Take a sneak peek at Google's Android replacement, Fuchsia An enthusiast has compiled Google's infant Fuchsia OS and put the toddler through its paces. The open-source OS is an open secret – anyone can download the platform from Github, and one enthusiast at Hotfix, a repair shop in Texas, has done just that. When Fuchsia broke cover last August, we noted the project's ambition. The …
although the tiny new Magenta kernel also allows it go there too [lightbulbs and toasters]
Not really, the microkernel should simplify recompiling for different architectures: x86 is already dead for handheld devices and IA64 won't get started. That said, if those archs are listed, then this is simply another project OS.
Google's anti-Oracle ploy has already been released: dumping Dalvik for ART and favouring native code over byte code. Fuchsia's licensing seems as much to do with avoiding the GPL as anything else. Works for me.
Of course switching platforms might also have the beneficial, to Google, side-effect of adding friction to pesky Android-compatible upstarts like Tizen or SailfishOS, and AlienDalvik.
Though, I'd be pretty happy to see the back of the JVM on mobile... not having look at Flutter (how did they avoid calling it Fluttr?) at all, it seems to aspire to what Qt/QML has been doing for years, but with Dart instead of C++.
Fuchsia. What a wonderful name. So easy to spell.
Almost nobody in the English-speaking world can spell "fuchsia" because almost everybody in the English-speaking world mispronounces it. To understand why requires a little knowledge of biological nomenclature.
Biologists have the habit of naming new species after other biologists (naming a new species after oneself would be naff) by latinizing the name. Often the latinization consists of appending "ia". So there's a shrub named after Mr Banks which is called a Banksia. There's a tree named after Mr Macadam which is called a Macadamia. You get the idea.
The Fuchsia is named after the 16th-century German botanist Leonhart Fuchs. "Fuchs" is the German cognate for the English "fox." So if that botanist had instead been Leonard Fox the plant would have been called a foxia, and pronounced "focksia," not "fyosha."
But to English-speaking ears, the German "ch" (similar to the Scots and Welsh "ch") sounds all too much like "ck." So if you pronounce "fuchsia" correctly (the way the rest of the world does) it sounds (to English-speaking ears) like "fucks ya." Hence "fyoosha."
Which amused the fuck out of me when Microsoft invented "friendly color names" for Internet Exploder. They could have chosen "magenta" for the mix of saturated red + saturated blue, like the printing industry and colour TV industry had long done. And made the browser also accept "majenta" for those who were bad at spelling. But they chose "fuchsia," which almost nobody can spell. And, if you look at the flowers of a standard shrub fuchsia, you see only the red outer petal (and perhaps pink and yellow tips of stamens) but not the inner petal. The inner petal is not magenta, anyway, it's closer to indigo. So a complete fuck-up all around with that name. Why does that not surprise me?
As Kojak never said, in the X-rated episode that was never made, "who fuchsia, baby?"
Blimey. I've never seen so many downvotes for someone making a valid (and interesting) observation on English spelling/pronunciation. Is pedantry dead here on The Register?
You can have my upvote, partly because I just noticed your post after I made a similar comment. We're both in this together :-/
Blimey. I've never seen so many downvotes for someone making a valid (and interesting) observation on English spelling/pronunciation. Is pedantry dead here on The Register?
I don't recall ever actually seeing fuchsia misspelt. Mispronounced, definitely; personally I have always generally avoided trying to pronounce it at all, due to being pretty sure I didn't know how to pronounce it, and I know I'm not alone.
But spelling it is no different than any other word. You don't learn to spell by learning a word phonetically and then trying to figure out how it's written; you see it written, and you learn to write it the same way. That's why reading and writing go hand in hand at school, the first two of the three Rs.
So I imagine the downvotes are not for pedantry, but for fundamental rejection of the premise that almost nobody in the English-speaking world can spell "fuchsia", or that the widespread mispronunciation of the word would lead to said misspelling.
"I don't recall ever actually seeing fuchsia misspelt."
You haven't spent enough time in usenet newsgroups then. Or tried using google's advanced search: "fuschia" 24,900,000 results; "fuchsia" 94,300,000 results. So ignoring various other mis-spellings, it's mis-spelled around 20% of the time.
"But spelling it is no different than any other word. You don't learn to spell by learning a word phonetically and then trying to figure out how it's written; you see it written, and you learn to write it the same way."
Sure, intelligent people might do it that way. Not everyone is intelligent. They've heard the word but forgotten how to spell it, if they ever knew. If they were intelligent they might check in a dictionary, but they're not intelligent. Hence "fuschia."
"So I imagine the downvotes are not for pedantry, but for fundamental rejection of the premise that almost nobody in the English-speaking world can spell "fuchsia","
I exaggerated for comedic effect. 20% is still a fuck of a lot. Really. Enough that no sane marketing person would ever consider using that as a product name. Oh, hang on, "sane" and "marketing person" - my error.
My guess is the seven (at the time of writing) downvotes came from:
1) The guy who hates it when people use the word "fuck" in a post.
2) The guy who got upset because I disparaged Microsoft and Internet Exploder.
3) The guy who has to dig up all the fuchsias in his garden because he doesn't like that he now has to call them "fucks yas" or deliberately mispronounce their name.
4) The guy who thinks everybody can spell "fuchsia" correctly. Mentioning no anonymous cowards.
5) The guy who has mis-spelled "fuchsia" his entire life and is now feeling deeply embarrassed.
6) Two people who are deeply upset at realizing google has announced a product that, when correctly pronounced, states that "Google fucks ya." They blame me for that even though I had nothing to do with naming it.
I exaggerated for comedic effect. 20% is still a fuck of a lot. Really. Enough that no sane marketing person would ever consider using that as a product name.
That 20% includes a lot of the non-English-Speaking world, the internet is global, you know. Although I admit the real figure is still probably higher than I would have thought, I maintain your "almost nobody in the English-speaking world" comment was a bit of a stretch.
4) The guy who thinks everybody can spell "fuchsia" correctly. Mentioning no anonymous cowards.
FWIW I did not downvote you. I generally dispense upvotes and no-votes quite liberally, and reserve the downvotes for posts that particularly rile me up, rather than those that are simply wrong.
"That 20% includes a lot of the non-English-Speaking world, the internet is global, you know."
Ummm, that 80% also includes a lot of the non-English-speaking world, too. And there is good reason to suppose that some of the non-English-speaking world (particularly those who speak German) are more likely to pronounce it correctly because "fucks ya" may not sound rude to them. Pronouncing it correctly makes it less likely for them to think it must be spelled as if it were pronounced "few sha".
"I maintain your "almost nobody in the English-speaking world" comment was a bit of a stretch."
I though it sufficiently obvious that the post was humorous that intelligent people would tolerate exaggeration for comedic effect. Obviously I was wrong about some part of that assumption.
"FWIW I did not downvote you."
FWIW, that analysis of voting motives was intended to be humorous. Or do you really also think I believe there's a commentard busily digging up his fuchsias because he doesn't want to pronounce their name correctly and cannot stand mispronouncing anything? Again, I was obviously wrong about some of my assumptions.
I must confess that is a question which has occasionally sprung to mind ever since I read of the biological naming conventions that gave rise to it. Not just which syllable has the emphasis but whether the third "a" is long or short.
This would all be so much better in ancient Hebrew or Aramaic. No characters for vowels so reading any unfamiliar written word could give a very large number of possibilities. You might think that makes matters worse, but in that situation as long as you get the consonants right then however you say it must be correct.
Actually, in "Fuchs", the ch is pronounced 'k' in German; not the "ch" sound of /ach/durch/loch at all.
So to spell the German pronounciation in English, "Fuchsia" is pronounced "fooxia", with the same (paradoxically, short) "oo" sound as in "book".
(Und ich bin in Deutschland geboren; Deutsch ist meine Muttersprache.)
Google has a rare situation where they have the same kernel on desktop/laptop, TV, iOT, tablet or smartphone and the the cloud. I do not know what Google is up to here but do not think it is what people think.
With the addition of containers being the unit of work they have the holy grail. We can finally get true compute distributed like never before and safely and efficiently.
Google has ... the same kernel on desktop/laptop, TV, iOT, tablet or smartphone and the the cloud. I do not know what Google is up to here but do not think it is what people think.
With the addition of containers .. We can finally get true compute distributed like never before and safely and efficiently.
So are you saying that when my telly runs like shit it is probably just taking up the slack for an Elastic Compute brownout somewhere?
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Fuck silky smooth. Is it secure? Am I in control of it or is the mothership? Does it do the minimal stuff it needs to do with 100% reliability? Is it a power hog?
After that is all nailed then lets talk about the zillion functions it doesn't truly need, the shiny, the bells, whistles and other crap that diverts programmers from useful work.
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40 comments and *no one* has mentioned the headline about the respected British scientist who researched the polar regions ...
Sir Vivian Fuchs off to Antarctic
"Material design" is crap. Horizontal toggles instead of check boxes? Takes up way more space, and if there's only one horizontal toggle, which way is on?They should completely divorce the UI from the underlying functionality - this way, we can get something that works intuitively.
This fuchsia is ugly and doesn't look very functional. I'd rather go back to KitKat.
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