i have been listening to the stories about the droid 2 and X re: being locked down too tight to load a custom ROM. it made me glad that i had a droid 1 that was more open. i wasn't sure if i would find a suitable phone to upgrade to when the time came.
i just did a warranty return on my droid 1 (headphone jack had a short) and was given a new in the box droid 2. i hate it. the custom camera, gallery, alarm clock, virtual keyboard, etc. all suck hard compared to vanilla android. and now i am screwed because i can't put my own ROM on it when they release a new version of android, i will be forced to wait for moto to update it.
short version: i didn't choose to 'upgrade' to a new phone that was just what they sent me. after one full day of using the droid 2 i am trying to figure out how i can get another droid 1 out of verizon.
he wasn't talking about a pre-computer definition of reboot.
on the first computer i ever used there was no hard drive and it booted off of floppies. when you rebooted it with the same disk in the drive it would reload the program or OS back to scratch and all of your changes were lost. for example, if i was using symphony spreadsheet and i reboot the computer it would reload symphony with a blank spreadsheet and all previous changes would be lost.
reboot is really an industry term in entertainment that has leaked into common use. it means to start a series over again from scratch and abandoning all the changes that writers have made along the way. to use an example from comics, it means placing batman in a totally different conception of what gotham city is and redesigning the batmobile, his outfit, enemies, etc.
in this case it means that they are going to revisit all the design and gameplay decisions and use the core idea of the game without all of the baggage of the previous versions.
this being slashdot, i will forgive you for making assumptions about who i am and if i am a software engineer or not. but i am not.
to be precise: the permission that gives the phone access to make calls is designed to sound scary. it is "Services that cost you money, directly call phone numbers". and my point stands that it sounds a hell of a lot different than "read phone state".
most businesses shoot for a 3rd grade reading level, and i think that in this case android did just fine in making the permission simple to understand. you can throw stones at some aspects of the android OS, but i don't think that this is one of those places. these people installed a wallpaper app that had as many permissions as a new launcher (desktop) and that was their decision.
if a layperson had a question about that app or permissions in general they could have googled it right from their phone. if you choose to drive with your eyes closed, you will crash the car in your analogy.
honestly, i think that you did something wrong with your test app. there are tons of highly intricate apps that do not request permission to make calls. now, if your app wanted to go to the background when a call came and relaunch when the call is over that's something different. however, that permission is "read phone state" which does not sound the same at all.
so, recognize that the ACLU is asserting that the Maryland's law against wiretapping is unconstitutional and plan to challenge it. this is a fairly simple concept, it is right in the summery.
no, you are either a dick or you don't know what you are talking about.
i have twenty years of experience shooting on fully manual 35mm cameras. i take my time and only shoot when i am really happy with what i have in the view finder. for every 10 times i lift the camera and compose a shot i take maybe one frame. i am not trying to get my photos published in a magazine, but these days i am pretty happy with over half of my shots. the reason pros say that they are at a 1-3% keepers is that they are shooting dozens at each subject but aren't going to sell or show a series all taken at the same time. since i am shooting for me and no one else i can take one and get in my car and go somewhere else if i want to.
no one is asking for Motorola to honor the warranty, they are pissed that Motorola is going to intentionally sabotage the product after it is sold to their customers.
to reiterate: void warranty, fine; brick phone, bad
try BatteryLife by Curvefish. it is a widget which is nicer since it is always running, it requires no permissions, and it doesn't seem to have any effect on my battery consumption.
it is the best one that i have found so far. i particularly like that it tells you the battery temperature, and i can set what % the battery turns orange and red at.
that sounds like the plan my friend has through MetroPCS...a lot of the regional cellphone companies have very cheap plans. some of them will flash your phone to work on their network if you buy a compatible phone online.
there is no amount of concentration on my part that is going to help when the plane banks sharply on take off, slams into the ground, and begins cartwheeling through a cornfield spewing burning jet fuel while rows of seats tear off the floor and fall out of holes in the plane.
but if i could listen to music, at least i wouldn't have to hear everyone else screaming as i burned to death in an aluminum tube
the worst case scenario is that browser gets slow on large pages or that it might cause your phone to hang/reboot. i am pretty sure that in the normal use case for a smartphone a reboot every now and then isn't going to cause immediate death. if you work in a life or death environment you should be provided with a dedicated communications device, such as a radio
fair enough, but for what it's worth it is working fine on my Moto Droid. i am not going to be using it as my primary browser yet, but the UI is pretty slick.
my point was why are you afraid to test it yourself? as soon as i saw that they said that worst case scenario was rebooting i was ready to try it. shit, i have 'professional' apps that have crashed my phone before (google sky map, i am looking at you). i was willing to put up with a little slowness to test drive a shiny new browser.
so your question is 'why would i download a pre-alpha release and play around with it on my phone' because it MIGHT NOT WORK
...mine is why are you on slashdot if that sounds like something you wouldn't do? i was really excited about the release and installed it immediately for my Moto Droid and then i come into the one place on the web where i thought that others would share my enthusiasm and here you two are pissing all over it for being, you know, an alpha release.
Motorola is the hardware.
Android is the software.
Adobe is making a flash app (slowly) and neither of the other two give a shit.
it's a nice open ecosystem, see? besides the issue in the article is more about Apple trying to lock developers out of coding their apps in other languages. Android and Motorola have no interest in what you can or can't run on the phone or what it was coded in. if anything a flash app will give one more bullet point under the list of things that Android can do, so that would a plus, right?
thank you very much, i didn't know that there were flash compatable android phones...yet. this is from the site, in case anyone is interested in the details:
* HTC Hero browser comes with Flash Lite version 3.1 and supports playback of SWF contents up to Flash 9 and ActionScript 2.0.
anyone have any experience with usability or battery life?
really? how did you get flash working on your Android phone? I have a Moto Droid running v2.1 and there is no flash support. Adobe is working on an Android Flash app or something, but there is no firm release date for it yet.
holy shit. if someone gave me a $3,500 check and told me to buy a laptop i would assume them to be some kind of harmless, but brain damaged, philanthropic employer. then i would buy the nicest $800 laptop that i could find.
so you are telling me that the cop that walked up on my friend, threw him on the ground face-first and then pepper-sprayed him when he rolled into the fetal positing clutching his shattered teeth and broken nose "gave [him] multiple opportunities for compliance" even though he never uttered a command. FYI the police review board ruled it a reasonable use of force even though the charges of resisting arrest were dropped. he was not breaking any law when approached, just 'looked like a suspect being sought'.
the point here is that if you give someone a tool it will be used, potentially in ways that are not foreseen or desired. but you don't care because you are a law enforcement cheerleader.
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i have been listening to the stories about the droid 2 and X re: being locked down too tight to load a custom ROM. it made me glad that i had a droid 1 that was more open. i wasn't sure if i would find a suitable phone to upgrade to when the time came.
i just did a warranty return on my droid 1 (headphone jack had a short) and was given a new in the box droid 2. i hate it. the custom camera, gallery, alarm clock, virtual keyboard, etc. all suck hard compared to vanilla android. and now i am screwed because i can't put my own ROM on it when they release a new version of android, i will be forced to wait for moto to update it.
short version: i didn't choose to 'upgrade' to a new phone that was just what they sent me. after one full day of using the droid 2 i am trying to figure out how i can get another droid 1 out of verizon.
he wasn't talking about a pre-computer definition of reboot.
on the first computer i ever used there was no hard drive and it booted off of floppies. when you rebooted it with the same disk in the drive it would reload the program or OS back to scratch and all of your changes were lost. for example, if i was using symphony spreadsheet and i reboot the computer it would reload symphony with a blank spreadsheet and all previous changes would be lost.
reboot is really an industry term in entertainment that has leaked into common use. it means to start a series over again from scratch and abandoning all the changes that writers have made along the way. to use an example from comics, it means placing batman in a totally different conception of what gotham city is and redesigning the batmobile, his outfit, enemies, etc.
in this case it means that they are going to revisit all the design and gameplay decisions and use the core idea of the game without all of the baggage of the previous versions.
this being slashdot, i will forgive you for making assumptions about who i am and if i am a software engineer or not. but i am not.
to be precise: the permission that gives the phone access to make calls is designed to sound scary. it is "Services that cost you money, directly call phone numbers". and my point stands that it sounds a hell of a lot different than "read phone state".
most businesses shoot for a 3rd grade reading level, and i think that in this case android did just fine in making the permission simple to understand. you can throw stones at some aspects of the android OS, but i don't think that this is one of those places. these people installed a wallpaper app that had as many permissions as a new launcher (desktop) and that was their decision.
if a layperson had a question about that app or permissions in general they could have googled it right from their phone. if you choose to drive with your eyes closed, you will crash the car in your analogy.
honestly, i think that you did something wrong with your test app. there are tons of highly intricate apps that do not request permission to make calls. now, if your app wanted to go to the background when a call came and relaunch when the call is over that's something different. however, that permission is "read phone state" which does not sound the same at all.
so, recognize that the ACLU is asserting that the Maryland's law against wiretapping is unconstitutional and plan to challenge it. this is a fairly simple concept, it is right in the summery.
no, you are either a dick or you don't know what you are talking about.
i have twenty years of experience shooting on fully manual 35mm cameras. i take my time and only shoot when i am really happy with what i have in the view finder. for every 10 times i lift the camera and compose a shot i take maybe one frame. i am not trying to get my photos published in a magazine, but these days i am pretty happy with over half of my shots. the reason pros say that they are at a 1-3% keepers is that they are shooting dozens at each subject but aren't going to sell or show a series all taken at the same time. since i am shooting for me and no one else i can take one and get in my car and go somewhere else if i want to.
not speaking to you directly, but if you only have one keeper out of a hundred it's time to find a new hobby.
the most reliable car i have ever owned was purchased for $50.
no one is asking for Motorola to honor the warranty, they are pissed that Motorola is going to intentionally sabotage the product after it is sold to their customers.
to reiterate: void warranty, fine; brick phone, bad
try BatteryLife by Curvefish. it is a widget which is nicer since it is always running, it requires no permissions, and it doesn't seem to have any effect on my battery consumption.
it is the best one that i have found so far. i particularly like that it tells you the battery temperature, and i can set what % the battery turns orange and red at.
that's pretty funny. you have been going on and on yourself, but there are zero rulings saying the kids were guilty of "malicious defamation".
that sounds like the plan my friend has through MetroPCS...a lot of the regional cellphone companies have very cheap plans. some of them will flash your phone to work on their network if you buy a compatible phone online.
nice catch, it was a reference to that particular crash.
i am not flying the plane.
there is no amount of concentration on my part that is going to help when the plane banks sharply on take off, slams into the ground, and begins cartwheeling through a cornfield spewing burning jet fuel while rows of seats tear off the floor and fall out of holes in the plane.
but if i could listen to music, at least i wouldn't have to hear everyone else screaming as i burned to death in an aluminum tube
put the micro-sd card in a hollow nickle and no one will ever know it is there. .5 Euro coins also available. pretty reasonably priced at $30.
i have been trying to find an excuse to buy one because i think that they are cool as hell.
did you read the summary, the GP, or the article?
the worst case scenario is that browser gets slow on large pages or that it might cause your phone to hang/reboot. i am pretty sure that in the normal use case for a smartphone a reboot every now and then isn't going to cause immediate death. if you work in a life or death environment you should be provided with a dedicated communications device, such as a radio
fair enough, but for what it's worth it is working fine on my Moto Droid. i am not going to be using it as my primary browser yet, but the UI is pretty slick.
my point was why are you afraid to test it yourself? as soon as i saw that they said that worst case scenario was rebooting i was ready to try it. shit, i have 'professional' apps that have crashed my phone before (google sky map, i am looking at you). i was willing to put up with a little slowness to test drive a shiny new browser.
so your question is 'why would i download a pre-alpha release and play around with it on my phone' because it MIGHT NOT WORK
...mine is why are you on slashdot if that sounds like something you wouldn't do? i was really excited about the release and installed it immediately for my Moto Droid and then i come into the one place on the web where i thought that others would share my enthusiasm and here you two are pissing all over it for being, you know, an alpha release.
the only letters i write are addressed to the department of corrections...(most) prisons don't have email (yet)
Motorola is the hardware.
Android is the software.
Adobe is making a flash app (slowly) and neither of the other two give a shit.
it's a nice open ecosystem, see? besides the issue in the article is more about Apple trying to lock developers out of coding their apps in other languages. Android and Motorola have no interest in what you can or can't run on the phone or what it was coded in. if anything a flash app will give one more bullet point under the list of things that Android can do, so that would a plus, right?
* HTC Hero browser comes with Flash Lite version 3.1 and supports playback of SWF contents up to Flash 9 and ActionScript 2.0.
anyone have any experience with usability or battery life?
really? how did you get flash working on your Android phone? I have a Moto Droid running v2.1 and there is no flash support. Adobe is working on an Android Flash app or something, but there is no firm release date for it yet.
holy shit. if someone gave me a $3,500 check and told me to buy a laptop i would assume them to be some kind of harmless, but brain damaged, philanthropic employer. then i would buy the nicest $800 laptop that i could find.
damn. so, are they hiring?
really? in every instance?
so you are telling me that the cop that walked up on my friend, threw him on the ground face-first and then pepper-sprayed him when he rolled into the fetal positing clutching his shattered teeth and broken nose "gave [him] multiple opportunities for compliance" even though he never uttered a command. FYI the police review board ruled it a reasonable use of force even though the charges of resisting arrest were dropped. he was not breaking any law when approached, just 'looked like a suspect being sought'.
the point here is that if you give someone a tool it will be used, potentially in ways that are not foreseen or desired. but you don't care because you are a law enforcement cheerleader.