In many scenarios, it's useful to have the same application software on multiple platforms. Such as, oh I don't know, business and education?
Why would a business or educational institution want multiple desktop platforms? Especially OS X and Linux? I can picture OS X only, and I can picture a mix of Windows/Linux (say, mid-migration) - which is handled (SoftMaker has a Windows version), but aside from that...
Also, if you have multiple desktop OSes in an enterprise setting, having same software for them is going to be the least of your worry - UI will still be different enough to cause major headaches with user training etc.
As I understand it, a major issue for readers of Slashdot when it comes to using Linux on their machines is the ability to maintain compatibility with the documents they have to handle coming from coworkers, using the in-office set up. That is, someone wants to avoid buying Windows and Office, and run free, open source alternatives on their home desktop, but they have to still consider the work that trickles home from the office.
OSX isn't FOSS like that, but the same idea largely applies. Maybe someone has a Linux desktop set up, and has bought an Apple laptop. Sure, it's Apple and OSX, but it still has a usable bash terminal and a POSIX backbone (MacPorts comes into play here). Anyway, the point is that OpenOffice runs on both scenes in this scenario, and, AFAIK, handles Word documents well enough.
Anyone who needs 100% Word compatibility and increased speed, etc, seems to be someone who needs to use Word. It's like Photoshop or Illustrator; if your job is using one of those applications, you're going to have to use the actual application. Alternatives to Word like OpenOffice are quite useful for situations when Word isn't required, like if you mainly write code and only get a Word document once in a while (and formatting isn't mission critical to your contributions), or if the whole office uses the alternative for advantages such as cost-savings and multi-platform support.
If your job revolves around MS Word and slight compatibility issues aren't acceptable, it's probably prudent to use Word and Windows. If you're a company looking to switch from MS Office to save costs, it makes sense to go for the free option instead of the "cheaper than Office" option, unless what you pay for really is worth it. Looking over the feature list, at this point in Softmaker's development, it hardly seems so.
1) It lacks vector drawing (Draw) 2) It lacks database (Base) 3) It is closed source 4) Although it supports Linux, it seems to not support MacOS 5) It costs a lot more than OpenOffice
Sorry, it is hard to get all that excited.
It seems like they're suffering from being closed source. At least, I see no reason why they would brag on their feature list about having spelling dictionaries for 20 languages; isn't that something aspell or another open source equivalent would immediately improve? Are they writing their own to keep GPL'd code out completely?
It may have better MS Office compatibility, and if that's a major need for someone who doesn't want to mess about with MS Office and Wine, they should try it while it's free. Aside from that, I couldn't really find anything in the feature list that didn't seem to belong under the single theme "default word processor features" (it read and writes files using ASCII formatting!). Something about image manipulation, I suppose, but I'd rather keep that separated, just as I'd rather not have a word processor inside my image editor.
At my current university, there are two undergraduate networking courses and one undergraduate security course. There's one network course in the graduate curriculum, but that's meant as a recap of the two undergrad ones if you didn't get your undergrad here. I would love to load up on network and security classes, but there's simply none being offered.
I don't really feel that having a lot more is appropriate. I'd rather see people with degrees in Computer Science go into network security then see people graduate with a specialty in Network Security. When I think "Cyber Security Expert" I think of someone who, say, writes custom kernel patches, works in the field of cryptography, or writes packet-level intrusion detection tools. These are all security things, but they don't need security courses given in university to match them. Knowing how to patch a system to be more secure is a result of knowing how those systems work on that base level. Cryptography means studying lots of math. Communication and authentication handlers is again, understanding how it's handled in the OS.
The problem with network security courses at school, is they either have to be offered late in your program, or be largely superficial. If you're interested in the field, I'd talk to some people in the industry (I hear the government is recruiting), and ask what you should be studying. Recruiters, specifically, as they'll be able to say what they look for in a graduate's skill set.
The whole statement seems to show a wildly inaccurate perspective on how education and industry go together:
"Homeland Security's cybersecurity director, Richard Marshall, warns that universities aren't turning out enough cybersecurity experts and urges greater scholarship funding.
Universities do not turn out experts, period. If one needs more national security experts, the place to look isn't for upcoming graduates from Harvard's "Department of National Security", because no such thing exists. Hopefully, 4-year degrees in cybersecurity don't/won't exist, either. Universities educate students, giving them knowledge and skills to put them in a situation where they can be trained into these rolls. I went to an engineering school, and the CIA had a booth at the job fair every year, and 3 or 4 of my friends interned with the NSA, at least one of whom accepted a job there after he finished his graduate degree(s).
Richard Marshall's statement seems absurd; if they need more cybersecurity experts then they should recruit and train more people. With today's unemployment rate, it's not like there aren't people with the education out there looking for jobs. If you want more experts, hire people and train them. Scholarships might put more inexperienced graduates into the hiring pool, but does nothing to produce more cybersecurity experts. People in Marshall's position need to start realizing that companies and agencies alike invest in developing employees when it comes to jobs as specific as cybersecurity. Just throwing more certification graduates into the world isn't likely to improve anything.
I don't see why anyone would be surprised by this. He's already a multi-billionaire business tycoon with his own custom-built fortress. Since the job of Batman is already taken, the transition to supervillain is the next logical step.
But he's SO far behind Larry Ellison in that area.
I know there're some sort of parental controls, but does an Xbox know how old you are? Wouldn't this just be filled with 14 year old adolescents who try to act way over their age as they do during actual gaming?
I have to say, paperless medical clinics / hospitals / etc do make me a little nervous (generally speaking). That's a lot of very personal information digitized, and I'm not sure a medical facility will have the same level of incentive to invest correctly in the proper data security as, say, a bank does. It might be way more expensive to have a paper workflow, but at least it would take hours at the copy machine and a truck or two to make off with the amount of data that digitally fits in one's pocket.
Humans... We like to have a piece of paper in our hands, we can easily hand it to a coworker, we can scribble on it to take notes. I know it sounds oldskool, but for many tasks, a piece of paper is just superior. Sure, most of it is for temporary use, but paper isn't going anywhere. For many people reading from screen just isn't anywhere as comfortable as reading from paper. (That's why we still buy real books!)
People who bought the "paperless office" fad years ago were living in a dreamland.
My office isn't paperless, but my job certainly is, and as I'm on the dev team in a small dev shop, that means almost everything (obviously there are some business activities that generate some paper use for the owners). We get requirements and deal with task / project management via email and web software. We do all our work on computers, and all the reference and documentation materials that come up are online. Our wages are direct deposit (although we do get "pay-stubs"). Occasionally when interacting with co-workers it's easier to explain something by jotting a diagram or pseudo code down, but the whiteboard takes care of that. Passed notes go via instant messenger.
The only time I can think of that we've had a real need for paper, is in planning or pre-interview meetings, or when giving interviews. For the meetings we tend to leave the office and go across the street to a coffee shop. While we could take a laptop with us, we opt to print out the project requirements and bring a notepad and pen. First of all, laptops are terrible to use in the sun even for a single user, much less 4 or 5 sets of eyes. A notepad lying on the table can be looked at from all angles, drawn on, passed around, etc. The project requirements printout can be written on, over, crossed out, etc. I don't think even a "built for direct sunlight" tablet PC with all the ideal features would be a better fit. As for interviews, it's just silly to have any reference notes I might need on a laptop, and I'm definitely going to be asking the applicant to be writing things down.
just as stupid as the $25,000 per song rulings. maybe this is indicative of how much their judges make, that $1000 doesn't seem like much to them?
As someone's pointed out already, sharing songs via peer-to-peer networks is not a business activity -- the perpetrator isn't profiting from the action. Spamming is a business model, and, in California, an illegal one. Damages of $1000 per spam email are designed to disrupt the profit motive by increasing the monetary risk one undertakes when engaging in this illegal business. It's not the same as sharing songs, as the defendants weren't earning income from sharing. Remember, it's the distribution they get in trouble for, not the download, so the argument that their profit comes by means of avoiding the cost of a CD doesn't work.
I suspect there is a lot of custom code/drivers for each specific handset model - while you can download the source to the android OS the expectation as an OEM is its your job to make it work on your device.
At the moment, I'd be quite happy with the source. The developer site provides lots of helpful tools and documentation for developing "apps" for the Android platform (the version of which you include as a component in the SDK), but I can find little about producing my own custom ROM to experiment with on my phone.
I suppose I probably have to just look through the SDK more carefully, if the workable source code isn't included in that download and I missed it, then I've no idea where it is. I haven't looked too deeply, but the SDK never gave me the impression it was for anything other than application development for Android (rather than Android development for my hardware).
Where exactly is the evidence that the HR representative admitted fault or even bothered to apologize? The quote from the alleged apology note is no apology. It is just a statement of official policy. Just like the voice on the telephone insisting that your call is important after you have been on hold for 47 minutes.
The user "centuren", in this post (the one to which I was responding), said the following:
Still, kudos to Ms. Flewers for coming through, even if it's only on a customer service front. If being accommodating is possible, why not formally apologise if someone was upset enough to complain.
I responded to "centuren" for the purpose of explaining why a formal apology would be undesirable in this situation.
"Causality" made an insightful point there, too. I wasn't thinking along such grounded lines in my post; I was mainly interested by how un-Jedi-like this man's actions were. If a bunch of people really have gotten together to formalise a Jedi religion, then I'd expect "What Would Obi-Wan Do?" to be a major theme. Hood up inside, not honoring a local official's simple request, following up with a complaint form? Sounds like this guy is missing the main concept when it comes to his actions (hmm, maybe it does sound a little like a religion after all;P ).
I'm clearly not addressing the "we live in the real world" angle of things with that line of thought, and the more I do, the more likely it is that the politeness / customer service line starts to get blurred by over-cautious political correctness. I think I'll go back to my former line of thinking for now and not worry about it.
Has anyone noticed how bad it is, that you have something that is supposed do be an open source Linux-based phone, and you don’t even have root access right out of the factory? Even worse, not only do you have to root it with a hack, but you are also supposed to feel bad about it when returning it for broken hardware (which has nothing to do with modded software)?
I have indeed noticed something at least a bit...off about Android phones, but that something could easily be something I'm missing. Before I explain my situation, perhaps someone with more experience can enlighten me: what's the deal with carrier released Android ROMs? More specifically, is this news only to Droid users who haven't rooted their phone, or are Android phone owners really not able to upgrade their OS version without a carrier release?
I've wanted an Android phone since the G1 was announced, more or less, but never could justify committing to the total cost of ownership (I get by with spending $10/mo on voice and ~$5/mo for 400 or so texts). Less than 6 months ago, I won a Samsung Behold 2 in an online giveaway (to my amazement). It's not the Android phone I would have picked by far, but it has enough of the hardware features one needs to use all the neat apps (touch, tilt, compass, gps, a rather nice camera, etc). Already being a T-Mobile customer, I put my existing sim card into the new phone, turned off all the wireless data conduits, and only use "network access" via WIFI (home, work, friends' places). I miss out on key things like maps and Internet outside where they can be most needed, but it works out well enough compared to the alternative of not having an Android phone at all.
As many will know, the Behold 2 shipped with Android 1.5 or 1.6. I have looked into rooting it but haven't put any serious effort into it yet, primarily because I haven't come across information on upgrading the OS version. I understand the advantage to getting a ROM from a carrier (e.g. I'd really like my camera software to keep working properly), but I expected to go to http://www.android.com/ and find a "Download Android 2.1 Now" link, with general documentation about how one goes about installing Android on their supported device.
All I find is the release notes and the SDK, which I've downloaded and used before with an emulator. If that's a path to upgrading my phone, I missed it (not having a phone at the time). If I have to root my phone before I can install / upgrade on that level, fine, just point me to a tangible Android 2.1 download I can use on my phone once I've rooted it. Since 2.1 is a big upgrade over 1.5/1.6, I'm not exactly going to be spending any money in the Android marketplace, since I don't know which weak points I want to replace are improved in the OS upgrade.
I'm by no means even close to being so dedicated a fan, but I'm pretty sure a Jedi would remove his hood when asked to after entering a building, specifically one run by the local government. All the Jedi characters I remember were pretty polite. Also, I don't recall many complaint forms being filled out.
Still, kudos to Ms. Flewers for coming through, even if it's only on a customer service front. If being accommodating is possible, why not formally apologise if someone was upset enough to complain.
Get this, most geeks don't have a lot of friends, so the "phone" part is pretty useless, but the "smart" part means you can play tower-defense games on the shitter, and tweet to famous people who don't even tweet their own tweets, to fill in the time you're not on the shitter or in class (since you don't have lots of friends, dig?).
So anyone in college who reads/. naturally needs a smartphone.
Um... you put geek and college together and you get tower defense and twitter? Seriously? Not ssh on the go for the mini-server farm you and your geeky roommate have set up, or maybe trying to install NetBSD on it? College is the time for geeks to experiment and go wild. In 2001, we had an Ultra 4, a NeXTcube, and a Dreamcast along side our two Linux (or BSD, depending on mood) desktops, in addition to each of our school laptops.
Smartphones, geeks, and college should be much zanier than games and social apps.
The article is likely correct about the snacks and food. Also, no offense intended to anyone, but I've noticed that people who just zone out to television as compared to active computer users/gamers tend to be a bit...dumber.
Yes yes, I know, a generalization...but in my experience, it's the truth.
It's worth pointing out that in this day and age, if a kid has a TV in his room, he's extremely likely to have an XBox as well. So the real story is that console gaming makes you fat, PC gaming doesn't. (Sitting up works those abdominal muscles!)
I've run both Photoshop 6.0, Photoshop CS 3, and Lightroom in a VM running Windows XP. They work very well, given that the VM has enough memory allocated to do its job, and that the memory must not be swapped to disk by the VM host.
(I'm a VMware Workstation user--versions 6 and 7.)
Did you test Photoshop CS3 using files that are multiple gigabytes in size and applying batch transforms to them? Print designers who need huge DPI detail need everything their system has available. I remember even CS3 was an issue while waiting for CS4, since CS3 for OSX wasn't Intel optimised.
Professionals who tell their clients that "the software sill work on all shipping Android phones" better have tested on actual hardware. Emulators could not replicate for you chipset quirks, subtle timing problems, and many other issues that only occur on hardware. If you've shipped commercial software tested only against an emulator, I would strongly urge you to not admit it, and maybe get a lawyer.
This happens all the time in other areas, without need of lawyers. Support of all versions of IE (6+) on all versions of Windows (2000+) comes directly to mind. Web shops don't have a hardware setup for every Windows/IE combination, we use virtual machines (i.e. emulators). We make sure clients sign off on the final product, and professional obligations are honourable fulfilled.
You don't have to buy all models of android phones to "prove" it will work. Android Emulator works just fine and you can test different OS versions, screen sizes and resolutions on it. I do own a Motorola droid and do test on it, but I don't lose sleep worrying about how my app will run on different phones, because the emulator testing works well.
This attitude is why software development will never be an "engineering" discipline.
This attitude is also why open source software development can be done at low cost, relying on community bug reports and fixes for different configurations that aren't directly available to a single programmer.
But in our shop, Android is really starting to cost us a lot of money in QA testing.
I can really see how this could be a problem, having had an Android phone land in my lap (free give away of the Behold II). It's a new phone, with an old version of Android, and no explicit word on when to expect an update to the current OS version. I come across apps in the Android Market that replace the desktop environment, or the keyboard, and I can't give those developers money even if their software sounds appealing. I just don't know what I'm missing out on in terms of what I'll gain when I upgrade the ancient Android version it shipped with. I imagine new products shipping with old OS versions must be a royal pain in the arse, on top of the variety of hardware platforms.
That's our choice as developers. If we make a bad investment in choosing to develop iPhone apps, so be it. It's not like there aren't plenty of other ways we can apply the same set of skills.
Apple was only occasionally innovative. They generally stole a lot of their ideas just like everyone else. But I agree, they are evil, though they've only really been evil since they got their first big taste of success with the iPod and have slid into crazy evil. Once upon a time, they actually served a useful purpose as a company delivering a product that helped to motivate the whole market towards user-oriented innovation. Mainly by stealing good ideas that other companies had, nabbing ideas from here and there, and making them work within their closed loop and proving to the market that those ideas were good.
I don't see how they're evil, unless it's a Faustian evil. The iPhone is a product that many people don't mind being locked into, or whatever developer limitations there are for producing software for the app store. That's fine for them, they can spend their money on an iPhone and be happy to do it. I have a Macbook as my portable computer, and I've never been tempted in the least to buy an iPhone. I don't expect Windows Mobile phones to deliver what I want, either. So long as they don't interfere with other companies trying to offer products that meet my personal tastes, what would I have to complain about? That my friends all have iPhones? That's their prerogative. No one needs an iPhone for anything, in my experience.
Never try to apply a technological solution to a social problem.
I'm also reminded of the serenity prayer (which doesn't demand a theological interpretation, even):
People apply social solutions to engineering problems all the time; I don't see why you can't engineer a social problem like you can "social engineer" a problem.
Why inconvenience yourself? Just turn off file sharing for 30 seconds, then turn it back on. Same effect for him, no interruption for you. For extra fun, you can automate this in a couple of likes of AppleScript and run it in a cron job with osascript.
As far as I know that only works if you're an admin, as do other suggestions I've read so far. I think the best plan of action is to talk to the boss about it explaining the problems then polish your resume in case the boss isn't reasonable.
Falcon
If it's a local file we're talking about, unplugging a network cable temporarily would have largely the same effect.
Slashdot Mirror
In many scenarios, it's useful to have the same application software on multiple platforms. Such as, oh I don't know, business and education?
Why would a business or educational institution want multiple desktop platforms? Especially OS X and Linux? I can picture OS X only, and I can picture a mix of Windows/Linux (say, mid-migration) - which is handled (SoftMaker has a Windows version), but aside from that...
Also, if you have multiple desktop OSes in an enterprise setting, having same software for them is going to be the least of your worry - UI will still be different enough to cause major headaches with user training etc.
As I understand it, a major issue for readers of Slashdot when it comes to using Linux on their machines is the ability to maintain compatibility with the documents they have to handle coming from coworkers, using the in-office set up. That is, someone wants to avoid buying Windows and Office, and run free, open source alternatives on their home desktop, but they have to still consider the work that trickles home from the office.
OSX isn't FOSS like that, but the same idea largely applies. Maybe someone has a Linux desktop set up, and has bought an Apple laptop. Sure, it's Apple and OSX, but it still has a usable bash terminal and a POSIX backbone (MacPorts comes into play here). Anyway, the point is that OpenOffice runs on both scenes in this scenario, and, AFAIK, handles Word documents well enough.
Anyone who needs 100% Word compatibility and increased speed, etc, seems to be someone who needs to use Word. It's like Photoshop or Illustrator; if your job is using one of those applications, you're going to have to use the actual application. Alternatives to Word like OpenOffice are quite useful for situations when Word isn't required, like if you mainly write code and only get a Word document once in a while (and formatting isn't mission critical to your contributions), or if the whole office uses the alternative for advantages such as cost-savings and multi-platform support.
If your job revolves around MS Word and slight compatibility issues aren't acceptable, it's probably prudent to use Word and Windows. If you're a company looking to switch from MS Office to save costs, it makes sense to go for the free option instead of the "cheaper than Office" option, unless what you pay for really is worth it. Looking over the feature list, at this point in Softmaker's development, it hardly seems so.
Let's see:
1) It lacks vector drawing (Draw)
2) It lacks database (Base)
3) It is closed source
4) Although it supports Linux, it seems to not support MacOS
5) It costs a lot more than OpenOffice
Sorry, it is hard to get all that excited.
It seems like they're suffering from being closed source. At least, I see no reason why they would brag on their feature list about having spelling dictionaries for 20 languages; isn't that something aspell or another open source equivalent would immediately improve? Are they writing their own to keep GPL'd code out completely?
It may have better MS Office compatibility, and if that's a major need for someone who doesn't want to mess about with MS Office and Wine, they should try it while it's free. Aside from that, I couldn't really find anything in the feature list that didn't seem to belong under the single theme "default word processor features" (it read and writes files using ASCII formatting!). Something about image manipulation, I suppose, but I'd rather keep that separated, just as I'd rather not have a word processor inside my image editor.
At my current university, there are two undergraduate networking courses and one undergraduate security course. There's one network course in the graduate curriculum, but that's meant as a recap of the two undergrad ones if you didn't get your undergrad here. I would love to load up on network and security classes, but there's simply none being offered.
I don't really feel that having a lot more is appropriate. I'd rather see people with degrees in Computer Science go into network security then see people graduate with a specialty in Network Security. When I think "Cyber Security Expert" I think of someone who, say, writes custom kernel patches, works in the field of cryptography, or writes packet-level intrusion detection tools. These are all security things, but they don't need security courses given in university to match them. Knowing how to patch a system to be more secure is a result of knowing how those systems work on that base level. Cryptography means studying lots of math. Communication and authentication handlers is again, understanding how it's handled in the OS.
The problem with network security courses at school, is they either have to be offered late in your program, or be largely superficial. If you're interested in the field, I'd talk to some people in the industry (I hear the government is recruiting), and ask what you should be studying. Recruiters, specifically, as they'll be able to say what they look for in a graduate's skill set.
The whole statement seems to show a wildly inaccurate perspective on how education and industry go together:
"Homeland Security's cybersecurity director, Richard Marshall, warns that universities aren't turning out enough cybersecurity experts and urges greater scholarship funding.
Universities do not turn out experts, period. If one needs more national security experts, the place to look isn't for upcoming graduates from Harvard's "Department of National Security", because no such thing exists. Hopefully, 4-year degrees in cybersecurity don't/won't exist, either. Universities educate students, giving them knowledge and skills to put them in a situation where they can be trained into these rolls. I went to an engineering school, and the CIA had a booth at the job fair every year, and 3 or 4 of my friends interned with the NSA, at least one of whom accepted a job there after he finished his graduate degree(s).
Richard Marshall's statement seems absurd; if they need more cybersecurity experts then they should recruit and train more people. With today's unemployment rate, it's not like there aren't people with the education out there looking for jobs. If you want more experts, hire people and train them. Scholarships might put more inexperienced graduates into the hiring pool, but does nothing to produce more cybersecurity experts. People in Marshall's position need to start realizing that companies and agencies alike invest in developing employees when it comes to jobs as specific as cybersecurity. Just throwing more certification graduates into the world isn't likely to improve anything.
I don't see why anyone would be surprised by this. He's already a multi-billionaire business tycoon with his own custom-built fortress. Since the job of Batman is already taken, the transition to supervillain is the next logical step.
But he's SO far behind Larry Ellison in that area.
I know there're some sort of parental controls, but does an Xbox know how old you are? Wouldn't this just be filled with 14 year old adolescents who try to act way over their age as they do during actual gaming?
If you think that's what a bidet is designed for, then you are horribly abusing your bidet
He's talking about "Washlets" in Japan, which are indeed paperless toilets.
I have to say, paperless medical clinics / hospitals / etc do make me a little nervous (generally speaking). That's a lot of very personal information digitized, and I'm not sure a medical facility will have the same level of incentive to invest correctly in the proper data security as, say, a bank does. It might be way more expensive to have a paper workflow, but at least it would take hours at the copy machine and a truck or two to make off with the amount of data that digitally fits in one's pocket.
Humans... We like to have a piece of paper in our hands, we can easily hand it to a coworker, we can scribble on it to take notes. I know it sounds oldskool, but for many tasks, a piece of paper is just superior. Sure, most of it is for temporary use, but paper isn't going anywhere. For many people reading from screen just isn't anywhere as comfortable as reading from paper. (That's why we still buy real books!)
People who bought the "paperless office" fad years ago were living in a dreamland.
My office isn't paperless, but my job certainly is, and as I'm on the dev team in a small dev shop, that means almost everything (obviously there are some business activities that generate some paper use for the owners). We get requirements and deal with task / project management via email and web software. We do all our work on computers, and all the reference and documentation materials that come up are online. Our wages are direct deposit (although we do get "pay-stubs"). Occasionally when interacting with co-workers it's easier to explain something by jotting a diagram or pseudo code down, but the whiteboard takes care of that. Passed notes go via instant messenger.
The only time I can think of that we've had a real need for paper, is in planning or pre-interview meetings, or when giving interviews. For the meetings we tend to leave the office and go across the street to a coffee shop. While we could take a laptop with us, we opt to print out the project requirements and bring a notepad and pen. First of all, laptops are terrible to use in the sun even for a single user, much less 4 or 5 sets of eyes. A notepad lying on the table can be looked at from all angles, drawn on, passed around, etc. The project requirements printout can be written on, over, crossed out, etc. I don't think even a "built for direct sunlight" tablet PC with all the ideal features would be a better fit. As for interviews, it's just silly to have any reference notes I might need on a laptop, and I'm definitely going to be asking the applicant to be writing things down.
Oh, and the origami.
just as stupid as the $25,000 per song rulings. maybe this is indicative of how much their judges make, that $1000 doesn't seem like much to them?
As someone's pointed out already, sharing songs via peer-to-peer networks is not a business activity -- the perpetrator isn't profiting from the action. Spamming is a business model, and, in California, an illegal one. Damages of $1000 per spam email are designed to disrupt the profit motive by increasing the monetary risk one undertakes when engaging in this illegal business. It's not the same as sharing songs, as the defendants weren't earning income from sharing. Remember, it's the distribution they get in trouble for, not the download, so the argument that their profit comes by means of avoiding the cost of a CD doesn't work.
I suspect there is a lot of custom code/drivers for each specific handset model - while you can download the source to the android OS the expectation as an OEM is its your job to make it work on your device.
At the moment, I'd be quite happy with the source. The developer site provides lots of helpful tools and documentation for developing "apps" for the Android platform (the version of which you include as a component in the SDK), but I can find little about producing my own custom ROM to experiment with on my phone.
I suppose I probably have to just look through the SDK more carefully, if the workable source code isn't included in that download and I missed it, then I've no idea where it is. I haven't looked too deeply, but the SDK never gave me the impression it was for anything other than application development for Android (rather than Android development for my hardware).
The user "centuren", in this post (the one to which I was responding), said the following:
I responded to "centuren" for the purpose of explaining why a formal apology would be undesirable in this situation.
"Causality" made an insightful point there, too. I wasn't thinking along such grounded lines in my post; I was mainly interested by how un-Jedi-like this man's actions were. If a bunch of people really have gotten together to formalise a Jedi religion, then I'd expect "What Would Obi-Wan Do?" to be a major theme. Hood up inside, not honoring a local official's simple request, following up with a complaint form? Sounds like this guy is missing the main concept when it comes to his actions (hmm, maybe it does sound a little like a religion after all ;P ).
I'm clearly not addressing the "we live in the real world" angle of things with that line of thought, and the more I do, the more likely it is that the politeness / customer service line starts to get blurred by over-cautious political correctness. I think I'll go back to my former line of thinking for now and not worry about it.
Has anyone noticed how bad it is, that you have something that is supposed do be an open source Linux-based phone, and you don’t even have root access right out of the factory? Even worse, not only do you have to root it with a hack, but you are also supposed to feel bad about it when returning it for broken hardware (which has nothing to do with modded software)?
I have indeed noticed something at least a bit...off about Android phones, but that something could easily be something I'm missing. Before I explain my situation, perhaps someone with more experience can enlighten me: what's the deal with carrier released Android ROMs? More specifically, is this news only to Droid users who haven't rooted their phone, or are Android phone owners really not able to upgrade their OS version without a carrier release?
I've wanted an Android phone since the G1 was announced, more or less, but never could justify committing to the total cost of ownership (I get by with spending $10/mo on voice and ~$5/mo for 400 or so texts). Less than 6 months ago, I won a Samsung Behold 2 in an online giveaway (to my amazement). It's not the Android phone I would have picked by far, but it has enough of the hardware features one needs to use all the neat apps (touch, tilt, compass, gps, a rather nice camera, etc). Already being a T-Mobile customer, I put my existing sim card into the new phone, turned off all the wireless data conduits, and only use "network access" via WIFI (home, work, friends' places). I miss out on key things like maps and Internet outside where they can be most needed, but it works out well enough compared to the alternative of not having an Android phone at all.
As many will know, the Behold 2 shipped with Android 1.5 or 1.6. I have looked into rooting it but haven't put any serious effort into it yet, primarily because I haven't come across information on upgrading the OS version. I understand the advantage to getting a ROM from a carrier (e.g. I'd really like my camera software to keep working properly), but I expected to go to http://www.android.com/ and find a "Download Android 2.1 Now" link, with general documentation about how one goes about installing Android on their supported device.
All I find is the release notes and the SDK, which I've downloaded and used before with an emulator. If that's a path to upgrading my phone, I missed it (not having a phone at the time). If I have to root my phone before I can install / upgrade on that level, fine, just point me to a tangible Android 2.1 download I can use on my phone once I've rooted it. Since 2.1 is a big upgrade over 1.5/1.6, I'm not exactly going to be spending any money in the Android marketplace, since I don't know which weak points I want to replace are improved in the OS upgrade.
I'm by no means even close to being so dedicated a fan, but I'm pretty sure a Jedi would remove his hood when asked to after entering a building, specifically one run by the local government. All the Jedi characters I remember were pretty polite. Also, I don't recall many complaint forms being filled out.
Still, kudos to Ms. Flewers for coming through, even if it's only on a customer service front. If being accommodating is possible, why not formally apologise if someone was upset enough to complain.
who the frack cares what a college student has to say?
Like it or not, today's kids are the ones who will be running things tomorrow. Especially the ones coming from Ivy league law schools.
They, of all people, will care the least about things they said in college, back before they had to actually run things.
Get this, most geeks don't have a lot of friends, so the "phone" part is pretty useless, but the "smart" part means you can play tower-defense games on the shitter, and tweet to famous people who don't even tweet their own tweets, to fill in the time you're not on the shitter or in class (since you don't have lots of friends, dig?).
So anyone in college who reads /. naturally needs a smartphone.
Um... you put geek and college together and you get tower defense and twitter? Seriously? Not ssh on the go for the mini-server farm you and your geeky roommate have set up, or maybe trying to install NetBSD on it? College is the time for geeks to experiment and go wild. In 2001, we had an Ultra 4, a NeXTcube, and a Dreamcast along side our two Linux (or BSD, depending on mood) desktops, in addition to each of our school laptops.
Smartphones, geeks, and college should be much zanier than games and social apps.
The article is likely correct about the snacks and food. Also, no offense intended to anyone, but I've noticed that people who just zone out to television as compared to active computer users/gamers tend to be a bit...dumber.
Yes yes, I know, a generalization...but in my experience, it's the truth.
It's worth pointing out that in this day and age, if a kid has a TV in his room, he's extremely likely to have an XBox as well. So the real story is that console gaming makes you fat, PC gaming doesn't. (Sitting up works those abdominal muscles!)
I've run both Photoshop 6.0, Photoshop CS 3, and Lightroom in a VM running Windows XP. They work very well, given that the VM has enough memory allocated to do its job, and that the memory must not be swapped to disk by the VM host.
(I'm a VMware Workstation user--versions 6 and 7.)
Did you test Photoshop CS3 using files that are multiple gigabytes in size and applying batch transforms to them? Print designers who need huge DPI detail need everything their system has available. I remember even CS3 was an issue while waiting for CS4, since CS3 for OSX wasn't Intel optimised.
Professionals who tell their clients that "the software sill work on all shipping Android phones" better have tested on actual hardware. Emulators could not replicate for you chipset quirks, subtle timing problems, and many other issues that only occur on hardware. If you've shipped commercial software tested only against an emulator, I would strongly urge you to not admit it, and maybe get a lawyer.
This happens all the time in other areas, without need of lawyers. Support of all versions of IE (6+) on all versions of Windows (2000+) comes directly to mind. Web shops don't have a hardware setup for every Windows/IE combination, we use virtual machines (i.e. emulators). We make sure clients sign off on the final product, and professional obligations are honourable fulfilled.
This attitude is why software development will never be an "engineering" discipline.
This attitude is also why open source software development can be done at low cost, relying on community bug reports and fixes for different configurations that aren't directly available to a single programmer.
But in our shop, Android is really starting to cost us a lot of money in QA testing.
I can really see how this could be a problem, having had an Android phone land in my lap (free give away of the Behold II). It's a new phone, with an old version of Android, and no explicit word on when to expect an update to the current OS version. I come across apps in the Android Market that replace the desktop environment, or the keyboard, and I can't give those developers money even if their software sounds appealing. I just don't know what I'm missing out on in terms of what I'll gain when I upgrade the ancient Android version it shipped with. I imagine new products shipping with old OS versions must be a royal pain in the arse, on top of the variety of hardware platforms.
Developers making $$ on iPhone apps are few and far between. The odds are pretty slim that you can recoup your investment.
http://www.fiercemobileit.com/story/most-iphone-developers-dont-make-money/2009-06-17-0
That's our choice as developers. If we make a bad investment in choosing to develop iPhone apps, so be it. It's not like there aren't plenty of other ways we can apply the same set of skills.
Apple was only occasionally innovative. They generally stole a lot of their ideas just like everyone else. But I agree, they are evil, though they've only really been evil since they got their first big taste of success with the iPod and have slid into crazy evil. Once upon a time, they actually served a useful purpose as a company delivering a product that helped to motivate the whole market towards user-oriented innovation. Mainly by stealing good ideas that other companies had, nabbing ideas from here and there, and making them work within their closed loop and proving to the market that those ideas were good.
I don't see how they're evil, unless it's a Faustian evil. The iPhone is a product that many people don't mind being locked into, or whatever developer limitations there are for producing software for the app store. That's fine for them, they can spend their money on an iPhone and be happy to do it. I have a Macbook as my portable computer, and I've never been tempted in the least to buy an iPhone. I don't expect Windows Mobile phones to deliver what I want, either. So long as they don't interfere with other companies trying to offer products that meet my personal tastes, what would I have to complain about? That my friends all have iPhones? That's their prerogative. No one needs an iPhone for anything, in my experience.
There's an old saying:
I'm also reminded of the serenity prayer (which doesn't demand a theological interpretation, even):
People apply social solutions to engineering problems all the time; I don't see why you can't engineer a social problem like you can "social engineer" a problem.
Why inconvenience yourself? Just turn off file sharing for 30 seconds, then turn it back on. Same effect for him, no interruption for you. For extra fun, you can automate this in a couple of likes of AppleScript and run it in a cron job with osascript.
As far as I know that only works if you're an admin, as do other suggestions I've read so far. I think the best plan of action is to talk to the boss about it explaining the problems then polish your resume in case the boss isn't reasonable.
Falcon
If it's a local file we're talking about, unplugging a network cable temporarily would have largely the same effect.