161 karma · joined February 26, 2012
Am I in opposite world? People want microsoft software on their mobile devices because an open source OS is too "closed"?
I would believe what you actually want is an alternative to google apps on android...
Isn't it kind of the point of web browsers to render webpages in a common open language instead of being a host for proprietary vendor specific plugins? What's the big advantage over standalone applications in that case anyway?
The important question then would be: Could you legally port directx to *nix from this? If not, then what'd be the point?
In firefox the textures are noticeably darker for some reason.
> The logic of buying a ‘games machine’ where the games selection will always be more limited than on a standard PC or Mac makes little sense.
Yet people buy consoles. And "standard PC"? Who decided that giving microsoft your money is a "standard"?
> The Windows trust and value proposition was always compatibility,
There are other platforms, you know? If you say "compatibility", you might want to add "compatibility with other proprietary microsoft stuff".
> low-cost devices,
They could be cheaper when not being forced to pay for windows with them.
> and an open architecture (to name a few).
I don't really get it. Almost everything he talks about is proprietary closed source microsoft specific stuff. How "open" of an architecture is that?
But then I don't really understand why people would want to tie themselves completely to proprietary microsoft technology, even if it did not change so much.
Aren't there enough actual open and cross platform frameworks that people could use? Why specialize yourself to create software that does and will only ever work on windows?
http://www.opengl.org/wiki_132/images/RenderingPipeline.png (blue = programmable)
Buying the alpha means paying for continuous development...
Also, you get a new download of the current state every time they have some significant changes.
Thanks to android being open source people can take it and build ...stuff.. with it. I'm sure you have heard of it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouya
And while it's very low-end, there is still stuff like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldwU96PGOyM which might not be a "real" game but it seems pretty close.
Now imagine the next generation of android consoles with OpenGL ES 3.0 and more powerful GPUs.
Yea, but maybe it would still be exactly 1.000.000 times as hard.
Why are these only positive adjectives? You could have included unethical, anticompetitive and illegal just as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_litigation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Microsoft_litigation http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=2005010107...
Sure, it was "clever" and "risky" and it probably was a lot of "hard work"...
"Asked to name the most innovative tech company, they’ll say Apple or Google. And they’ll do it with a straight face, while sitting in a chair made by Microsoft. Wait, Microsoft makes chairs? No, not directly. But the part of that chair? Manufactured in facilities running on, you guess it, Microsoft software."
Let's look at this statement. "sitting in a chair made by Microsoft". It's pretty clear what "made by Microsoft" should mean, shouldn't it? What do you think when I say "a smartphone made by nokia"? You surely think that the smartphone was manufactured in a facility that may or may not used some software from nokia, right?
So my issue with that article is very misleading language. Can I call it newspeak?
So "made by microsoft" means neither made by microsoft nor does it mean made with sotware made by microsoft. It means it was made in a facility that may or may not uses an operating system made by microsoft. Who actually made the chair is an ingenieur using software not made by microsoft but that for reasons decided to target the microsoft operating system.
And these reasons are not something anyone at microsoft should be proud about. They worked really hard at disabling their competition with unethical methods. It's not exactly secret, anyone can read about their history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_litigation http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=2005010107...
"Transported in trucks built by Microsoft software, on roads built by Microsoft software,"
Microsoft produces software for building trucks and roads?
"Trained at a school running Microsoft,"
Said as if it wasn't a bad thing microsoft is pushing educational institutions to use proprietary software.
"If you prefer not getting hit by a bus, think about the role that Microsoft has had in making sure your baby was born healthy."
Ok, do people really think that it's not a bad thing that (according to the article) the whole manufacturing chain is dependent on proprietary software made by one vendor? Is it not bad that fucking hospitals and their instruments "run on" proprietary closed source microsoft software? Again, this was achieved by becoming a (quasi-) monopolist by methods described in the links above.
"we’re only able to do so because of generations of Microsoft leadership in technology."
What gets me is the casual tone that (as I read it) sounds like microsoft had "generations of leadership in technology" on their own merits instead of because they disabled their competition by their business behavior.
"I run our Bing for Schools program. It gets hardware in the hands of kids, teaches them digital literacy skills, and creates a safe environment for them to practice in. And when we launched, the haters emerged from the woodwork with pitchforks and torches, growling “Google! Google!” Just for fun, see the comment stream on The Verge story: Microsoft offers classrooms free Surface RT tablets with ad-free Bing for Schools"
Again, as others have said. It's cool that children are introduced to technology. It's bad that it's proprietary technology. Especially at educational institutions. When I advocate that they get android tablets instead it's not because it's from google but because it is (mostly) free and open source. Meego/Sailfish OS/Firefox OS would be fine too. But getting taught proprietary microsoft software, possibly with their first contact to this technology? No.
"But think about the number of young people who make a face when you say Microsoft. That’s an entirely different problem."
Why is that a problem? Sounds totally healthy to me.
"Because even if you know that you are working on something that will help save lives"
Actually you don't do that. You are working on something that others will build something for that will save lives. And because you work for someone who has become a quasi monopolist with unethical behavior those others will have to give a lot of money to your employer even though without you we may or may not had a world running on free and open software by now.
"or make things better for humanity"
Again, look at the list of lawsuits microsoft was in and lost. And that's only the stuff that is actually illegal, there is a lot you can do that is not illegal but still unethical. There's everything from their faked "get the facts" studies to the plan to pressure hardware manufacturers to cripple absolute basic standard functionality just to make their competitors look worse http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/...
"I’ve pushed through a program that does good things for kids."
You mean the program that is designed to make children already dependent on microsoft software? It's called vendor lock-in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendor_lock-in#Microsoft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft#Vendor_l...
Tl dr; I personally don't see how anyone that thinks stuff like "know that you are working on something that will help save lives or make things better for humanity,", i.e. who has a heart and a conscience can work for Microsoft. I'm sure the working conditions aren't as bad as some people say and the products aren't as bad as people say either. For example the metro interface: I don't really see why microsoft thought it was a good idea, but I could certainly work with it with no problems if I wanted to. It'd be only a little bit annoying but as someone who has no problems with fluxbox/openbox, xfce4, gnome2, gnome3, kde4 etc. it'd be no big deal.
The thing is that it's not just microsoft, they "support" a whole industry intentionally or coincidentally designed to lock you in: Adobe Flash DRM, while atrocious, did work on linux. But it wasn't "good enough" or something. The media industry had to choose microsoft technology with silverlight. Result: netflix, lovefilm, ... only (officially) work on either microsoft windows or apple's mac os, both commercial proprietary operating systems.
No tweaking needed. Test it yourself: Download any of those huge gifs and encode it to h.264 with ffmpeg defaults. With no perceptive quality loss it's immediately 60-90% smaller. And then h.265 comes along soon.
What exactly is that?
It's not like people wouldn't tell you otherwise.
"Proprietary software means, fundamentally, that you don't control what it does; you can't study the source code, or change it. It's not surprising that clever businessmen find ways to use their control to put you at a disadvantage."
"In the past, these were isolated incidents. “Trusted computing” would make the practice pervasive. “Treacherous computing” is a more appropriate name, because the plan is designed to make sure your computer will systematically disobey you. In fact, it is designed to stop your computer from functioning as a general-purpose computer. Every operation may require explicit permission.
The technical idea underlying treacherous computing is that the computer includes a digital encryption and signature device, and the keys are kept secret from you. Proprietary programs will use this device to control which other programs you can run, which documents or data you can access, and what programs you can pass them to."
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/can-you-trust.en.html
Ok, "trusted computing" doesn't do that yet... completely...
But has microsoft been going into that direction or hasn't it?
If you want control over your PC, use at least open source software.
$ pacman -S applescript
error: target not found: applescript
$ pacman -S photoshop
error: target not found: photoshop
$ ruby --version
ruby 2.0.0p247 (2013-06-27 revision 41674) [x86_64-linux]
KDE's kolourpaint is basically a clone with more features: http://kolourpaint.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html
Pinta has this layer idea more prominent, but it can still be used as simple as you want: http://pinta-project.com/
mtpaint has a lot more features than ms paint. The gui is unintuitive, but if you get used to it I'm sure it's just as easy: http://mtpaint.sourceforge.net/
easystroke-mt - Use mouse and screen multitouch gestures to initiate commands and hotkeys.
touchegg - Multitouch gesture recognizer
Obviously I can't tell how well those work and whether there are better projects...
The display adapters should be only a few dollars, so maybe not ideal, but hardly a really good reason.
There's not really a reason why a powerful laptop should be really bad on battery power. Modern CPUs save power pretty well, especially mobile ones. And any powerful GPU should have the capability to be disabled.
But still, it's mobile or "mobile". As long as it fits in a backpack and I don't have to hike for hours I really don't see the problem. Maybe laptops today are not completely feasible, but I suspect in one or two generations the successor to USB3/4/? will be capable of driving everything from screens to external GPUs or CPUs so you'd only connect one cable and have everything attached there. But that's not now. For me it's just a minor inconvenience for the big convenience of having everything with me. And everything is not only stuff I have synced or in a version control system (by the way, don't you have that moments where you are somewhere and remember that the code you want to access is on a machine dozens of kilometers away and you forgot to push it?), but really everything and everything exactly how I left it. It's just the feeling that I can just suspend and go somewhere, no matter where, get my laptop out and continue exactly where I left off.
LinuxVirtualBox.part1.sfx
LinuxVirtualBox.part2.rar
LinuxVirtualBox.part3.rar
LinuxVirtualBox.part4.rar
LinuxVirtualBox.part5.rar
Keyboard and Mouse, obviously. Best to have them at an usb hub so you only need to plug in one cable (or a docking station).
Fast is relative. There are laptops where you can put in 6 core Xeons, but they are rather expensive. A modern mobile i7 quadcore or equivalent AMD CPU is rather fast. Try it.
On a powerful laptop you can easily have 32 Gigabyte Ram. If you need more, then you need a highend workstation, yes.
Poor posture doesn't need to concern you more than on a desktop PC if you have your laptop connected to the same peripherals than you would have a desktop PC connected to.
Laptops additionally allow you to take them with you and work with bad posture.