Big mistake, Google. Big mistake: Chrome OS to be 'folded into Android' Google is apparently going to "fold" Chrome OS into Android, potentially killing the development of a secure, lightweight desktop OS in the process. The Wall Street Journal, citing anonymous sources, claims engineers at the Mountain View giant have spent the past two years merging Chrome OS into Android. The end result will …
Bad criticism I think. I won't call it pedantry, because it isn't; it's preference. Pedantry is a word that should be reserved for when someone has got something wrong. "One less" is not bad English since Chrome (on Android versus Chrome the OS) can both be referred to by the definite article. Just because you can make a substitution doesn't mean you should, indeed "one less" has a cadence that emphasises the point. Consider:
And Snake, wiping Semtex residue off his hand, looked back at the wreckage of the Google development lab and said to Flint, "That's one less Chrome we have to deal with."
and
And Snake, wiping Semtex residue off his hand, looked back at the wreckage of the Google development lab and said to Flint, "That's fewer Chromes we have to deal with."
The latter is just grotesque!
I'm afraid you are wrong about it being a preference.
'Less' refers to a reduction in a continuous amount of a thing, as in 'less water', whilst 'fewer' refers to a reduction in a number of discrete items, as in 'fewer bricks'. Part of the confusion is that we can use 'more' to indicate an increase in both, but there is still a distinction when it comes to indicating a reduction.
'Less bricks' is just as wrong as 'fewer water'.
I think /you're/ wrong (not "your wrong" -- that should be "your bad").
As you say, to quote the Oxford English Dictionary: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/few
scroll down to "Usage
Fewer versus less: strictly speaking, the rule is that fewer, the comparative form of few, is used with words denoting people or countable things ( fewer members; fewer books). Less, on the other hand, is used with mass nouns, denoting things which cannot be counted ( less money; less bother). It is regarded as incorrect in standard English to use less with count nouns, as in less people or less words, although this is one of the most widespread errors made by native speakers. It is not so obvious which word should be used with than. Less is normally used with numerals ( a score of less than 100) and with expressions of measurement or time ( less than two weeks; less than four miles away), but fewer is used if the things denoted by the number are seen as individual items or units ( there were fewer than ten contestants)."
Note the "strictly speaking" and "one of the most widespread errors made by native speakers".
Of course the OED Usage statement (which should magically appear on the CLI whenever someone uses it incorrectly) is imprecise: Why "people or countable things"? Wouldn't just "countable things" suffice? And "things which cannot be counted ( less money)" clearly contradicts the well known fact that the King was in his counting house, counting out his money. Actually, we are never told if the King succeeds.
what's 1500 years of usage set against the personal preference of one 18th century grammarian, which is how the whole less/fewer fetish got started
Yes. And the OED, in the passage quoted by another poster, is guilty of the worst sort of naive prescriptivism, with its talk of "error" and "strictly". Since the OED is supposed to be a descriptive dictionary, I don't know what that rubbish is doing there; but no one who understands how natural languages in general and English in particular work would pay any attention to it.
But the sophomores do love their shibboleths.
Thanks for the support but I have to admit there's a logic to what he is saying when you are referring to grammar books written in the 1950's. But that means we have to fix this, which now just doesn't sound quite right:
And Snake, wiping Semtex residue off his hand, looked back at the wreckage of the Google development lab and said to Flint, "That's one fewer Chrome to deal with."
This is better:
And Farquhar, wiping Semtex residue off his hand, looked back at the wreckage of the Google development lab and said to Gaylord, "By Golly, that's one fewer Chrome to deal with."
... what? What belongs to the 1950?
You don't need an apostrophe here because you are not using the genitive/possessive sense. Now if you had said
grammar books written in the 1950's style,
that would have been acceptable, but what you should have said was
grammar books written in the 1950s.
> The "less" is this case is connected to the one thing, a singular, not all the remaining things.
"Less" here is related to the number of things we stared with, compared with the number which remain. There is 1 fewer (or 14% less, which makes no sense because Chromes are whole things).
> A thing cannot be fewer.
There are to be fewer Chromes. It refers to the remainder not what was taken away.
That's a red herring. Reducing by one doesn't change the that you're comparing a lower countable number of items (in this case, "Chromes", or presumably versions of Chrome). If there were 3 fewer Chromes instead of one fewer Chrome, you would quite definitely say "fewer" rather than "less" (even by your logic). It's just that it's misused even more when the quantity is reduced by just one (to you and lots of other people, although I'm hoping there might be one fewer people to convert ;) ).
On your side, however, you have the very erudite Alexander Armstrong continuing to say "can you score less points than ..." where the points are integers from 0 to 100 -- clearly countable. I've often wondered where the practical physical boundary between discrete and continuous occurs.
As the OP, I can inform you all that I thought long and hard about whether to use less or fewer. I distinguish between less and fewer in what I believe is the correct manner on a daily basis, however sometimes, it is a rather grey area. I still think less is the best usage in my example, but I cannot articulate why I think this.
I tried, and I did learn something from the commentary!
For the love of God, please do some googling before tweeting?
Pixel C is the tablet that will have those updates and folding to this single OS. If you look closely at Google remarks about this device, updates for it will come directly from Google *EVERY 6 WEEKS!*, just like Chrome OS devices get.
People, the new Android version is not even ready yet, and yes, i'm pretty sure that Google will change their update policy regarding those devices who will have this new "merged" Android version, It will *NOT* be like today that you have to wait weeks or months for a damn update, you'll get it directly from Google, just like Chromebooks gets them, so any security issue will be dealt quite fast.
Silly people! This is classic "anonymous source" misdirection from a vendor - not a confirmed fact.
There is no way Chrome OS is going to be "folded" into Android. If anything Android apps will run on Chrome OS just like some are capable of using the Android Runtime for Chrome (ARC):
https://developer.chrome.com/apps/getstarted_arc
:ROLLEYES:
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Windows 2000 was NT kernel 5.0. Windows XP was Windows NT kernel 5.1, plus some eye candy.
Are you suggesting that Google is doing to dump Android and replace it with Chrome? No, Android has a 1 billion+ user base, and Chrome has a user base of a few tens of millions at the most (and that's being charitable, assuming most of the Chrome laptops aren't sitting in closets like we know they are) Android will win, and Chrome will disappear.
I think his point is that it's not the underlying technology - it's the applications.
Windows NT4 was unsuitable for home use despite having the same interface as Windows 95. That's because it had to ensure security and process safety (amongst other demands).
Windows 95 was backwards compatible with a LOT of software. There were some exceptions - for example Delrina Winfax Pro didn't work - but that's because it replaced the COM port driver. The actual application would load and show you your old faxes, but it couldn't send or receive, due to that COM port driver. That's actually pretty impressive - only specialised software that did odd stuff didn't work, and even then it often partially worked. The rest of your Windows and DOS software would run just fine.
Where Windows 95 was impressive in its backwards compatibility, Windows NT 4 wasn't as impressive. Sure, it had a Windows on Windows 16-bit machine and a rudimentary DOS box. But most Windows software wasn't written with security in mind. A lot of 16-bit software did stuff that Windows 95 could allow, but the strict process limitations in NT wouldn't. Hell, Microsoft's own Office suite had a bunch of "this feature doesn't work under Windows NT" and "this feature requires local admin rights to work under Windows NT" issues until about Office 97 or 2000. If even Microsoft's developers couldn't get it right, what chance did others have?
The solution was actually pretty simple. It took two things - time and patience. Over time, most of the software became 32-bit and the compilers wouldn't allow stupid coding behaviour as easily. And software gradually became a little more security aware. But most importantly, users moved to software that was compatible as they either upgraded or switched to other applications.
It wasn't perfect, but after five years or so the world was just about ready to migrate to that new NT kernel. Some software wouldn't - couldn't - work on it. But most did, and it was just like the Windows 95 compatibility situation all over again.
How is this relevant to Chrome/Android? Well, there's an Android Runtime for Chrome. At the moment it only works with (and therefore allows) specific, vetted apps. It's quite possible that Google's plan is to run a "virtual device" on your Chromebook, where you'll be able to have your Chromebook as another Android instance, possibly even with app data synchronisation and the like. Android lends itself well to that architecturally, and it's far easier than trying to get lots of Android apps replaced with Chrome web apps/extensions.
But like those early Windows 95/Windows NT migrations, there will be edge cases where apps do unexpected and stupid things that the Android Runtime guys never anticipated. And there's issues like the notification centre (do they unify it between the Android instance and Chrome?), what data to synchronise, and so forth. It won't be perfect. So Google have some work to do to get it "good enough", and there may be new APIs in both Android and ChromeOS to help developers get the best out of this integration.
In this sense, I see strong parallels between the first two big Windows upgrade/migrations and this one. It's about application compatibility more than anything else - nobody runs an OS just for the sake of running an OS.
(Well, nobody with a life...)
> only specialised software that did odd stuff didn't work,
Windows 95 completely dropped support for all Windows 2 programs which ran fine under all 3.x. I had one Windows 2 program that didn't have a suitable replacement so ran a copy of Win3.11 in a virtual machine.
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> re-write Android to be based on Chrome.
They are both based on the Linux kernel. They may add GNU to Android and/or Android UI and ART to ChromeOS. This would give Android apps on ChromeBooks and allow phones to become ChromeBooks/desktops when connected to a monitor or TV like Ubuntu does.
They may add GNU to Android
I really doubt that.
Substantially all GNU userland stuff is GPL or similar; to start putting GPL into Android means that redistributors (i.e. the phone manuacturers) will have to track the GPL stuff and release it properly. That's just asking for trouble - so many vendors are notoriously crap at compliance. And Google - whilst not responsible for the phone makers' compliance - will take flak for it. That's something they won't want...
Vic.
"Android needs a re-write from scratch to fix it's problems, not another, "lipstick on a pig", facelift like Lollipop was."
The *only* reason why I am currently in the process of setting up my Android tablet as a Laptop replacement are those dreaded Android Apps.
You might be willing to forsake the "awfully insecure" flexibility and user friendliness of Android Apps by replacing Android with a server centric ChromeOS, which would de'facto reduce my smartphone or tablet to a half-dumb webterminal, utterly beholden to Google's software update and maintenance policy.
But I for one rather choose insecure freedom over semi-secure slavery (NSA and local law enforcement snoops anyone? - not to mention Google's own data mining madness).
If Google ever would phase Android out in favor of a webterminal called ChromeOS, then I'd ditch the platform altogether.
Next stop: Ubuntu or iOS.
"Windows 2000 was NT kernel 5.0."
And it was such a hit with users compared to Win 98... in bizarro world.
His point is that Win NT-based machines were not the commercially successful product, and yet the more popular, mass-market DOS-based line was the one that was discontinued. The same may apply here (I'd doubt it, myself, but the way of the chocolate factory is mysterious).
'Dispose the whole shi%#t altogether. Google made absolutely sure it is a PITA to install Linux on it.'
Errm. Installing Crouton (Ubuntu for chromebooks) is fairly trivial - just one command to install and then one to run it.
'Download crouton
Open a shell (Ctrl+Alt+T, type shell and hit enter) and run sudo sh ~/Downloads/crouton -t xfce
Wait patiently and answer the prompts like a good person.
Done! You can jump straight to your Xfce session by running sudo enter-chroot startxfce4 or, as a special shortcut, sudo startxfce4'
I installed unity instead. It's all so easy because ChromeOS is based on Linux. For the techies - Crouton installs a simple chrooted login.
So, my Lenovo N20 chromebook becomes a 1Kg SSD drived laptop running Ubuntu perfectly and fast - at a cost of 180 quid!
Linux has been on mine for a while, but I still haven't figured out how to get it as a native install and not through crouton, so I can use the linux I want.
^%$ Baytrail processors and fake boot sequences...
(though it does look as if someone has managed to get seabios onto the Tosh II so there is hope.)
After having Ubuntu installed on the internal SSD on my daughters chrome book, I borrowed it one day and accidentally pressed space after switching it on thereafter leading to hours of unwanted work.
Therefore I suggest you purchase a tiny USB stick (USB3.0 32GB say) and install to that.
Then just press Ctrl L every time you boot safe in the knowledge that if you accidentally press space it won't matter :-)
My post upthread triggered me to do another websearch - and woohoo, someone's worked out how to get seabios onto the Toshiba CB2, so now I have an almost working Mint running natively on it.
Instructions from the Captain at www.fascinatingcaptain.com/howto/install-ubuntu-on-the-toshiba-chromebook-2-in-5-steps - still need to find a solution though for no sound, no touchpad, and no suspend - of which only the last is for me a real annoyance since I don't do a lot with the audio on this machine.
Kudos to John Lewis for sorting the seabios scripts.
> To put some linux distro on my chromebook.
I did kind of the opposite. I took some nearly 9lb Pentium4 laptop with Linux Mint, and set up a login that auto-hides the panel and autostarts Google Chrome, logged into my daughter's Google Desktop account from elementary school. Made a free pseudo-Chromebook of sorts. Lightweight it ain't, cheap it is (and if she breaks it, I still have a Thinkpad T23 to use, or maybe I'll have a spare used X64 machine by then).
At least there is the opportunity to give the result a new name now.
As this comes out of the unification of Android and Chrome OS, perhaps "unity"... no? Then we could call it "integrated OS" or "iOS"... again not good?
Then may I suggest "Franken-OS"? Yes, Franken-OS it is!
A Chrome OS phone that can handle a well defined core suite of useful apps would be an easy sell -- especially for enterprise. But a Chromed Android OS on a laptop? Feh! I like my Chromebook. Android security is an oxymoron.
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