Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 18th Oct 2010 21:54 UTC
Well, it's been a while since we've opened this particular jar (box is not historically accurate) owned by Pandora. Desktop Linux... Yes, that ever elusive readiness of the desktop that is Linux-powered. Some story on ComputerWorld argues that the desktop Linux dream is dead, and apparently, the story is causing some stir on the web. Well, paint me pink and call me a lightbulb, but of course desktop Linux is dead. However - who gives a flying monkey? Linux is being used by more people than ever!
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/22/13 13:38 UTC
"The Verge has learned that HTC's Chief Product Officer, Kouji Kodera, left the company last week. Kodera was responsible for HTC's overall product strategy, which makes the departure especially notable on the heels of the global launch of the make-or-break One. It's not just Kodera. In the past three-odd months, HTC has lost a number of employees in rapid succession." I really hope HTC pulls it together.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/22/13 13:30 UTC, submitted by JRepin
"It is with huge pleasure that the Debian GNU/Hurd team announces the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2013. This is a snapshot of Debian 'sid' at the time of the Debian 'wheezy' release (May 2013), so it is mostly based on the same sources. It is not an official Debian release, but it is an official Debian GNU/Hurd port release." Important note: 75% of Debian packages are supported bu Debian GNU/Hurd. Impressive.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 22:06 UTC
"The first killer app was VisiCalc. This early spreadsheet turned the Apple II from a hobbyist toy to a business computer. VisiCalc came with room for improvement, though. In addition, a new architecture and operating system, the Intel-based IBM PC and MS-DOS, also needed a spreadsheet to be taken seriously. That spreadsheet, released in early 1983, would be Lotus 1-2-3, and it would change the world. It became the PC's killer app, and the world would never be the same. On May 14, IBM quietly announced the end of the road for 1-2-3, along with Lotus Organizer and the Lotus SmartSuite office suite. Lotus 1-2-3's day is done." Impressive 30 year run.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 21:45 UTC
"There's a disconnect between how Apple CEO Tim Cook sees his company's tax strategies and how some members of the US Senate view it. That became clearer than ever today after Cook and two other Apple executives testified before Congress, explaining why they're holding most of their international income in Irish subsidiaries like Apple Operations International, which declare no tax residency anywhere in the world. AOI hasn't filed a tax return anywhere in the world for the last five years, yet it earned $30 billion in income from 2009 to 2012, according to a Senate report released yesterday." Just because something is legal, doesn't mean it's just. Apple, Google, Microsoft, and many more - these companies might not be breaking any laws, but it's obvious to anyone that what they are doing is scummy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 15:53 UTC
The new WebKit Opera for Android has been released. "Opera 14 for Android is built on top of Chromium 26, with a total overhaul of the UI in native code, making it fit well with the latest Android design guidelines. Go get the build from Google Play or point your browser to m.opera.com, and give it a spin!"
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 22:43 UTC
The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 21:50 UTC
PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.More News »
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2006-01-24
Like end-user cares. Nobody sees it, and
"C:\Windows\System32" does no make much sense either.
Users don't need to go hunting through there unless they want to do something with the Windows system files - the '32' is a little bit cryptic, i'll give you that.
However, 'Program Files' makes a bit more sense, doesn't it?
And yes, users do see it. For example, whenever firefox can't handle a protocol and the user needs to find a program to handle it, they have to trawl through /usr/bin assuming they even know what that is.
Its a stupid system, and people who for some reason have become perversely attached to this stuff cos they've been dealing with it since the 1970s making excuses for something thats barely adequate instead of pushing for something good is the problem.
Samba is available
Sure, samba is available, but why would the linux desktop use the Windows workgroup/domain/permissions model when none of that stuff is actually implemented in the rest of the OS? Plus shared homedirs don't work properly on samba, locking is a problem on samba. Samba is a great tool for interoperability, but why doesn't Linux have something good, something best-of-breed?
I've managed systems with ACL since 1989
(remember Apollo/Domain ?).
No real big advantages.
Rubbish. When some manager type comes to you and says 'I need group A to have read access to this folder and group B to have write access to this folder' and you say 'sorry, can't do it with Linux', thats not the right answer.
d) one GUI, with one widget API, and one system services (installed components, configuration settings, device discovery) backend. Doesn't mean people can't offer different stuff on top of that, but its pointless for things to be split into such tiny bits for the desktop user.
Can you say MFC and .NET ?
Can you say XP an Win7 ?
Can you say Cocoa and Carbon ?
Can you say 'none of those technologies are 'horizontally fragmented', or mutually exclusive at all?, and all go out of their way to provide a seamless look and feel on their respective OSes, as well as all leveraging common low-level services in a way that Linux doesn't?, as well as actually representing progress instead of 'it was done this way in the 1970s so it must be right'?'
e) a driver API which supports backwards compatibility even while new features are added
Go read http://www.linuxdriverproject.org.
Linux driver model is superior, period.
Company just have to realize that there is no
advantages in closed-source drivers.
I am sure that you won't get it,
and call me an old farth, since I remember the
day that when you bought a printer, it came with
a programming manual.
[/q]
I've read it, I understand that point of view, but when all your drivers have to be updated every time a kernel point release comes out, its just painful. Why can't I use the webcam driver that worked perfectly well on linux 2.6.18 on 2.6.19 without having to recompile it from source? I mean, apart from the kernel developers desire to preserve flexibility, why?
Users don't understand the reason for this, because he reason why is only relevant to kernel developers. Users just see broken stuff. And stuff breaks, even the open source stuff breaks - see recent Nouveau driver problems where kernel driver changes forced userland API changes, making it impossible to use newer kernels with older X.org stuff. Theres no mechanism in place to allow API to be gracefully deprecated as it changes, there is no way in hell this situation benefits anyone but kernel developers.
And sure, the kernel developers are important, they wrote this stuff, but this is an example of why desktop linux isn't a reality, because this 'we don't need no APIs, we'll change whatever we want, whenever we want, and if your driver isn't in the kernel tree for whatever reason, go f**k yourself' isn't working well for desktop users.