Strange, no mention that probably the main reason MSFT is paying $300M to B&N is to buy their way out of the "android patent extortion" law suite that B&N seemed close to winning.
And probably B&N will also stop asking the DOJ to investigate the patent extortion and MSFT will keep extorting money from android device manufacturers in exchange of not taking them to court...
Am I the only one getting tired of this "android trojan/malware of the day" press releases by the anti-virus authors?
Seems more and more like pure astro-turfing for their own products, trying to create a sense of insecurity in the users of the biggest mobile OS just so that they can sell their products.
Most users won't be affected by this malware - the play store won't have it, and most of those that install apps from outside the store are techs who know what they are doing. The few affected will be the usual ones, those who think they can ignore the warning when they allow install from untrusted sources, and then ignore the permissions requested by the app. If you're dumb enough to do that, to install games from a suspicious site, that want to make calls and send SMS, then no anti-virus will save you. And it isn't the OS fault if you choose to ignore all safety precautions and disable all protections.
Well, it sure smells funny. In particular after seeing how the companies that have pressed for this investigation have been trying to lobby MEPs.
Maybe in the end they found out that it is easier to sway the commission than the parliament...
No. I call Microsoft evil for the way the use NDAs when they are extorting money from companies using open source (I never wrote open source projects) with crap patents; it is evil in that it allows them to hide the merits (or more accurately, the lack of) and to avoid that the open source projects involved use alternatives that don't violate Microsoft's patents.
If you don't know of Microsoft doing patent trolling with dubious patents, check the Motorola or Nook suits. They are suing for the use of open source projects, and using NDAs to try to hide the ridiculous patents that these projects might be infringing.
Yes they are. As long as they are using NDAs and patent trolling to extort money from companies using open source, they are evil.
They might seem less evil in this particular point - but they are still the same microsoft we all learned to hate. At least those of us that did do business with them, or know some company who did, like sendo...
And drop the micro-SIM at the same time? It isn't like the SIM is too big, and having more than one standard means one can't interchange SIMs between phones (or tablets) without adapters. The "extra" size of the normal SIM in comparison with the micro (and now the nano) SIM isn't enough to make an impact on phone size, and the micro-SIMs are easier to lose. Also, the adapters don't work on all phones.
I just finished switching all my clients to duckduckgo.com, take the hint
This I don't get, you're leery of Google and you switch to a service that uses bing? I'm sorry, Google might be scary, but how can anyone prefer Microsoft over it?
I love the new tagging system, having "bonch writes" is so much clearer and concise than having a tag with "anti-google distorted declaration FUD", and the sematic value is exactly the same!
The interface wastes nearly one third of the screen with a blank column, no idea why. The rectangular widgets can be moved around, but that is about it. The toilet paper roll approach of putting everything should have been killed in teletype days,
I guess it's not supposed to grow too big; if it does, you are probably not a target Windows Phone user. Get an Android to fit your need for overpopulated app grids;)
Overpopulated or sparse, at least with android that is your choice. With WP7 you get this "pinned" apps screen, and a even worst scrollable list with all apps. Doesn't have the flexibility of widgets, no way to organize stuff in folders, nothing. Absolutely awful if you have more than a few apps.
Bad form, yes. BTW, is Bing really too bad as a search engine? Does Android support Bing as a search engine choice?
For me, Bing is almost useless as a search engine. Returns less relevant results than google, and has a tendency to prefer MSFT related/sponsored links without identifying them as such. Even when searching on microsoft.com or related sites, I usualy end up using google, as it is more likely to turn up what I am searching for. As for supporting Bing as a search engine choice, that was a huge complaint with one ISP some months back, that it had replaced google with bing on the android phones, so I guess it is doable.
I never had the need to extend the browser on my phone. I guess I don't use it to browse sites that show obnoxious ads.
Almost every ad is obnoxious on a metered connection. I can tell you I see a huge difference when I use the Lumia's browser instead of the N1 browser. Pages take a lot longer to load, content is almost lost in the middle of ads, etc.
Apps that I miss: alternative browsers (Maxthon, Dolphin, etc.). Touchdown (exchange client). Messengers - fring, nimbuzz, skype. Media players with DLNA support. Etc.
Synchronization with Outlook - every Nokia phone until now had it, and at least HTC androids have it. Yes, it needs software on the PC. But one would assume Microsoft could do it for their phones. That would help when you get the kind of admins that don't want to open activesync for everyone...
What is it that you need to do on a phone, that is prevented by not having a dual-core CPU and a gigabyte of RAM?
Probably run next year's version of the phone OS, with real multitasking? Or play more complex games? In the end, if a user can get better hardware for the same price, how can the less powered one be attractive?
We have an HTC Sensation at home, I guess it can serve as an example. Both me and my wife find the UI mediocre, cluttered, and sometimes poorly usable. We never cared to mod it, or even install any significant number of apps. Geeks who read specification sheets like the holy scripture and care about things like USB mass storage access to the filesystem tend to forget what really matters to most people out there.
Well, if you feel that Sense is cluttered, then maybe Wp7 is for you. But don't install many apps The scrolling apps list might not be cluttered, but is probably unusable with more than 30 entries, and it already comes with more than 10 to start with...
And honestly, if the cheap shots in the last paragraph were aimed at me, sorry, but you missed the point completely.
Full of what? the only thing you argued was with the micro sim - and what seems a load of bull is claiming there is no upper limit on specs. If so, why is the lumia 900 screen still 480x800? Why is the memory still 512MB? Why are all WP7 phones alike, with the same specs? BTW, I got a Lumia 800, exactly a Nokia WP7. And I'd trade it at once for a Galaxy S2.
Sure, it looks nice. But that seems to be about it. Go back to what I wrote, and tell me where I was wrong.
I still am trying to like this phone, after all it was a gift. But I am failing.
(I wish I was the owner of an handful of phones - but can't afford it right now).
I got gifted with one. I am trying, hard, to not hate it at first sight. But god, this thing is so limited! No standard USB connection, no uSD card; uSIM instead of regular SIM; everything seems to have been done to make life difficult. One has to use a iTunes clone to transfer videos and music into it, that or a dropbox clone that doesn't work with linux.
The interface wastes nearly one third of the screen with a blank column, no idea why. The rectangular widgets can be moved around, but that is about it. The toilet paper roll approach of putting everything should have been killed in teletype days, You can't change the background, only the lockscreen background.
There is no way to bind the search key to anything else, it is locked to bing. If you want to search in the market, you have to install an app to do the search. There is no alternative browser, only IE. No ad blocking or anything. There is a limited list of apps in the market, and most are for pay only. No google apps apart from search. No synchronization with outlook, only with exchange, and only if your admins have enabled activesync. No skype, fring or nimbuzz. No way to install applications except the market.
To top it, the WP7 phones are limited to "old" hardware. No dual core CPUs, only 512MB memory, screen resolution limited to 480x800, incapable of 1080p recording.
How can someone call this competitive? Really? It is competitive if you're comparing with 2010 android phones; but with anything more recent than that, forget it.
The KDE-alike one was sweet too, IIRC it ran entirely on framebuffer. I don't recall it being slower than GPE though. I forget what it was called, someone here probably knows.
Opie was the open source version, but I also recall that Sharp had made a fork for the Zaurus line of PDAs called qtopia. It was as fast as GPE, if not faster.
Sadly, nobody is interested on it any more. When I tried to offer my SL-C1000 to a developer who could keep maintaining it, but nobody in the angstrom mailing list was interested.
Sorry, but I don't believe this. I've had multiple Android phones over the last couple of years and never experienced any lag except when I was installing an app in the background and trying to do something else. Then again, the reviewer bashes the tablet because it allows tablet owners to download any Android apps and not just tablet specific apps, so he's clearly an idiot or a troll.
I concur. It is now the remaining troll attack on android, now that apple has copied stuff like the notifications into iOS, but I've never seen it. On a ZTE blade with the original Sapo ROM, or with Cyanogen. On a Nexus One. On my sister's Galaxy II. But still trolls will brandish that as a weapon, and will get voted insightful or informative by other trolls, even though that problem was eradicated on later android versions.
Lol - "Everyone knows that Android suffers significant, sporadic slowdowns" has been part of the APL and MSFT marketing campaigns against Android for so long that it is enough to brand a "review" starting with these words a anti-android rant. Never mind it is mostly false, all my fanboi friends repeat it as a mantra.
And in that piece it is even more ridiculous - the authors write that, give no justification or indication that it really happens on the Fire, then go off on a tangent about buttons.
But even more interesting is that you copy that paragraph of FUD, add a couple of lines saying basically "it will fail" and get modded +5 interesting.
Too bad I don't have mod points to upvote you. A very fair comparison, and you didn't even get into other advantages of the Transformer/Android, like mounting as USB storage, and support for removable uSD cards, giving the user complete independence to transfer anything HE wants to or from HIS device.
Before anyone claims that iDevices no longer need the abomination called iTunes (after how many years), just tell me how one transfer files to them? Do they support USB storage, or removable cards?
It is also very interesting reading fanboi responses here, most can be resumed to "iDevices are perfect, if you criticise them you're wrong and a Asus (or Google or whatever) employee".
And pulseaudio is a mixed bag -- some good, some not-so-good.
Just a small comment - this is what I like less about KDE4, as pulseaudio always had problems on my netbooks, but fortunately it is optional. In Kubuntu all you need to do is "sudo apt-get purge pulseaudio*" and you're rid of it.
You first preferred to try to pull some kind of "age rank" with me, and when that failed, I am suddenly the one who made a "bad taste" comment. You might not be a fanboi, but you surely sound like someone out of arguments who is now entering the insult path.
BTW, I'm not the one who wrote "stole" - I'd rather have written "copied", but I understand the usage on the light of the "great artists steal" as Picasso allegedly said and Jobs "borrowed".
And some of us, even if we only started working at the end of the 80's, still remember Apple when they did the look and feel lawsuit against Microsoft failing because Apple hadn't licensed the technology from Xerox and didn't have an exclusive right for its use.
So saying Apple stole the icon grid, mouse, etc. from Xerox is an exaggeration, but not that far from the truth. Everyone based their GUIs on Xerox PARC work, and claiming exclusive rights on that derivative work as if it were original has already failed once. The only thing they were allowed to use exclusively was the trash icon.
Is Florian Mueller the king of Slashdot? It seems so since he gets mentioned more than any other single person.
Florian Mueller is the current more vocal MS shill in the war against google. Is is doing the same role as Enderle does, only Enderle is by now completely discredited, and some still quote Mueller as if he knew what he is talking about. As usual, your best source is Groklaw, they've discredited many of Mueller's ravings already.
Slashdot Mirror
Could it be that the buyout of B&N by Microsoft has produced the first victim?
Or just a "unfortunate coincidence" that the magazine censured over a word is a Linux magazine?
Doh, should have read the TFA more carefully. The final line in particular... :(
Strange, no mention that probably the main reason MSFT is paying $300M to B&N is to buy their way out of the "android patent extortion" law suite that B&N seemed close to winning. And probably B&N will also stop asking the DOJ to investigate the patent extortion and MSFT will keep extorting money from android device manufacturers in exchange of not taking them to court...
Am I the only one getting tired of this "android trojan/malware of the day" press releases by the anti-virus authors?
Seems more and more like pure astro-turfing for their own products, trying to create a sense of insecurity in the users of the biggest mobile OS just so that they can sell their products.
Most users won't be affected by this malware - the play store won't have it, and most of those that install apps from outside the store are techs who know what they are doing. The few affected will be the usual ones, those who think they can ignore the warning when they allow install from untrusted sources, and then ignore the permissions requested by the app. If you're dumb enough to do that, to install games from a suspicious site, that want to make calls and send SMS, then no anti-virus will save you. And it isn't the OS fault if you choose to ignore all safety precautions and disable all protections.
Well, it sure smells funny. In particular after seeing how the companies that have pressed for this investigation have been trying to lobby MEPs. Maybe in the end they found out that it is easier to sway the commission than the parliament...
No. I call Microsoft evil for the way the use NDAs when they are extorting money from companies using open source (I never wrote open source projects) with crap patents; it is evil in that it allows them to hide the merits (or more accurately, the lack of) and to avoid that the open source projects involved use alternatives that don't violate Microsoft's patents. If you don't know of Microsoft doing patent trolling with dubious patents, check the Motorola or Nook suits. They are suing for the use of open source projects, and using NDAs to try to hide the ridiculous patents that these projects might be infringing.
Yes they are. As long as they are using NDAs and patent trolling to extort money from companies using open source, they are evil. They might seem less evil in this particular point - but they are still the same microsoft we all learned to hate. At least those of us that did do business with them, or know some company who did, like sendo...
And drop the micro-SIM at the same time? It isn't like the SIM is too big, and having more than one standard means one can't interchange SIMs between phones (or tablets) without adapters. The "extra" size of the normal SIM in comparison with the micro (and now the nano) SIM isn't enough to make an impact on phone size, and the micro-SIMs are easier to lose. Also, the adapters don't work on all phones.
I just finished switching all my clients to duckduckgo.com, take the hint
This I don't get, you're leery of Google and you switch to a service that uses bing? I'm sorry, Google might be scary, but how can anyone prefer Microsoft over it?
Duck Duck Go uses Bing... So instead of Google tracking you, MSFT is tracking you. And all you gain is lower quality search results...
I love the new tagging system, having "bonch writes" is so much clearer and concise than having a tag with "anti-google distorted declaration FUD", and the sematic value is exactly the same!
The interface wastes nearly one third of the screen with a blank column, no idea why. The rectangular widgets can be moved around, but that is about it. The toilet paper roll approach of putting everything should have been killed in teletype days,
I guess it's not supposed to grow too big; if it does, you are probably not a target Windows Phone user. Get an Android to fit your need for overpopulated app grids ;)
Overpopulated or sparse, at least with android that is your choice. With WP7 you get this "pinned" apps screen, and a even worst scrollable list with all apps. Doesn't have the flexibility of widgets, no way to organize stuff in folders, nothing. Absolutely awful if you have more than a few apps.
Bad form, yes. BTW, is Bing really too bad as a search engine? Does Android support Bing as a search engine choice?
For me, Bing is almost useless as a search engine. Returns less relevant results than google, and has a tendency to prefer MSFT related/sponsored links without identifying them as such. Even when searching on microsoft.com or related sites, I usualy end up using google, as it is more likely to turn up what I am searching for. As for supporting Bing as a search engine choice, that was a huge complaint with one ISP some months back, that it had replaced google with bing on the android phones, so I guess it is doable.
I never had the need to extend the browser on my phone. I guess I don't use it to browse sites that show obnoxious ads.
Almost every ad is obnoxious on a metered connection. I can tell you I see a huge difference when I use the Lumia's browser instead of the N1 browser. Pages take a lot longer to load, content is almost lost in the middle of ads, etc.
Apps that I miss: alternative browsers (Maxthon, Dolphin, etc.). Touchdown (exchange client). Messengers - fring, nimbuzz, skype. Media players with DLNA support. Etc.
Synchronization with Outlook - every Nokia phone until now had it, and at least HTC androids have it. Yes, it needs software on the PC. But one would assume Microsoft could do it for their phones. That would help when you get the kind of admins that don't want to open activesync for everyone...
What is it that you need to do on a phone, that is prevented by not having a dual-core CPU and a gigabyte of RAM?
Probably run next year's version of the phone OS, with real multitasking? Or play more complex games? In the end, if a user can get better hardware for the same price, how can the less powered one be attractive?
We have an HTC Sensation at home, I guess it can serve as an example. Both me and my wife find the UI mediocre, cluttered, and sometimes poorly usable. We never cared to mod it, or even install any significant number of apps. Geeks who read specification sheets like the holy scripture and care about things like USB mass storage access to the filesystem tend to forget what really matters to most people out there.
Well, if you feel that Sense is cluttered, then maybe Wp7 is for you. But don't install many apps The scrolling apps list might not be cluttered, but is probably unusable with more than 30 entries, and it already comes with more than 10 to start with... And honestly, if the cheap shots in the last paragraph were aimed at me, sorry, but you missed the point completely.
Full of what? the only thing you argued was with the micro sim - and what seems a load of bull is claiming there is no upper limit on specs. If so, why is the lumia 900 screen still 480x800? Why is the memory still 512MB? Why are all WP7 phones alike, with the same specs? BTW, I got a Lumia 800, exactly a Nokia WP7. And I'd trade it at once for a Galaxy S2. Sure, it looks nice. But that seems to be about it. Go back to what I wrote, and tell me where I was wrong. I still am trying to like this phone, after all it was a gift. But I am failing. (I wish I was the owner of an handful of phones - but can't afford it right now).
I got gifted with one. I am trying, hard, to not hate it at first sight. But god, this thing is so limited! No standard USB connection, no uSD card; uSIM instead of regular SIM; everything seems to have been done to make life difficult. One has to use a iTunes clone to transfer videos and music into it, that or a dropbox clone that doesn't work with linux. The interface wastes nearly one third of the screen with a blank column, no idea why. The rectangular widgets can be moved around, but that is about it. The toilet paper roll approach of putting everything should have been killed in teletype days, You can't change the background, only the lockscreen background. There is no way to bind the search key to anything else, it is locked to bing. If you want to search in the market, you have to install an app to do the search. There is no alternative browser, only IE. No ad blocking or anything. There is a limited list of apps in the market, and most are for pay only. No google apps apart from search. No synchronization with outlook, only with exchange, and only if your admins have enabled activesync. No skype, fring or nimbuzz. No way to install applications except the market. To top it, the WP7 phones are limited to "old" hardware. No dual core CPUs, only 512MB memory, screen resolution limited to 480x800, incapable of 1080p recording. How can someone call this competitive? Really? It is competitive if you're comparing with 2010 android phones; but with anything more recent than that, forget it.
The KDE-alike one was sweet too, IIRC it ran entirely on framebuffer. I don't recall it being slower than GPE though. I forget what it was called, someone here probably knows.
Opie was the open source version, but I also recall that Sharp had made a fork for the Zaurus line of PDAs called qtopia. It was as fast as GPE, if not faster. Sadly, nobody is interested on it any more. When I tried to offer my SL-C1000 to a developer who could keep maintaining it, but nobody in the angstrom mailing list was interested.
I just tried it now, and it detected my CUPS server immediately. The test page printed without problems, so thanks for the tip!
Sorry, but I don't believe this. I've had multiple Android phones over the last couple of years and never experienced any lag except when I was installing an app in the background and trying to do something else. Then again, the reviewer bashes the tablet because it allows tablet owners to download any Android apps and not just tablet specific apps, so he's clearly an idiot or a troll.
I concur. It is now the remaining troll attack on android, now that apple has copied stuff like the notifications into iOS, but I've never seen it. On a ZTE blade with the original Sapo ROM, or with Cyanogen. On a Nexus One. On my sister's Galaxy II. But still trolls will brandish that as a weapon, and will get voted insightful or informative by other trolls, even though that problem was eradicated on later android versions.
Lol - "Everyone knows that Android suffers significant, sporadic slowdowns" has been part of the APL and MSFT marketing campaigns against Android for so long that it is enough to brand a "review" starting with these words a anti-android rant. Never mind it is mostly false, all my fanboi friends repeat it as a mantra.
And in that piece it is even more ridiculous - the authors write that, give no justification or indication that it really happens on the Fire, then go off on a tangent about buttons.
But even more interesting is that you copy that paragraph of FUD, add a couple of lines saying basically "it will fail" and get modded +5 interesting.
Too bad I don't have mod points to upvote you. A very fair comparison, and you didn't even get into other advantages of the Transformer/Android, like mounting as USB storage, and support for removable uSD cards, giving the user complete independence to transfer anything HE wants to or from HIS device.
Before anyone claims that iDevices no longer need the abomination called iTunes (after how many years), just tell me how one transfer files to them? Do they support USB storage, or removable cards?
It is also very interesting reading fanboi responses here, most can be resumed to "iDevices are perfect, if you criticise them you're wrong and a Asus (or Google or whatever) employee".
And pulseaudio is a mixed bag -- some good, some not-so-good.
Just a small comment - this is what I like less about KDE4, as pulseaudio always had problems on my netbooks, but fortunately it is optional. In Kubuntu all you need to do is "sudo apt-get purge pulseaudio*" and you're rid of it.
You first preferred to try to pull some kind of "age rank" with me, and when that failed, I am suddenly the one who made a "bad taste" comment. You might not be a fanboi, but you surely sound like someone out of arguments who is now entering the insult path. BTW, I'm not the one who wrote "stole" - I'd rather have written "copied", but I understand the usage on the light of the "great artists steal" as Picasso allegedly said and Jobs "borrowed".
And some of us, even if we only started working at the end of the 80's, still remember Apple when they did the look and feel lawsuit against Microsoft failing because Apple hadn't licensed the technology from Xerox and didn't have an exclusive right for its use. So saying Apple stole the icon grid, mouse, etc. from Xerox is an exaggeration, but not that far from the truth. Everyone based their GUIs on Xerox PARC work, and claiming exclusive rights on that derivative work as if it were original has already failed once. The only thing they were allowed to use exclusively was the trash icon.
I see the reality distortion field stays strong, even with Jobs untimely departure.
Next up: North Korea praises your foreign politics.
More likely, North Korea praises your criminal retributions law, expelling families from their homes because one of their members is accused (not convicted) of participating in the riots - http://m.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/aug/13/england-riots-coalition-response?cat=politics&type=article.
Is Florian Mueller the king of Slashdot? It seems so since he gets mentioned more than any other single person.
Florian Mueller is the current more vocal MS shill in the war against google. Is is doing the same role as Enderle does, only Enderle is by now completely discredited, and some still quote Mueller as if he knew what he is talking about. As usual, your best source is Groklaw, they've discredited many of Mueller's ravings already.