inventor even more so; or unreasonably burden their future income as with VC funding.
I should also add that those nasty "long commands" that you have to type can be fairly easily tossed into a batch file/script -- you could even make that into a shortcut on your desktop, so you never have to see that icky shell window!
I am a developer for the BlackBerry platform; and am also developing a PlayBook app. (There's little reason NOT to - get a free PlayBook out of the deal, AND the app will be compat w/ ipad and android w/ minimal mods, b/c it's HTML5/webkit based). The author does raise many valid points, but I think some clarification is needed on a couple of them. SO here goes...
I do, however, notice that although it is currently free to register with App World, in the future there will be a $200 USD charge
First, if you register for free you'll never have to pay $200 to register again. ONce you're an app world vendor, you're an app world vendor - period. Second, they do not say this will exist in the future -- they only say that the fees are suspended, and that the fees MAY exist in the future. MOving on...
(paraphrased: I had to fill out personal info three times)
Yes and no. This has long been a painful point, but in the last couple of years RIM has modified it. YES you are presented with the forms three times. But if you check the "remember this info [or whatever]" box, it will pre-fill the form for you. And if you don't, your browser remembers anyway. Obviously this is not ideal (I really should be able to register with this info once) but it's not as painful as he makes it sound either.
Adobe AIR doesn't come with an installer
True. But that's not really RIM's fault. Too -if you're developing an AIR app, you can also download a trial version of Burrito or whatever the environment is -- good for sixty days.
For some reason, it thinks that the optimal place to install software on a Mac is my home directory. Not/Developer, not even/Applications, where 99.99% of software is supposed to be installed.
Now I don't know about Mac, but on WIndows you have the option to install it wherever you want. Outside of that -- and keeping in mind that RIM has little Mac experience unfortunately -- it seems likely that they didn't know about/Developer; and I'd assume you don't want to install a set of non-executable libraries into/Applications so why'd you even mention it?
Oh, I forgot to mention that you also told me I had to download VMWare Fusion to run the simulator
That's probably because on Linux and Windows, VMWare Player is free. I would again chalk it up to inexperience with the Mac platform, but perhaps that's being too generous. Certainly you have a point in that no platform should require you to purchase excessive amounts of software just to develop for it. For example, i'm sure iPhone can be developed on any platform, right? Oh, wait... Ok, snarkiness aside (and slight bitterness - I'd like to develop for iPhone, but will not buy a Mac for the privilege) fact is that for the MAJORITY of people developing, the simulator can be run for free.
Re: running the installer to get an ISO - I agree, that's just dumb.
Re: whining about developer mode. I can see your point here - it seems a bit excessive except when you realize this is the actual image used on the device; which means that teh device itself in all likelihood has a Development Mode that behaves in the same. With a bit of contextual understanding about how developers might want to deploy to an actual device for debugging and testing, this setup suddenly makes a lot more sense.
Command line tools: well, yes. If you don't pay Adobe for development tools, you need to use their free command line tools to build your app. Oh, the horror - expecting a developer to know how to use a shell. My understanding is that the final version of Burrito (adobe's tools) will also provide deployment-to-simulator.
Three additional points to keep in mind:
1) if you're developing an AIR app, you can do 90% of your testing and development in the AIR environment without really need
Why would someone say up the night developing for a platform that is a PITA when they can go and develop painfully for "the King" ? (be it iOS or Android, whatever)
I would rather focus on making my app great rather than wasting time dealing with a hideous development environment.
Moreover, the author not just complains about time. Its about money, too:
"I do, however, notice that although it is currently free to register with App World, in the future there will be a $200 USD charge. Now just in case you’ve never looked in to competing developer programs, Apple charges $99, and Google charges $25. Considering you are by far the underdog in this game, how do you justify charging double the price of the market leader? Also, with the $99 or $25 charge, Apple and Google let you publish and unlimited number of apps on their stores. You, on the other hand, have decided that for $200, a developer should only get to publish 10 apps, and it will cost $200 for every additional 10 apps"
Actually I haven't read anything that says they'd resume charging or not - only that they reserve the right to. SInce they're currently in the process of giving away free PlayBooks to developers who submit PlayBook apps, I rather doubt they'll be shooting themselves in the foot that way in the near future, if at all. One thing is certain - if you have a vendor account and you get it for free, they're not going to make you pay for it retroactively. In the worst case (if they do decide to shoot themselves in the foot) you'll have to start paying to submit apps, presumably $20/submission. (This honestly wouldn't be a bad thing as far as I'm concerned - since they suspended the fees for registering and submitting apps, we have problems like this [berryreview.com] in app world [for phones]. A differentiating factor for the RIM app store was the minimal amount of that kind of crap, before they dropped th
Well - the impression left by TFA is that the user isn't even told or prompted about it - if it's not enabled, it just won't work. No banner or popup requesting permission to enable.
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For using the computer more as a commodity tool for email/word processing/video watching etc Windows still is better presented and more importantly doesnt break grotesquely with every new update that appears like Ubuntu does (and yes I'm looking at 9.10) Until Linux, or more strictly I suppose GNOME/KDE etc get over this then I suspect that further adoption of linux on the desktop will stall.
That's something that a lot of people seem to miss.
If you need to get at internals, Linux is the choice. If you want a workhorse back-end system, Linux is the choice. If you want a desktop with great cutting-edge features, Linux is the way to go - KDE betas are best for that ;). On the other hand -- if you want a desktop system that stays out of your way, Just Works, and requires little maintenance beyond letting an auto updater do its thing... Windows or OSX are your only real options.
When I use my computer to get a task done, my time is valuable - and I increasingly resent time I am forced to spend fixing or working around issues that are not immediately germane to the task at hand. That task might be browsing the web, editing a document, writing code, watching a video, debugging, etc. I have consistently found that I can't simply do that on the various flavors of linux - there's always something that seems to need adjusting, or stops working correctly, or doesn't work at all.
The problem is that people will often start blaming at this point, when they hear these statements. They'll say, "It's nvidia's fault for not doing X" or "it's your fault because you didn't do Y" or "it's the upstream maintainer's fault because he didn't do Z". Which is, unfortunately, completely missing the point: when you are using a system to get a task done, fault does not matter.
I, as a user of a product, want to simply use the product -- and spend zero time hunting down answers that I shouldn't need to concern myself with. As a developer and a tinkerer I understand why doing this is necessary, and can even enjoy it sometimes. But as an end user, I experience a ridiculous level of frustration and exasperation when I need to devote MY time to working around somebody ELSE's issue - no matter whether we're talking about operating system, development tool chain, pc games, the amazingly badly designed FIOS TV interface, or anything else.
In recent years, I also find that the desktops are experimenting with increasingly weird crap - things that are both fun and frustrating. (Fun because they look like good concepts. Frustrating because the deviation from the familiar means less time Just Working even as I enjoy playing with them.) I will keep trying every few months, and I certainly have more than my fair share of back end linux servers and dual boot desktop systems - but for the forseeable future, Linux just isn't there.
I can't take seriously anything that begins with the blanket statement "competition is never for good". If he'd said, "Sometimes competition isn't the best thing for consumers" or even "forced competition is never for the good" I could have gone along with it. But to say it's never good without actually explaining it or anything to back it up... either no foundation in reality or joking.
My point is that he was able to take those steps in the first place because of how small apple's customer base was. If they had MS's install base at that time, it could never have happened.
I very much appreciate your concern about having choices, which is one of the good things that I love about all things OSS. But my bigger concern has to do with OSS efforts being diluted by forks and people doing very similar things separately.
I think this is similar to the kind of thinking that leaves RIAA execs believing that if people didn't pirate, they would suddenly start buying albums.
Maybe the things are similar to you and me - but obviously not to the people doing it, or there wouldn't be any debate. And the blessing and curse of OSS is that no one entity has the option of saying "No, your way is worse, we're using mine." While sometimes frustrating, that's also a Good Thing.
I was going to mod you down, but I couldn't find "-1 Clueless" in the options.
Apple (dare I say it) markets to an even less tech-savvy demographic than MS, and they've rarely ever had "misses" as painful as some of the MS ones.
Not that I'm an MS hater, mind- they've produced some good nuggets over the years. It'd be much easier to like them if it weren't for all the evil.
It's the difference between having an established market and custom-building a market. When you're a small player (10% now, 0% at start) you can afford to take some chances and break away from established ways of doing things . You don't really have that option when you're a big player, not without alienating a significant portion of your customer base.
Seriously, I agree - it would be great if things worked that way. But unfortunately, an extremely small minority of people standing around saying, "That makes no sense. Use your own brain and figure this out - what proof was offered to support this claim of pedophilia?" doesn't do a whole lot to change ingrained cultural values.
It's the disadvantage of not being king of a sovereign nation that only grants citizenship to those of a certain intellectual and emotional maturity.
Hmm, something's fishy here... oh, wait. I see. It's right there in TFA:
OpenLogic sells a product called the OLEX App Store Edition which provides tooling that can be used by developers to do a self-service scan on their apps prior to submitting to the app store and by app stores to track open source compliance.
How convenient! A one-company study -- using undisclosed methodology -- draws broad and irrational conclusions that suggest that people really need to buy its products and services. Amazing!
In an objective world where everybody has a high IQ and is not afraid to use it -- yeah, completely harmless. In the real world, not so much... In such a case, it has nothing to do with the accused's response or lack thereof. The accusation itself does serious harm to reputation at minimum; and can lead to financial and physical harm in the longer term.
You can also pronounce your name however you want. "My name is Elizabeth. Spelled F - A - C - E - B - O - O K. Yes, Elizabeth. "
There are plenty of laws about libel and slander that do that far better than I can. In a very broad sense I would say that harm be financial or to reputation. If statements are demonstrably true - then you can say them all you want. If not, and you state them as fact instead of opinion... well, you can still say them if you want to, but there are consequences for doing so.
Again, nobody is saying that they can't say these things. Only saying things that cause measurable harm to others carries consequences. I don't see anything in that amendment that is incompatible with this concept - do you? (Let's also not get into how it says CONGRESS shall pass no law...)
IANAL but my understanding is that you can state your opinion as much you want. It's when you present damaging lies as facts that you get into trouble... "I think Joe is a wife beater" vs. "Joe beats his wife."
Alternatively, I guess we can all just say whatever we want about anyone without consequence to ourselves - no matter the harm it does to the individual targeted. That's the true benefit of freedom of speech.
First I should have to prove the allegations are false, though.
Alright, sounds fair. Go ahead and prove for us that you are NOT a child molester.
How so? When your free speech causes actual damages to someone (or in the case of threats - potential damage), it's gone beyond free speech and into the realm of "libel" (as we're talking about written speech) Come to think of it, I didn't see anything in the Bill of Rights which guarantees that exercising your freedom of speech be without consequence.
(no, IANAL.)
Irony would have applied only if it were not expected that the FP be an anonymous one. In this situation, it was both expected and logical Therefore it is with no sense of irony that I say: "irony fail".
I knew about the command line tools, but not about the other options - thanks for the info.
You could put the high or a higher standard first, but you would have to fund it
OK: have the applicants pay for the needed experts. After all, the idea of a patent is to let the inventor profit. The inventor cannot afford it? That's what banks are for. If the idea is good, he can get a loan based on his future profit. Or get a venture capitalist to fund him.
You realize the most VC's are just loan sharks of the startup world, don't you?
Another possibility would be to have those who have successfully obtained a patent and are not actively licensing it under reasonable terms pay an annual penalty. This penalty would be used to fund the expert assistance required to maintain a manageable patent system. This has three advantages: it ensures fewer garbage patents are allowed into this system; it discourages people and companies from sitting on patents; and it encourages availability of the patented technology.
Further - it wouldn't make a process that's already too expensive for the independent inventor even more so; or unreasonably burden their future income as with VC funding.
I should also add that those nasty "long commands" that you have to type can be fairly easily tossed into a batch file /script -- you could even make that into a shortcut on your desktop, so you never have to see that icky shell window!
I do, however, notice that although it is currently free to register with App World, in the future there will be a $200 USD charge
First, if you register for free you'll never have to pay $200 to register again. ONce you're an app world vendor, you're an app world vendor - period. Second, they do not say this will exist in the future -- they only say that the fees are suspended, and that the fees MAY exist in the future. MOving on...
(paraphrased: I had to fill out personal info three times)
Yes and no. This has long been a painful point, but in the last couple of years RIM has modified it. YES you are presented with the forms three times. But if you check the "remember this info [or whatever]" box, it will pre-fill the form for you. And if you don't, your browser remembers anyway. Obviously this is not ideal (I really should be able to register with this info once) but it's not as painful as he makes it sound either.
Adobe AIR doesn't come with an installer
True. But that's not really RIM's fault. Too -if you're developing an AIR app, you can also download a trial version of Burrito or whatever the environment is -- good for sixty days.
For some reason, it thinks that the optimal place to install software on a Mac is my home directory. Not /Developer, not even /Applications, where 99.99% of software is supposed to be installed.
Now I don't know about Mac, but on WIndows you have the option to install it wherever you want. Outside of that -- and keeping in mind that RIM has little Mac experience unfortunately -- it seems likely that they didn't know about /Developer; and I'd assume you don't want to install a set of non-executable libraries into /Applications so why'd you even mention it?
Oh, I forgot to mention that you also told me I had to download VMWare Fusion to run the simulator
That's probably because on Linux and Windows, VMWare Player is free. I would again chalk it up to inexperience with the Mac platform, but perhaps that's being too generous. Certainly you have a point in that no platform should require you to purchase excessive amounts of software just to develop for it. For example, i'm sure iPhone can be developed on any platform, right? Oh, wait... Ok, snarkiness aside (and slight bitterness - I'd like to develop for iPhone, but will not buy a Mac for the privilege) fact is that for the MAJORITY of people developing, the simulator can be run for free.
Re: running the installer to get an ISO - I agree, that's just dumb.
Re: whining about developer mode. I can see your point here - it seems a bit excessive except when you realize this is the actual image used on the device; which means that teh device itself in all likelihood has a Development Mode that behaves in the same. With a bit of contextual understanding about how developers might want to deploy to an actual device for debugging and testing, this setup suddenly makes a lot more sense.
Command line tools: well, yes. If you don't pay Adobe for development tools, you need to use their free command line tools to build your app. Oh, the horror - expecting a developer to know how to use a shell. My understanding is that the final version of Burrito (adobe's tools) will also provide deployment-to-simulator.
Three additional points to keep in mind:
1) if you're developing an AIR app, you can do 90% of your testing and development in the AIR environment without really need
ou can get a free license for it from Adobe as well
Whoah, you can? How? (I went w/ HTML5 b/c I didn't realize this...)
Why would someone say up the night developing for a platform that is a PITA when they can go and develop painfully for "the King" ? (be it iOS or Android, whatever)
I would rather focus on making my app great rather than wasting time dealing with a hideous development environment.
Moreover, the author not just complains about time. Its about money, too: "I do, however, notice that although it is currently free to register with App World, in the future there will be a $200 USD charge. Now just in case you’ve never looked in to competing developer programs, Apple charges $99, and Google charges $25. Considering you are by far the underdog in this game, how do you justify charging double the price of the market leader? Also, with the $99 or $25 charge, Apple and Google let you publish and unlimited number of apps on their stores. You, on the other hand, have decided that for $200, a developer should only get to publish 10 apps, and it will cost $200 for every additional 10 apps"
Actually I haven't read anything that says they'd resume charging or not - only that they reserve the right to. SInce they're currently in the process of giving away free PlayBooks to developers who submit PlayBook apps, I rather doubt they'll be shooting themselves in the foot that way in the near future, if at all. One thing is certain - if you have a vendor account and you get it for free, they're not going to make you pay for it retroactively. In the worst case (if they do decide to shoot themselves in the foot) you'll have to start paying to submit apps, presumably $20/submission. (This honestly wouldn't be a bad thing as far as I'm concerned - since they suspended the fees for registering and submitting apps, we have problems like this [berryreview.com] in app world [for phones]. A differentiating factor for the RIM app store was the minimal amount of that kind of crap, before they dropped th
Well - the impression left by TFA is that the user isn't even told or prompted about it - if it's not enabled, it just won't work. No banner or popup requesting permission to enable.
The ability to run these binaries must be explicitly enabled by the user, so no reason to avoid Chrome just yet ;)