Your first link is not the app store, though. That would be the online Apple Store, you know like Amazon.com? The one that actually has some brick-and-mortar cousins? With the Macs standing around and the Genius Bar? Sorta like Best Buy, but Apple-specific?
And, also that is definitely not for download, because, you know there is a shipping estimate there? And the first picture actually shows you the physical box the software is shipping in?
Besides, that box also contains the old version 8 which does not have the obnoxious behavior written about here. That one is new for version 9, which is not in your link.
Well, you guessed wrong, because this article is about the Parallels Desktop Software for Macs that is installing the unwanted parts.
Funny enough, a software like Parallels Desktop needs such low-level access to the system that it would most certainly be prohibited from being approved into the Mac App Store. Apple is pretty strict about what kind of low-level access its App Store apps are allowed and where they can install their stuff.
So if the user would have stayed inside the walled garden, he would actually be safe from this particular threat.
I do not want to say that the walled garden is flawless or does not have some significant problems, but your guess is really simply wrong in this case.
Nope, you mixed the lawsuits up, I think. That happened in the Apple vs. Samsung lawsuit, which is a whole different can of worms. Nokia never demanded anything close to that and the Nokia vs. Apple lawsuit was about cell radio technology licensing in most parts anyway, not so much about any specific shipping product.
Besides and with the caveat that IANAL, as far as I understand it the new product demand by Samsung is kinda weak anyway, because it was done in reaction to Apple demanding to see Samsung products which were already announced and shown to the public or even be on retail shelves already and Samsung wanting to see future unannounced products in counter.
Again, IANAL and I have not watched those lawsuits in great detail, that is just what I gathered. But even I found that to be an odd request from Samsung and I am not sure why they even bothered trying to make that demand.
Well, I want give them some benefit of doubt for now that they still mean right with Android and that they will continue to keep it open enough (although the mentioned reason smells pretty fishy to me).
But I think this is just more strong evidence that Google was caught off-guard with the success of the iPad and rushed Honeycomb to an early release in order to have something to counter Apple.
In my mind, I think Google still was internally trying to limit Android to smaller smartphone-type devices and was still betting on ChromeOS to put on bigger-screen hardware like tablets. So I think Android was never meant to be put on tablets and Google did not want to expand Android to deal with the larger screen estate in a similar way as Apple did.
However, after seeing Apple having such success with the iPad and the carefully expanded iOS for the bigger-screen device, I think they scrambled and rushed Honeycomb together as fast as they could so they could expand Android in a somewhat similar fashion.
Right now, Honeycomb still seems to be buggy and somewhat unfinished, at least from what I gather from the Xoom reviews around the net. Other manufacturers have been slow to roll-out their Android tablets as well and the SDK was released just a few weeks before the Xoom launch, so tablet development for Android has some serious catching-up to do. Those are all good indications about the rushed state of Honeycomb to me
Now delaying the open-source release of Honeycomb in my mind indicates that the source is still a mess right now because it was so rushed and Google wants to delay it in order to stabilize everything and frankly, to remove a lot of embarrassing dirty hacks they put into their code just to get it to a sorta-shipping state.
In summary, I still think that this also shows once more that the simple "Android=Open" and "iOS=Closed" view is nowhere as black and white as some people might think. But right now, I also think this does not signal a strategic shift away from Android being open, but is more of an admission that Honeycomb was rushed to release and Google needs more time to fix its mess.
That is kind of a bummer, although after such a long time of silence, it was certainly quite expected (also, I guess that the Mac version of that game, which was also announced a long time ago, got axed quietly as well).
What I would find more interesting however, would be whether the Unreal Engine 3 itself was ported into a workable state, so it could be used for other porting projects in the future. Because although I do not care too much about the Unreal Tournament 3 game itself, having the Unreal Engine 3 on Linux could at least open some interesting possibilities either for other games being ported or for a developer studio using the Engine in a future game and then doing simultaneous cross-platform development.
Because if you look at the list of games using the Unreal Engine 3, that list of projects is rather impressive (for example, the entire Mass Effect series uses the Engine) and having such a widely used Engine available on Linux would be a boon, I think, maybe even for smaller Indie developers willing to do Linux development (depending on how expensive those licensing terms are).
Technically, porting should be possible, as the Unreal Engine 3 already runs on Windows, PS3, Xbox 360 and even MacOS X and iOS now, so it has shown that it is portable. And before you ask, I am not concluding that because Epic did an iOS port that it automatically runs on Mac OS X as well, although those two share a decent amount of similarities making the jump between those two platforms a good deal easier. No, actually, with Borderlands now having a Mac port, there are already two titles on Mac OS X using the Unreal Engine 3 that I know of (the other one being Star Trek DAC), so there is proof it runs on the Mac. I know that those are only two titles and only one you could possibly call an AAA title, but sadly, as far as I know, that is still more titles available than on Linux:(
So I hope Ryan Gordon at least got the Engine ported, so future projects can use it on Linux. Because although losing the game sucks a little, having the Engine could at least give some hope for some better future developments in Linux gaming. It sure could use some.
I do not think this will elicit a big reaction from Apple. GNUstep is, as far as I know, relatively close to the old frameworks NeXT used in their OS before Apple bought them. Apple then extended and expanded those and made what we now know as Cocoa out of them.
But that was about a decade ago and Cocoa grew and changed a lot during this time. I have not dabbled in GNUstep, but I believe that although there may be some familiarities, nowadays using GNUstep and using Cocoa is a pretty different experience for developers.
For this reason, I also think the summary is way too optimistic: There are already some big differences between developing for the Mac and developing for iOS and those two are at least developed side by side by the same company. The differences between GNUstep and iOS should even be bigger then, making the possible transition not nearly as smooth as the summary might suggest, especially since GNUstep might not even have many APIs for touchscreens and other mobile device-specific stuff yet. I think GNUstep is still pretty much desktop-only as of right now, which makes the Sony decision more than just... interesting.
What this Sony decision might do, however, is increase adoption of Objective-C as a language. Before now, Objective-C was pretty much confined to the Apple ecosystem, apart from some guys fiddling around GNUstep for fun, I think the language did not have any other commercial venue besides using it on a Mac or on iOS devices (which is a pretty big venue, though). Now, you can also use it to target some Sony stuff as well and maybe, if it proves successful, also gets adopted by some other manufacturers, too. In that sense, Apple might secretly even be pleased that Sony did this, as it promotes Objective-C and gives developers more incentive to learn the language, which might then spur more Mac or iOS development as well.
Well, they are a niche genre for sure, but if done well, they can still be interesting today and actually are kinda coming back again a little.
I think the wave of motion-control systems for consoles played a big part in it, starting with the Wii. Because the Wiimote could essentially be used quite nicely as a modern lightgun system and was standard issue on all Wii consoles, games like House of the Dead: Overkill or Dead Space: Extraction for the Wii were made as rail shooters and now with the Playstation Move rail shooters are now in development for the PS3 as well.
I am not sure how successful those rail shooters are financially, but since the modern consoles gave them some legitimacy back, I think those are good signs that there is definitely interest in rail shooters now.
Well, if you could believe that he actually thinks that way and was not just deliberately stirring the pot in order to hawk his book, Tim Wu, who was mentioned in this slashdot story just two stories below this one, should technically feel very stupid right now for saying the Apple is the greatest danger to information freedom right before Facebook announces this.
At least the guy has impeccable timing in regards to putting his foot in his mouth;)
Android would be a good example of this, as the company that originally made Android was bought by Google and the founder of that company, Andy Rubin is now overseeing all of Googles Android development.
Call me jaded, but the way the patent system is right now (meaning "fucked up"), as far as I am concerned, everything is subject to patent trolling until tested in court (and even then, sometimes another troll shows up later:-P)
Now considering that, why exactly should I assume that H.264 should be subject to patent trolling later and while WebM remains (patent) troll-free? Just because Google said so? Just because Google has an army of lawyers and money in the bank? Guess what, all of those arguments apply to H.264 too (the MPEG LA also says they have all the patents for it, they have lawyers and money in the bank from the license fees). And what Googles promises and their lawyers are actually worth, we will sadly see soon when the Android patent trials against Oracle gets started.
Also, since we already know that WebM and H.264 are technically very similar, I personally think that possible patent lawsuits coming from future patent trolls might be directed at both systems simultaneously, which would make any perceived advantage from WebM moot in that regard.
Now, WebM still has a lot of merit as an open and royalty-free web video codec. But as far as I am concerned, until either of them gets really tested in court against a patent troll, both codecs are still susceptible to litigation and H.264 may actually have an advantage in that regard as it has been on the market (and thus as a target for patent trolls) longer.
I hate to say this, but aside from the usual slashdot bashing (which honestly, I found kinda odd), there actually is a recently released smartphone with greatly increased battery life compared to its predecessor:
The Apple iPhone 4
As far as I have seen the new iPhone usually gets the best scores among all smartphones right now in terms of battery and a lot of user reports seem to suggest that they get great battery life out of it, even without disabling all connectivity options.
Yes, you could pack a spare battery and yes, walled garden and evil Apple and yada yada, but the recent crop of Apple products all seem to have nailed down great battery life for some reason, considering the iPad and the newer Macbooks seem to do well in that area as well.
Good luck trying to get an FCC certification with something like an Open GSM stack and then finding a carrier willing to let you on their network with that.
Its a custom stylesheet that autohides comments on a lot of popular web pages. There are even some browser extensions for it so you can toggle it on and off at will.
I think the way Bittorrent works, it does especially well for some specific use cases and might not work so well for other ones.
As far as I understand it, Bittorrent works very well if a lot of people want to get the same download at roughly the same time because then the bandwidth-sharing aspect of Bittorrent makes it scale better in comparison to a direct download. Thus, it makes sense to be used by someone like Blizzard for their updates, because all the players want and should get the Update more or less as soon as it gets out.
But I think it does not work as well if you try to use it for less frequented files or if you use it during less frequented times. I might be wrong here, but I seem to remember that in such cases, the protocol overhead makes the direct download the better choice.
Also (and my understanding might be shady here as well), something like using a local mirror is not quite easy to do via Bittorrent, I believe and local mirrors (for example, the ones sourceforge uses) can be quite useful and give much better bandwith.
In short, I think Bittorrent can be pretty powerful, but does not give advantages in all use cases, which might slow down wider adoption.
I think putting the (former) OpenOffice on independent footing away from a single corporation is a laudable goal and a good idea, but can it work this way?
As far as I remember, one of the problems OpenOffice always had was that most of the developers were paid developers inside Sun who worked on OpenOffice full-time. I thought the code was kind of a mess and hard to decipher for anyone outside, so the project always fought for more volunteers, but could not get many. Has this changed?
Because otherwise, OpenOffice development, while now technically being independent from Oracle, might still by all accounts be entirely dependent on Oracle goodwill if most of the meaningful development can still only be done by those full-time developers inside Oracle.
This might work however, if that new-founded Foundation can somehow acquire enough funding to ease away those internal developers as well and continue paying them to work on OpenOffice full-time. I am not sure if that is feasible, however.
Well, according to TFA, this includes ALL coverage of Apple, whether it is good or bad.
That means all the negative Apple articles and Apple bashing will be counted in as well. No wonder Apple got the highest number in the media coverage count, I am pretty sure there are very few companies that are so emotionally charged either way right now, so those articles tend to draw huge reactions either way:)
Also, the media selected for this survey is a bit odd. Of the 52 news outlets, 12 are websites, six are television channels, but a whopping 10 radio stations? That seems like the wrong ratio to me.
Thanks, I wish I had mod points right now to mod you up.
I would like to wait how this develops to make a final judgement, but this looks pretty serious and I hate to say this, but if those allegations are found to be true, those tactics look like the bad old days of someone like Microsoft or Intel strong-arming their business partners into shady deals in order to drive their competition out:-P
I guess because in that case, Google would have to go against Verizon and I think against a big carrier, the chances of Google getting away with strong-arming one of those are pretty much nil, because Google is dependent on the carriers for Android marketshare and so apparently will let them get away with things like that.
Am I the only one who is concerned that Google abandoning the Nexus One might spell future trouble for the Android platform? They already said they have no plans for a successor, so the Nexus One will for all means remains the only device that gets new Android versions as soon as Google finishes them. If there is no officially "Google-blessed" other phone in the future with the same capability, this could be bad news not only for developers, who will then lose a valuable testing hardware for new Android versions.
I also believe that the Nexus One was a pretty significant kick in the butt for handset makers and carriers as an Android showcase, not only for new Android versions, but also as some sort of a gold standard hardware-wise which gives them a spec target they should aspire to. It enabled us to tell handset makers and carriers "...see, new Android versions on the Nexus One bring pretty nice improvements, we want those in all the other Android phones as well" and "...see, the Nexus One has pretty decent specs, all Android devices should have least something comparable to this under the hood". This put mindshare pressure on them to make better Android devices and equip them with the latest Android versions.
But now, with the Nexus One being slowly phased out and no spiritual successor on the horizon, I fear that Android device makers will be even more lazy in adopting the latest new Android versions. They are already lagging, but until now, there always was at least the Nexus One to show what we were missing, so the handset makers had some pressure to bring newer Android versions even to older devices. But now? What incentive should OEMs have now to make new Android versions available, the Nexus One was the only one to get them on time and the only one which was even promised to get any update at all.If we now try to put mindshare pressure on them, they can all say "well, we would love to, but this is a lot of work and there is no other phone with the brand new Android version anyway, so who cares?". Look at the slow pace of getting Froyo to Android devices and then tell me you are not even a little bit concerned this might happen...
And without something like a regularly updated hardware gold standard like the Nexus One was, maybe Android device makers will try to bring out more cheap Android devices with subpar hardware, which will give you a pretty crappy Android experience. I think this is what is happening in the Android tablet space at the moment: There is no "gold standard" Android tablet, so a lot of the Android tablets seem to be quickly cobbled together, with crappy specs, which slow them down and make for a poor tablet experience. I have no trust in handset makers that they will not try to make somethink similar in the smartphone area.
Lastly, I think the dreaded fragmentation problem could become much worse if Google no longer has a gold standard device like the Nexus One. Android 3.0 and beyond seem to bring quite significant changes to the Android UI and with the Nexus One, you would get at least one device with the pure, unaltered Android UI experience. But without that, things like Sense UI or Motoblur could become even more prominent and dilute Android, especially when the pressure to provide new Android versions goes down without something like the Nexus One. Also, handset makers could try to hang on to old Android versions they have already tested and deployed much longer, which would mean the new features introduced in new Android versions could be delayed, since none of the device makers bothers to catch up.
Sure, the community can alleviate some of those concerns with custom firmware and stuff. But without a successor to the Nexus One, I fear the need for tinkering will become bigger and bigger and would put a serious damper on the mass appeal and the future growth of the Android platform. I think it is no coincidence that all other smartphone makers either design their own hardware or otherwise put pretty strict definitions even on their hardware (like Microsoft will do with WP7), I think in significant part because of some of the concerns I am having.
Maybe thats just me, but does anyone see any system requirements on anywhere? I read the press release, looked all over the company website and still could not find anything even remotely looking like system requirements anywhere.
I would guess that there is a Windows version and since it seems to integrate with Final Cut Pro, a Mac version seems likely as well, but there is no way to be sure and strangely, I could not find anything.
Also, it seems that Lightworks was only recently (August 2009) acquired by EditShare. Making it OpenSource now could mean that EditShare maybe was not able or willing to continue developing, selling and supporting the program and now tries to salvage something by open-sourcing it, hoping the community will pick up the slack.
Well, if you have software on your $400 laptop that can do the digital to analog / analog to digital just like you say, the solution is clear: hold one laptop up to each ear.
Gee thanks, now I have a terrible vision of a whole new level of sidetalkin;-)
Well, I was so foolish to RTFA and I am kinda infuriated now. The article tries to make a valid point about the importance of net neutrality and open source, but in my opinion fails horribly to do so because it mixes it up in a hodgepodge of buzzwords and misunderstood and wrongy applied concepts.
I cannot even start to describe what I feel is wrong with this article, but the last paragraph contains two especially big stinkers:
-First, the ill-fated assumption that the performance and the responsiveness of the iPhone is just an "implementation detail" and that Android phones would have an advantage because they have better specs. As if there never have been cases in IT history where the competitors with the better specs lost out (*cough* iPod killers *cough* Console wars *cough*)
-And even more wrong the assumption that just because Android is an open-source implementation, the web itself would become more open. WTF? Why should it make a difference whether the platform with which I access the web is open, when the web application itself isnt (regardless of the fact that both Android and the iPhone use the same browser engine)? And why should for example Amazon (which is named in the article) be more inclined to open up its data when we use an Android device opposed to an iPhone?
I know that the argument that he tries to make is that openness is very important and that we should strive to not get proprietary insulas in the web as we had in traditional applications. But I think that openness he strives for is not necessarily tied to open source and net neutrality, you need better data portability and better access to the data stored inside those web entities, which is a whole different can of worms right there.
So the big mistake of this article is not promoting open source and net neutrality, which are important. The big mistake is assuming those two will be sufficient in achieving the kind of openness that he wants. They wont, but he fails to see that.
Its good to see Microfsoft open up the Outlook PST format, if only to improve importing into other mail clients like Thunderbird etc.
But honestly, using the PST format in other applications sounds like a terrible idea to me: Those monolithic PST files, which Outlook uses to store mail data get corrupted easily (at least in my experience) and storing all your email data in one gigantic file always struck me as a really bad design choice anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
Your first link is not the app store, though. That would be the online Apple Store, you know like Amazon.com? The one that actually has some brick-and-mortar cousins? With the Macs standing around and the Genius Bar? Sorta like Best Buy, but Apple-specific?
And, also that is definitely not for download, because, you know there is a shipping estimate there? And the first picture actually shows you the physical box the software is shipping in?
Besides, that box also contains the old version 8 which does not have the obnoxious behavior written about here. That one is new for version 9, which is not in your link.
Well, you guessed wrong, because this article is about the Parallels Desktop Software for Macs that is installing the unwanted parts.
Funny enough, a software like Parallels Desktop needs such low-level access to the system that it would most certainly be prohibited from being approved into the Mac App Store. Apple is pretty strict about what kind of low-level access its App Store apps are allowed and where they can install their stuff.
So if the user would have stayed inside the walled garden, he would actually be safe from this particular threat.
I do not want to say that the walled garden is flawless or does not have some significant problems, but your guess is really simply wrong in this case.
Nope, you mixed the lawsuits up, I think. That happened in the Apple vs. Samsung lawsuit, which is a whole different can of worms. Nokia never demanded anything close to that and the Nokia vs. Apple lawsuit was about cell radio technology licensing in most parts anyway, not so much about any specific shipping product.
Besides and with the caveat that IANAL, as far as I understand it the new product demand by Samsung is kinda weak anyway, because it was done in reaction to Apple demanding to see Samsung products which were already announced and shown to the public or even be on retail shelves already and Samsung wanting to see future unannounced products in counter.
Again, IANAL and I have not watched those lawsuits in great detail, that is just what I gathered. But even I found that to be an odd request from Samsung and I am not sure why they even bothered trying to make that demand.
Well, I want give them some benefit of doubt for now that they still mean right with Android and that they will continue to keep it open enough (although the mentioned reason smells pretty fishy to me).
But I think this is just more strong evidence that Google was caught off-guard with the success of the iPad and rushed Honeycomb to an early release in order to have something to counter Apple.
In my mind, I think Google still was internally trying to limit Android to smaller smartphone-type devices and was still betting on ChromeOS to put on bigger-screen hardware like tablets. So I think Android was never meant to be put on tablets and Google did not want to expand Android to deal with the larger screen estate in a similar way as Apple did.
However, after seeing Apple having such success with the iPad and the carefully expanded iOS for the bigger-screen device, I think they scrambled and rushed Honeycomb together as fast as they could so they could expand Android in a somewhat similar fashion.
Right now, Honeycomb still seems to be buggy and somewhat unfinished, at least from what I gather from the Xoom reviews around the net. Other manufacturers have been slow to roll-out their Android tablets as well and the SDK was released just a few weeks before the Xoom launch, so tablet development for Android has some serious catching-up to do. Those are all good indications about the rushed state of Honeycomb to me
Now delaying the open-source release of Honeycomb in my mind indicates that the source is still a mess right now because it was so rushed and Google wants to delay it in order to stabilize everything and frankly, to remove a lot of embarrassing dirty hacks they put into their code just to get it to a sorta-shipping state.
In summary, I still think that this also shows once more that the simple "Android=Open" and "iOS=Closed" view is nowhere as black and white as some people might think. But right now, I also think this does not signal a strategic shift away from Android being open, but is more of an admission that Honeycomb was rushed to release and Google needs more time to fix its mess.
That is kind of a bummer, although after such a long time of silence, it was certainly quite expected (also, I guess that the Mac version of that game, which was also announced a long time ago, got axed quietly as well).
:(
What I would find more interesting however, would be whether the Unreal Engine 3 itself was ported into a workable state, so it could be used for other porting projects in the future. Because although I do not care too much about the Unreal Tournament 3 game itself, having the Unreal Engine 3 on Linux could at least open some interesting possibilities either for other games being ported or for a developer studio using the Engine in a future game and then doing simultaneous cross-platform development.
Because if you look at the list of games using the Unreal Engine 3, that list of projects is rather impressive (for example, the entire Mass Effect series uses the Engine) and having such a widely used Engine available on Linux would be a boon, I think, maybe even for smaller Indie developers willing to do Linux development (depending on how expensive those licensing terms are).
Technically, porting should be possible, as the Unreal Engine 3 already runs on Windows, PS3, Xbox 360 and even MacOS X and iOS now, so it has shown that it is portable. And before you ask, I am not concluding that because Epic did an iOS port that it automatically runs on Mac OS X as well, although those two share a decent amount of similarities making the jump between those two platforms a good deal easier. No, actually, with Borderlands now having a Mac port, there are already two titles on Mac OS X using the Unreal Engine 3 that I know of (the other one being Star Trek DAC), so there is proof it runs on the Mac. I know that those are only two titles and only one you could possibly call an AAA title, but sadly, as far as I know, that is still more titles available than on Linux
So I hope Ryan Gordon at least got the Engine ported, so future projects can use it on Linux. Because although losing the game sucks a little, having the Engine could at least give some hope for some better future developments in Linux gaming. It sure could use some.
I do not think this will elicit a big reaction from Apple. GNUstep is, as far as I know, relatively close to the old frameworks NeXT used in their OS before Apple bought them. Apple then extended and expanded those and made what we now know as Cocoa out of them.
... interesting.
But that was about a decade ago and Cocoa grew and changed a lot during this time. I have not dabbled in GNUstep, but I believe that although there may be some familiarities, nowadays using GNUstep and using Cocoa is a pretty different experience for developers.
For this reason, I also think the summary is way too optimistic: There are already some big differences between developing for the Mac and developing for iOS and those two are at least developed side by side by the same company. The differences between GNUstep and iOS should even be bigger then, making the possible transition not nearly as smooth as the summary might suggest, especially since GNUstep might not even have many APIs for touchscreens and other mobile device-specific stuff yet. I think GNUstep is still pretty much desktop-only as of right now, which makes the Sony decision more than just
What this Sony decision might do, however, is increase adoption of Objective-C as a language. Before now, Objective-C was pretty much confined to the Apple ecosystem, apart from some guys fiddling around GNUstep for fun, I think the language did not have any other commercial venue besides using it on a Mac or on iOS devices (which is a pretty big venue, though). Now, you can also use it to target some Sony stuff as well and maybe, if it proves successful, also gets adopted by some other manufacturers, too. In that sense, Apple might secretly even be pleased that Sony did this, as it promotes Objective-C and gives developers more incentive to learn the language, which might then spur more Mac or iOS development as well.
Well, they are a niche genre for sure, but if done well, they can still be interesting today and actually are kinda coming back again a little.
I think the wave of motion-control systems for consoles played a big part in it, starting with the Wii. Because the Wiimote could essentially be used quite nicely as a modern lightgun system and was standard issue on all Wii consoles, games like House of the Dead: Overkill or Dead Space: Extraction for the Wii were made as rail shooters and now with the Playstation Move rail shooters are now in development for the PS3 as well.
I am not sure how successful those rail shooters are financially, but since the modern consoles gave them some legitimacy back, I think those are good signs that there is definitely interest in rail shooters now.
Well, if you could believe that he actually thinks that way and was not just deliberately stirring the pot in order to hawk his book, Tim Wu, who was mentioned in this slashdot story just two stories below this one, should technically feel very stupid right now for saying the Apple is the greatest danger to information freedom right before Facebook announces this.
;)
At least the guy has impeccable timing in regards to putting his foot in his mouth
Android would be a good example of this, as the company that originally made Android was bought by Google and the founder of that company, Andy Rubin is now overseeing all of Googles Android development.
Call me jaded, but the way the patent system is right now (meaning "fucked up"), as far as I am concerned, everything is subject to patent trolling until tested in court (and even then, sometimes another troll shows up later :-P)
Now considering that, why exactly should I assume that H.264 should be subject to patent trolling later and while WebM remains (patent) troll-free? Just because Google said so? Just because Google has an army of lawyers and money in the bank? Guess what, all of those arguments apply to H.264 too (the MPEG LA also says they have all the patents for it, they have lawyers and money in the bank from the license fees). And what Googles promises and their lawyers are actually worth, we will sadly see soon when the Android patent trials against Oracle gets started.
Also, since we already know that WebM and H.264 are technically very similar, I personally think that possible patent lawsuits coming from future patent trolls might be directed at both systems simultaneously, which would make any perceived advantage from WebM moot in that regard.
Now, WebM still has a lot of merit as an open and royalty-free web video codec. But as far as I am concerned, until either of them gets really tested in court against a patent troll, both codecs are still susceptible to litigation and H.264 may actually have an advantage in that regard as it has been on the market (and thus as a target for patent trolls) longer.
I hate to say this, but aside from the usual slashdot bashing (which honestly, I found kinda odd), there actually is a recently released smartphone with greatly increased battery life compared to its predecessor:
The Apple iPhone 4
As far as I have seen the new iPhone usually gets the best scores among all smartphones right now in terms of battery and a lot of user reports seem to suggest that they get great battery life out of it, even without disabling all connectivity options.
Yes, you could pack a spare battery and yes, walled garden and evil Apple and yada yada, but the recent crop of Apple products all seem to have nailed down great battery life for some reason, considering the iPad and the newer Macbooks seem to do well in that area as well.
Good luck trying to get an FCC certification with something like an Open GSM stack and then finding a carrier willing to let you on their network with that.
Try shutup.css
Its a custom stylesheet that autohides comments on a lot of popular web pages. There are even some browser extensions for it so you can toggle it on and off at will.
I think the way Bittorrent works, it does especially well for some specific use cases and might not work so well for other ones.
As far as I understand it, Bittorrent works very well if a lot of people want to get the same download at roughly the same time because then the bandwidth-sharing aspect of Bittorrent makes it scale better in comparison to a direct download. Thus, it makes sense to be used by someone like Blizzard for their updates, because all the players want and should get the Update more or less as soon as it gets out.
But I think it does not work as well if you try to use it for less frequented files or if you use it during less frequented times. I might be wrong here, but I seem to remember that in such cases, the protocol overhead makes the direct download the better choice.
Also (and my understanding might be shady here as well), something like using a local mirror is not quite easy to do via Bittorrent, I believe and local mirrors (for example, the ones sourceforge uses) can be quite useful and give much better bandwith.
In short, I think Bittorrent can be pretty powerful, but does not give advantages in all use cases, which might slow down wider adoption.
I think putting the (former) OpenOffice on independent footing away from a single corporation is a laudable goal and a good idea, but can it work this way?
As far as I remember, one of the problems OpenOffice always had was that most of the developers were paid developers inside Sun who worked on OpenOffice full-time. I thought the code was kind of a mess and hard to decipher for anyone outside, so the project always fought for more volunteers, but could not get many. Has this changed?
Because otherwise, OpenOffice development, while now technically being independent from Oracle, might still by all accounts be entirely dependent on Oracle goodwill if most of the meaningful development can still only be done by those full-time developers inside Oracle.
This might work however, if that new-founded Foundation can somehow acquire enough funding to ease away those internal developers as well and continue paying them to work on OpenOffice full-time. I am not sure if that is feasible, however.
Well, according to TFA, this includes ALL coverage of Apple, whether it is good or bad.
:)
That means all the negative Apple articles and Apple bashing will be counted in as well. No wonder Apple got the highest number in the media coverage count, I am pretty sure there are very few companies that are so emotionally charged either way right now, so those articles tend to draw huge reactions either way
Also, the media selected for this survey is a bit odd. Of the 52 news outlets, 12 are websites, six are television channels, but a whopping 10 radio stations? That seems like the wrong ratio to me.
Thanks, I wish I had mod points right now to mod you up.
:-P
I would like to wait how this develops to make a final judgement, but this looks pretty serious and I hate to say this, but if those allegations are found to be true, those tactics look like the bad old days of someone like Microsoft or Intel strong-arming their business partners into shady deals in order to drive their competition out
Good question.
I guess because in that case, Google would have to go against Verizon and I think against a big carrier, the chances of Google getting away with strong-arming one of those are pretty much nil, because Google is dependent on the carriers for Android marketshare and so apparently will let them get away with things like that.
Am I the only one who is concerned that Google abandoning the Nexus One might spell future trouble for the Android platform? They already said they have no plans for a successor, so the Nexus One will for all means remains the only device that gets new Android versions as soon as Google finishes them. If there is no officially "Google-blessed" other phone in the future with the same capability, this could be bad news not only for developers, who will then lose a valuable testing hardware for new Android versions.
I also believe that the Nexus One was a pretty significant kick in the butt for handset makers and carriers as an Android showcase, not only for new Android versions, but also as some sort of a gold standard hardware-wise which gives them a spec target they should aspire to. It enabled us to tell handset makers and carriers "...see, new Android versions on the Nexus One bring pretty nice improvements, we want those in all the other Android phones as well" and "...see, the Nexus One has pretty decent specs, all Android devices should have least something comparable to this under the hood". This put mindshare pressure on them to make better Android devices and equip them with the latest Android versions.
But now, with the Nexus One being slowly phased out and no spiritual successor on the horizon, I fear that Android device makers will be even more lazy in adopting the latest new Android versions. They are already lagging, but until now, there always was at least the Nexus One to show what we were missing, so the handset makers had some pressure to bring newer Android versions even to older devices. But now? What incentive should OEMs have now to make new Android versions available, the Nexus One was the only one to get them on time and the only one which was even promised to get any update at all.If we now try to put mindshare pressure on them, they can all say "well, we would love to, but this is a lot of work and there is no other phone with the brand new Android version anyway, so who cares?". Look at the slow pace of getting Froyo to Android devices and then tell me you are not even a little bit concerned this might happen...
And without something like a regularly updated hardware gold standard like the Nexus One was, maybe Android device makers will try to bring out more cheap Android devices with subpar hardware, which will give you a pretty crappy Android experience. I think this is what is happening in the Android tablet space at the moment: There is no "gold standard" Android tablet, so a lot of the Android tablets seem to be quickly cobbled together, with crappy specs, which slow them down and make for a poor tablet experience. I have no trust in handset makers that they will not try to make somethink similar in the smartphone area.
Lastly, I think the dreaded fragmentation problem could become much worse if Google no longer has a gold standard device like the Nexus One. Android 3.0 and beyond seem to bring quite significant changes to the Android UI and with the Nexus One, you would get at least one device with the pure, unaltered Android UI experience. But without that, things like Sense UI or Motoblur could become even more prominent and dilute Android, especially when the pressure to provide new Android versions goes down without something like the Nexus One. Also, handset makers could try to hang on to old Android versions they have already tested and deployed much longer, which would mean the new features introduced in new Android versions could be delayed, since none of the device makers bothers to catch up.
Sure, the community can alleviate some of those concerns with custom firmware and stuff. But without a successor to the Nexus One, I fear the need for tinkering will become bigger and bigger and would put a serious damper on the mass appeal and the future growth of the Android platform. I think it is no coincidence that all other smartphone makers either design their own hardware or otherwise put pretty strict definitions even on their hardware (like Microsoft will do with WP7), I think in significant part because of some of the concerns I am having.
Maybe thats just me, but does anyone see any system requirements on anywhere? I read the press release, looked all over the company website and still could not find anything even remotely looking like system requirements anywhere.
I would guess that there is a Windows version and since it seems to integrate with Final Cut Pro, a Mac version seems likely as well, but there is no way to be sure and strangely, I could not find anything.
Also, it seems that Lightworks was only recently (August 2009) acquired by EditShare. Making it OpenSource now could mean that EditShare maybe was not able or willing to continue developing, selling and supporting the program and now tries to salvage something by open-sourcing it, hoping the community will pick up the slack.
Gee thanks, now I have a terrible vision of a whole new level of sidetalkin ;-)
Well, I was so foolish to RTFA and I am kinda infuriated now. The article tries to make a valid point about the importance of net neutrality and open source, but in my opinion fails horribly to do so because it mixes it up in a hodgepodge of buzzwords and misunderstood and wrongy applied concepts.
I cannot even start to describe what I feel is wrong with this article, but the last paragraph contains two especially big stinkers:
-First, the ill-fated assumption that the performance and the responsiveness of the iPhone is just an "implementation detail" and that Android phones would have an advantage because they have better specs. As if there never have been cases in IT history where the competitors with the better specs lost out (*cough* iPod killers *cough* Console wars *cough*)
-And even more wrong the assumption that just because Android is an open-source implementation, the web itself would become more open. WTF? Why should it make a difference whether the platform with which I access the web is open, when the web application itself isnt (regardless of the fact that both Android and the iPhone use the same browser engine)? And why should for example Amazon (which is named in the article) be more inclined to open up its data when we use an Android device opposed to an iPhone?
I know that the argument that he tries to make is that openness is very important and that we should strive to not get proprietary insulas in the web as we had in traditional applications. But I think that openness he strives for is not necessarily tied to open source and net neutrality, you need better data portability and better access to the data stored inside those web entities, which is a whole different can of worms right there.
So the big mistake of this article is not promoting open source and net neutrality, which are important. The big mistake is assuming those two will be sufficient in achieving the kind of openness that he wants. They wont, but he fails to see that.
Doh! Yeah, sorry about that :) I guess I could not decide whether PST was a bad format or a dud, so naturally, it became a dad ;)
Its good to see Microfsoft open up the Outlook PST format, if only to improve importing into other mail clients like Thunderbird etc.
But honestly, using the PST format in other applications sounds like a terrible idea to me: Those monolithic PST files, which Outlook uses to store mail data get corrupted easily (at least in my experience) and storing all your email data in one gigantic file always struck me as a really bad design choice anyway.
No wonder that this sort of article is posted on Techcrunch, those guys clearly have a lot of experience in that regard! ;-)
And no, I do not want to flame, they even use an older Techcrunch story as an example in TFA. They really speak from experience.