The developer always has the opportunity to make the activity close itself if you don't grant it the right permissions. (In fact, this is what applications do by default in modded ROMs and in Android 4.3 with App Ops because they don't catch SecurityException.) So again, the beef is between you and the developer. You could always get applications from F-Droid, where all applications are distributed under a free software license. Then you can load an application's source code into Android SDK and compile out the feature that you insist on not using.
No my beef is with Google/Android's weakness at letting users control their apps, I'll keep using my iPhone, thanks. While you look down on iOS users, you feel free to jump through all those wonderful hoops to lick the developer's boots or maybe I'll look down at you instead for simply rolling over and taking what the developers offer instead of taking control of your own device.
I gave actual examples of why I find Apple's privacy model better than Google's. Can you rebut that, or are you just going to go on about "Apple owning the user".
Android isn't secure, true, but at least it isn't always owned the moment you get it, though Google does try. Thus, the malware targets the devices that are most secure, from the perspective of those on the attack.
This just shows have zero understanding of basic economics. The lower hanging fruit is always the best bet unless you can justify that the more difficult is indeed far more profitable. And guess what - iPhone users are more valuable to advertisers and developers [1]... yet have only 1% of the malware. Nice try at sophistry.
Access to my contact list in exchange for information on astronomy?!
That's why Android has a system-wide Back button. If you disagree with the permissions that an application requests, tap Back instead of Install, and take it up with the application's publisher.
And that kind of attitude is why Android's privacy model is flawed. This puts the control of your options at the whim of the developer. Instead *you* should be able to disable the camera, or disallow access to your GPS for any given app. If I find out after the fact that I don't want an app to have access to that information, I shouldn't have to uninstall the whole app. Example: weather apps almost always (reasonably) ask for my location info. I deny them, because, I have all my locations already entered. They don't need to know where I've been, but I still like to get the forecast on my phone.
No, Blackberry got beat there, too, by Apple. You could just as well say "frozen OJ" is "concentrating on product". What matters isn't how hard you work, but what you're working on, and whether it has appeal.
Android being "open" and given away free to manufacturers and carriers wouldn't be worth a shit without their mimicking a successful design and adopting the iPhone look and feel. In 2006, Android devices being specced looked like a Blackberry copy, in 2008, they pivoted to become iPhone imitations.
Snow Leopard is also the last version of the OS to support executing PowerPC binaries under the Rosetta engine, and some people keep it around for that reason. (Example: it's the last version of MacOS that will still play the MacOS version of Diablo 2, which, while complied for OS X, was never compiled for Intel processors.)
If someone is still using Snow Leopard for software purposes, it's probably best done in a VM now. Lots of new features and performance in Lion and later assuming you have at least a 5 year old machine or later.
BTW, we did finally find a Nissan dealer that had a good attitude about the LEAF and we are satisfied customers.
Just as an aside, why didn't you buy a Tesla Model S? Lack of availability? Cost? Interested, as I'm in this stage where I'm considering my EV options.
I don't see the Tesla as competing with the Leaf. The Leaf basically competes with the Volt. It's biggest problem is range. The Leaf suits only a narrow market who either has a very short commute or a relatively short commute with charging at their destination.
There's nothing wrong with that, but it does mean there's necessarily a small audience for it.
The Leaf competes with the Tesla in the sense that if it had better range (say 150% more at the cost of maybe $10k more), I'm sure there'd be much more folks considering it.
As someone who's been eyeing the electrics (love the Rav4 EV, just not the range), I'd rather save $20-30k and still avoid the gas stations and my high monthly gas bill as I'd pretty much use this car only for commuting.
You would think teachers would love this technology because it would allow them to focus their instruction time on concepts their students have not mastered
I'm pretty sure most folks who rail against this are of the very valid opinion that the books and tests themselves are not indicative of intelligence or success (other than by making it so because those who fail are made to think they're failures).
If the test is bad, metrics pointing out how badly some classes or students do on the test are besides the point.
The endgame is to privatize school - and push us back into the medieval times when only the rich could afford good schools (Which don't participate in this kind of joke of assessment), and the rest of the schools had little to no funding because they're pressured to constantly improve scores while the public is pressured to "lower spending" so we can spend our taxes on bridges to nowhere or the next big war (which really puts all that money into the military industrial complex)
But something you wear all the time *might be* different. I don't *know* this, because I have no experience with wearables, but I think it's possible they won't get left on top of the truck or fumbled into a water-filled ditch when you take it out of its holster. It may also be a bit more secure mounted near the user's eye, which people instinctively protect.
You're right, while the glasses are on the head, they will likely be safer than a phone in a field users's hands. However - and keep this in mind, glasses don't get worn all the time (unless they're corrective - and only a small portion of the populace needs those). They get worn when needed (sunglasses, decorative, bifocals, only for driving corrective, etc) and then placed somewhere - and that's when they get damaged. Stepped on, dropped, left in pockets where they can be dropped or smashed (once I got my driving glasses messed up by a very unexpected bearhug while they were in my front pocket). They are far more fragile than phones.
The better field device would be (and these exist now) smartphones that are field ready like the Samsung S4 Active or any smartphone with a proper field-rugged case. I would much prefer a rugged smartphone that tied in with a sturdy sweat/water resistant wireless audio device (bluetooth LE?) that was very very speech enabled (much better than Siri or Google Now is today).
That's because, despite what the idiots on Slashdot assert, the point isn't video. It's having a convenient screen always in view.
then why does it have a camera? if it didn't have a camera, this would solve 95% of the problems people have with the technology.
There is a line I won't cross - and being a complete prick because people feel I could be recording them at any time is something I don't want to be. Ever.
They put a camera on the device and don't have a "recording in progress" indicator anywhere on the exterior. WTF was Google thinking?
Pocket devices like smartphones and PDAs get rough treatment in the field, especially as they tend to get put in bad places
This is a pretty bad argument for replacing that with a very expensive item that's arguably more fragile than the phone, and requires the phone (i.e., some data conduit) anyway in order to function.
This is the problem in the US these days: the government is supposed to be a steward of the public's property and an avenue by which the public can engage in collective action ("hey guys, let's pay for some garbage trucks and some people to collect the garbage, no?")
But increasingly the government is becoming an independent agent outside the realm of merely acting as a proxy for the public will, and therein lies the problem...
By definition, the government always has a constituency - it's just an organization consisting of people. It's just that of late, it's for/by/of corporations (who are collectively owned mainly by very very wealthy people), as corporations have effectively subverted any attempt by governance from non-wealthy people (i.e., the vast majority of Americans).
Sure, it's nice to think about an 1984-esque big brother, but the reality is that that big brother is comprised of many very wealthy people and corporations they own all pushing for their vested interest over everyone else's.
In summer months almost anywhere, and even fall/spring in warm areas (read: half the USA), this would put your goods in very uncomfortable temperatures, even for non-perishables (ever had plastic melt while it's in the car trunk?)
Yes, there's a whole prepaid purchase industry out there, and whole racks of their cards at most retail outlets. This is just another one.
Burger King had the most honest description: "Pay now so you can eat later".
It's honest, but a bit naive. Prepaid cards serve a lot of purposes.
1) It's a great way to give a gift that's not as impersonal as money (just a step above, but hey). 2) Great way to buy stuff in one country with cash from another (eBay has a thriving prepaid card market). A really valid use-case for this is buying music from countries you don't have credit cards which is made difficult in the first place by the media industry and it's market segmentation (region coding, etc). 3) You can launder money this way - safer than cash. See Tide economy [1].
Obama's hands are tied because the Republicans will reflexively obstruct if he tries to get this through Congress, but the real problem with doing this via FCC rule change is that as soon as a Republican gets elected President network neutrality goes out the window.
The obvious follow through is to prevent any Republican from becoming President if you value the internet not reverting back into pay-for-access cable TV. The democrats aren't much better, but at least they pay lip-service to non-conservative causes.
Sorry you're bitter about it. I've lived it, been through 2 hostile acquisitions (one on one side, one on the other) as an employee of one of the companies. In the end what sealed both of them is the same investor class (i.e., professionally managed pension funds and private big-money hedge funds) owned both the companies that were being acquired and doing the acquiring, and they were essentially bought off on the deal.
Go pitch this to them, and see what they say. Your empty-mouthed diatribe: "Comcast is publicly traded." - belies the fact that the public securities market is by no means a free market. There are big players and if you do something they don't like, they can and will stop you and the SEC can or won't do anything about it.
There are tools that corporations use [1] [2] to prevent such efforts. Often it's to protect them from a hostile takeover, but the same tools could be used to prevent a populist uprising as well.
The corporatocracy will not allow us (say even if you did get a kickstarter or other such crowd funded initiative) to dominate Comcast. If this initiative were started, Comcast would have no shortage of tools to put it down.
Majority fan/employee owned ventures are the exception, not the norm, for this reason (amongst others - coordinating large groups of diverse interests is not easy).
If they can run Android apps with the same OS level security as iOS, and the same level of app vetting as the Apple App Store - they may be onto something.
Wait, isn't this what Amazon is trying to do with it's Amazon AppStore? How's that going, I wonder?
I see this as another attempt to EEE [1] - but that only works if the competition is weak or fragmented. Google is likely more than up to the challenge, and in fact, is likely instituting the same anticompetitive behavior that Microsoft does in the PC world (I've heard they force folks who want any Google apps to not run incompatible versions of Android or they can't run Google apps on any of their shipped sets - this is why Amazon has to do without Google apps - but you can side load them, IIRC).
While Microsoft is definitely the reigning champion of using this strategy, Google has grown up a lot recently (and hired a *lot* of former softies, too). This would be an epic match, but likely tilted in Google's favor for now.
Seriously try out any video in Flash+ VP6 and compare it to HTML V5 H.26x and disable hardware acceleration (which is a bandaid designed to cover up how big a pig H.26x is) and look at the numbers yourself.
So you're essentially saying that turning off hardware acceleration is going to require Core2 specs to play video?
Let's do this: play H.264 on an original iPhone (i.e., youtube app) and tell me why it's performant. That's a seriously slow (400mhz older ARM) processor compared to even a mid-decade Intel part.
How is any of this a good comparison? Your rant is not meaningful whatsoever.
It happens so often it's surprising legislators don't put out a price list for laws that favour your business.
Why limit the upside? Value-based pricing FTW [1]. On the other hand, in competitive legislative markets, there may indeed be such a menu, it's just not for public consumption. What do you think the golf courses, resort stays and cruises are for? Private meeting rooms to divvy up public resources for pennies on the dollar.
This is the USA. Corporate interests own the legislatures.
The bill was introduced by John Federico, a cable industry lobbyist.
What do you expect? Who let this asshat in the door?
What do you think corporate funding of campaigns are going to result it? These corps aren't stupid, they're in it for returns. A congresscritter pet better earn it's keep or it's off the payroll.
Thank Citizens United and rollback of campaign finance reform (won't anyone thing of those $$?)
Slashdot Mirror
The developer always has the opportunity to make the activity close itself if you don't grant it the right permissions. (In fact, this is what applications do by default in modded ROMs and in Android 4.3 with App Ops because they don't catch SecurityException.) So again, the beef is between you and the developer. You could always get applications from F-Droid, where all applications are distributed under a free software license. Then you can load an application's source code into Android SDK and compile out the feature that you insist on not using.
No my beef is with Google/Android's weakness at letting users control their apps, I'll keep using my iPhone, thanks. While you look down on iOS users, you feel free to jump through all those wonderful hoops to lick the developer's boots or maybe I'll look down at you instead for simply rolling over and taking what the developers offer instead of taking control of your own device.
Contrasted with what, Apple?
I gave actual examples of why I find Apple's privacy model better than Google's. Can you rebut that, or are you just going to go on about "Apple owning the user".
Android isn't secure, true, but at least it isn't always owned the moment you get it, though Google does try.
Thus, the malware targets the devices that are most secure, from the perspective of those on the attack.
This just shows have zero understanding of basic economics. The lower hanging fruit is always the best bet unless you can justify that the more difficult is indeed far more profitable. And guess what - iPhone users are more valuable to advertisers and developers [1]... yet have only 1% of the malware. Nice try at sophistry.
[1] https://digiday.com/platforms/...
Access to my contact list in exchange for information on astronomy?!
That's why Android has a system-wide Back button. If you disagree with the permissions that an application requests, tap Back instead of Install, and take it up with the application's publisher.
And that kind of attitude is why Android's privacy model is flawed. This puts the control of your options at the whim of the developer. Instead *you* should be able to disable the camera, or disallow access to your GPS for any given app. If I find out after the fact that I don't want an app to have access to that information, I shouldn't have to uninstall the whole app. Example: weather apps almost always (reasonably) ask for my location info. I deny them, because, I have all my locations already entered. They don't need to know where I've been, but I still like to get the forecast on my phone.
Wrong business model: concentrate on the product.
No, Blackberry got beat there, too, by Apple. You could just as well say "frozen OJ" is "concentrating on product". What matters isn't how hard you work, but what you're working on, and whether it has appeal.
Android being "open" and given away free to manufacturers and carriers wouldn't be worth a shit without their mimicking a successful design and adopting the iPhone look and feel. In 2006, Android devices being specced looked like a Blackberry copy, in 2008, they pivoted to become iPhone imitations.
Snow Leopard is also the last version of the OS to support executing PowerPC binaries under the Rosetta engine, and some people keep it around for that reason. (Example: it's the last version of MacOS that will still play the MacOS version of Diablo 2, which, while complied for OS X, was never compiled for Intel processors.)
If someone is still using Snow Leopard for software purposes, it's probably best done in a VM now. Lots of new features and performance in Lion and later assuming you have at least a 5 year old machine or later.
However, it is more likely Nissan is more concerned by the 2015 and 2016 model year Teslas which are in the 45,000 and 30,000 dollar range.
Where are you getting this information? I'd love to get a lower-end Tesla for cheaper...
BTW, we did finally find a Nissan dealer that had a good attitude about the LEAF and we are satisfied customers.
Just as an aside, why didn't you buy a Tesla Model S? Lack of availability? Cost? Interested, as I'm in this stage where I'm considering my EV options.
I don't see the Tesla as competing with the Leaf. The Leaf basically competes with the Volt. It's biggest problem is range. The Leaf suits only a narrow market who either has a very short commute or a relatively short commute with charging at their destination.
There's nothing wrong with that, but it does mean there's necessarily a small audience for it.
The Leaf competes with the Tesla in the sense that if it had better range (say 150% more at the cost of maybe $10k more), I'm sure there'd be much more folks considering it.
As someone who's been eyeing the electrics (love the Rav4 EV, just not the range), I'd rather save $20-30k and still avoid the gas stations and my high monthly gas bill as I'd pretty much use this car only for commuting.
You would think teachers would love this technology because it would allow them to focus their instruction time on concepts their students have not mastered
I'm pretty sure most folks who rail against this are of the very valid opinion that the books and tests themselves are not indicative of intelligence or success (other than by making it so because those who fail are made to think they're failures).
If the test is bad, metrics pointing out how badly some classes or students do on the test are besides the point.
The endgame is to privatize school - and push us back into the medieval times when only the rich could afford good schools (Which don't participate in this kind of joke of assessment), and the rest of the schools had little to no funding because they're pressured to constantly improve scores while the public is pressured to "lower spending" so we can spend our taxes on bridges to nowhere or the next big war (which really puts all that money into the military industrial complex)
But something you wear all the time *might be* different. I don't *know* this, because I have no experience with wearables, but I think it's possible they won't get left on top of the truck or fumbled into a water-filled ditch when you take it out of its holster. It may also be a bit more secure mounted near the user's eye, which people instinctively protect.
You're right, while the glasses are on the head, they will likely be safer than a phone in a field users's hands. However - and keep this in mind, glasses don't get worn all the time (unless they're corrective - and only a small portion of the populace needs those). They get worn when needed (sunglasses, decorative, bifocals, only for driving corrective, etc) and then placed somewhere - and that's when they get damaged. Stepped on, dropped, left in pockets where they can be dropped or smashed (once I got my driving glasses messed up by a very unexpected bearhug while they were in my front pocket). They are far more fragile than phones.
The better field device would be (and these exist now) smartphones that are field ready like the Samsung S4 Active or any smartphone with a proper field-rugged case. I would much prefer a rugged smartphone that tied in with a sturdy sweat/water resistant wireless audio device (bluetooth LE?) that was very very speech enabled (much better than Siri or Google Now is today).
That's because, despite what the idiots on Slashdot assert, the point isn't video. It's having a convenient screen always in view.
then why does it have a camera? if it didn't have a camera, this would solve 95% of the problems people have with the technology.
There is a line I won't cross - and being a complete prick because people feel I could be recording them at any time is something I don't want to be. Ever.
They put a camera on the device and don't have a "recording in progress" indicator anywhere on the exterior. WTF was Google thinking?
Pocket devices like smartphones and PDAs get rough treatment in the field, especially as they tend to get put in bad places
This is a pretty bad argument for replacing that with a very expensive item that's arguably more fragile than the phone, and requires the phone (i.e., some data conduit) anyway in order to function.
This is the problem in the US these days: the government is supposed to be a steward of the public's property and an avenue by which the public can engage in collective action ("hey guys, let's pay for some garbage trucks and some people to collect the garbage, no?")
But increasingly the government is becoming an independent agent outside the realm of merely acting as a proxy for the public will, and therein lies the problem...
By definition, the government always has a constituency - it's just an organization consisting of people. It's just that of late, it's for/by/of corporations (who are collectively owned mainly by very very wealthy people), as corporations have effectively subverted any attempt by governance from non-wealthy people (i.e., the vast majority of Americans).
Sure, it's nice to think about an 1984-esque big brother, but the reality is that that big brother is comprised of many very wealthy people and corporations they own all pushing for their vested interest over everyone else's.
In summer months almost anywhere, and even fall/spring in warm areas (read: half the USA), this would put your goods in very uncomfortable temperatures, even for non-perishables (ever had plastic melt while it's in the car trunk?)
Yes, there's a whole prepaid purchase industry out there, and whole racks of their cards at most retail outlets. This is just another one.
Burger King had the most honest description: "Pay now so you can eat later".
It's honest, but a bit naive. Prepaid cards serve a lot of purposes.
1) It's a great way to give a gift that's not as impersonal as money (just a step above, but hey).
2) Great way to buy stuff in one country with cash from another (eBay has a thriving prepaid card market). A really valid use-case for this is buying music from countries you don't have credit cards which is made difficult in the first place by the media industry and it's market segmentation (region coding, etc).
3) You can launder money this way - safer than cash. See Tide economy [1].
[1] http://reason.com/archives/201...
Obama's hands are tied because the Republicans will reflexively obstruct if he tries to get this through Congress, but the real problem with doing this via FCC rule change is that as soon as a Republican gets elected President network neutrality goes out the window.
The obvious follow through is to prevent any Republican from becoming President if you value the internet not reverting back into pay-for-access cable TV. The democrats aren't much better, but at least they pay lip-service to non-conservative causes.
Sorry you're bitter about it. I've lived it, been through 2 hostile acquisitions (one on one side, one on the other) as an employee of one of the companies. In the end what sealed both of them is the same investor class (i.e., professionally managed pension funds and private big-money hedge funds) owned both the companies that were being acquired and doing the acquiring, and they were essentially bought off on the deal.
Look at Comcast: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/mh?...
Go pitch this to them, and see what they say. Your empty-mouthed diatribe: "Comcast is publicly traded." - belies the fact that the public securities market is by no means a free market. There are big players and if you do something they don't like, they can and will stop you and the SEC can or won't do anything about it.
Buy a controlling share in the company.
There are tools that corporations use [1] [2] to prevent such efforts. Often it's to protect them from a hostile takeover, but the same tools could be used to prevent a populist uprising as well.
The corporatocracy will not allow us (say even if you did get a kickstarter or other such crowd funded initiative) to dominate Comcast. If this initiative were started, Comcast would have no shortage of tools to put it down.
Majority fan/employee owned ventures are the exception, not the norm, for this reason (amongst others - coordinating large groups of diverse interests is not easy).
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...
Well, NOTHING is more American than dollars.
In a Plutocracy, money is the real first class citizen, eh?
If they can run Android apps with the same OS level security as iOS, and the same level of app vetting as the Apple App Store - they may be onto something.
Wait, isn't this what Amazon is trying to do with it's Amazon AppStore? How's that going, I wonder?
I see this as another attempt to EEE [1] - but that only works if the competition is weak or fragmented. Google is likely more than up to the challenge, and in fact, is likely instituting the same anticompetitive behavior that Microsoft does in the PC world (I've heard they force folks who want any Google apps to not run incompatible versions of Android or they can't run Google apps on any of their shipped sets - this is why Amazon has to do without Google apps - but you can side load them, IIRC).
While Microsoft is definitely the reigning champion of using this strategy, Google has grown up a lot recently (and hired a *lot* of former softies, too). This would be an epic match, but likely tilted in Google's favor for now.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...
Seriously try out any video in Flash+ VP6 and compare it to HTML V5 H.26x and disable hardware acceleration (which is a bandaid designed to cover up how big a pig H.26x is) and look at the numbers yourself.
So you're essentially saying that turning off hardware acceleration is going to require Core2 specs to play video?
Let's do this: play H.264 on an original iPhone (i.e., youtube app) and tell me why it's performant. That's a seriously slow (400mhz older ARM) processor compared to even a mid-decade Intel part.
How is any of this a good comparison? Your rant is not meaningful whatsoever.
I think everyone on Slashdot has a story about women just feigning interest in coding because they want a one night stand.
I certainly do not.
Avoiding ascii graphics to avoid lameness filter, but you get the point (i.e., it's way above parent commenter's head).
It happens so often it's surprising legislators don't put out a price list for laws that favour your business.
Why limit the upside? Value-based pricing FTW [1]. On the other hand, in competitive legislative markets, there may indeed be such a menu, it's just not for public consumption. What do you think the golf courses, resort stays and cruises are for? Private meeting rooms to divvy up public resources for pennies on the dollar.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V...
This is the USA. Corporate interests own the legislatures.
The bill was introduced by John Federico, a cable industry lobbyist.
What do you expect? Who let this asshat in the door?
What do you think corporate funding of campaigns are going to result it? These corps aren't stupid, they're in it for returns. A congresscritter pet better earn it's keep or it's off the payroll.
Thank Citizens United and rollback of campaign finance reform (won't anyone thing of those $$?)
He's not retiring; he has simply outsourced his chair-tossing to an Indian guy.
Satya better get to juicing if chair tossing is on the job description.