Posts by Joe Burmeister
43 posts • joined Wednesday 11th March 2009 13:05 GMT
Hopefully more competition
This is why I think open and free will win. New processor designs come along and we just recompile the repository and use it. Instantly thousands of native applications. The closed world must either get important players to port to try and create critical mass on the platform, or do byte code and take the speed hit compared with native open/free software.
Wintel are pooing their pants about ARM, imagine if it's not just ARM they have to worry about.
Competition is good, and we can just use what's best for the job not worrying about legacy instruction set support.
Mint is going MATE and Gnome3
Very selective quoting. It is moving to have MATE and Gnome3 and is involved in work to ensure MATE can live along side Gnome3. What I'd like to see is MATE moved to GTK3 because I don't think there is any debate that GTK3 is an improvement. I'm quite interested in trying Gnome3 with MGSE, though I still think Gnome3 needs a slim fast diet. Mint seams to be taking the best approach yet.
http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1851
a justification for secure boot?
Of course the problem is the attack getting root in the first place. Secure boot just closes one way of keeping it but introduces new problems. Couldn't the root kit removal kit check how the machine is to boot? Couldn't the OS be hardened better to not be compromised in the first place? Secure boot is like saying the OS cann't be secured and root kit removers cann't do thier job either. It is waving the white flag on software and retreating to hardware while not fixing the real problem. Unless it's not about security but locking hardware.......
Posted in Hadoop: A Linux even Microsoft likes
copyleft!
Embrace is protected against by copyleft. I see Apple and Sun as exactly the kind of "tragedy of the commons" copyleft is protection against. But Hadoop is Apache. Microsoft can Extend Hapoop and not share. With their history I don't trust not to try and do an Apple/Sun. Give some, but take more.
Posted in ISPs end PM's web smut block dream
Good, it wouldn't have worked.
All this would have done is "normalise" proxies.
Few couples are going to agree they want porn, even if both (but it's normally just the man) secretly want it.
If you want your kids not to see porn, don't give them a laptop. Have a desktop (or two (multiseat?)) in the living room where you can see what they are doing. If you give them a machine they can use in private, they will see porn. To be honest, I use to be involved with copying floppy disks of porn like most nerds when I was a kid. Didn't do me any harm but I'm sure what I saw would have horrified my parents. Of far more a concern to me is social networks without parent supervision, but they will probably all grow up fine too. Let's just fight to make sure they can delete or make private at least, their teen history as an adult. Or maybe they will all just have to be much more open about what they did as kids.
wait I've got an idea
What about native apps targeted directly to the OS, but all in a database on the internet. Packages installed from this db are all kept upto date with the db. Everything is signed and there is a strong trust system for db write access. You can save and restore the selection of packages installed. Oh wait, we've had that for years!
As long as we can replace Android I'm happy.
I don't want Android/Linux I want real Linux i.e. GNU/Linux, more specifically Debian.
Yer you can chroot Debian on Android, but that sucks (but it is better than nothing).
Windows 8?
As long as we can wipe Windows 8 and put on Debian.
Ideally we have nice open graphics drivers too. Then it will be supported forever and a day, but you just know it's going to be binary blobs and problems from that straight away. The state of the ARM graphics driver situation has been holding back Beagle+Pandaboards (and family) for being useful media PCs. At least on PC, Nvidia put work into their horrid closed Linux drivers, and even then, they are still problematic. Yer stable kernel interface, yak yak (like Windows), but that does not give as good results as drivers open and in kernel so things are free to share code and evolve. The WiFi drivers story is the most recent story of this. I wish ARM graphics would get sorted. I want my ARM Linux media PC and laptop!
Without this being sorted, ARM Linux is going to be stunted. Unless you happy with a kernel version stuck at the time of release, or at best, the last date the manufacturer cared about their old product. Or maybe, if your lucky, it's just your X frozen in time.
People keep forgetting about this issue about ARM, but it's really important if you want your ARM Linux to be recent and any good at displaying things (and that's all normal users care about).
Python is the new BBC BASIC
I grew up on BBC BASIC (with a sprinkling of SWI to speed things up). In my wilderness years after leaving RiscOS, I had nothing quite like BBC BASIC, just C and C++. Perl seamed almost there, but just didn't feel right. Then I found Python. If you are a lost after the loss of BBC BASIC and never found something to fill that whole, try Python. If you are like me, you will feel like you have found a new home. In fact, Python is better than BBC BASIC ever was. It's also got easy C and C++ APIs to extend it. InkScape replaces !Draw. Gimp is better than !Paint ever was. Guake gives me F12 command line goodness. The only thing I now morn from leaving RiscOS is drag/drop saving (don't point me to Rox). The thing I really don't miss from RiscOS is no package management (and yes, you need it). Still fond of RiscOS, but it wasn't a grown up OS, none of the desktop ones where at the time. For some reason that generation wrote new OSs ignoring decades of OS research, using hardware as an excuse when the hardware was miles better than the old hardware the OS research was done on......
Picking up the programming back again?
Python! It fills the whole left by BBC BASIC when I left RiscOS. It's a great scripting language with bindings for nearly everything, cross platform and really useful to knock quick one offs in. To reignite computers in general, Linux and the command line. Get your computer back!
Bloody ivory tower types
What a desktop is has been define. It has been defined for a while. I know it's boring but tough. Try experiments by all means, but don't force them on people. I want to overlap Windows (I often use the "always on top" feature while doing this) for instance when referring to something or playing a movie/tv on the same screen I'm doing something else on. Any desktop I can't multitask on, I'm not even going to try. To me, demanding I do so before you take into account my dismissal is like the creationists demanding you look at their "evidence" before you dismiss them as mad. This is only going to hurt Linux adoption. Stupid ivory tower rubbish I hope fails quickly so we can move on quickly. Friends and family now running Gnome aren't going to learn another desktop, for them learning two was hard (XP then Gnome2).
Binary blobs
Binary blobs are as much the problem here. Nvidia have to make fresh binary blobs and Google can ask them not to. If the source code for Tegra drivers was out there, once Google are forced to honor the GPL with Honeycomb, someone could just update the Tegra drivers and release them, regardless of what Google want. It would also aid us using another distro than Android.
if you don't like it, don't use it, that's my plan
It's open source, nothing can be forced on you. If there was only Gnome3, and it didn't work the way people liked, it would be forked and developed in the direction people like, and the original would wither and die. I suspect if Gnome3 causes people to start leaving Gnome on mass, either a fork would pop up, or Gnome3 guys would change course. Either way, at the moment I'm thinking of moving to XFCE as I don't want to learn a "new desktop metaphor" or inflict it on anyone who sits at my computer, they can just about cope with Gnome now when they realise it's much the same as they know. They won't even try when it's not.
"they should be brought to book as were MS."
Yer, I remember how MS was found guilty and split into two businesses. A OS business and a software business. It was crazy to allow a company to make a closed OS and closed software for that OS. It's anticompetitive. Wait.....what happened again I fell into a time warp after they lost the case....
Start with the worse first
>> The thing about Google's dominance is that it's ephemeral.
>
> You could have said the same about MS' dominance of the desktop OS
No, you really couldn't. They own and control Win32 (and now .NET) and no other implementation can compete as they are chasing tail lights that are deliberately doing anything they can to shake anyone off.
This isn't like search. There isn't a massive world of things built on Google's search API locking us in. We could all change search engine tomorrow, we can't all change our OS tomorrow because most people use Win32 apps, Wine is amazing, but it can't really do this as it's an impossible task. If you move to Linux/BSD thinking you can continue to use all your Windows apps, you will find you are mistaken, and either go running back to Windows, or learn new cross platform apps.
What makes this much worse is they are allowed to do closed software on their own closed operating system. How the hell is anyone expected to fairly compete? With MS Office it's even worse as they have a doc spec too to use to try and stop competitors.
MS need at very least splitting into a operating system business and a software business. There should be regulation so you can do a OS and open software, or a closed software and a open OS, but both can't be closed.
It's amazing we have freed ourselves as much as we have, but this doesn't mean things aren't broken. I still every now and then, most recently with my wifes SATS marking, hit sites that only work with IE. Who knows how many Windows apps Wine can't run because of undocumented behaviour/bugs that Wine hasn't matched. It was many many years before ".doc" was blown open.
Now if Google use their monoply in search, which I wouldn't argue they don't have, to dominate another market, then there is a problem. But to my knowledge, they haven't done this yet. There isn't Google Halloween like documents with internal emails about how they can use their APIs and formats to lock people in.
A new peer-to-peer search could come from nowhere and overtake Google, or a IBM, or anyone with the money to do it traditionally. Anyway, the hardware need only grow as fast as the userbase. Google could lose their cash cow within a year or so. With MS it will be decades before we are free of their cash cows. Not saying Google don't have evil money men working there too, they do, but it's no MS. They will go down in the monopoly history books as a one of a kind.
Posted in UK is a closed source 'stronghold'
Read more, write less
In a closed source world, everyone is use to blackboxes. They don't question how these blackboxes work, because they couldn't find out if they wanted to, and so don't learn. These developer then write their own blackboxes, in ignorance of how the other blackboxes work. This doesn't only make for a unstable system of blackboxes, but they are all writing more than they reading, no one can think this is a good thing. We had a head start in the IT because of the Spectrum and BBC Micro teaching so many to program, but that legacy is going and not being replaced. I think the BBC should do a fresh "teach the UK computers" crusade with *nix and open source to get the nation educated. I'm sorry, but in comparison to *nix and open source, Windows keeps you ignorant. Teach Python instead of BASIC, it's easy, free, powerful and cross platform, what more do you want? Well, may late night advanced episode that teach C..... ;-)
Posted in WTF is... cloud gaming?
mainframe and thin clients, the 50s future, again
The world only needs 5 real computers, maybe even just 1, etc etc.
But:
What if I want to play a old game, deemed not popular enough to maintain?
What if I want to play something not government approved?
What if I want to play something and don't want the outside to know or leave a record? (slightly different than above)
What if a computational intensive game is fantastically popular?
What if I want to buy not rent?
Every 10 years or so we seam to go through this "mainframe and thin client is the future" idea.
What the nerds are doing today, everyone else is doing tomorrow.
Many many nerds already run their own home server they can ssh into from outside, often hosting a personal website and maybe more. Some even use a SheevaPlug to do this. Bundle this up so it's easy and it's quite possible it could sell well. Reason being, it doesn't just replace facebook and other cloudy services, it gives you more power then you had before. For instance remote access to home devices. You just have to make this all easy and it really could sell like hot cakes. One related cool tech no one has mentioned that I see related is n2n, the p2p vpn.
Posted in Qt sees its future in Microkia
QT will not die, Autodesk use it.
Autodesk have been doing a big QT push in the last few years. Maya is now QT based. I suspect this was for the developers as much as anything. If you looked at the headers previously, there was ifdef all other place for the different platforms they supported. Unifying on QT must have made their life much easier. They came to see us, with some developers, before Maya went QT, and we were complaining about something or other, and the developer come back was the problem with all the different platforms doing things different ways. QT would have gone a long way to solving that issue. I don't know if QT is used on other Autodesk products, but even not, Autodesk are huge and love buying things (they bought the whole 3D market, Max,Maya,XSI), so I'm sure buying QT might interest them. Though I'm not sure more corporate ownership is what QT needs........
Posted in TiVo calls time on ageing set-tops
GPL3
TiVoization bites. Now if more (Linux itself) was GPL3, they won't have been able to lock down, and the users could continue the device as long as they wanted without Tivo's support.
x86 on phone? Why?
We don't need x86 compatibility. No one needs software or hardware legacy of x86 on phones. Hardware legacy for the sake of software legacy on a form factor it won't be any use on....
I don't hear any complaints about Linux 3D drivers......
So what's going on? I thought it was the WebGL stuff causing FireFox4 issues on Linux. Does Chrome 9 manage WebGL on Linux without a problem? Maybe Firefox could copy the Chrome code. ;-)
Cloud exports/import
What we really need is a way of exporting and importing between the cloud and local storage. This of course depends on the cloud type, but it's really important! We need to be able to self host too, so we can view/use the data locally. How to enforce this I don't know, but without it, we are asking to get screwed like this. As he said, he had all the photos, but not the cloudy meta data. This would aid moving stuff between clouds too, thus aid competition. It's a terrible system we have now, and one I avoid as much as possible. RMS is so right about all this, as normal.
Wintel poo themselves. MS try and hedge bets
I think this is really interesting times. We have known this battel was coming for a while, and now it looks like it's about to start proper. Netbooks caught MS with thier pants down and Linux started to come at them from the bottom into their market. Linux had always been at the top, I think MS conceeded big iron and servers. I also think MS conceeded the embedded market, but the netbooks with on MS turf, and they poo'ed themselves. They brought back XP, and reduced the specs of their next OS so it could complete in the market (though does it?). The Linux platform doesn't care about processor type, and ARM's rock, so ARM is coming into MS turf now too, now that the netbooks showed that Linux in that turf isn't completely crazy. Why is Linux so important to this? Well without Linux there would no point on ARM entering this turf as their is no software, it's all x86 locked, as it has been, for years. But with Linux/openness, there is no hardware platform locks. ARM vs x86 when power requirements come into play is a no brainer, ARM win hands down everytime. So with ARM coming in, Linux would start coming into too, again, so MS poo'ed themselves again and start talking about real Windows on ARM. But the thing is, that won't matter because you can't run any Windows software on it. So you either have a Windows ARM machine you can't run any Windows software on, or you have a Linux ARM machine you can't run any Windows software on, but you can run the world of free software on it. Really interesting. Worse for MS, is that ARM starts coming in, again with Linux, from the top too where data centers want to save power. Intel will be watching all this in horror. If you stop caring about Windows, and go open, you stop caring about backwards compatbility with x86. This could all snow ball rather nicely for ARM and free software. Great for consumers to break the Wintel catch 22 we have been stuck in.
Sheevaplug melt
Sheevaplugs are brilliant..........but their power units aren't.
Here's a picture of the replacement of the power unit sent me 6 months after the original burnt out.
http://plugcomputer.org/plugforum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=1428.0;attach=1732;image
I'm running a external power unit now. Many "usb 1-1: disconnect" or "I/O error" are actually because the power pack is melting. Maybe I was unlucky, but there are melty pictures of the power units all over the place.
I'd buy another if this one was smashed by my daughter or something, but I'd be waiting for the power unit to fail.
Until the power unit issues are solved, it's not ready to be Eben's FreedomBox. ;-)
Posted in Firefox 4 beta gets hard on Windows
There is hope
Gallium3D is a big new hope for this. It should break this cycle by making writing graphics drivers easier and mean much more shared code between drivers, meaning better drivers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallium3D
It's also going to help Xorg development as the X server need not be graphics card specific. So it can have all the drivers removed from it, greatly shrinking the code base, making maintenance and development easier.
"Another thing that didn't get a lot of attention is Alan's xf86-video-modesetting driver. It's a dummy X11 driver that uses DRM for modesetting and Gallium3D for graphics acceleration. Because of that it's hardware independent, meaning that all hardware that has a DRM driver and Gallium3D driver automatically works and is accelerated under X11. Very neat stuff."
http://zrusin.blogspot.com/2009/02/latest-changes.html
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/driver/xf86-video-modesetting/
ARM servers
"AMD is open to the idea, but don't hold your breath. Unless ARM, Tilera, and Intel Atom chips start getting some server sales."
Could be already in motion.
http://www.semiaccurate.com/2010/08/23/facebook-first-jump-arm-servers/
I think you just added examples to my point.......
All that requires the person/company that originally made the software to think it's worth updating. Every time Apple jump platform, or even sdk, they will leave things behind. Things some users will like. In open systems, the software can survive the transition as someone can pick it up and update it. To take the edge off, Apple have Rosetta and universal binaries, but those are exactly the kind of legacy clutches I was talking about. With open systems there is no need for this as the source can just be updated and recompiled. With repositories, all this happens in the background and the user doesn't even need to know what architecture they are on or what the packages on the repository are compiled for. When it's not as easy as that, the developers in question have the source, so they have the option to make it so and normally do. (Update/backport to the libs versions the rest of the repository uses.)
Re: Take a look at Android's developer agreement.
And I don't agree with it. But Android has a freer ecosystem then iPhone.
I never claimed Linux was the only UNIX flavour, but at the moment, it is the one at the heart of the open platform. There are other free UNIX platforms, all the parts can be swapped for alternatives, even the kernel, but the Linux kernel is the one that has gained the most traction. But as I said, the key is openness, not so much the kernel, the kernel is what it is because of the openness (due to the GPL).
I'm not a blind Linux evangelists, Linux isn't a perfect UNIX for me, it doesn't stick to "everything is a file" quite enough for me, but due to other factors, like openness, speed, reliability, it's the best fit for now. Sorry you find me irritating, but please debate rather then emote.
Open equals portablity
Linux will dominate any new platform now. Everything is open, so portable. People complain about the different architecture of ARMs, but it just doesn't matter. We have the source, so recompile. Better still, we have repositories, so it can be compiled by someone centrally and everyone else just downloads that.
Windows problem is that it's not a open platform. You can't just recompile. Each software company must decide what is worth porting. The closed nature means legacy support is a must. There is no repositories, the users are trained to find and download executables from the web. If what they download doesn't work they won't understand why. They are wedded to Win32 and x86 until death do they part, .NET won't save them, just makes them even fatter and slower.
Apple have much of the advantages of Linux, due to the Unix heritage, but they compromise it with closeness added over the top. They don't have the source to the apps in the app store. They can't change the architecture without backwards compatibility.
Open will win out because it can move quicker. Linux will probably remain the kernel most used in the open ecosystem, but it's the openness that is really winning.
Maybe give up on the market and goverment?
The market isn't going to do it, not enough profit margin (which is what it's about, not service).
The government isn't going to do it because they believe the market will do it, and they have no money now.
But it is possible for the community to do it themselves, if they have the money.
http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/how-to-start-your-own-isp-699959
Problem is of course despite what some have said, rural doesn't mean rich.
Posted in Google mocks Jobs with Flash on Android
To me, XKCD seams extra relivent today
http://xkcd.com/743/
Flash isn't something we should be relying on. One company, in case Adobe, should have power like this.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/may/06/flash-delays-arm-devices
Posted in Pirate Party UK sinks on maiden voyage
No one will vote for them until there is PR
We need a PR system then it is worth voting for parties like this. That's my feelings anyway.
This is EXACTLY the point of view that scares me about the Tories
Even if the numbers aren't cooked (and it looks like they are), it's missing the point!
How this is put forwards as a good thing pulls together the luddite fallacy and trickledown effect, both of which I don't buy.
It should really be all about employment.
Even if it looks on paper great for the economy, we can't all clean toilets or make tea/coffee for a few rich bankers. No, you judge a society by how it treats its poor and how wealth is distributed. Assuming they aren't sociopaths, the rich end of the right never put themselves in the shoes of the unemployed. They always believe they would rise to their position regardless of the expensive education, lucky breaks, right skin color, right accent, etc etc. But what if you parent's where never employed, never valued, along with the whole community. All living on hand outs, the schooling is whatever is forced, and is seen as pointless by your parents and community. Drugs (especially alcohol + smoking) and crime are rife. Then you won't rise to the top either, you like them, would be lucky to get out of it at all, or even consider it a possibility! It is heart breaking how a large section of society are swept under the carpet. No people are valueless. I cannot believe even economically, let alone morally, that this is the best way to run a society.
Both main parties have had a hand in this. The UK gini coefficient was 0.25 when Thatcher came to power it is now 0.36 and continues to rise. I think for things to really change we need a big change in our political system.
Posted in Windows 8 possible July 2011 release?
Can you smell the penguin fear?
Yet again Windows users can thank the fishy breath on Microsoft's neck. Not going to help them with getting ARM battery life netbooks though. Or their freedom.....or wallets.....
Does that mean Wine's DirectX code on Unix?
So what are they doing to remain cross plaform?
They going to just use the Wine DirectX code to shoe horn it into the Unixs?
Are they going to use some abstraction above DirectX that can be something else on Unixes?
Are other platforms going to be left un-GPU accelerated?
Don't use MS platform specific API directly unless you really have to or the app is never to be ported. DirectX isn't even pretended to be cross platform (like Win32 was (see Wise) or .NET is now).
We will have to see what is actually released, but I would like a mozilla statement to clarify what they are doing. Damn, I liked mozilla and firefox........hope they aren't going to let us down.
Posted in Visual Studio gets Linux dose with Mono
Mono/.NET == WISE/Win32
Argh I am so sick of hearing about Mono and .NET.
We have a company with a stated policy of embrace, extend, extinguish.
They have done this time and time again with existing standards.
Now instead of embracing and extending an existing thing, said company invents a "open" "cross platform" standard and invites us all to join in. This company has done this before (WISE/Win32 1995), and guess what it was used to herd people to their platform and then lock them in using unfair business practices. Read Groklaw. Microsoft are not about standards or openness, they are about controlling the whole ecosystem. In a MS world there is no competition, least not to MS. Will I program .NET? HELL NO.
Can't wait for these old ignorant men to die
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1720068211869162779#
Wake me when the King Canute followers have died. In the mean time I'll vote for those who promise to speed it up.
Oh give over with the RiscOS stuff
I use to love RiscOS, I really did. But I've moved on, and so has my requirements. Even if you gave it preemptive multitasking and virtual memory, it's still lacking. I want a ARM smartbook, but I will run Linux on it. Python is my BASIC now, InkScape my Draw, Gimp my Paint, and I have Guake for my F12 command line. I can mount filesystem (or things as filesystems) where ever I want them. Drive numbers are no better than drive letters. I'd rather have package management then application folders. If I want to run RiscOS to run my old stuff, RpcEmu does me.
Posted in Google Android code goes native
Does anyone else feel uncomfortable about Android?
Android looks more and more like lock in to me. I feel the Linux world is not going to benefit much from Android, and Android is only going to benefit a little from Linux.
The best I can see coming out of it is that Dalvik turns out to be a better ./Net/Mono without the MS dangers. Which could only be a good thing, finally taking the Java dream of write once run anyway main stream. Being able to replace bottle neck VM code with native code can only be a good thing, it just needs to be able to be compiled on other platform as easily as possible.
Moblin looks more to my taste, full little Linux (including a X server), so can run anything I want, providing it compiles for ARM. If Dalvik is truly open, it could also run on Moblin.
Posted in Next Ubuntu alpha reveals video change
Eh?
No secret docs could be better, but it's always best to go to the documentation/faq on the site of the tool if possible anyway.
GDM, X11, etc etc are all explained if you just look them up on Wikipedia.
Networking? I'm assuming you don't mean a straight forward IP network. That should just work. Never seen otherwise. If you mean Samba, it's not too bad once you read the docs or someones quick summary (use my smb.conf file for instance). If you mean wireless, no idea, I'm a wire fan. ;-)
PhD for firewalling? God how do I apply for this PhD! I could do with some extra letters to my name! ;-) iptables are fine, and Gufw makes it even easier.
Terrible printer support? Depends on the manufacturer of the printer, and that's not CUPS/Linux fault. HP seam to work fine, just plug and play. No installing driver with crappy branded bundled apps.
I miss Ubuntu when I'm at work, especially Bash and Guake. :-(
I'm still waiting for "my" netbook.
I want one with an ARM processor because battery life will be a very important thing for me about this thing. I don't care about x86 compatibility because A) free software is widely ported B) it's a netbook, I don't need legacy apps.
If you can buy a cheap ARM netbook with a long long battery life, that could be a game changer. It will put ARM-Linux up against ARM-WinCE. WinCE runs next to nothing compared to ARM-Linux which relatively has a huge amount of software.
