In a comment for another thread, I described US practices to be similar to North Korea and Iran ones.

It is a shame, because I know a lot of US citizen and they are wonderful people, but each day I hear things that make my suspicion to be real. Just see the facts.

1) In many US based online places, when you are not an US citizen having an US legal address, you can't purchase anything using a valid international credit card.
2) If you try to store any type of data in US servers, the US authorities can, legally, ask for the information you stored there. Take into consideration that even the US citizen are involved in this "natural" seizing of data, because what is "third party" generated data in the modern information world?
3) If you try to enter the United States with any type of computing device, the authorities have the right to seize it and you need to provide them with passwords, and they can copy your data and to do whatever they like with it.

As they already have legal rights to do whatever they like with your digital data, the next step is to confiscate your paper notebooks. Because they could have any type of security related information. If you carry "YOUR" written poems, then they will ask you to give them the clue to acquire the hidden data, because for them it is clear that you are the enemy and that nobody enter the United States with good intentions. Why then they don't close all the airports, harbours, etc.?

I live in Costa Rica. Our laws are very different than the US laws. In the wikileaks data about the relationship between US and Costa Rica, something was said about that Costa Rica had a "dysfunctional" government, because here everything needs to pass through a very lengthly legal process. But now I understand what dysfunctional really means.

Dysfunctional means that they can't pass on top of their citizen minds without asking for permission. So, the authorities have the right to do whatever they like to do, without any type of control and then they are functional authorities. But when you keep their hands out of the personal privacy, you are the bad guy.

What a shame ...

Happy new year

There is a new discussion thread about text based programs, and this remembered me about the UNIX approach.

1) You create a tool "with" functionality. This tool has no user interface but only a text based interface and/or some type of API access layer.
2) You create a graphical wrapper.

Then, you see these wrappers in many different types of GUI approaches. But you don't need to recreate the hard things.

The problem Android and IOS have is that they mix the functionality with the presentation layers and later, even if you have a good idea about how to improve the way these programs are presented, it is very expensive to do so ... so nobody do it.

Graphics need to be only an accessory. If you like windows, why not to use windows where you can use them? If you like tiled interfaces, why not? If you are a "power user" that doesn't depends on a GUI to perform a specific task, why not to use a text command? Even a robot can do it .... I think that these are the real universal applications and maybe this is what we need on the mobile area to recover all the current functionality of the desktop there.

I will tell you my current experience with OSX and windows ... when I have many programs running, I can't find the windows, so I need to go to the dock area to find them (MS Windows have the same problem). Windows are not a perfect solution anyway, and it is normal to be lost in the forest, particularly when you are running one or more virtual machines with many windows each...

On the other side, all these systems have a clear limitation in the way they work the clipboard. Sometimes I need to open a text editor to use as my clipboard because the natural clipboard only stores one "copy" before be able to make the "paste". This is also limited. In fact, in MS Windows you were able to have more but because Office added extra clipboards, but this is an "application" solution, this is not part of the working environment.

I think that if you have a vertical bar in the current "wide mode" screens, that won't eat a lot of useful space, you really don't need windows, you can manage everything with some type of navigation tool, providing you more control than regular independent windows disordered everywhere in your desktop. And when observing GIMP, they even included a new mode with all the windows mixed as an IDE, because that type of environment sometimes becomes chaotic. ... what I like to say is that not everything is written, somebody will arrive with a nice solution or, with windows :-)

And that "put away" "pick up" "put away" ... you also need to do so with your mouse in your windows, you can't have focus in all them at the same time, you have one and later the other.

...

mmm ... Firefox for Android is a full featured browser. And I don't know any browser, for desktops or mobile environment showing more than one page mixed, this doesn't exist. They offer tabs but you need to choose what to see each time. Firefox/Android have a special design for tabs, but they are tabs ...

They use some shared code and some specific one. But users will force them to have compatible environments in all the platforms, this is a fact of time.

Resizable windows ... mmmm ...

There was a world without windows many years ago. Why everything needs to have them? And there is creativity also, even the character based screen had floating windows before the current environments took the space, and they were very good, light, fast and useful options.

Maybe Android development is a little weird, but not so different that web development. And .... you always can work HTML5 in a browser, so you can have those floating windows if you like to do so.

What I expect is a completely revolutionary user interface experience soon, making the current "windows" metaphor a thing of the past ... Metro was a failed attempt, but won't be the best neither the last one. We need to stay tuned to see what will happen.

The Nexus 7 is a very limited device. You can't compare a 7 inches screen with a 28 inches screen. And the emulator is .... how to say? .... I make software and this is the worst thing I ever have seen.

Android has visible scroll bars, but the applications designed for mobile devices don't use them because they will eat the limited space. Obviously, if we like to think on Android as s desktop replacement, we need to create applications for desktops. In fact, I see the current android office tools extremely limited but this is, also, because they were thought to work in limited spaces. But the miniPCs and the "extended PCs" are very capable and it is not necessary to limit them so much.

1 gigabyte of RAM is a lot of memory (now the were updated to 2 gigabytes and one quad-core CPU). I used desktops with 1/16 that CPU capacity and with 512 megabytes RAM with full Graphics interface and complex office tools several years ago, the problem is that Microsoft washed our minds and made us to think that we need so huge quantities of resources to have useful tools.

I understand.

The difference is that there is a person "behind" the decision. That the decision can be immediate or that could be let incomplete for the "robot" to complete it.

A computer is one of these robots that are not responsible for their actions and where the person controlling it is the direct responsible. But a computer whose software was created to "learn" could, eventually, be responsible of its actions independently of the person that created the computer and/or the software and here is where the three laws have sense, as a guide for that software to evolve correctly.

The law is an interpretation.

That interpretation is given by people according with their own realities, and in this case, according with the specific US laws and regulations.

Then, THE CLOUD is over as a concept, and it only needs to be considered within each country limit, because the "not owned" data belongs to the country where the servers are located and not to the individuals whose data is used to derive that "not owned" information. As many services, including the "big ones" are located in the US territory, the rest of the world is basically a set of second class individuals.

I am part of this second class, so what I can do is to try not to share anything I consider private on the Internet ... what this means?

A complete fragmentation of the Internet. No more private data traveling it.

Each country needs to derive its own local services that will be ruled by their own regulations. The United States is forcing the World to follow what North Korea and Iran are doing, to build big intranets instead of being integrated as part of the connected Internet, this would make this surveillance system completely useless.

This is far of being a solution, and from my perspective, it is the most stupid and naive way of working. This is like a naughty child trying to find a justification to continue being naughty instead of learning to grow up and behave with more common sense and reasonings. What is being justified is brute force behaviour instead of intelligent one.

Have you ever used a miniPC running Android?

Although not perfect, basically because of the applications not being designed for a desktop, not because Android itself, it is a perfectly usable Desktop machine when you disable the on-screen keyboard and add a physical keyboard and mouse. And it works wonderfully with a Full-HDMI screen, everything with a dual-core 1 GHz CPU, 1 Gigabyte RAM, 8 Gigabyte storage, WIFI, USB, Bluetooth ( Imito MX1 for around $50 on Amazon ).

What could you do with the extended hardware a regular PC could offer and good desktop applications?

What this will do is to open the eyes of the people. I don't see the PC Plus living for many years, but enough to create a real alternative to Windows outside Windows in the mind if the final users.

A robot is a machine but not all the machines are robots.

A gun can't be responsible of its acts, but a Robot, in Asimov terms, IS responsible because it needs to accomplish the three laws.

So, the robot is given enough freedom because the laws protect their users. If an autonomous machine can't work these laws, it is a dangerous machine and it is better not to be related with it.

The problem is that humans are making many autonomous machines that are not robots. And this could have harmful results. It is similar to grow Lions at home; when babies they are like little cats, but their nature is to be wild animals, and soon or later (in the most of the cases), they will grow to eat who has been taking care of them.

There is a basic problem with your recommendation. If your software is designed to accept "independent loadable components", then each component could have a legally bounded identity that can be separated as not being part of your software (also you need to choose the right type of license).

If the contribution becomes part of your software "genes", then it is extremely difficult to proof that the resulting product is not infringing any type of legal definition. How can you say the line 300 and 450 is not our responsibility?

Obviously this is a combined problem : "design" and "code management". Maybe when we define these types of things on new projects, we need to think in possible future legal issues and work according with that reality.

I am from Costa Rica. I have been in DR, China, Germany, several other countries in Latin America and US. And the numbers are accurate.

When I was in DR I found wonderful people, very kind and helpful, but I was amazed how bad drivers they were. Let me see ... a small Taxi with 10-15 people inside, or a motorcycle with 5 was a common sight. The speed is not everything for having an accident.

For China is different. When you are in Beijing, you have bridges everywhere and "you need to use them". If you, by the chance try to cross the road directly, be prepared to stay there for a long time, because no driver will stop for you.

Germany has high speed highways, but drivers are very polite in general. And I was driving in Orlando, Florida, USA, and noticed how gentle are the drivers there. Let me give a point of comparison with a red light.

Distance to stop in a red light:

• Costa Rica : 10 meters, but if the light is yellow, people speed up before going red. Be aware of Taxi drivers, they have different "mental" rules. Manual cars
• Germany : 20 meters. Combination, and ... what cars they do drive?
• US : 30 meters. Automatic cars. If you break the law, you are a poor person.
• DR : oops, -3 ... I didn't see any red light. If I can take a shortcut I will invent it. Automatic cars.
• China (Beijing) : 5 meters. This is because there are so many cars in the street that you can't go fast. Combination.
• China (Taiyuan) : 10 meters, but won't stop for pedestrians, they are focused in the light. Combination.

This is a focus problem.

UNIX (branded) : One very big and expensive software license for a very complex and capable "enterprise-level" operating system running on an even more expensive and complex computer.

UNIX (derived) : One "or many" -- even counted on the thousands, small and more limited computers performing specific tasks on cheap computers, covering not only what the UNIX-branded was capable of doing but much more things, with less cost and more flexibility. And with this specialisation comes the expansion, because they even can run a UNIX-derived operating systems in mobile devices, covering practically all the world.

In my own perspective, UNIX was as important for current UNIX-derived operating systems, as DOS was for current Windows. They are impossible separable parts of the same evolution story.

When the prices depend on quantity and all the people that can purchase a good computer already have one, then the sales are doomed. There are several solutions to this dilemma:

--- Create "almost good" computers that will work for you only for a while. Let's see. ... cheaper netbooks with slow processors and limited storage. Oh, this was already done, but makers like to sell them as the notebooks the really are not.
--- Create "disposable" devices. This is how the printer business is shaped. They could work more time, but their chips decide not to continue working ... fill the planet with trash and doom yourself or your descendants in the future.
--- Create "durable" machines, making them more expensive in the first moment, but cheaper on the long term. And develop an "update and DIY repairing business" around it. Again, as the printers industry, do $$$ with the ink, not with the printer, or the car industry do with their regular checkpoints and the replacement part industry. Try to be "the dentist".
--- Order your goals. Mobile, Desktop ... break the separations between them, the truth is that there is a limited quantity of people on this planet and no mater how attractive you paint the image, when all them have what they need, no need to have more. If you are a serious user, what is the "real" difference between an iPhone4 and an iPhone5? ... both do their jobs well ... the same for Samsung S3 and S4, etc.
--- Sell what you can sell ... do added value on top of that. This industry is so extremely disordered that is a miracle we are still alive. Let's see ... Windows native format for external hard disks NTFS ... OSX native format for external hard disks HPFS+ ... Windows can't read HPFS+, OSX can write NTFS disks ... there is no technical reason for this difference because Linux read whatever and write wherever ... pure ego.

Yeah, there are solutions ... but people need to think better their ways of doing the things.

Last economic crisis is not a joke, and how the ice is melting in our poles neither. The industries can't continue selling as they are doing now, this is nonsense.

Ransomware, rootkits ... all these are tools from bad people, not from good ones.
This is like to work against another government and to define that a biological weapon will be used to defeat the enemy. Soon or later, this weapon will turn back and shoot the originator feet, because it is not good to use these types of tools, period. Nobody can control them well, not now, not tomorrow.
At the end, trying to protect the intelectual property industry, what they will provoke is that all the people will run to any open source and/or free alternative, making that all the closed sourced business be in bankrupcy. If there is the minimum possibility that something like that work wrong and that I be in a situation where I can't use my own "intelectual property" because it was stolen because of an error, I never will use that type of tools ... I am not so fool.