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CyanogenMod Installer Removed From Google Play Store
sfcrazy writes "[Wednesday] Google asked the CM team to voluntarily remove the [CyanogenMod installer] app from the store or they would be forced to remove it administratively. CM team chose to remove the app voluntarily. According to the CyanogenMod team, Google initially said that the app was in violation of Google's Play's developer terms. When the CM team reached out to the Play team, they found that 'though application itself is harmless, and not actually in violation of their Terms of Service, since it 'encourages users to void their warranty', it would not be allowed to remain in the store.'" You can still install manually, though.
If this were Apple removing an app, everyone would be complaining about the walled garden!
This doesn't' seem all that voluntary to me. My reaction was yeah sure you go ahead and remove it, why should we do you any favors?
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Note from the article "Removed reference to Google stating the app was not in violation of TOS – this was a mischaracterization of Google’s statement."
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
How can it be considered voiding the warranty?
It's like Dell saying that if you delete Windows, format your hard disk and install Linux, you void the warranty on your PC.
They didn't "reach out to Google", they contacted Google. Using "reached out to" in this context makes it sound like they are trying to make an emotional appeal to an elderly stroke patient. The perfectly usable verb "contact" is also one word instead of three.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
If by 'encourage(s) users to void their warranty'" you mean "use the thing you paid for however you see fit in concordance with a thousand year history of English, Formal and natural law, then yeah, I guess you could say it voids your warranty.
It's just amazing seeing, first Apple, and now Google, transform themselves into the modern IBM with their ever encroaching and desperate "lock in" policies. I guess it shouldn't be surprising. Seeing as the user is the product being sold, Google can't have their products (users vis a vie control of the user experience) just walking off the plantation, now can they?
1. cyanomodgen
How long before 'certified' devices only allow Play store installs. I say 2 years tops.
Just unplug the router, fashion a tinfoil hat and wear it while crying yourself to sleep in a corner. Google is the internet, get used to it.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
There are plenty of alternatives to the official Google App Store.
I'm not sure if it's a good thing they removed it from the official store or not. If it was up to me I'd probably allow it with big red letters saying "THIS WILL VOID YOUR WARRANTY AND MIGHT BRICK YOUR PHONE". OTOH people installing stuff from official Google App Store don't expect these things to happen, so maybe it's a good thing for the masses that this app was removed... And tech-savy people will find ways to get Cyanogen installed anyway.
--Coder
Kdawson has thankfully been gone for awhile now, unfortunately timothy picked up right where he left-off. I'm half convinced they are the same person.
Yeah, just like the USA is the world. No, I'm not getting used to it. If all you use the Internet for is to like, give thumbs up and watch kitten clips, sure. I get it you don't want to block the anal probing.
The solution to your problem lies on the foundations of it.
i.e.: Ask yourself why you want to block all Google hosts and open your mind to a new solution to that same problem. One that while less evident may well be more feasible.
http://f-droid.org/ is full of opensource goodies, and has a nice package manager.
Organization: alphabetical, sometimes numerical or messy
Can everyone side-load these days or do some carriers still lock that down?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Go on... void your warranty. All the cool kids are doing it.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
They had an installer on the play store? Well I'd say that would have made things easier last time I installed, but it wasn't really all that difficult last time I installed it. On a Galaxy S3 it was just a matter of grabbing the CM image for the phone, grabbing a recovery image I could flash with odin, flashing the recovery image to the phone, booting to it and installing the CM image from the external SD card. The only tricky part was if the phone was allowed to reboot to the stock image, it'd rewrite the stock recovery without so much as an irritable warning message.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
This post really highlights what's wrong with the world today. Let me guess... You also don't care about being tracked or spied on? Because you do nothing wrong. So you don't have anything to fear. Right?
And that android phone can be used to steal government secrets and make you a traitor!
So Google needs to remove this "Android" app from the phones, because that's even worse than merely voiding a warranty!
The peripheral legal implications aside, and at the risk of sounding like a Google apologist, I really can't say I have any problem with this.
The sort of people who want to install CM will still have absolutely no problem going to the website and doing it manually. This presents no barrier to them exercising their choice of how to use their hardware.
On the flip side of that, having it in the Play store presents something of an outright danger to people who don't know any better (aka "the vast majority")... "Oh, a new version of Android? Hey, I have an Android, I should grab this!". Ten minutes later, their battery dies, or they get sick of watching the installer screen and interrupt it. Oops! Partial brick-time, and now Google (via Samsung/HTC/etc, via Verizon/Sprint/etc) gets to deal with thousands of self-inflicted warranty issues.
Again, at the risk of sounding like an apologist, Google has made compromises that let power-users do whatever the hell they want, while providing 99% of the "walled garden" experience most users want.
I use Android and have no Google accounts, none. I block google analytics on my router (dd-wrt). It is possible.
I'm increasingly trying to find reasons not to block. Their G+ tracker icons and toolbar are now all over the place (even saw the toolbar on Liveleak, of all places, at one point). They've extended their Real Name harassment to anyone who logs on to GMail. (They've done it only once for me, for now, as opposed to the every-reload rain of creepy that sent me flying from YouTube, but a day or so before that incident I also had to unblock plus.google.com to even log in. My account was apparently not "upgraded" by that, but still...at least buy me dinner first.)
"Pile of shit"? Not quite, but they're aiming for it and have already reached "damage to the internet".
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Techncially they only deny warranty coverage if the different operating system damaged the product, caused it to be unsafe, or caused it to malfunction.
How can the act of simply installing software void a warranty?
When you come down to it, today's smartphone is just a compact, pocket-size general purpose computer with a radio transceiver in it. I fail to see how anyone can legitimately claim that installing software on it (even changing an OS) can void the warranty - particularly such a computer that comes with GPL software which is designed by the very license for user customization. If there is a chance it will be bricked, then that's a manufacturing defect on part of the manufacturer since the bootloader ought to be bulletproof and have multiple failsafes built into it, much like many of today's motherboards have two or more BIOS/UEFI systems allowing for recovery even if the board would be otherwise "bricked" from a faulty firmware upgrade.
I mean really - why the fuck should they care what software you install? I care about a warranty on the hardware - when it comes to software I couldn't give a fuck, since historically no software ever comes with a warranty in the first place.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
If you reflash your computer BIOS with something random that you cooked up, do you think the manufacturer should be on the hook to fix it? You screwed it up, you're responsible.
Embedded devices are *not standardized*. Alternate kernels could cause things to overheat, raise the voltage too high (or drop it too low), apply voltage to the wrong pins, etc. If you do this and damage your device, do you really think that the manufacturer should fix it for you?
And conveniently enough, just booting an alternate OS *doesn't* void your warranty. It only does so if it actually causes damage.
Because a phone is not a PC, that's why.
The bootloader of the phone lives on the same flash chip as the OS. For a moment let's just put aside the fact that recovering a phone from a bad flash using it's "download mode" is an arcane procedure involving special software that most people won't have. Beyond that, a failed flash of an OS can brick your phone in such a way that even the "download" mode of your phone does not work, and the only way to fix it is to crack open the phone and JTAG the memory directly.
This is not something an average consumer has experience with. You don't want your mom trying to flash a new ROM on her phone.
> fashion a tinfoil hat and wear it
Not good enouh anymore! There are air gap infection methods that use sound waves into your ears now.!
L2/.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Honestly, I'd except anyone who was planning to install CM to be a bit more knowledgeable than the average user anyhow, which means that they should know how to install stuff from a 3rd-party package rather than just through the app store.
Put the package on an official site, it doesn't really need to be in the store.
It doesn't matter how secure a system is if the security method does more damage than the potential malware.
See the new "fundamentally changed" United States of Amerika, and especially its TSA for an even better example.
One thing to try to appease Google Play is to change the app, so it's a set of instructions/downloads as follows:
* If Unknown Sources isn't ticked on, the first screen tells the user to go to Setttings/Security and tick on Unknown Sources (maybe that screen could be loaded by the app to make it even easier?).
* Next, the app downloads the apk from the CM site and installs it.
* Ask the user to uncheck Unknown Sources if they had to check it on in the first step.
* Run the downloaded app (exiting the original app at the same time if possible).
Would *this* violate any terms of service of Google Play (written down or otherwise)?
Even if it is irrelevant, stock Android provides only two choices: only APKs signed by the phone maker's preferred curator, or every APK from every source. There's no way to add a third party as a curator the way one can with, say, any Linux distribution using APT. If you turn on "Unknown sources" for Amazon Appstore or F-Droid, for instance, you add the ability for apps to pose as Amazon or F-Droid and present an "update" that's actually a trojan.
Are there examples of software that are available for Android but not for iOS.
I can think of a few things Apple forbids under its guidelines:
Can you please give some details on how you do that?
What I find offensive here is the dual standard being applied. There are plenty of apps on the poorly named "Play Store" that openly state that they require the user to Root the device. And others relating to Rooting or encouraging Rooting by offering more features if the device is Rooted. Why are not all of those considered to be encouraging the users to be voiding their warranties? This looks to me like this one application was selectively targeted and then a reason was fabricated that contradicts with many of the other thing that I see openly offered.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
[Over the past decade] the readership [of Slashdot] has defiantly fallen
I'm not sure what you meant by "defiant". What is defying what?
A quick googling pulled up this.
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/DNSMasq_Local_Network
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
Open wins again!
Maybe you could search for "list of Google domains" on the Internet. There a website which lets you do that!
Or does anyone have a better suggestion?
Firefox + NoScript + RequestPolicy
[My smartphone] plays games, edits documents, and lets me use things like Skype, AIM, and web browsers just like a [...] PC.
It acts like a PC from the user's point of view, but the relevant difference here is that it doesn't boot like a PC. PCs have the BIOS and operating system stored on separate media, and they have a PCI bus that the operating system can scan for plug-and-play devices. Battery-powered ARM devices don't.*
* Some pedant will probably chime in with some RISC OS laptop.
Actually, that rule changed a few weeks ago: ...
From the article:
- They are also retroactively reinstating the warranties of people who already asked for an unlock code and had their warranty voided as a result.
- They are posting "return to factory images". (Nice pun, that. They let you flash your phone back to the factory image, which you'll want to do before returning it to the factory for service.)
I guess losing a touch more than a third of a billion dollars ($342 million) in one year CAN sometimes get executives to look at customer complaints and try to address them. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I wasn't even aware Cyanogen was on the Play store. Who the heck installs a ROM from the play store anyway? That's kind of silly. You download the ROM from the official website to your SD card and flash from recovery. Trying to install from within a running ROM is just asking for trouble.
IMHO, maybe CM uninstalls / disables junks that CM team feels not required, which in some way hinders the ability to collect and profile?
Even it the decision weren't Goog's alone, anyone making android phones (e.g. HTC, Samsung) would probably be compelled to request to have this "app" be removed as well, as it encourages removal of the the vendors own junkware/bloatware.
Really? Last I checked, this is a legal contract between the end-user and the phone manufacturer, not Google. Further, do all phone manufacturers void warranty on reflashing?
That doesn't follow at all. You're engaging in "The Falacy of the Excluded Middle."
There's an enormous difference between Google saying that installing the app isn't a TOS violation (thus committing themselves to supporting the phone) and claiming it is.
For instance, they could be reserving the right to make the claim later, on a case-by-case basis depending on what was installed and/or how it was done. Or they could just be avoiding potential legal entanglements without extensive (and expensive) study and/or risk of litigation if their lawyers guessed wrong about how juries, judges, and regulatory agencies around the world might act.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I've got BALLS OF STEEL!!!
--Duke nukem
Timothy doesn't bother me. Kdawson was awful though; that guy couldn't wipe his ass without hatching a conspiracy theory, and I did stop visiting slashdot for a while because of it. If I really wanted that, I would be a regular visitor at prisonplanet and listener of Alex Jones.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Brad Pitt is hot. Even I "wood" take homosex from this homo homosapiens ;)
Thank you! I can't believe so many people took my post seriously :3
You could try some tinfoil ear-plugs?
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Your post characterized those who avoid Google as crazy, paranoid lunatics who can't cope with "the future," regardless of how you intended it to sound. It doesn't help that the events of the past year have proven a lot of crazy, paranoid lunatics 100% correct.