I was personally going to donate to this project, but unfortunately, there seems to be little evidence that these guys actually are competent coders (not even code samples from their uni). So I fear that people are paying money simply because they hate Facebook, and that it may be mostly wasted.
I'd love to see this happen, but I do feel that there is a high risk that the end product may be garbage. So I urge people who want to donate to learn more about the boys first (a computer science degree doesn't necessarily guarantee that they even know basics such as proper multithreading or have ever touched sockets).
The fact that you need to install either Cygwin or a 100MB collection of Msys files put us off it for our project. We stuck to Mercurial because we thought it would be easier for newbies to get involved, and it seems to be working.
Also, unlike Git, Mercurial is coded in Python.. Git is a mesh-mash of half a dozen different languages. I'm guessing long-term, Mercurial will be maintained better (but might be wrong).
If I wrote "Flash no longer available, thanks to a change by Apple", I'm pretty sure you'd probably change your mind.
And if I wrote "Linux no longer supports our program due to a change in kernel design. We are asking why it was done. Oh, and Microsoft did the same things 2 years ago and were sued for trying to block competitors. But until we find out, we can't confirm its because they are trying to stop competition."
Both of these statements are obviously heavily biased, and yet, that's what we see in the article, and in the hacker news headline.
If it weren't biased, why would Scroogle even mention the Microsoft thing? It is hardly relevant. It seems like they are trying to invoke anger by the community, so that Google is forced to reinstate the feature. And judging by the headline here, it seems to have worked.
But hey, I guess headlines which are anti-large company on a system which only gets upvotes would generate more attention than neutral ones, because all the Google haters jump on board and vote it up, without reading the article and actually seeing if the headline is remotely accurate.
I'd say that the title is intended to strongly imply that Google are evil. Also, the vibe the article is trying to create is that if Google don't re-add the api, they are probably doing it to block competition (why else would they start with their Microsoft rant at the bottom?)
Also.. Privacy issues with Google? Just because they are capturing details you put into their system, doesn't mean they are sharing it, or changing their privacy policy overnight to make all your details public (as Facebook does). Or are you complaining they take photos in public areas?
Saw this the other week (I think its been posted to hacker news before). It's actually surprisingly easy to understand, even for private barely-trained pilot's.
How would you like an already painfully slow service to be even slower? The rumor that this is based on has no credibility.
And even if it were free, I'd still avoid it like the plague, because there are better offering's out there, most of which aren't mostly tied down to an OS.
This is unlikely to happen, unless Apple becomes a mobile service provider which is likely a bigger possibility.
So in other words, Google are the bad guys for depreciating/axing a feature which they no longer use, and which was probably never intended to be used in the way which Scroogle are using it?
That's right, it's all about Scroogle. I appreciate that Scroogle are upset that their service (which relies on hacks) will no longer work, however, it's ridiculous that even developers are acting irrational these days.
Why Scroogle thinks that Google should pay developers to maintain an interface to support their service which strips the ads from results, is beyond me. I'd say this change shows scroogle's true colors...
I totally agree. The internet has had this discussion millions of time in the past, and this post does nothing but turn 1 or 2 obvious points into a giant essay.
The fact's are.. They wont. Remember, it's the small additions to sales that make sales highly profitable and if they made it free, people would probably register for many accounts and use them to host warez. The .Mac servers are already slowly crawling along. By making it free, they would probably grind to a complete halt.
The author also fails to recognise that unlike Google, Apple's core profit model isn't advertising, instead, Apple actually does the opposite (wastes untold amounts on advertising). So Google profits heavily from their web apps, whereas web app's actually cut into Apple's profits.
Great in practice, but in reality, terrible idea. In fact, I'd be as bold as to say this article is as terrible as the idea..
Using cardiac patterns for login are also prone to "denial of service attacks". Because if I scare someone, suddenly they will be unable to access their phone.
Regardless, just reading through this patent, I find it difficult/impossible to believe that there isn't prior art for this.
Let's face it, we all hate facebook, but there are no good alternatives yet. Orkut and networks like friendstar are hopeless still, and whilst I'd love to remove myself from facebook, the reality is that most invitations people receive to do things are by facebook these days.
But we both know it wont in the real world. We also know that Adobe will probably change the Flash output slightly in the future, and Gnash will always be a step behind.
It doesn't change the fact that you would be wasting development resources, because you then have duplicate functionality. Why waste resources on developing an addon, which will need to be updated with the browser api's, for many browsers, and optimised, when the browsers themselves already have the functionality built in? If resources are spent optimising the browsers themselves rather than a foreign addon, every website benefits.
Fact is, the same problem's we've had with flash addon in the past (such as in cases where updating the browser caused crashes), will still exist in Gnash player instead.
Why are you so eager to encourage people to duplicate functionality browsers are building into their core code these days?
You can either improve the browser, or you can improve Gnash. Both are open source. Unless there is something the flash standard can do which open standards couldn't?
I don't think Gnash fixes anything. The reason why flash is so prominent is that there is no good flash-creator-like program out there that outputs files as HTML5/SVG/AJAX/Javascript. People use Flash because it is the only good way to create animations that work for many people, but with a proper editor, we could eliminate the need for additional addons entirely.
ZeroGravitas. Apple also banged on in 2004 about how awesome PowerPC was compared to Intel. Remind me what happened 2 years later? Yes, companies do slag others off..
The smartphone market was held up for many other reasons too. It mostly came down to the fact that the mobile OS's sucked at the time. One would have also expected Android/iPhone sales to have been flat without flash support, and this is untrue (Apple have said they refuse to support Flash, and iPhones are unfortunately flying off the shelves).
If you think Flash will suddenly replace the fact that software support for ARM is limited, that the CPU's are slow (and only recently started operating at good enough speeds) and that no major OS's even support ARM (Windows, Ubuntu, redhat, many other major linux distro's) then you should perhaps list EXACTLY what you think consumers need flash for (youtube perhaps would have been one valid reason, but it has been accessible via other means since at least 2006 now).
Whilst technologies such as Flash and ActiveX do still have their uses (hopefully though HTML5 will kill flash), I doubt that the lack of flash would have influenced any manufacturers into delaying an ARM product (which would be slightly cheaper), if they were serious.
Lets face it, The major issues with the iPhone 2G was the lack of applications (and even a javascript refreshing security camera stream caused safari to crash) and on Windows Mobile it was general usability issues. Or do you think these problems would have magically disappeared because of a really-slow version of Flash?
They have productivity benefits for some things true, but they don't expose or constrain operations very well (ie, I have seen "professionals" do stuff like "rm -rf ~/ folder" before accidentally) .
CLI's are generally only good at administration tasks (such as moving files around). In the vast majority of cases though, a good GUI would probably be more productive to work with.
But once again, that's my opinion. Until CLI's can expose tasks better, their benefits will be limited.
This would work, if it didn't make things more difficult for less common tasks (many Linux distro's suffer this same problem, everything is great and productive when you are performing mainstream computing. However, cross the boundary slightly, and you'll find yourself in bash shell, which ruins all productivity benefits).
Sorry, but this isn't a good idea. iTunes actually wouldn't be half bad if they permitted addons, theming and official support for MTP/MSC. However, inconsistant UI's are a big no-no according to the lecturer who taught me GUI design, because users have to continue learning and cannot rely on elements existing where they expect them.
It couldn't possibly have anything to do with the fact that ARM is competing against the faster atom processors, which can run windows and a lot more applications? I would have thought that consumers would see an Atom netbook, compare it to ARM, realise the minimal cost difference and then settle on the Atom based one.
It sounds like they are simply fishing for excuses honestly. Flash may make ARM netbook's more appealing, but if this was the sole reason that they were delayed, the companies interested in creating smartbooks would have simply released the products now, and introduced a flash update later.
I think it probably has more to do with lack of demand. Whilst the ARM processors are good mobile phone CPU's, for laptops/netbooks, it is simply a trade-off of compatibility for slightly lower cost, and it would have to be a significant reduction in cost for salespeople to recommend a foreign processor.
That's just my opinion though. Personally, I used to sell laptops, and I would much rather push Atom netbooks than ARM netbooks.
Because it seems a lot of crap coming here these days, nobody double checks actually.