Well, I own a Lenovo Android tablet, a Huawei phone and now an OnePlus One.
Both Lenovo and Huawei stopped updating their devices after a year or so. Both have issues (rare random reboots, battery drain when WiFi is turned off). And custom ROMs are basically non-existant due to the hardware used being practically unsupported (HiSense CPU on the Huawei phone, Nvidia Tegra chipset on the Lenovvo tablet).
My OPO has none of the issues reported by some, it uses the basically the same hardware as other high-end Android phones, it comes with CM installed -- chances a way better that will be able to update it 2 years down the road.
My MP3 players, a SanDisk Sansa Clip Zip (running Rockbox) and a Creative Zen X-fi2, have 136GB and 64GB of storage space respectively. My entire MP3 library almost fits on the Sansa. If they were FLAC files, I would only be able to fit about 1/10th that amount
Working with made-up numbers is fun, right? A FLAC file is about 2-3 times as big as a high quality MP3 file. So unless you encoded your complete collection with 80 kbps, we're talking about 1/3 and not 1/10.
Right... Back in the day I had a MP3 player with a few dozen MB of memory. So to fit as much music on it as possble I converted it to MP3s with less than 128 kbps. A few years later, I had MP3 players with several hundred MB. And them with some GB.
What was a sensible choice 15 years ago isn't anymore today. And you can not got up from lossy encoded music files.
FLAC files are about 2-3 times bigger than a high-quality (320 kbps) MP3 file. So your collection would be less than 400 GB. Considering that todays hard drive sizes are counted in TB and that it doesn't make any economy sense to buy a small one (doubling the size from 1 TB to 2 TB costs only 20% or 30% more) the file size doesn't really matter.
Hard drives are cheap. Ripping all my CDs once as FLAC means that I don't have to shuffle through 700+ CDs to find the one I'm looking for. Also, some of my older CDs were already unreadable or hard to read. Having a backup in original quality is important.
I buy music online in FLAC or WAV format from: Bandcamp.com Bleep.com Boomkat.com FSOLdigital.com Junodownload.com and others
Or I download legally for free in FLAC format from Archive.org.
Nope, I use high quality VBR MP3 for my music because a) it sounds great, b) it's supported on everything and c) it takes a lot less storage space. FLAC is for idiots who think they have superhuman hearing.
No. FLAC is for idiots who don't see any reason to throw away some information that might be of use later (say when mixing, postprocession etc. the music) just because it saves a little space on a insanely cheap hard drive.
High quality MP3s sound good enough, I agree. But when I store something, I store it in the best quality possible, even if I don't need that quality right now in everyday use. Things change, and I might need it later on.
Repeat after me: There where no reviews for Zoe Quinns game after she supposedly or actually had sex with journalists. The whole premise of this 'scandal' is factually wrong.
Now, if you Gamergaters would actually go after the real problems in gaming journalism, I would be alll for it, but instead you continue to attack women (and strangely enough almost exclusively women) in gaming.
Funny you say that, because that's EXACTLY what this news is about: While Googles Project Ara goes the 'everything is a module' route, the newcomer Vsenn has a design with only three replacable modules.
Just because you want the conclusion that modular phones are cool and good for everyone to be true, doesn't mean the evidence supports that.
Reading isn't your strong suit, right? GP explicitely said that he sees advantages 'only for a small group of people'. So nobody claims that modular phones a good for everyone.
But for those few with special use cases or special needs modular phones can be a boon.
You pretend that Google displaying more than the headline and the link would keep people away from visiting the news site. That is just outright wrong.
1. If Google didn't display the link at all, there would be no people to not visit this link. 2. The newspapers themselves often put the most essential bit of information in the headline. 3. Google sends MILLIONS of visitors per month to the newspapers.Even if it was true that displaying some of the content would stop some people from following the link, the net gain for the newspapers is still enormous.
No doubt, China and Russia will react to this announcement with enthusiasm. "Chinese military hacking DOD computers?" No no no, of course not - They just needed to gather some evidence of "blatantly criminal" activity.
So... Chinese hackers hack into servers of US agencies to find out why US agencies hacked into Chinese servers to find out why Chinese hackers hacked into...
Yes alibaba is a theives market. Alibaba does little to root this out too. Moreover the entire china small items trade competiveness relys on the rediculous postage rates (low) that allows delivery in the US for a mere $1 worth of postage. Finally all the small vendors lie about the item in the postage to evade customs charges.
The same happens when I buy on eBay or Amazon Marketplace. Lot's of Chinese vendors there that ship from China.
Also, US vendors lie on the customs sticker as well, if they care to put that information on a package at all. I live in Germany and I order from all around the world, Every time I need to go to the customs offices to pick up a package because it was not declared properly it's a package from the US or Australia.
Sure. But the question whether somebody is a 'customer' (actually a 'consumer', as the law is about 'Verbraucher') when using Google products or not is a matter of law. Personal opinions have not practical impact.
drinkypoo tries to argue semantics, when the only definition of 'customer' that is relevant here is the one that German law uses.
Pardon me if I do not get teary-eyed over the notion of German law.
Well, since this is about a German court talking about German consumers and (I assume) addressing Google Germany, German law is pretty much all that matters.
Yeah and, how can that judge claim that German Google customers do not have a way to communicate with Google? German Google customers send mail to support-de@google.com and a Google bot tells them to F*** Off! Not only does that constitute communication but the message is pretty clear.
Point is that that's not enough for Google to fulfill their legal obligation. They have to read the emails and (supposedly) react in some meaningful way.
Of course, traditionally it has not proven to be a particularly intelligent strategy to tell the Germans to F*** Off! since they tend to react badly to that (read: Invasions, panzers, stukas, u-boats, V-1 cruise missiles, V-2 rockets... etc) but If Google wants to take a shot at it they I say let them try.
If I look at the last 60 years I come to the conclusion that the US has become the new Germany.
They're agreeing that Google use their personal data, but there's no suggestion they're going to get paid for it. The "payment" is that Google provide them services, without any support.
And that's the point: German law says that you can not provide a service without a certain amount of support. Google HAS to be available to German customers via email.
Also, insurance may not cover you if you're carrying passengers for-profit (though it could be difficult for them to find that out).
How so? 'Hey, I'm sorry that you just got injured while being in my car, but could you please not mention that you booked me on Uber to anybody, like the police, because I'm not covered for this case?'
I see Uber and the like as being in the same vein - and while Germany, London, whatever ends up 'banning' these services, I'm sure they realize that it's not going to stop then and there, and the rules will eventually have to be adjusted.
And once the rules have been adjusted Uber is free to do business according to those rules. But TODAY they have to do business according to TODAYS rules. If they think the rules are outdated, they should work on changing them. But until then they have to follow them.
Do you really would want to do business with AT&T or Microsoft or GM without any laws in place that regulate the contracts? Trust me: You don't. They have the power of a multi billion company and you have nothing. They would dictate all the rules and you could agree or die. And no, the free market wouldn't solve the problem: There would be no smaller competitors, because there would be no law that protects them from the big meanie.
The free market is an ideal that ignores reality. We need government regulation because we are not on equal standing in regards to the companies we would like (or need, for want of alternatives) do business with.
These permits, insurances ect. are there to protect the customers of the taxi service.
If a Uber driver causes an accident, what will happen? His private car insurance will not cover any damages he incurred while driving his car for profit, and it's very unlikely that he has the kind of money to pay damages for injuries out of his pocket.
Sure every driver has that for the purpose of driving oneself or friends and relatives. But once you want to drive people for profit you have to follow stricter rules, pass more tests and have more insurance.
Cab drivers have to do that, so why shouldn't Uber do the same?
So it will be interesting to see how the courts explain how these services are different.
The decision explicitely mentions the fact that Uber and the drivers are doing it for profit. The Mitfahrzentralen work on a no profit basis, and the drivers don't make a profit either and would drive that way anyway.
This isn't about protectionism. This is about countries having laws and expecting everybody to follow them. Sure, US companies are not used to do that, but that is a problem of the US, not of the other countries.
Germany has laws regulating persons and companies that want to be active in the transport business. These laws where not made to keep US companies out. The laws are a lot older than Uber. They are there to protect consumers and give them a certain amount of safety. Ubers profits are not more important than everybodies safety.
How so? The rules in question here are questions of insurance, of proper training for drivers, of car maintenance... the same rules that cab drivers and companies in Germany have been following for many years. How are these rules 'made to prevent US companies from gaining traction'?
Unless of course, having local law that everybody (local companies as well as US companies) have to follow is preventing US companies in your eyes. I mean, sure, they are not used to actually having to follow laws they don't like. It's real mean of European governments and regulators to actually check whether companies follow the law...
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Well, I own a Lenovo Android tablet, a Huawei phone and now an OnePlus One.
Both Lenovo and Huawei stopped updating their devices after a year or so. Both have issues (rare random reboots, battery drain when WiFi is turned off). And custom ROMs are basically non-existant due to the hardware used being practically unsupported (HiSense CPU on the Huawei phone, Nvidia Tegra chipset on the Lenovvo tablet).
My OPO has none of the issues reported by some, it uses the basically the same hardware as other high-end Android phones, it comes with CM installed -- chances a way better that will be able to update it 2 years down the road.
My MP3 players, a SanDisk Sansa Clip Zip (running Rockbox) and a Creative Zen X-fi2, have 136GB and 64GB of storage space respectively. My entire MP3 library almost fits on the Sansa. If they were FLAC files, I would only be able to fit about 1/10th that amount
Working with made-up numbers is fun, right?
A FLAC file is about 2-3 times as big as a high quality MP3 file.
So unless you encoded your complete collection with 80 kbps, we're talking about 1/3 and not 1/10.
Right... Back in the day I had a MP3 player with a few dozen MB of memory. So to fit as much music on it as possble I converted it to MP3s with less than 128 kbps.
A few years later, I had MP3 players with several hundred MB. And them with some GB.
What was a sensible choice 15 years ago isn't anymore today. And you can not got up from lossy encoded music files.
FLAC files are about 2-3 times bigger than a high-quality (320 kbps) MP3 file.
So your collection would be less than 400 GB.
Considering that todays hard drive sizes are counted in TB and that it doesn't make any economy sense to buy a small one (doubling the size from 1 TB to 2 TB costs only 20% or 30% more) the file size doesn't really matter.
No benefit? Having a backup in original quality is benefit enough, I would think.
Well, those site pretty much cover my taste in music.
I don't need my whole music collection on my phone (which doubles as music player). The 40 Gig that I can spare for music has been plenty, so far.
Hard drives are cheap. Ripping all my CDs once as FLAC means that I don't have to shuffle through 700+ CDs to find the one I'm looking for.
Also, some of my older CDs were already unreadable or hard to read. Having a backup in original quality is important.
I buy music online in FLAC or WAV format from:
Bandcamp.com
Bleep.com
Boomkat.com
FSOLdigital.com
Junodownload.com
and others
Or I download legally for free in FLAC format from Archive.org.
Nope, I use high quality VBR MP3 for my music because a) it sounds great, b) it's supported on everything and c) it takes a lot less storage space. FLAC is for idiots who think they have superhuman hearing.
No. FLAC is for idiots who don't see any reason to throw away some information that might be of use later (say when mixing, postprocession etc. the music) just because it saves a little space on a insanely cheap hard drive.
High quality MP3s sound good enough, I agree. But when I store something, I store it in the best quality possible, even if I don't need that quality right now in everyday use. Things change, and I might need it later on.
Repeat after me: There where no reviews for Zoe Quinns game after she supposedly or actually had sex with journalists.
The whole premise of this 'scandal' is factually wrong.
Now, if you Gamergaters would actually go after the real problems in gaming journalism, I would be alll for it, but instead you continue to attack women (and strangely enough almost exclusively women) in gaming.
Funny you say that, because that's EXACTLY what this news is about: While Googles Project Ara goes the 'everything is a module' route, the newcomer Vsenn has a design with only three replacable modules.
Just because you want the conclusion that modular phones are cool and good for everyone to be true, doesn't mean the evidence supports that.
Reading isn't your strong suit, right?
GP explicitely said that he sees advantages 'only for a small group of people'. So nobody claims that modular phones a good for everyone.
But for those few with special use cases or special needs modular phones can be a boon.
You pretend that Google displaying more than the headline and the link would keep people away from visiting the news site.
That is just outright wrong.
1. If Google didn't display the link at all, there would be no people to not visit this link.
2. The newspapers themselves often put the most essential bit of information in the headline.
3. Google sends MILLIONS of visitors per month to the newspapers.Even if it was true that displaying some of the content would stop some people from following the link, the net gain for the newspapers is still enormous.
No doubt, China and Russia will react to this announcement with enthusiasm. "Chinese military hacking DOD computers?" No no no, of course not - They just needed to gather some evidence of "blatantly criminal" activity.
So... Chinese hackers hack into servers of US agencies to find out why US agencies hacked into Chinese servers to find out why Chinese hackers hacked into...
No, I don't see any problem with that.
Yes alibaba is a theives market. Alibaba does little to root this out too. Moreover the entire china small items trade competiveness relys on the rediculous postage rates (low) that allows delivery in the US for a mere $1 worth of postage. Finally all the small vendors lie about the item in the postage to evade customs charges.
The same happens when I buy on eBay or Amazon Marketplace.
Lot's of Chinese vendors there that ship from China.
Also, US vendors lie on the customs sticker as well, if they care to put that information on a package at all.
I live in Germany and I order from all around the world, Every time I need to go to the customs offices to pick up a package because it was not declared properly it's a package from the US or Australia.
Sure. But the question whether somebody is a 'customer' (actually a 'consumer', as the law is about 'Verbraucher') when using Google products or not is a matter of law. Personal opinions have not practical impact.
drinkypoo tries to argue semantics, when the only definition of 'customer' that is relevant here is the one that German law uses.
German law disagrees.
Pardon me if I do not get teary-eyed over the notion of German law.
Well, since this is about a German court talking about German consumers and (I assume) addressing Google Germany, German law is pretty much all that matters.
Yeah and, how can that judge claim that German Google customers do not have a way to communicate with Google? German Google customers send mail to support-de@google.com and a Google bot tells them to F*** Off! Not only does that constitute communication but the message is pretty clear.
Point is that that's not enough for Google to fulfill their legal obligation. They have to read the emails and (supposedly) react in some meaningful way.
Of course, traditionally it has not proven to be a particularly intelligent strategy to tell the Germans to F*** Off! since they tend to react badly to that (read: Invasions, panzers, stukas, u-boats, V-1 cruise missiles, V-2 rockets... etc) but If Google wants to take a shot at it they I say let them try.
If I look at the last 60 years I come to the conclusion that the US has become the new Germany.
They're agreeing that Google use their personal data, but there's no suggestion they're going to get paid for it. The "payment" is that Google provide them services, without any support.
And that's the point: German law says that you can not provide a service without a certain amount of support. Google HAS to be available to German customers via email.
Also, insurance may not cover you if you're carrying passengers for-profit (though it could be difficult for them to find that out).
How so?
'Hey, I'm sorry that you just got injured while being in my car, but could you please not mention that you booked me on Uber to anybody, like the police, because I'm not covered for this case?'
Yeah, right. That will work out just fine...
I see Uber and the like as being in the same vein - and while Germany, London, whatever ends up 'banning' these services, I'm sure they realize that it's not going to stop then and there, and the rules will eventually have to be adjusted.
And once the rules have been adjusted Uber is free to do business according to those rules.
But TODAY they have to do business according to TODAYS rules. If they think the rules are outdated, they should work on changing them. But until then they have to follow them.
Do you really would want to do business with AT&T or Microsoft or GM without any laws in place that regulate the contracts?
Trust me: You don't. They have the power of a multi billion company and you have nothing.
They would dictate all the rules and you could agree or die.
And no, the free market wouldn't solve the problem: There would be no smaller competitors, because there would be no law that protects them from the big meanie.
The free market is an ideal that ignores reality.
We need government regulation because we are not on equal standing in regards to the companies we would like (or need, for want of alternatives) do business with.
If they don't follow the laws that other companies in this business have to follow -- of course it should extend that far.
The fact that Uber explicitly says that they are going to ignore this court decision speaks volumes.
These permits, insurances ect. are there to protect the customers of the taxi service.
If a Uber driver causes an accident, what will happen?
His private car insurance will not cover any damages he incurred while driving his car for profit, and it's very unlikely that he has the kind of money to pay damages for injuries out of his pocket.
'relevant tests', 'approriate insurance'
Sure every driver has that for the purpose of driving oneself or friends and relatives.
But once you want to drive people for profit you have to follow stricter rules, pass more tests and have more insurance.
Cab drivers have to do that, so why shouldn't Uber do the same?
So it will be interesting to see how the courts explain how these services are different.
The decision explicitely mentions the fact that Uber and the drivers are doing it for profit.
The Mitfahrzentralen work on a no profit basis, and the drivers don't make a profit either and would drive that way anyway.
This isn't about protectionism.
This is about countries having laws and expecting everybody to follow them.
Sure, US companies are not used to do that, but that is a problem of the US, not of the other countries.
Germany has laws regulating persons and companies that want to be active in the transport business. These laws where not made to keep US companies out. The laws are a lot older than Uber. They are there to protect consumers and give them a certain amount of safety.
Ubers profits are not more important than everybodies safety.
How so?
The rules in question here are questions of insurance, of proper training for drivers, of car maintenance... the same rules that cab drivers and companies in Germany have been following for many years.
How are these rules 'made to prevent US companies from gaining traction'?
Unless of course, having local law that everybody (local companies as well as US companies) have to follow is preventing US companies in your eyes. I mean, sure, they are not used to actually having to follow laws they don't like. It's real mean of European governments and regulators to actually check whether companies follow the law...