* Posts by Nathan 6

110 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Mar 2010

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Soon the most popular 'real' desktop will be the Linux desktop

Nathan 6

3 Percent now and forever IMO.

I used Linux for years from the mid 90s all the way up to time of windows 7 when I transitioned to the MS OS. Never went back. The main issue with Linux I found was no consistent UI, way to install apps, and programming API. Those are things Android solved years ago, yet the main linux releases have no real interest in solving. Linux is and have always been about choice which is it strengths as well as it greatest weakness.

Will this be one of the world's first RISC-V laptops?

Nathan 6

Solaris Box

For folks who like vintage compute gear, a good way to get some marking for these this chip might be to port/run Solaris onto the hardware and sell as a SBC. Not sure how much work that would involve, but it's the only reason I would even care about this chip given all the other x86/Arm options out there.

Twitter faces existential threat from world's richest techbro

Nathan 6

Terrible idea!

The whole idea of bring more freedom of speech to twitter would be equivalent to allowing people to yell fire in crowded theaters with no consequences. From the 2016 US election to Covid, its clear that twitter can easily be used to convince a significant amount of people to do things against their best interest. Just look at https://www.sorryantivaxxer.com/ where you see a bunch of fools sharing the same garbage to feed their antivax stance which leads to their deaths. Take twitter and other social media platforms out of the equation, most of these people would not have such views (unless they has such views before) and would still be alive more than likely.

The black screen of BIOS borkage haunts Space Shuttle Discovery's new home

Nathan 6

Maybe they should use their Cray as a temp fix here?

https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/computer-super-cray-1-cpu/nasm_A19880565000

Intel to put SiFive's latest CPU cores into 7nm dev system to woo customers to RISC-V

Nathan 6
IT Angle

Can they run Solaris?

I wonder can these chips run Solaris? Would be an interesting way to position them for the tinkerer market. Imagine a SBC that boots Solaris instead of the usual Linux flavor. Now if Oracle would allow that,I am not sure. They did have open Solaris so.

The Fuchsia is now. Google's operating system lands on real-world consumer devices, starting with 2018's Nest Hub

Nathan 6

Yeah, I can't see another operating system replacing Android anytime soon. Only way a new embedded OS can be remotely viable is that it must support Android apps, so from a developers standpoint there would be no reason to code specifically for that OS/framework. That's' especially the case if the end user is not going to know, or care what OS/framework their apps are written in. Even the whole Fuchsia framework is a hard sell for developers given the already mature cross-platforms frameworks that already exist.

Zorin OS 16 beta claims largest built-in app library 'of any open source desktop ever'

Nathan 6

I guess a good option for those running Linux, but not going to attract any Windows or Mac users.

Polishing the UI and running apps through wine is not going to get any Windows or Mac users to give Linux a look. It's way too late for that. Having started using Linux since the Slackware/X windows days, I haven't really used Linux on daily bases since Windows 7. I kinda like just plugging some piece of hardware in, and it just works, instead of messing around with some config files and permissions etc... Also I really like having first class apps an install away. No matter how much the UI of Linux is polished, they still haven't solved those two issues and never will at this point IMO. Well Android has in a away, but not on desktop hardware for now. Boy I just wished BeOS took off years ago, now that really was a move in the correct direction :(.

Care for a Flutter? Google emits fresh version of all-things-app-platform, plus a tart-up for Dart

Nathan 6
FAIL

Taking out behind the barn soon

Given Google's track record of quickly killing off these kinds of projects when critical mass is not attained quickly enough, I don't know what professional developer would bother investing time into this tool-chain. Especially considering, as pointed out in the article, that similar, more mature cross platform tools already exist, Codenameone, Phone Gap etc. Moreover, these tools don't require developers to learn a bunch of new languages. But huh, I guess they had to find a use for Dart, after it failed to kill of JavaScript I guess.

Doctor AI: Good news, I'm better at predicting when you'll die of a heart attack. Bad news is...

Nathan 6

Baseline?

80% sounds impressive, but without knowing the baseline i.e. how many people with bad hearts would die in five years then not really sure if this adds anything?

Three-commas Thiel expresses love for himself, Trump and downtrodden millionaires

Nathan 6
Devil

Re: Could be...

Queen, I thought she is the Devil or the anti-Christ???? How else does one explain her rising from the dead every week, or so.

Google Fuchsia OS eyes non-Linux things

Nathan 6

Dart?

Isn't Dart dead for all practical purposes? This whole project seems like another compute science endeavor to create something "better" that will quickly be abandoned by Google once the uptake is not there.

Intel helps Redmond ingest Objective-C code

Nathan 6

Going to be taken out back in in a year

This project will be dead in a year or two, tops. What iOS developer would ignore the much larger Android market to go through the trouble of porting their apps to the windows 10 platform? If they haven't ported their apps before it's because it simple wasn't worth it, and that's not going to change anytime soon. Only thing MS can do is just pay developers to port their apps.

Embrace, extend – and kill. Microsoft discontinues RoboVM

Nathan 6

Meh, Just Use Codenameone

If you want to keep dong cross platform mobile dev using Java just use Codenameone. It was always more mature and a better solution than RoboVM IMO.

Microsoft to make Xamarin tools and code free and open source

Nathan 6

Re: Fantastic

You do realize that Java (especially Java 8) and C# are pretty much identical from language standpoint right? So not sure why one would be viewed with distaste and the other not. Now you may want to argue about the JVM vs the CLR, but neither of those are found on Android/iOS.

In anycase, if you want to do crossplatform apps using Java checkout Codenameone.

Was Android moving to OpenJDK really a Google gift to devs?

Nathan 6

Re: From a developer perspective

What other language would they use? Ruby? Scala (Oh that run on JVM)? Javascript/HTML (tried and failed x3). C# (and have to deal with MS)? So again, what other mythical language should Google use?

Well maybe they should invent a new language that just like Java, but not Java, just to avoid potential paying Oracle? Am I am sure that would cost even more.

Microsoft Lumia 950 and 950XL: Clear thoughts of Continuum with a snazzy camera

Nathan 6
FAIL

Only thing that can save Microsoft phone is Android. I don't mean just having a MS phone with Android, but a hybrid phone built on an x86 chip, which runs desktop Windows when docked, and Android in phone mode.

Fruity Firefox: Mozilla caves to Apple, unveils iOS-friendly browser

Nathan 6
FAIL

Desperation?

Now that Firefox OS has failed to gain any traction I guess Mozilla is a bit desperate to gain some kind of foothold in the mobile API space.

BB10 AND Android? How BlackBerry can have its cake and eat it

Nathan 6

Two OSes, in the phone, why?

Rim just need to dump bb10 for phones, and focus on Android and leveraging their brand. All that hypervisor stuff maybe cool, but thats not going to sell phones! I guarantee they will sell more than 1m per quarter, and more importantly become a nice acquisition target for Samsung perhaps with Android.

White House forced to wade into Oracle vs Google Java bickerfest

Nathan 6

Re: Why are you using Oracle?

Right, you clearly didn't read the original lawsuit as to why the Java language/API was chosen. I will give you a guess, it's the toolchain and huge developer base. Don't believe me, just ask all the DOA mobile OSes that have chosen to use something else such as WebOS, Firefox OS etc ...

Google takes ARC Welder to Android, grafts on Windows, OS X

Nathan 6

I Guess Devs Just Not Targeting ChromeOS

It seems like every OS failing to attract devs to the preferred API stack just go down the road of running Android apps. I guess as much as Java is hated, there simple isn't an alternative if you want to get tons of "apps" coded for a new OS, unless you Apple.

Android Patent Dispute: Microsoft, Samsung hug it out

Nathan 6

Another place for win10 perhaps?

Seems to me that MS maybe looking for another hardware partner to flog a Win10 handset and king of the droids Samsung would be the perfect firm to do that. So I am guessing Sammy just had to promise to say they are looking at Win10. Hell they might even bring over the ability to run droid apps on Win10.

Why Windows 10 on Raspberry Pi 2? Upton: 'I drank the Kool-Aid'

Nathan 6

What about Python and Java?

Giving that Python and JDK are some of the more popular platforms for hacking the RPi, I don't see any mention of windows 10 for RPi shipping with those. Granted anyone can port those platforms over, but why when you can just use Raspbian or what ever.

Mozilla re-negotiates Google multi-million dollar sugar-daddy deal

Nathan 6

What happened to all those millions from firefox os?

I guess FfOS is DOA as far as revenues are concerned. Looks like that whole html5/javascript stack is just not as appealing for mobile development has some would like to believe.

Good grief! Have you seen BlackBerry's square smartphone?

Nathan 6
FAIL

DOA

This phone is DOA. One has to wonder why if this is such a good idea, why none of the other phone makers thought about it before? Maybe because, the vast majority of usability studies show that most people like a phone they can pocket, or they can easily slip into their pocket book. I guess once you get rid of over 60% of your staff, whatever is left isn't the most talented, or forward thinking bunch.

The best think BB could have done, was to continue their BB7 line, while BB10 catches on. By now BB7 devices would have cost $50 bucks, and would have help them retain a lot of customers who are now in the Apple and Android world and would never go back to BB.

Will Microsoft devices sit happily on a single platform?

Nathan 6
FAIL

Just Pick One Language/Framework!

Much like apple was able to deliver a singular development environment build around good old Object C for both iOS and Mac OSX, I never really saw why MS couldn't have done the same with C#/.Net, which IMO is a pretty solid stack. Instead, they decided to also push Javascript/HTML5 for mobile development, which just confuses developers. Hell, even Apple was smart enough to abandon the JS/HTML5 app approach early on, and Google, the 800 lb web gorilla, never bordered. Why? I suspect their very smart engineers realized that mobile apps are closer to desktop apps than web-pages-apps. Hence, basing your mobile dev environment/APIs on desktop model will gain you more devs than JS/HTML approach, even though there are a lot more web devs out there in theory. To put it another way, someone who knows HTML/JQuery is going to have a hard time understanding a mobile dev stack. On the other hand, someone who knows Java/Swing or Object-C/Cocoa can get going on mobile app development with relative ease. It's just a matter of seeing what APIs to call and SDK to use. For example, this week I decided to get my feet wet with iOS development, coming from an Java/Swing world, it only took me a few days to understand how things work in iOS. I just need to understand Object-C Syntax and the APIs since the whole concept of client side MVC is known to me already.

There is also the issue that the JSHTML5 approach for mobile has failed to make any real inroads and has left many such mobile platforms (WebOS, Blackberry OS10, FireFox OS) dead, or dying by the wayside. Yet MS feels the solution to their stagnant mobile platform is down this road. The even invented a "new" language (TypeScript) to take this task on. Why they simple didn't do something like GWT, but with C# instead, one wonders? That at least would make more sense.

Android to drop Dalvik VM for high-performance ART in next version

Nathan 6

Maybe Not

Since appeal court said that API are copyrightable, the ART would still be problematic since it uses the same Java APIs that got Google into trouble in the first place.

Also, JIT tech is pretty good these days, so I don't expect a big performance improvement. AOT is really only useful for reducing start-up times and initial memory consumption. That's why we haven't seen it used much in desktop/server side Java stuff. Improvements in hardware, combined with cheap memory makes it useless in most situations.

BlackBerry bottoms out: Vows to wow with new Berries

Nathan 6
FAIL

Sure sign your device is doa

When you BB7 devices outsell the new flashy BB10 stuff then yea, it maybe time walk away from mobile market. Or better yet just make $50 BB7 devices. I know I still miss mine.

ASUS launches 5-in-1 Android Windows Phone laptop tablet (breathe)

Nathan 6
FAIL

Atom based huh?

I bet Intel's cash funded most, if not all of this project. That's the only reason they would chose using an atom CPU for phone rather than Arm.

Oracle vs Google redux: Appeals court says APIs CAN TOO be copyrighted

Nathan 6

Re: What Java APIs?

IBM had a licenses to do their own JVM from Sun. Also, you are fine doing your own JVM as long as it for desktop use, and you don't call it Java. Google should have just license Java since that would make the most business sense.

Amazon stuffs games into Fire TV box: Soz, rivals... WE don't need to make cash on hardware

Nathan 6
FAIL

Don't need this

As a Prime customer, I see no reason at all to get this. My roku/ps3/pc/phone etc already allow me to to watch all the streaming I want. Also, given the next tv I buy will already come with some Android smart tv stuff, this makes even less sense to buy. Had this hit the market 2 years ago, then I think the situation would be different. In the end this just looks like sonething else to stream Netflix.

What did you see, Elder Galaxies? What made you age so quickly?

Nathan 6
Terminator

Faulty simulation

Apparently, this whole universe might be a simulation, so there are bound to be these anomalies along with dark matter, dark energy etc...

BlackBerry makes its devilish Android trickery official in OS update

Nathan 6

Re: Again, too litle to late!

Hmmm, I am sure BB wasn't allowing backdoors to government agencies. Oh wait, there is the issue with India demanding this from BB, and BB caving. Also, why do you think Pentagon loved BB so much?

Nathan 6

Re: How to install Amazon app store on BB10.2.1

How about install Google play store?

Nathan 6
Facepalm

Again, too litle to late!

As a loyal BB device owner for the past 10 years, I finally had to get a Moto X, simple because I have to faith that BB is going to be making phones in 2 yrs (when I can upgrade to a new phone) so might as well migrate now.

IMO, One of BB biggest mistake was not making sub $100 (with contract) BBOS7 devices to appeal to users like me, who just need a phone that does task good enough, until OS10 proved itself. The cheapest OS7 device from my carrier was $250 and it wasn't even in stock. OS10 is of course better, but it has nothing that most people can't leave without (especially OS7 users), or find in the competition, and that is why it just not appealing to the masses.

Verizon's transparency report shows more than 320,000 US data slurping orders

Nathan 6

Is this surprising?

Lets see, government funds and builds the internet backbone for their own purposes, allows companies to use it to sell services to their customers and now everyone is surprised when the government wants to pick at the data. Give me a break, if you don't want the gorv potential snooping then build an over the air, trusted, amateur, secure, ptp network for your own needs (FCC might have issues though). Otherwise, just assume some agency is snooping your data. Kinda like when put trash by the curb, its free for anyone to go through, much like when you send data over the internet.

Also, I strongly suspect that some gorv agency has a quantum computer munching away at data of interest.

Dart 1.1 bullseyes JavaScript performance in latest benchmarks

Nathan 6

Re: Oracle sucks

I agree, GWT should be more of a focus for Google since I dont see Dart going anywhere soon. I have used GWT/GXT for a few projects and the speed of development is pretty good. On the other hand, Dart does seem to solve any problem that can't be solved using other approaches, and they made the fatal mistake of requiring the learning of yet another language.

LG to bring Palm's webOS BACK FROM THE DEAD in TVs next week – report

Nathan 6
Linux

Maybe this time they do the smart thing.

Amazingly from the start webos shipped with a full j2se runtime, but the idoits running things never bothered to expose it to developers. Had they did that I suspect webos eould be in a much better position since the api/toolchain would be similar to Androids, but only couple years ahead.

Meet the BlackBerry wizardry that created its 'better Android than Android'

Nathan 6
FAIL

So after Management has hit the Iceberge ...

So after management ran the ship headlong into an iceberg, and fled into their golden life rafts, its up to the engineers to save the company with "this cool hack"? At this point, the ship is halfway to the bottom, and no amount of hackery can save it.

Only thing that would have save them would be if they had build a Java API on top of QNX from the start, or just rolled their own Andriod OS 3-4 years ago. However, that would have required competent management.

Kinda reminds me of the whole JCPenny mess, in which a new CEO and his management team were given ~80 million in one year to save the company, and guess what, company is now way worse off. The JCP board would have been better of just setting 80 million dollars on fire or just given it to their employees.

BlackBerry flings John Chen $89 MILLION to save troubled firm

Nathan 6
FAIL

Should have focused more on low end BB7 devices.

I have a current BB7 device and it can't compete with the current crop of Android and iOS devices, but it doesn't have to. I only need it for phone, email, texting and occasional Twitter, Pandora, Facebook. For mobile computing I just use my 4G MIFI, and Samsung galaxy note 10.1.

Folks like me are/were BB core customers, and they losing us because the want to offer something that I can already get with a lot of other devices.

US.gov - including NASA et al - quits internet. Is the UN running it now?

Nathan 6

No Library of Congress (LOC), Means no document validation

In the library world a surprising number of XML formatted documents rely on LOC for the Schema needed for validation. Those are all gone now, so work just grind to a halt for now.

Circling the RIM: BB10 becomes chamber of horrors for BlackBerry

Nathan 6

Its All About Getting Dev Support Early and In Numbers.

The meeting for select SDK for BB10 must have went like this

Manager: OK, we have shinny new OS in the works so we need a shinny new SDK.

Developer: Well, our current SDK is based on J2me/J2SE, so maybe we just extend the APIs to leverage the new OS. Our current devs will be happy, and we will attract a good amount of Java devs who know about writing apps. You know, proper debugging, unit testing, and year really good IDE ecosystem. We would just have to do a few plugins for the top IDEs. As a matter of fact we don't even have to pay Oracle for a license, we can just role our own VM.

Manager: Hogwash, everyone knows Java is DEAD! I think Adobe has some shinny new SDK. Adobe Air, Yes, it all html5 and stuff.

Developer: But others have tried that approach for mobile and they haven't been head from since (i.e. Palm webos etc...)

Manager: Nonsense, there are 1000s more web developers than Java developers, so success will surely be ours.

Developer: Just because someone can write a webpage using html/css/JQuery doesn't mean they understand the concept of writing something that doesn't look like a web-page.

Manager: Shut-up with these nonsense facts, but for good measure we will also provide a C++ SDK since, unlike JAVA, that's not DEAD.

Developer: OK. (in his/her head: I think I saw add for mobile Java dev at Google ... Hmmm, time to send that resume out)

Few Years Go Buy then ...

Manager: So it seems the whole html5 SDK thing didn't work out as we thought and we have no apps. Any ideas?

New Developer: Well, since Google has done some good work with their JVM, lets just port it and run Androids app.

Manager: Your are a genius, now why hasn't any of the other devs thought of this before!!!! I am sure we will have thousands of apps and devs now. I see us going strait to the top.

As of Today

Manager: Well OS 10 has failed to ignite the mobile world, and oh yes company if effectively dead as a top mobile platform provider.

BlackBerry inks deal to go private for $4.7bn

Nathan 6

Re: Moto X it is then!

Let's see,

Cost of new phone: $99 US

Cost of NOT learning new OS simple to make calls, text, check/send emails, and maybe take a pic or two: Priceless. (Sorry Mastercard for stealing your line)

Believe or not that's how Apple or any other successful consumer company get to where they are. Find a product that works, and only make incremental updates that give consumers the impression that they don't have to lean anything new.

History's dust bins are filled with companies who had technically superior products.

Nathan 6

Moto X it is then!

Been debating whether to get a new OS7 BB device (never saw much value in BB OS10), or move to the Android camp by getting the Moto X. This news makes decision much easier. What would be cool is if I could run BB OS7 on the Android hardware.

A single company is responsible for 1 out of 4 BlackBerry apps

Nathan 6
FAIL

The meeting for select SDK for BB10 must have went like this

Manager: OK, we have shinny new OS in the works so we need a shinny new SDK.

Developer: Well, our current SDK is based on J2me/J2SE, so maybe we just extend the APIs to leverage the new OS. Our current devs will be happy, and we will attract a good amount of Java devs who know about writing apps. You know, proper debugging, unit testing, and year really good IDE ecosystem. We would just have to do a few plugins for the top IDEs. As a matter of fact we don't even have to pay Oracle for a license, we can just role our own VM.

Manager: Hogwash, everyone knows Java is DEAD! I think Adobe has some shinny new SDK. Adobe Air, Yes, it all html5 and stuff.

Developer: But others have tried that route for mobile and haven't been head from since (i.e. palm webos)

Manager: Nonsense, there are 1000s more web developers than Java developers, so success will surely be ours.

Developer: Just because someone can write a webpage using html/css/JQuery doesn't mean they understand the concept of writing something that doesn't look like a web-page.

Manager: Shut-up with these nonsense facts, but for good measure we will also provide a C++ SDK since unlike JAVA, that's not DEAD.

Developer: OK. (in his/her head: I think I saw add for mobile Java dev at Google ... Hmmm to to send that resume out)

Few Years Go Buy then ...

Manager: So it seems the whole html5 SDK thing didn't work out as we thought and we have no apps. Any ideas?

New Developer: Well, since Google has done some good work with their JVM, lets just port it and run Androids app.

Manager: Your are a genius, now why hasn't any of the other devs thought of this before!!!! I am sure we will have thousands of apps and devs now. I see us going strait to the top.

Firefox OS: Go away fanbois, fandroids - you wouldn't understand

Nathan 6
FAIL

Hmmm, another vendor trying the html5/JS API approach for mobile

The html5/JS approach has so far failed to gather much developer support (those interesting in making money at least) on the mobile side. Compare Android (Java API)/iOS (Object C API) vs. WebOS, ChromeOS, and the new Blackberry OS. All are pretty much DOA, so I don't see why Firefox OS would be any different.

US Navy blasts drones with ship-mounted LASER CANNON

Nathan 6

Pulse is Infrare, So Silver Paint Probable Won't Make A Difference

These lasers operate in the infrared region where silver paint absorbs, so it's not going to make any difference how shinny the silver paint is in the visible region. A Gold coating may work better but still you would need a surface with a reflectivity of 99.99...% for no real damage to occur.

Google's JavaScript assassin: Web languages are harder than VMs

Nathan 6
IT Angle

Dart -- Great in theory, but doomed to fail?

After keeping up with Dart progress for the better part of it's lifespan, I can see why hard core developers would like the concepts it bringing to the table for web developement. However, aside from the performance gains, most of what dart would deliver can already be done with existing stuff. For example, for structured development GWT/GXT presents a much better option since all the knowledge, tools, middleware etc ... are already entrenched.For more basic needs, there are enough JS frameworks and planned language additions to fit most people needs.

So the question remains, is there enough developers from those 2 camps who will by into Dart?

Dropbox drops JavaScript, brews CoffeeScript

Nathan 6
Thumb Up

So True!

Recently had to do a web based manager app, and did it using GWT/GXT, and the results were great. Being able to use the full IDE support for Java, compile time checks, and generics, definitely reduced the time to market and increased the maintainability of the code. There is also the fact that my backend and frontend code was more or less seamless connected which further reduce the amount of coding needed.

Performance is the only area where there is a slight trade-off, but I can leave with that. I just hope the Dart language takes off soon and make this approach to JS based apps the norm.

Google offers tool to bridge Android and iOS app dev

Nathan 6

Codename One

Codename One seems to have a much better tool for doing this, or they will once the program matures.

http://www.codenameone.com/

RIM: What's all the 'bleeding' fuss about BlackBerry developers?

Nathan 6
FAIL

Maybe all those adobe AIR developers will finally materialize?

When I first read about BB new OS, I went looking for what they add to offer their current Java devs. Answer, nothing! After scoping my Jaw of the flaw, can't realize no one was driving the ship at that point at RIM.

The only thing that can save RIM now to get mass developer interest is to OS 10, is to implement Java SE embedded (http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/embedded/overview/getstarted/index.html?origref=http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/embedded-jsp-135769.html). This is not Java ME that's in the current BB OS, but a full Java SE stack with some optional stuff removed. They would probable just have to implement a mobile swing profile for graphics, or built something on JavaFX, and hardware access API. In any case it's would get a bunch of Java devs on onboard, since the dev tooling will be what they are already used to.

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