In which Apple sues HTC, and a good time is not had by all. Tess Flynn joins golden oldies Kroc and Thom to also discuss the Ubuntu redesign, Haiku's new browser, SkyOS'es lack of movement and Microsoft's Courier concept.
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2008-12-26
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What's with the odd names of a lot of foss projects? Not just metacity, but a lot of projects have odd names or recursive acronym names. I like descriptive names personally, and sometimes I just have to shrug and shake my head at the strange names foss devs often give their projects.
Member since:2010-01-04
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Part of it's the whole playfulness thing. But I think it's important to remember that some comes in from open source not being sanitized for your cultural protection. It's not all from the US, there's a lot of international development and contribution and naming schemes are a part of that.
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2009-04-10
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Blackberry? You obviously don't come to London very often. I see people carrying two and sometimes 3 phones - one Blackeberry, one "other" (like a candy bar style Nokia or SE) and often either a second BB or an iPhone. Usually, one "work" one "personal".. the people with 3, God only knows why.
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2007-04-08
See: http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/23773/
They don't seem to implement this.
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2008-07-15
There's no doubt that the Atom platform has taken a long time to finally produce something decent. That being said, the new Pinetrail platform is not bad at all. I just got an Asus 1005PE a couple of days ago, and the power consumption is pretty low, and I get a solid 10 plus hours of battery with it. ARM might be able to do better (almost certainly), but their market share might be snatched away before they even get it, as most people wil probably see the Atom as good enough, and Atom is available *now*. The ARM netbooks are still vaporware for the most part, and I don't really count tablets as netbooks; they do basically the same things, but the design and concept is completely different in a netbook vs a tablet.
Member since:2009-05-06
Tablets are silly, but smart phones are here and useful. Make a N900 or a Nexus1 a clamshell and you have a ARM netbook. Or give a iPhone a keyboard and remove the locks..... All average Joe wants is a device that can get them on facebook with minimal recharging. All a nerd wants like me wants is a pocket Linux X11 terminal that doesn't need to keep charging. A decent ARM netbook will do that, and cheaply. It's amazing none have got to the market yet because it's ripe for the taking. Even been eyeing OpenPandora.....
Member since:2008-07-15
You've just described a MID (mobile internet device). Maybe it's just me, but to me, a netbook has certain characteristics. It's a laptop style device, but smaller and less powerful. That means it opens like a laptop and has an almost full-sized keyboard. What you're describing is something even smaller than that and is commonly called a MID. For an ARM netbook I'd be looking along the form factor of the Asus Eee series but with an ARM chip in it which would make it last considerably longer on battery and considerably thinner and lighter. Something the size of an N900 is too small for me to do much more than instant message on. Even typing out emails is a pain on devices that small.
Member since:2009-05-06
My point was it's all about keyboard and form factor. The guts of what I (we?) want is already there, it's just not in the right package. There is: http://www.open-pandora.org
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2009-05-06
Ok, wait a minute. I'm not sure just throwing money at the problem will work this time. A x86 processor these days is a very complex beast. It takes x86 instruction from the outside, but these are turned into micro-code for a RISC like chip. Plus there is all sorts of crazy shit done to get a little bit further on the diminishing returns curve. Man they are ugly. All this cost transistors. Which cost power and money and die space. ARM doesn't have this, it takes it's instructions as is. Yes, you can use THUMB instructions that are converted into ARM, but this means the THUMB-to-ARM unit must be present and drawing power, but the point is, you don't have to use it. ARM has much less baggage then x86, and baggage costs transistors, which cost power and money. Getting a x86 near ARM for power/performance is a massive undertaking because it's a bad starting place. And for what? Windows? I think the virtualization idea is a better bet, WINE actually fits into this nicely with its client/server model. The WINE client apps run in a x86 emulator, and the WINE server runs natively on ARM. That's if you care about Windows at all. I don't. The OS and all the software I use are free software so can and have been ported. That's a better solution yet. Make everything open, thus portable so you are free to change architecture for what is best for the job. Also PowerPC is only gone for the desktop. All the consoles use them, even MS's own, despite their first console being x86.
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2010-01-21
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2006-06-22
Your OSNews MP3 podcast no longer works on my LG Viewty phone. I have to re-encode it using LAME. Used to work fine till show #30. Just had this problem for last two shows.
Also noticed that on Linux Mplayer displays the length of the podcast as 43 minutes although it keeps playing to the end. GStreamer based MP3 player shows correct length.
Just thought it might be related.
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2008-03-29
I actually prefer the discussion when Tess is on, as she actually knows something, and corrects the guys when they go off base with something more technical or in the corporate IT arena. All of the participants routinely launch into rants, which is fine, and to some degree is part of the show. I like to know where people stand, even if I disagree, and I did learn a few things.
But like a lot of posters, this is only the first time I've been somewhat annoyed by Tess's ranting, because it comes very close to fanboyism. Kroc and Thom are shamelessly guilty of that and yet we seem to give them a free pass. I quite enjoy the podcast generally and would hate for it to stop because of some negative commentary. I wish they would get rid of some annoying echo though.
What I find rather reprehensible is that the opinions of the participants seems to indicate a belief that the OSNews readership represents the world, when it most surely does not. A bunch of computer nerds on a forum will never represent the views of the ordinary consumer and thus have little effect on the market, and many of their comments border on asinine for not taking that into consideration.
Member since:2006-01-01
I don't hate Tess, but my problem with her contribution is that pretty much everything she says about Microsoft and Apple makes we want to scream "NO!!" To say that her viewpoint is that of a "LINUX fanboy" would be to putting it lightly. I don't think Thom gets an easy ride at all, and generally Thom says things that actually make sense - even if they are hard to hear for the fanboys. Kroc - yes he gets an easy ride, as his opinion swings like the wind. As for Tess, quite often she is completely wrong or working from an old crib sheet. Example? Any time she speaks about Mono, much of what she was saying about Apple this week and many other Apple and Microsoft related angles.
I, for one, have decided not to automatically listen to the podcast in the future, because it isn't giving me any value. I don't expect that to mean anything, but there you go. This is *me*, not people in general - your mileage may vary.
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Kroc, I'd be extremely interested in contributing too.. I feel I have something to say and as a pro developer in a very Microsoft orientated environment, with a personal preference for Apple products outside of my professional IT wanderings. I've been very in to Alternate OS for the longest time (a former Amiga, Acorn RISCOS and BeOS user) I think I could add some depth.
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Possibly because we participate a lot in the forums and we are ready to be corrected with your comments. Also, we've been around a long time, like a lot of the userbase (2005/2006); I think we know each other reasonably well with all the arguments we've had.
BLAME THOM. A leak is occurring between his headphones and microphone or somewhere in his Linux system, because I can see it clear as day on Skype! I can't remove the echo because the Skype call is recorded with Tess and Thom's audio combined.
We love you that much! We're geeks. We're no better than [you] when it comes to missing the point sometimes.
Edited 2010-03-09 13:31 UTC
