Every week we have the creeping feeling that our lack of expertise in some areas is working against us and soon we are to be set upon by an amassed army of geeks armed with ‘torches and pitchforks’ for forgetting a fact here and a name there and confusing x86-64 with ia64. This week we can’t avoid the ignorance as we have to discuss Android and Windows CE on netbooks, Opera Unite and then wade through Microsoft’s “Get the Facts” campaign, but find sanctuary in something I do know a good deal about – HTML5 video.
Here’s how the audio file breaks down:
| 0:00:30 | Intro / Reader comments |
|---|---|
| 0:07:24 | “Android / WinCE on Netbooks†|
| 0:22:40 | “Opera Unite†|
| 0:40:39 | “Get The Facts†|
| 0:57:02 | “Letter to Mozilla / HTML5 Video†|
| 1:28:56 | Meta |
| 1:32:28 | (Total Time) |
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The intro / intermission and extro music is a Commodore 64 remix “Turrican 2 – The Final Fight†by Daree Rock.
We genuinely hope that you enjoy the show, and that we’ve managed to bring up original points in our discussion. Do follow up what you picked up on in your comments!
We are always open to your feedback. Please either leave your comments on the site, or send us an email to [email protected].
Opera uses UPnP. So they seem to use *.*.operaunite.com just as DNS and then use your IP. So not all data is going through their server. Not 100% sure about that, but I don’t think Kroc is either
(Too late to check that now. Lazy web will have to do. EDIT: I seems to do both. Direct IP and proxy.)
I totally agree what you said about Smartbooks, they need a proper Ubuntu (maybe with another theme and a one panel layout .. so unintrusive visual tweaks.)
And Google Wave is messaging platform/protocol and it will rock. It (or something like Wave) will hopefully kill all these silos (Comments, forums, wikis, email, sharepoint etc.) in the long long run.
I want my own Wave that manages all my conversations etc.
BTW: I love the time index.
Edited 2009-06-21 23:38 UTC
While everything being in Wave might be more convenient, do we really want a google monopoly? If you think a MS monopoly is bad, what happens when google is the one and only provider of web services and has all of your data to boot? I think this is a legitimate question before we start saying that we want everything to be using Google or any other centralized web service we had better think of what the consequences of that could be if it were to turn sour.
As a said, I want my _own_wave_ (as in server). It is open (source).
2. BTW: I love Video For Everybody
Wave hasn’t been released (at all, thus also not as Open source).
An argument that can be made for Windows CE is that it seems to come with readers for all of the MS Office applications. This could be seen as a good selling point for CE. The only thing I can think of is that OO.org might be painful to use on an ARM, however this is just speculation as I don’t have an ARM based computer at the moment.
The argument for Windows CE and Office documents falls apart quickly though as MS has not released any writing utilities for CE (as far as I can tell).
Maybe, but in my experience OO.O does a better job of rendering office docs than Office Mobile, which is what I believe you’re referring to. This would actually apply to Windows Mobile not CE in general, while some use the terms interchangably they really are not the same thing. And the powers that be forbid you ever have to edit office docs in office mobile… you’ll wish you were using an old line editor again instead. The experience is just painful. OO.O murders Office Mobile imho, and I don’t think it would actually be that painful to use on an ARM machine if the right optimizations were applied. The java parts could actually run much better than they currently do on x86 if the ARM machine in question has native java execution support.
I listened to your last 5-6 podcast and they’re great, keep up the good discussions
, am looking forward to listening to this one !
Geeks tend to have the (many times terrible) propension to point out errors. That’s just the way it is.
When people nitpick on errors you guys make 1 hour into the podcast, it’s just because they are listening to it.
no, not really, the title is only a joke. but it might not stay like that all the time :]
good evening gentlemen,
i have just listened to your podcast to see if you did any homework after the trashing i gave you. i am sorry to say that your podcast rss feed is not making it into my collection. my life is too short to listen to your tech-musings, and it’s really (really) not because of your different views or opinions (when they are different) or the mistakes you make, we all make mistakes all the time (perhaps with the difference of not being on air at the same time ;-). having said that, i admire your ambition to discuss technology on air, and i am sure some people will also learn from them.
it’s not for me, because after 15 minutes of your painfully nervous laughs (in part 12) about how the new opera beta’s design is hurting your eyes (and i am fine with that, i dont use it either) making it into a showstopper is not my idea of “reviews” or technology discussion. mostly because i think you totally miss the point. you keep talking about constant, every-day usage and still talking about the default skin. show me someone who is technologically literate, does not like the default skin and still does that. i know my father doesn’t even know there is a possibility to “skin” applications, let alone care about it. so from where i stand, joe sixpacks don’t care, and tech entisuasts don’t care either. that leaves you two who are able to talk about this for full 15 minutes. and then you proceed to be surprised how the world doesn’t get you.. the thing is, that in the foul year of the lord 2009 we came to live in an age where we are spoilt with browser choice. backpedal to 2000 and the picture is drastically different. i wonder how your “review” (i still think that article is not a review) would’ve turned out if the only other alternative at the time of writing was say IE7. i think you’d have installed your favourite skin and proceeded to test ride “opera the browser” and not “opera the skin” as you have the last time. there is no more sense for me in beating this dead horse, so i’ll stop. i just hope you won’t write reviews based on default skins of beta programs. there’s more to the software world than that.
regarding part 14: i was kind of looking forward to this after reading Kroc’s comment on my comment. but the “discussion” about opera unite turned out to be “someone a bit interested in unite telling what he thinks he knows about unite to a totally disinterested person” — a one eyed man leading a blind one.
before i go on, i must admit that it’s not only you who get an D- on this one but opera itself as well. their own enthusiasm made them blind and they rushed on to present an alpha product with rough edges, using marketing that failed to flash out its strengths while spotlighting uses (facebook eliminator) that were clearly never meant to be. while these are sad mistakes, they are also a clear sign that this company is run by engineers and not some “get the facts” people and i attribute it to the fact that the actual technology is so new, and has so much potential, it eclipsed its best and foremost use: micro-scale social networking with ridiculously few terms of service to agree to (more on this later).
i was hoping that you, Kroc would see this, but instead you start spreading FUD: everything is proxied through opera’s servers even the data itself!… is it too much to ask of osnews editors to read a whitepaper if they are going to make remarks about a product on air? if you were talking about a person, you’d have done slander.. do you realize that you are actually turning away people from trying out this technology with your ignorance?
http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/custom-domains-opera-unite/
opera as such is only a reverse dns proxy so you have human friendly url’s for your “devices” or “services”. noone is really stopping you from opening up port 8840, forward it, and handing out your router’s sexy hostname alongside with the port number and adress of the actual service. look ma! no hands!
so instead of saying routers and tcp/ip is a mess when you are on dial-up or broadband, let’s blame opera for giving it a human face and say that all of unite was to create a huge spy network.
it would be nice if opera could have managed to pull this off without using unifying reverse proxy services but tell your mom to set the router to forward port 8840 and then we can resume this discussion. that would be the firt step to make that happen with any other webserver you host on your notebook as well..
right, the terms of service. there are two paragpraps of concern when it comes to unite.
http://my.opera.com/community/terms-of-service/
the first one being the standard boilerplate “let’s all play nice” plea:
“By using the Services, you warrant that you will not upload, transfer or otherwise make available files, images, code, materials, or other information or content (“Content”) that is obscene, vulgar, sexually-oriented, hateful, threatening, or that violates any laws or third-party rights, hereunder, but not limited to, third-party intellectual property rights.”
i see no problem with this one at all not only because the out-of-the-box unite sharing services sport the “powered by unite & username” tagline on every unite generated webpage (and naturally, no company wants to be associated with such material) but also because most of this is illegal under EU law anyway and your ISP’s house rules are stricter than this. hell, even osnews’ terms of use are draconian compared to it.
the second paragraph is longer so i just quote the relevant part:
“By uploading Content to Opera’s site, you grant Opera an unrestricted, royalty-free, worldwide, irrevocable license to use, reproduce, display, perform, modify, transmit, and distribute such material in any manner, including in connection with Opera’s business, and you also agree that Opera is free to use any ideas, concepts, know-how, or techniques that you send Opera for any purpose. For the avoidance of doubt, this clause does not apply to the files you share as an End-User of the Opera Unite, as such files are never uploaded to Opera’s site.”
(highlighting by me). basically another boilerplate stanza about whatever you upload to any opera service, they are free to use it. except everything in unite.
now go read youtube’s or facebook’s terms of services. go on, i’ll wait. (not they are unite’s competition anyway.)
frankly Kroc, i hoped you would mention the family/instantous/ephemeral aspects of unite, the fact that the receiving part does not need opera — as you said you would in your comment — but you got lost in openid again (as if it was impossible to add it later) and without the technical foundation you just kept repeating the same things all around.
i am really running out of ways to shame you both into more research. i am not your chief editor after all. if you are not interested at all, why bother i ask? informed opinions take courage, an open mind, time and effort. it seems to me you are choosing any two from these most of the time. i wish you proved me wrong.
typos. lots.
Edited 2009-06-22 22:16 UTC
Sir, I appreciate that you can write a well thought out and detailed letter here, but I cannot do the same on air.
The medium is different, and as such all I communicate is my inner feelings, and I’m sorry that they are not the most accurate or broadly representative things in this world. I cannot ‘proof-read’ what I am saying or thinking. If I were writing an article I would usually proof read 4 times.
Opera Unite might be just fine for the average user, but our podcast isn’t for said average user—it’s for geeks, by geeks.
You obviously have an excellent writing manner and skill; I would ask that instead of correcting me with replies that I am never going to be able to give you a substantiative answer to, I would recommend that you instead use that skill to write an article that address your concerns to all OSNews readers and I would have no qualms about publishing it. If you want to correct me and Thom and how we talk about things on the Podcast, or just want to provide a higher level of accuracy and insight to the readers about something we discussed on the show, then please send us a submission.
The show isn’t going to change because I cannot spend a day or two carefully preparing a week’s worth of material. I have just one day off and only enough time to actually record the show right there and then, and then edit it. A process which takes 4-6 hours to do.
If you write a full article on your subject of choice, then we will naturally spend 15 minutes discussing your very points on air. We only have time to discuss what’s in the news; if you want us to more fully discuss your points, then make them the news.
Kind regards,
Kroc Camen.
Just one simple rule:
Don’t pretend to know things about stuff you haven’t even tried. (If you had tried Unite you would have seen the UPnP part etc.)
So turn down the authority and just try to do basic 5 minute research on the stuff you talk about. Or just don’t talk about stuff and keep the podcast shorter. Long ramblings about false information benefit nobody.
The internet has enough uninformed opinion pieces and isn’t really in dire need of more.
Pretty basic really.
PS. This sounded a bit harsh. But please take is as constructive criticism. I just want the podcast to be shorter and higher quality.
That’s more helpful. I had mentioned on the show that they ‘used the proxy to avoid UPnP’ but Thom wasn’t sure and nor was I certain. I was trying to find the relevant text in my browser but couldn’t leave a minute’s silence trying to find the right part
Nevertheless you are right and I need to sharpen up the information presented on the show. When we started out, it was just about our personal opinions, but when it comes to news we are not experts on it is not always easy to divide what we are presenting as opinion and fact in the hurried nature of recording so ad-hoc.
Another reason why we’ve been asking for volunteers to join us on the show and some more knowledge to the pool.
P.S. At the end of the Podcast we offered the chance for a reader to join us on the show. If you want to correct us on air, then by all means please do so.
Because Chrome implements the searchbar and address bar in one, Chrome is probably the worst in the privacy department if you ask me. Because everything you type in that bar is send (in plain text) to the Google servers.
Edited 2009-06-22 23:08 UTC
I could be wrong, but I have the idea that with MSI the browser isn’t able to do automatic updates.
They might be afraid corporations will hold back updates, because you depend on the system administrator to push the updates.
This could be the reason why they don’t do it officially.
Although I haven’t seen any Mozilla people mention this in the feature-requests in Bugzilla.
Edited 2009-06-22 23:18 UTC
They could easily provide MSI based updates if they want – or they could create an ‘update server’ where by the customer can point their MSI installations to the internal update server which then synchronises with the main one. There are many, many solutions they could employ but what it seems to be is Mozilla Foundation would sooner team up with Opera and Google to complain to the EU about ‘evil Internet Explorer’ than asking some tough questions about their product and addressing the short comings when it comes to addressing enterprise customers requirements.
The interesting thing you’ll find, however, is there are a lot of VB applications that are being replaced with Silverlight front ends; many programmers I have chatted to had been waiting for key features that now exist in Silverlight 2.0. How this relates to the larger picture is as people move away from dependency on Windows, you’ll find that their dependency on Internet Explorer will wane, and eventually you’ll see that companies will start asking the question, “do we need Windows”. It isn’t going to happen tomorrow, next month or next year but I have a feeling that over the next 5 years within the enterprise the desktop operating system will be irrelevant. Microsoft will lose their dominance through the very technology that they champion (although one would argue that they really don’t care about the desktop – they’re just buying their time as they transition).
Edit: Programmers aren’t going to jump quickly onto Silverlight 3.0 so Novell has plenty of time to finish Moonlight 2.0 and getting 3.0 up to speed. What I hope to see is Novell working to create a top-notch development tool to make development for Moonlight on Linux a possibility. What ever the case maybe, things are going to get interesting in the next couple of years in regards to the role of the browser – will it become the platform for which software will appear on; either it being hosted on the server or bundled up to the customer and run locally.
Edited 2009-06-23 04:44 UTC