 |
|
| FriendFeed is the easiest way to share online. Learn more » |
HeliOS - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - https://www.iterasi.net/public...
 |
Maxamad (Amazigh) liked this
Squeaker | Nanoblogging - https://www.iterasi.net/public...
 |
Maxamad (Amazigh) and Helen Sventitsky liked this
LOL
- Maxamad (Amazigh)
@victorpalau Would you prefer the Wiki or Forum, out of interest? (Assuming that we're both talking about EUserHL/QEMU since last time)
@brendan_donegan Thanks for the update on those. I'm tempted to see if I can get them to build, so I can try to bake them into a ROM...
If "user data is sacred", and "user time is precious", then why do we still put up with archaic file systems and implementations of them that are more than happy to corrupt data silently, or otherwise decay over time; and bloated, inefficient software with awful UIs that were seemingly designed to frustrate users?
Hutch Carpenter, Kol Tregaskes, Thomas Hawk and 21 other people liked this
1. Because making things better requires more than just an awareness of how things suck? 2. The resources required to update archaic file systems, etc. are resources which could be used in an alternate manner, and people do chose to use those resources on some other goal. 3. Because there is fortunately no "we" that can just put it's foot down and say "Everyone - update your archaic file systems and switch to this UI, or you will feel our wrath!". There's a few possibilities.
- SuezanneC Baskerville
just cuz
- sofarsoShawn
Valid points there, SuezanneC Baskerville. Of course, I don't expect overnight transitions, or even miracles - after all, I'm used to being disappointed, and hearing news of vapourware that was supposedly going to revolutionise everything...
- Tyson Key
Designing good software is hard, designing good UI can be REALLY hard. One of the bigger problems with UI is no two consecutive users will even agree on what is good and bad. You can get users to agree that a UI is good when its finished and they see it and it is good, but the process to getting there when starting from scratch is really hard. Good UI designers are under appreciated artists of the software development world and most of them seem to be at Apple.
- Ed Millard
The problem with bloated and inefficient is that most software starts life being designed for functionality, as in we want it to do this, and then at the end of its life cycle the goal is getting all the bugs out. Performance and bloat are frequently pushed to the bottom of the priority list, unless performance is critical to market success which it often isn't.
- Ed Millard
After all, we're still using the abomination that is the FAT family of file systems, decades after their introduction for interchange purposes, despite superior technologies being developed in that space of time... (Just an example).
- Tyson Key
What FS are you proposing as an interchange standard? I think FAT is still dominant because Windows is still dominant and Microsoft wont adopt anything it didn't invent which mostly leaves FAT and NTFS. FAT is a lot simpler than NTFS and you generally want simple for interchange and something being integrated in a lot of consumer electronics.
- Ed Millard
Hmm. Tyson, A switch to a different filesystem (for example a journaling one, or one that incorporates various forms of fault-tolerance) would do *nothing* to fix UI problems (even paradigmatic ones). You're talking about two mostly unrelated problems, except insofar as they are both exacerbated by the momentum of user behavior and acceptance.
- Michael R. Bernstein
I know. I never said that they were related, and I guess that I mis-phrased my initial post. It was intended as food for thought, though.
- Tyson Key
@Ed - UDF is more than suitable, although of course, persuading vendors and users alike to switch would be an impossible task, as mentioned.
- Tyson Key
On the subject of performance tuning, and bloat reduction, a lot of things have been proposed in the past, although they haven't always yielded viable results. Naturally, it doesn't help that "bloat" is subjective, or that hardware development is progressing at a markedly different pace, either.
- Tyson Key
We've tried "hyper-modularity" previously with microkernel-based OSes, component-based document creation technology (e.g. OpenDoc), and client-server software architectures, amongst other things, in the hope that "bloat" can be reduced, and performance/reliability can be increased, and the plans backfired in various ways. (Developers and users either decried the results as "slow", "clunky" or as generally being difficult to develop with)...
- Tyson Key
UDF seems possible, though they seem to be marketing it only as a standard for optical media. Its not clear if it would be a good fit for Flash drives, though maybe it is. If the Wikipedia chart is correct it appears there is sufficient OS support for 1.5 it could be a standard. The next battle would presumably to get device makers to support it(i.e. cameras, phone), and there could be inertia there.
- Ed Millard
It makes the most sense from a compatibility perspective, given that Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris and a number of reasonably cheap devices support it well, and that it's possible to use it on Flash and magnetic media (as Iomega have done in the past with Jaz disks and their Rev product line).
- Tyson Key
Sadly, Microsoft were predictably slow to jump on the bandwagon with non-optical support - formatting support was added to Windows Vista, but is only exposed as an argument to a CLI utility, and said implementation is incompatible with most other implementations, due to a non-standard quirk/defect that may have been added in an attempt to sabotage interoperability with other implementations...
- Tyson Key
Barring a few low-quality implementations on the Windows platform by third-parties, UDF happens to support metadata from various OSes natively in a safe manner (i.e. implementations that don't know how to manipulate a piece of metadata will simply ignore it, but will also add their own, if necessary - as happens when sharing a volume between Linux and Mac OS X).
- Tyson Key
Since Microsoft won its FAT patents in 2006, I think their goal was to make FAT licensing a revenue stream, a means for influencing the device market, and to annoy competitors like Linux and Mac. It would be like them to intentionally obstruct UDF for purely business reasons. Let's hope the Supreme Court case on process patents ends some of this madness soon, though I wouldn't count on it.
- Ed Millard
It's a shame that some will actively subvert standards, and aim to deliberately prevent any chance of natural interoperability occurring. C'est la vie, though. :(
- Tyson Key
It doesn't help that Microsoft are planning on unleashing yet another, patent-infested FAT variant upon the world, in the form of exFAT, either - which is planned for use in the upcoming SDXC Flash media standard. I believe that people are working on reverse-engineering it, though.
- Tyson Key
Well I guess we answered one of your original questions. We end up with bad technology sometimes because there are big, powerful, companies who have a vested interest in and profit off it. Microsoft certainly isn't the only one, they've just historically been the best at it.
- Ed Millard
@loosecjcannon mIRGGI was a reasonable IRC client, last time I checked
Regretsy – Well Done - https://www.iterasi.net/public...
 |
@EverythingBlaxx Sorry about that, by the way. Still, it's Open Source. This is the time to do something about your @Symbian-related woes.
@EverythingBlaxx I was comparing it to the Symbian Platform. It doesn't help that you're conflating the UI layers with the core OS, either.
@EverythingBlaxx Point in case - Android still doesn't support installation of applications, or message DB storage on external Flash OOTB
@EverythingBlaxx Oh, puh-lease. @Symbian are not going away any time soon, no matter how much you keep wishing... You're driving away devs.
Slashdot Apple Story | First iPhone Worm Discovered, Rickrolls Jailbroken Phones - https://www.iterasi.net/public...
 |
Communicating with Palm Engineering and Developer Relations on IRC - webOSdev - Palm - https://www.iterasi.net/public...
 |
Palm Shows Ares WebOS Development Tool - Business Center - PC World - https://www.iterasi.net/public...
 |
UIST'09: A reconfigurable ferromagnetic input device - http://www.youtube.com/watch...
  |
Slashdot Technology Story | X11 Chrome Reportedly Outperforms Windows and Mac Versions - https://www.iterasi.net/public...
 |
 |
 |
Siavash liked this
Slashdot News Story | Lulu Introduces DRM - https://www.iterasi.net/public...
 |
Looking for a Windows Live Messenger to XMPP gateway that doesn't randomly flake out with "Disconnected from MSN servers: [Failure instance: Traceback (failure with no frames): twisted.internet.error.ConnectionLost: Connection to the other side was lost in a non-clean fashion.]" errors, or otherwise fail silently every other week...
@brendan_donegan I have a feeling that you'll love the slide deck and commentary, at http://laforge.gnumonks.org/weblog..., then. ;)
Wondering what the deal is with the "distribution.policy" files in the @Symbian packages containing seemingly random numbers...
Roberto Bonini and Maxamad (Amazigh) liked this
Apparently, they're not even supposed to be in the published codebase, as supplied by Nokia, from what I've been told just now. I vaguely recall seeing them in some older S60 SDKs, for what it's worth.
- Tyson Key
It seems that someone's cleaning those files up, after checking http://developer.symbian.org/oss.... I'd be interested to see what else gets removed, given that documentation and internal testing utilities were also included in the source code drop.
- Tyson Key
@victorpalau http://code.google.com/p... is where I'm documenting my progress, so far, if you're interested.
Other ways to read this feed:
