Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 9th Feb 2011 00:04 UTC
Speaking of Nokia - Engadget got their hands on what is supposedly an internal memo sent to Nokia employees by the company's new CEO. It's... Brutal. As in, brutally honest. There's no sugar-coating here, no unicorns, no glitter. "Nokia, our platform is burning." Update: Android is probably out of the question. Will it be Windows Phone 7, after all? Damn; Palm tonight, Nokia Friday - what a week for mobile! Update: The "Communities Dominate Brands" blog published an in-depth analysis of the memo, which claims with sound arguments that it might well be a hoax.
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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.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."More News »
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I was thinking shorter term benefits:
- bug is reported in platform X
- bug is promptly fixed affecting platforms X Y Z
- regular users of X Y and Z recieve the patch update in much shorter time mitigating the attack window, improving stability or whatever
You really don't need to reach back to the down of BSD and spin it out.
In terms of regular users and the N900? I can only hazard a guess:
- it's pretty (we're talking regular users here right?)
- camera on front and back
- excelent quality main camera (stomps all over Iphone's)
- slider keyboard (onscreen sucks)
- good battery life
- connect and/or charge from standard microUSB (they'll recognize that they can easily find a cable to charge off at least)
- good spread of supported cell technologies for regular users who travel
- 64 gigs of storage space (I'm not sure when the first 64 gig Iphone shipped.. think it was after)
- native Exchange sync support for the business regular users
The turn-offs; price asked by Nokia, lack of carrier sponsorship (no three year contract and 100$ N900 from my provider anyhow), lack of marketing and markets receiving product (it was how long before available in Canada and the US?). Also the app issue if you can't live without a function only available through another device or can't live without running the same game/app title as all your friends.
Even with Meego and ongoing Nokia rumors, apps are still being added and updated in the N900's repositories. Regular users probably don't recognize it in detail but they would recognize the additions of titles (yeah, Apple and Google's title counts have since eclipsed Maemo's library but I don't find as much repetition either).
For me, it was more nerdy things of course:
- an upgrade path from the N810 which happened to include a cell radio
- continued use of Maemo (nice and close to a Debian full distro)
- continued use of collected apps outside of Maemo repositories (scappy, metasploit...)
- ability to cross-compile debian packages (see Debfarm for example)
- developer and user friendly vendor not looking to lock me out of my own purchased hardware
- native integration into my home network and existing apps thanks to rsync/ssh/zim/
- easy of sync over network from any Internet connection (rsync/ssh again)
Turn offs; I reboot about once every three to six weeks for stability (I have a lot installed and use the device pretty hard), multi-touch would be handy and should have been included in the first place (believe that's a BS patent thing though), headphone jack in the way beside the keyboard and/or long strait connector on headphone wire instead of a nice manageable 90 degree bend.