OSNews : Touvan

Getting devs on the platform?

donotreply@osnews.com (Kevin Newman) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 19:40:41 GMT

I wouldn\'t be surprised if this was just an attempt to get this technology in the hands of developers who just want to play with cool technology. The more devs they can have working with such technology, the more some of them might bring it up with management in the companies they work for.

The consumer benefits mentioned in the summary were pretty weak - but getting this into the hands of the technically savvy, so they can do \"tricks\" seems like a pretty good way to promote the architecture - to get it into the hands of the development mavens if you will, without requiring those users to give up all their x86 computability (these can be frugal people).

Then again, maybe I\'m reading too much into this. :-)

RE: Strange move

donotreply@osnews.com (Kevin Newman) — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 14:50:37 GMT

I think the story is different with SoC chips.

For these types of devices what they\'ve done with P.A. is really just an extension of what they do with their custom hardware in general. They take a generally available CPU (nVidia chose ARM chips for it\'s SoC, Apple will use P.A. chips), and integrate it in silicon with their own parts, or licensed third party parts. That\'s remarkably similar to their current model - take the chip, Intel, ARM or whatever, and put it on a circuit board with other licensed chips (and maybe some custom/proprietary ones, like nVidia does).

The only difference is the package they are putting it in. They\'ve shifted to micro chip level integration, in addition to circuit board integration.

It's the coder, not the toolkit

donotreply@osnews.com (Kevin Newman) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 15:48:18 GMT

I just have to say, a good coder, who is familiar with his/her platform, would have no problem making even scripted languages like javascript or actionscript absolutely scream.

The problem isn\'t the environment or the language, it\'s the coder, and there are a lot of them, just trying to make it work, never mind make it work fast.

RE[2]: Low cost PCs?

donotreply@osnews.com (Kevin Newman) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:10:45 GMT

I would argue that Windows isn\'t suited for much of anything at its current price point. The simple fact of the matter is that Operating Systems, and even office productivity software, are commodities. They simply don\'t hold a value that is equal to what MS wants to charge for them. That\'s been Microsoft\'s entire problem with Vista. I\'d actually pay $30 for Vista Ultimate, but certainly not $300 when Ubuntu can do just about everything Vista can for free (even gaming is getting better, thanks to wine).

RE[3]: Karma..

donotreply@osnews.com (Kevin Newman) — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 20:18:08 GMT

The exploits they were talking about seem to have a lot to do with the Flash AVM, which just happens to be open source.

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/tamarin/

If my math is correct

donotreply@osnews.com (Kevin Newman) — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 18:23:54 GMT

If my math is correct, Microsoft designed this to annoy users, then provided a business program that will allow developers to pay a fee, which will let them bypass the annoyance for their signed apps.

In Ubuntu, the app will either fail if gksudo is not invoked, or is canceled (or whatever), or will install in the user directory, and you either avoid all manner of popups, or get only one that you can\'t simply yes to death (and is easy to dismiss, and usually still get what you want). OSX seems to work in a similar unintrusive way.

I often wondered why MS didn\'t simply emulate what had worked for damn near everyone else, so well, for so long. Well, now we know - they wanted another revenue stream.

It\'s crap like this, why I switched to Linux (Ubuntu ATM), and will not go back.

RE[6]: No reason ...

donotreply@osnews.com (Kevin Newman) — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 16:55:36 GMT

I\'ve read (but have not tried, since I\'m a PC gamer, still) that you can connect a keyboard and mouse to the XBox 360, and they will work in most games.

I just upgraded my PC gaming rig, and it was a hard call to spend that money on a gaming rig instead of on a console, and a less powerful computer to run my normal PC apps, and the console to run my games.

In the end, the freedom of the PC (to run games, mods, demos, etc.) that won the argument, as I don\'t mind the console controller for most games. Not FPS though, can\'t play those on consoles, except those that are designed for it - Metroid - that would have been easier with a mouse and keyboard though, even over the Wii-Mote (minus the cool motion sensor stuff, that was fun). Zelda would have been better with a GC controller, to be quite honest.

BTW, Ubuntu and Linux in general need to get better at supporting the newest hardware - I\'m stuck on Vista because my PC\'s hardware isn\'t working quite as well under the Alpha version of Ubuntu 8 (the current stable build runs worse). I get no boot screen, and sometimes it stalls in an odd way during boot up, and it runs hotter (the fans spin up more often under Ubuntu than Vista).

Still Ubuntu makes my computer feel new, while Vista is actually slower feeling than XP was on 4 year old hardware - and I have 4 GB of DDR 800 RAM, which should be plenty.

RE: never too late to fix whats broken

donotreply@osnews.com (Kevin Newman) — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 18:55:29 GMT

It\'s worth adding to that, that Netscape 2.x - 4.x used to come pre-installed on windows and mac machines, back when it was top dog.

There is today good reason for OEMs to choose an alternative. The question is, why don\'t they choose the alternative.

My money\'s on unfair licensing deals that Microsoft gets them into. There is the chance though that they simply have a better product in the eyes of most OEMs. Then again, when is the last time you saw any group of people always agree on anything - I mean besides conservative republicans (-ducks-). :-D

A good fair hearing should help to bear this all out, so Opera has my complete support.

E is ugly

donotreply@osnews.com (Kevin Newman) — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 16:45:03 GMT

I played with E for a while, and it\'s pretty impressively responsive, and fast loading. The only problem I have with it, is that by default, the theme tends to be ugly - and that includes the linked distro.

I\'m saying that\'s a permanent problem by any means, it\'s just a them for a very customizable window manager. If they want to impress anyone, they are going to need to get some real high end design intervention.

That\'s the same problem KDE has in my opinion. It\'s impressive, but the rough edges are just too hard to look past (KDE in particular is always far too cluttered looking IMO - despite the impressive eye candy).

Just my 2 cents.

I welcome this

donotreply@osnews.com (Kevin Newman) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 17:20:31 GMT

I think Microsoft got it just right. How to fix their broken problem of a browser, without breaking the web for most users (and causing we the web developers to have to fix it - which would cost us money). This is the only solution. I welcome these changes if it\'ll give me standards going forward.

RE[3]: Why bother with BeOS?

donotreply@osnews.com (Kevin Newman) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 22:20:57 GMT

That\'s all fine and dandy, but they did that through OEM contracts. Fact is, they still sell their Operating System, almost exclusively, tied with hardware - just like I said previously. :-)

BTW, mentioning their decoupling, strengthens my position, because MS abuses their monopoly position to keep alternatives off of the machines of those very same OEMs (admittedly, that position has weakened ever so slightly in the last few years).

As far as I can tell, the only way to take on a company like that is through lobbying oversight bodies (governments). If you really wanted to take them on in the private sector, Apple\'s model seems to be the only way to go. If you can\'t get OEMs to use your alternative product, you\'d have to be your own OEM (and I don\'t mean to say you need to be as locked down as Apple often is, that\'s all them).

RE: Why bother with BeOS?

donotreply@osnews.com (Kevin Newman) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 15:44:47 GMT

I don\'t think it\'s stupid, but they\'d need to do some things right. First, they\'d have to tie it to hardware (Operating Systems are sold with hardware - almost exclusively - why don\'t business people get that?)

Second, they\'d need to have good marketing to sell that hardware - and a good suite of programs (this is essentially what Apple has been doing).

If it were me, I\'d try to figure out how to target gamers, but BeOS isn\'t really ready for that.

RE[2]: Hope this helps...

donotreply@osnews.com (Kevin Newman) — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 16:25:32 GMT

I don\'t know, I rather like(d) Azureus (don\'t get me started on Vuze), and think Eclipse works as expected on both Windows and Ubuntu (they feel native on both). Similar arguments are made about other cross platform GUI toolkits, like GTK (Pidgin - feels native on Windows and of course is native on Ubuntu), and some of Mono. I didn\'t even know that Banshee and F-Spot were running on Mono at first - both very nice apps - especially F-Spot.

Sun does need to figure out how to help their developers choose the appropriate tool kits though. These good apps do seem to be the exception rather than the rule.

RE[2]: Prerequisite Microsoft is an monopoly post

donotreply@osnews.com (Kevin Newman) — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 16:00:26 GMT

I'm not sure I totally understood what you were saying, but I have opinions too, so I figured I'd share. :-)

Network Carriers shaping network traffic is a problem in the same way GE owning most of the roads, and shaping traffic (mostly though tolls I'd imagine) would be a problem for roads, and the economy that runs on them. It would stifle commerce, not enable it.

In fact, any company in an overly dominant position has the capability to stifle commerce, to bring capitalism to a halt. That's why we need rules, and oversight to make sure those very large companies follow them.

It's odd that there are some free market fundamentalists that can't understand that basic fact. Laissez faire doesn't work for stable and fair economies, and it never has. I wish we could move past all the name calling, and figure out how to provide the best rules, and oversight for the rules for our economy. As long as far right economic theorists are continuing to hold the line on any form of even slight oversight, constantly jumping straight across the vast middle ground to the label "communism", I guess that's not going to happen.

Finally, to be clear, Microsoft being allowed to dominate the Web Platform, and the Operating System platform (etc.) for their own profit at the expense of everyone else, is just as bad as network providers shaping traffic for their own profit, at the expense of everyone else. It's the same problem - the problem of monopolies, a problem for which the "free market" provides no solution.

RE: Can't agree witth...

donotreply@osnews.com (Kevin Newman) — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 21:01:31 GMT

You are exactly right about that. In Ubuntu there is no well established alternative to using the Ubuntu repos to grab your software. There should be an easy to follow, even windows-esque way to download software from a random site, and have it install for just your user.

You can do that now. You can download a copy of Firefox, or Songbird or Wine or whatever, and install that into your Home folder. But it's not a well defined normal way to do things in Ubuntu - nor is it easy to find an explanation about how or why that can be done, and seems to be actively discouraged.

Placing a simple Applications folder in the Home directory and having the devs acknowledge that they just can't keep up with every piece of software that users might want to use, could go a long way to helping with this issue. Adding a way to install low privilege applications (and files for that matter, like music and photos) that everyone on the system can access would go even further (my other pet peeve with Ubuntu so far).