If people are complicit in the actions of the corporations they buy from, then most people are guilty of far worse offenses than losing a lawsuit.
But I do need to question your logic to begin with. If you buy something from me, then I go commit a crime, you are guilty? Doesn't it make more sense to lay the blame at the people who are actually in charge of the entity involved, and the actual actors in the "offense" under discussion?
The next question is the following: Where should these niche customers turn now that netbooks are discontinued? Tablets that come with iOS, Android, or Windows RT can't run PC applications, or at least they aren't warranted to.
Those, and regular laptops, ultrabooks, MacBook Airs, Surface Pros.
Both Android and iOS have ssh clients, VNC clients, various other remote access clients, and remote monitoring software. Those account for the bulk of the uses for a sysadmin netbook. And those that need a full PC operating system, for whatever reason, will not die having to use an ultrabook or MacBook Air. Presumably they do this for a living and aren't bound to netbooks for cost alone.
After all, what do you think they did *before* netbooks? Hell, something like an 11" MacBook Air is an arguably superior solution anyway (and if you are Mac-phobic, an ultrabook if you must).
You are a master at pulling contrived scenarios out of your ass and acting like they are somehow impossible to solve in any way other than the one you are presently attached to. What kind of geek are you that you can't come up with clever solutions to problems you encounter, but can somehow only seem to deal with with the present solution as though it's etched in stone from on high?
$200 is significant, but the set of people for whom it is significant to the point of being a deal-breaker who are also in the market for something like the ChromeBook is close to nil. And for those people? Kindle Fire (mistakenly) or Nexus 7 (more properly) will suit them much better, and be cheaper as well! Or even just finding a used notebook on Craigslist, or spend $50 more and get a discount notebook at Best Buy.
The main problem with the Chromebook is that it's not useful. If you are good with just a Chrome browser as essentially a web terminal, then you are probably good with an Android tablet that runs the Chrome browser plus all the apps available for Android.
And if you have even just a small amount of additional money, so many more options open up, including iPads and proper notebooks that do everything a ChromeBook can do and more.
All that said, I do like the idea of them, and like I said before, I see a lot of potential in them. Google is strangely able to keep at things even if they aren't very well received by the market (like Android) until they grow to fit a real demand in the market (like Android). Though I do think it will take a healthy app ecosystem to really kick it into gear, and although Chrome has some "apps", somehow finding a way to open up the greater Android app ecosystem would really turn the ChromeBook from an interesting concept to something truly useful with a much broader appeal.
"No power"? An Atom could do everything that a comparably clocked P4 could do. I use mine for lightweight Python programming. I bought a 10" because it fits in a bag that isn't an obvious "mug me" magnet.
And why should someone put up with P4-level performance, when Core i5's and i7's are available for only a few hundred more? Portability? iPads are better at that.
There really aren't all that many people who want a separate device simply for lightweight Python programming on the go at an ultra-low price. For the extra device, they'd rather have an iPad.
What I'd find interesting would be something like a modern-day HP 200LX. Way better as a small portable nerdbox, without all the false pretenses of a netbook.
I'd say that there are very few people for whom ChromeBooks fits their needs "perfectly". It does show promise, but it's too incongruent with how most people want to use their computers and devices.
Unless Google does something more consumer-oriented with their ChromeBooks, like combining it with Android and opening up a vast swath of apps for it (more than just the Chrome apps that are available now), I think the ChromeBook's biggest potential in the near term is as something of an enterprise cloud-based dumb terminal. Google would still have to beef up its Google Docs and related services, but I can see it as appealing to just hand these out to employees vs full-featured PCs with all the Office apps and VPN/Exchange CALs/etc. to keep them running.
But as a consumer, I can't see why I'd want a ChromeBook over either a MacBook Air or iPad (for portability) or even just a regular PC or Mac notebook. Price? It just seems that, for now, you give up way too much to justify not spending just a little bit more for, at the very least, a $400 HP.
are not a perfect replacement for the low-cost subnotebook PC that netbooks used to be.
But netbooks were never good as a PC. They were just "ok", and were only ever good at being really small and really cheap. Actual notebooks have always outclassed netbooks, and now the iPad has beat it on portability, while smaller tablets like the Kindle Fire and Nexus 7 have beat it on price.
So where does that leave the netbook? It's inferior in all three of its most prominent attributes. It has nothing compelling about it for the end user. Even if you gave them away, people would still be more likely to just use their iPad away from home, and their PC at home. Even the more geeky among us would tend to rather use an Android tablet on the go, and a Linux box at home.
And let me repeat this: the average person, even if you gave them a netbook and they already had a nice notebook, would rather go out and spend $500+ on an iPad than use their free netbook.
As someone who wouldn't mind at all having a cheap little Linux computer, even I can't justify such a shitty device as a netbook. I'd rather either have a proper Linux PC (desktop or notebook) or go with something like a Chromebook or Android tablet for portable geekery.
Body: The logo looks like a piece of Communist propaganda straight out of Moscow circa 1925.
That's all there was. "Commies" is a pejorative. The extent of the comment is to equate their logo (it's actually not) with the "Commies". If you can't see how that can be inflammatory, I can't help you. I mean, just imagine if you worked at that company, and somebody just walked in and said just the above and left. Don't you think that it would come across as an insult?
The difference is that you think because big brother Apple has locked things down in some way that you are safe.
No, just safer.
That just isn't the case. If Apple is in control, then you are not. Who does Apple serve?
Me, the customer. Though that's a bit of misdirection on your part, since it doesn't have anything to do with whether the App Store is more secure or not.
In any case, Apple iOS is equally vulnerable.
Except it's not. This is proven out by the fact that Android malware is a regular occurrence, while iOS malware is all but non-existent.
As another commenter pointed out, for this malware to get onto an Android, the user would have to enable other sources to install. Though it's not a simple check box, it's fairly easy to enable other sources on iOS at which point malware can be installed by the user.
Again, misdirection. The Play Store has had more malware than the App Store. And, yet again, you are creating a false equivalency when you make it sound like jailbreaking an iPhone is in the same realm of difficulty as allowing outside sources an Android phone. It's not even *close*, and that, again, causes a difference between the two.
Once in, each platform is comprimised. There is no difference.
Are you saying that once both devices are infected, they are both infected? Well, even though it's a tautology, at least it's correct!
But also a misdirection. How is it you can't accept that iOS is safer than Android? Why the dishonesty? iOS is safer. That's proven by the rates of malware on the two systems. You can argue whether it's a worthwhile trade off, you can argue whether Google needs to do more, less, or is doing things just right, but you can't change reality.
That's the bias you are suffering from. Cut it out, you'll be better off for it.
Read my complete post. I completly agree with you that optional permissions are lacking on Android.
That's not the part I'm calling bullshit. The bullshit is where you claim that the permissions are only about "essential" requirements for the app to work at all. Please take your own advice and read my complete post.
I don't agree with you that it should be the users choice to break the core funcionality of an app. That would be contradictory to Apples "it just works" philosophy.
That's consistent with making an ecosystem that the user can trust and feel safe with. Better to slightly break an app (you are vastly overblowing the impact here!) than to force a user to give up privacy just to even try out an app.
I gave numerous examples of apps working just fine, even when you remove what you seem to think are part of their "core functionality". And what's the worst, absolute *worst* case? The app will try do to the thing it wants, fail, and pop up a dialog saying, "you didn't grant permission to X, the app needs it in order to Y, please try again and grant permission when asked, or close the app, kthxbye!"
Easy as pie. No apps were harmed in this process, and no user had to give up their privacy. Everyone's a winner!
That one slip proves it is possible. And knowing it's possible, if I were to plan a massive hit, I would make sure the timing on activation was such that my trojan app would have the widest possible distribution before it became active.
Possible, but not likely, and not easy either. Definitely not as possible nor as easy as it is on Android.
You're acting like this "possible" thing is just as bad as the actual thing that happens on Android at least a few times per year. They aren't equal.
I did not say anything in support of any particular platform as I mentioned them all in a neutral manner.
No, you distorted facts to an absurd level to make two disparate app ecosystems appear equally flawed.
Apple's is more restricted, but safer. Google's is more open, but more dangerous. They *are* different. By claiming equality between the two, you are tinting reality, in this case against Apple and for Google.
Then you went further and claimed that the person trying to say that they aren't the same is delusional and biased, and mocked and belittled him for it. You seem to think you aren't biased because you didn't use charged words. That's only one form of bias.
Now, I won't insult or belittle you. I do think you are smart enough to see the difference between iOS and Android here. It'd just be nice to see that reflected in your comments.
it will have shit graphics, shit physics and shit AI making for shit games
The first three shits are debatable, but the last one is outright false. People have been making great games on much less capable hardware. What "shit" graphics, physics, and AI mean is that there are some games that can't be made, but there's a whole slew of games that *can* be made, and whether they are shitty or not will not be due to the hardware's "obsolescence".
Hell, even if they only thing it did was had an NES/SNES emulator and nothing more, it would prove you wrong.
Sorry but that's BS. The reason why those rights are asked for at install time is that they are considered as required for the app. What use would a calendar application have that is denied access to the phone calendar? So there's no need to install an app without the requirements for it to work. The actual security check is "do the required rights match the apps purpose?" if not, don't install. But that's between you and the app developer.
No, sorry, but that's bullshit. Most apps you'll find on the Play store require permissions to read the phone status, including identity, regardless of whether they have anything to do with the phone or not. Some want access to your location (like Facebook), even if it's not core to the app.
On iOS, any requests for location, contacts, photos, or calendar must be authorized by the user *explicitly*, and it can be denied if the user wishes, yet the app will still run.
Now, your example of a calendar app is simple-minded. What about an app that has a calendaring aspect, but does other things as well? Such as a task management app? Perhaps I want to use it as a to do list, but don't want it to include my calendar appointments as to do items, and I don't want it to store to dos into my calendar? The app will still work without access to my calendar, and my privacy will be just a little bit more protected.
Or like Facebook. Some people want to tag their posts with location. But maybe I don't want to, or maybe I just don't want to *this one time*, not even accidentally? Again, it's all or nothing on Android.
The idea that permissions are usually essential to the app such that it can't function without them is false. The only time that's sufficiently true is for apps that need access to the Internet. Even apps that you'd think might need what they are asking for, like a maps app, still will work fine without access to the thing they most logically need, like GPS. You can easily find a maps app useful, even if it doesn't have access to your location.
And this is Android we're talking about here. Isn't "choice" the Android mantra? The permissions system in Android is one aspect where they are severely lagging behind Apple. And even if it does break the app's core functionality, shouldn't that be the user's choice? On iOS, if an app wants access to the user's photos, it has to ask for permission to read the user's location. That's because photos can contain location metadata. If the user says "no", the app won't be able to open photos or the camera, which would break something like Instagram.
So, what happens? Instagram crashes? The iPhone explodes? No! It just tries and fails to open the photos (or camera), and then pops up a dialog saying, "hey, we need permission to read your location if you want the app to work, please say yes", and if the user decides it's ok, they can. If not, they can just not use the app.
On Android, you have to accept permissions, most of which are not necessary, but neither you *nor even the developer*, can say, "yes" to this and "no" to that. It's all or nothing. Maybe I don't know why Facebook wants access to my location, but I notice it only asks when I post if I check the "include location" button, so I figure, ok, cool, it's not tracking me all the time, just when I choose the option. Or maybe some chat app asks for access to my contacts, but only when I choose the "find friends" feature, and isn't just siphoning off my address book every time it launches.
Or maybe it is! On iOS, I can tell if it is or not, and make an educated decision. On Android, I just have to cross my fingers.
And not only that, the user can say "no", and still use the app!
Google really needs to work on protecting the privacy of its users. They are generally quite capable technologically, it shouldn't be hard to have an option to say yes or no to specific permissions. That they haven't done it shows that they either don't see it as a priority, or simply think the way it works now is correct.
I'd like to think it's the former, but I tend to suspect more and more that it's the latter. Hopefully this will be clarified at I/O 2013.
I totally understand the human aspects of this behavior.
You understand it because you are engaging in it yourself in your condemnation of Apple. It's absurd to claim that Apple's app ecosystem isn't more secure than Android's. Everyone knows this, even the most ardent Android fanatic does.
You think that *one* piece of malware, that got through Apple's testing, which was caught and removed, which can't even automatically affect people on iOS 6, and stands out as an exception which is nowhere nearly as common as malware on Android, is exactly the same as malware on Android?
Of course not.
So, please, take your own advice and quit being so foolish. iOS is vastly more secure than Android. Android is vastly more open. Both are that way by design. Anyone who denies either of those two facts are engaging in exactly what you seem to think SuperKendall is guilty of, or is just simply ignorant, and you don't appear ignorant, just biased.
I'm sitting in front our our Christmas tree here. I just shoot my head side to side quickly and saw the light streak. There's a decay time on the light sensitive chemicals on our retina; I don't think motion blur can be avoided if the speed is fast enough.
Yes, the motion blur is in your eyes, not the christmas lights. Your eyes will do the same thing with a motion picture of sufficiently high frame rate.
The primary reason we have motion blur in motion pictures is because the frame rate is so low that it's needed to help make the brain see the images as continuous, instead of discrete.
But with a higher frame rate, there's a point where motion blur is no longer needed to make our brains think the motion of the objects in the pictures are continuous.
At 48 fps (chosen for the obvious reason that it's double 24 fps), most motion appears smooth, and does not benefit from blur (in fact, blur will make things worse), but there's still some amount of high speed action or panning which would benefit from smoothing up until (supposedly) somewhere between 60 fps and 120 fps.
Until Apple came along, hardware and software companies armed themselves with patents to ward off threats from trolls, or as a defensive measure alone.
That's not true at all. Cell technologies (like CDMA, GSM) are all heavily patented, and not simply for defensive measures. And patent trolls really don't have much surface area to counter-attack with patents.
The main difference is that these become FRAND patents, allowing everyone equal opportunity to use these necessary technologies, while still encouraging innovation and participation in standards processes. Although I wonder if even these types of patents are sub-optimal, at least they tend to work out for most everyone involved.
It's likely new methods were discovered since 1972. Apple's patent, which I did not read, could be novel enough to merit a patents.
I don't think it's likely at all that any method for something so basic is novel enough to deserve being granted a patent.
The only thing Apple does in these sorts of things is be the first entity to think deeply about the problem at hand. In general, the solutions to these sorts of problems are either too obvious (to anyone who thinks about the problems) or too generic, to deserve being granted a monopoly for their "discovery".
Certain types of look and feel, design patents I can see making sense. But simply being the first person to do something doesn't justify granting them an artificial right to be the *only* person allowed to do that thing.
Though I do like Motorola's slab designs, and at least some aspects of Google's Nexus devices (though it's not all that clear how much of that is Google's doing).
"Exercise and eat healthy food" is not a universal prescription for "control body fat." It's just a good start for baseline health.
Actually, it has almost nothing to do with controlling body fat, which is the exact disconnect you are pointing out, beyond directly affecting the body's energy balance.
By far, the most important factor in body fatness is caloric balance. It doesn't matter all that much if your calories or healthy or not, or whether you exercise or not. If you overeat on "healthy" food, you will get fat, and if you undereat on junk food you will get skinny. There are other factors, like you point out, but for the most part, they mostly just fine tune the details.
Those kids that are wolfing down $15 of McDonald's are burning off those calories and/or not eating a whole heck of a lot the rest of the day. It's not out of the ordinary for a teenager to burn off 3,000 calories per day (through activity and growth), and it's also not uncommon for a middle aged adult to burn less than 2,000 (almost entirely due to sitting all day at work, at home, and in the car). That's about 1/3 of a pound difference in fat gain/loss *per day* on the same food intake. It's got very little to do with basal metabolism, but with activity.
And a little-known fact: fat people have higher metabolisms than skinny people, all else remaining equal. The reason for that is that your body needs to burn calories to maintain your fat mass. Just lying in bed all day, a fat person will burn more calories than a skinny person (though muscle burns more than fat, so there's a certain variability here where a lighter person *can* burn more than a heavier person, it's more of a second-order variable).
Slashdot Mirror
If people are complicit in the actions of the corporations they buy from, then most people are guilty of far worse offenses than losing a lawsuit.
But I do need to question your logic to begin with. If you buy something from me, then I go commit a crime, you are guilty? Doesn't it make more sense to lay the blame at the people who are actually in charge of the entity involved, and the actual actors in the "offense" under discussion?
There are thousands of kids out there who would not have any computer at all if it was not for cheap netbooks.
That's ok. They'd all rather have a Nexus 7 or iPad anyway.
The next question is the following: Where should these niche customers turn now that netbooks are discontinued? Tablets that come with iOS, Android, or Windows RT can't run PC applications, or at least they aren't warranted to.
Those, and regular laptops, ultrabooks, MacBook Airs, Surface Pros.
Both Android and iOS have ssh clients, VNC clients, various other remote access clients, and remote monitoring software. Those account for the bulk of the uses for a sysadmin netbook. And those that need a full PC operating system, for whatever reason, will not die having to use an ultrabook or MacBook Air. Presumably they do this for a living and aren't bound to netbooks for cost alone.
After all, what do you think they did *before* netbooks? Hell, something like an 11" MacBook Air is an arguably superior solution anyway (and if you are Mac-phobic, an ultrabook if you must).
You are a master at pulling contrived scenarios out of your ass and acting like they are somehow impossible to solve in any way other than the one you are presently attached to. What kind of geek are you that you can't come up with clever solutions to problems you encounter, but can somehow only seem to deal with with the present solution as though it's etched in stone from on high?
What do you call a $5 million cluster at a top tier university, then?
A niche.
$200 is significant, but the set of people for whom it is significant to the point of being a deal-breaker who are also in the market for something like the ChromeBook is close to nil. And for those people? Kindle Fire (mistakenly) or Nexus 7 (more properly) will suit them much better, and be cheaper as well! Or even just finding a used notebook on Craigslist, or spend $50 more and get a discount notebook at Best Buy.
The main problem with the Chromebook is that it's not useful. If you are good with just a Chrome browser as essentially a web terminal, then you are probably good with an Android tablet that runs the Chrome browser plus all the apps available for Android.
And if you have even just a small amount of additional money, so many more options open up, including iPads and proper notebooks that do everything a ChromeBook can do and more.
All that said, I do like the idea of them, and like I said before, I see a lot of potential in them. Google is strangely able to keep at things even if they aren't very well received by the market (like Android) until they grow to fit a real demand in the market (like Android). Though I do think it will take a healthy app ecosystem to really kick it into gear, and although Chrome has some "apps", somehow finding a way to open up the greater Android app ecosystem would really turn the ChromeBook from an interesting concept to something truly useful with a much broader appeal.
"No power"? An Atom could do everything that a comparably clocked P4 could do. I use mine for lightweight Python programming. I bought a 10" because it fits in a bag that isn't an obvious "mug me" magnet.
And why should someone put up with P4-level performance, when Core i5's and i7's are available for only a few hundred more? Portability? iPads are better at that.
There really aren't all that many people who want a separate device simply for lightweight Python programming on the go at an ultra-low price. For the extra device, they'd rather have an iPad.
What I'd find interesting would be something like a modern-day HP 200LX. Way better as a small portable nerdbox, without all the false pretenses of a netbook.
I'd say that there are very few people for whom ChromeBooks fits their needs "perfectly". It does show promise, but it's too incongruent with how most people want to use their computers and devices.
Unless Google does something more consumer-oriented with their ChromeBooks, like combining it with Android and opening up a vast swath of apps for it (more than just the Chrome apps that are available now), I think the ChromeBook's biggest potential in the near term is as something of an enterprise cloud-based dumb terminal. Google would still have to beef up its Google Docs and related services, but I can see it as appealing to just hand these out to employees vs full-featured PCs with all the Office apps and VPN/Exchange CALs/etc. to keep them running.
But as a consumer, I can't see why I'd want a ChromeBook over either a MacBook Air or iPad (for portability) or even just a regular PC or Mac notebook. Price? It just seems that, for now, you give up way too much to justify not spending just a little bit more for, at the very least, a $400 HP.
are not a perfect replacement for the low-cost subnotebook PC that netbooks used to be.
But netbooks were never good as a PC. They were just "ok", and were only ever good at being really small and really cheap. Actual notebooks have always outclassed netbooks, and now the iPad has beat it on portability, while smaller tablets like the Kindle Fire and Nexus 7 have beat it on price.
So where does that leave the netbook? It's inferior in all three of its most prominent attributes. It has nothing compelling about it for the end user. Even if you gave them away, people would still be more likely to just use their iPad away from home, and their PC at home. Even the more geeky among us would tend to rather use an Android tablet on the go, and a Linux box at home.
And let me repeat this: the average person, even if you gave them a netbook and they already had a nice notebook, would rather go out and spend $500+ on an iPad than use their free netbook.
As someone who wouldn't mind at all having a cheap little Linux computer, even I can't justify such a shitty device as a netbook. I'd rather either have a proper Linux PC (desktop or notebook) or go with something like a Chromebook or Android tablet for portable geekery.
Subject: Commies
Body: The logo looks like a piece of Communist propaganda straight out of Moscow circa 1925.
That's all there was. "Commies" is a pejorative. The extent of the comment is to equate their logo (it's actually not) with the "Commies". If you can't see how that can be inflammatory, I can't help you. I mean, just imagine if you worked at that company, and somebody just walked in and said just the above and left. Don't you think that it would come across as an insult?
The difference is that you think because big brother Apple has locked things down in some way that you are safe.
No, just safer.
That just isn't the case. If Apple is in control, then you are not. Who does Apple serve?
Me, the customer. Though that's a bit of misdirection on your part, since it doesn't have anything to do with whether the App Store is more secure or not.
In any case, Apple iOS is equally vulnerable.
Except it's not. This is proven out by the fact that Android malware is a regular occurrence, while iOS malware is all but non-existent.
As another commenter pointed out, for this malware to get onto an Android, the user would have to enable other sources to install. Though it's not a simple check box, it's fairly easy to enable other sources on iOS at which point malware can be installed by the user.
Again, misdirection. The Play Store has had more malware than the App Store. And, yet again, you are creating a false equivalency when you make it sound like jailbreaking an iPhone is in the same realm of difficulty as allowing outside sources an Android phone. It's not even *close*, and that, again, causes a difference between the two.
Once in, each platform is comprimised. There is no difference.
Are you saying that once both devices are infected, they are both infected? Well, even though it's a tautology, at least it's correct!
But also a misdirection. How is it you can't accept that iOS is safer than Android? Why the dishonesty? iOS is safer. That's proven by the rates of malware on the two systems. You can argue whether it's a worthwhile trade off, you can argue whether Google needs to do more, less, or is doing things just right, but you can't change reality.
That's the bias you are suffering from. Cut it out, you'll be better off for it.
Read my complete post. I completly agree with you that optional permissions are lacking on Android.
That's not the part I'm calling bullshit. The bullshit is where you claim that the permissions are only about "essential" requirements for the app to work at all. Please take your own advice and read my complete post.
I don't agree with you that it should be the users choice to break the core funcionality of an app. That would be contradictory to Apples "it just works" philosophy.
That's consistent with making an ecosystem that the user can trust and feel safe with. Better to slightly break an app (you are vastly overblowing the impact here!) than to force a user to give up privacy just to even try out an app.
I gave numerous examples of apps working just fine, even when you remove what you seem to think are part of their "core functionality". And what's the worst, absolute *worst* case? The app will try do to the thing it wants, fail, and pop up a dialog saying, "you didn't grant permission to X, the app needs it in order to Y, please try again and grant permission when asked, or close the app, kthxbye!"
Easy as pie. No apps were harmed in this process, and no user had to give up their privacy. Everyone's a winner!
That one slip proves it is possible. And knowing it's possible, if I were to plan a massive hit, I would make sure the timing on activation was such that my trojan app would have the widest possible distribution before it became active.
Possible, but not likely, and not easy either. Definitely not as possible nor as easy as it is on Android.
You're acting like this "possible" thing is just as bad as the actual thing that happens on Android at least a few times per year. They aren't equal.
I did not say anything in support of any particular platform as I mentioned them all in a neutral manner.
No, you distorted facts to an absurd level to make two disparate app ecosystems appear equally flawed.
Apple's is more restricted, but safer. Google's is more open, but more dangerous. They *are* different. By claiming equality between the two, you are tinting reality, in this case against Apple and for Google.
Then you went further and claimed that the person trying to say that they aren't the same is delusional and biased, and mocked and belittled him for it. You seem to think you aren't biased because you didn't use charged words. That's only one form of bias.
Now, I won't insult or belittle you. I do think you are smart enough to see the difference between iOS and Android here. It'd just be nice to see that reflected in your comments.
You're judging something that doesn't yet exist. This is a dev kit, not the final product.
I seem to remember that if the truth is flamebait, it's what called an "inconvenient truth". What's the polite way to express something like this?
That's exactly the problem, the OP *didn't* express it politely. He stated something factual in a very aggressive manner.
In a word, flamebait (just as you admitted in your opening sentence).
it will have shit graphics, shit physics and shit AI making for shit games
The first three shits are debatable, but the last one is outright false. People have been making great games on much less capable hardware. What "shit" graphics, physics, and AI mean is that there are some games that can't be made, but there's a whole slew of games that *can* be made, and whether they are shitty or not will not be due to the hardware's "obsolescence".
Hell, even if they only thing it did was had an NES/SNES emulator and nothing more, it would prove you wrong.
Sorry but that's BS. The reason why those rights are asked for at install time is that they are considered as required for the app. What use would a calendar application have that is denied access to the phone calendar? So there's no need to install an app without the requirements for it to work. The actual security check is "do the required rights match the apps purpose?" if not, don't install. But that's between you and the app developer.
No, sorry, but that's bullshit. Most apps you'll find on the Play store require permissions to read the phone status, including identity, regardless of whether they have anything to do with the phone or not. Some want access to your location (like Facebook), even if it's not core to the app.
On iOS, any requests for location, contacts, photos, or calendar must be authorized by the user *explicitly*, and it can be denied if the user wishes, yet the app will still run.
Now, your example of a calendar app is simple-minded. What about an app that has a calendaring aspect, but does other things as well? Such as a task management app? Perhaps I want to use it as a to do list, but don't want it to include my calendar appointments as to do items, and I don't want it to store to dos into my calendar? The app will still work without access to my calendar, and my privacy will be just a little bit more protected.
Or like Facebook. Some people want to tag their posts with location. But maybe I don't want to, or maybe I just don't want to *this one time*, not even accidentally? Again, it's all or nothing on Android.
The idea that permissions are usually essential to the app such that it can't function without them is false. The only time that's sufficiently true is for apps that need access to the Internet. Even apps that you'd think might need what they are asking for, like a maps app, still will work fine without access to the thing they most logically need, like GPS. You can easily find a maps app useful, even if it doesn't have access to your location.
And this is Android we're talking about here. Isn't "choice" the Android mantra? The permissions system in Android is one aspect where they are severely lagging behind Apple. And even if it does break the app's core functionality, shouldn't that be the user's choice? On iOS, if an app wants access to the user's photos, it has to ask for permission to read the user's location. That's because photos can contain location metadata. If the user says "no", the app won't be able to open photos or the camera, which would break something like Instagram.
So, what happens? Instagram crashes? The iPhone explodes? No! It just tries and fails to open the photos (or camera), and then pops up a dialog saying, "hey, we need permission to read your location if you want the app to work, please say yes", and if the user decides it's ok, they can. If not, they can just not use the app.
On Android, you have to accept permissions, most of which are not necessary, but neither you *nor even the developer*, can say, "yes" to this and "no" to that. It's all or nothing. Maybe I don't know why Facebook wants access to my location, but I notice it only asks when I post if I check the "include location" button, so I figure, ok, cool, it's not tracking me all the time, just when I choose the option. Or maybe some chat app asks for access to my contacts, but only when I choose the "find friends" feature, and isn't just siphoning off my address book every time it launches.
Or maybe it is! On iOS, I can tell if it is or not, and make an educated decision. On Android, I just have to cross my fingers.
And not only that, the user can say "no", and still use the app!
Google really needs to work on protecting the privacy of its users. They are generally quite capable technologically, it shouldn't be hard to have an option to say yes or no to specific permissions. That they haven't done it shows that they either don't see it as a priority, or simply think the way it works now is correct.
I'd like to think it's the former, but I tend to suspect more and more that it's the latter. Hopefully this will be clarified at I/O 2013.
I totally understand the human aspects of this behavior.
You understand it because you are engaging in it yourself in your condemnation of Apple. It's absurd to claim that Apple's app ecosystem isn't more secure than Android's. Everyone knows this, even the most ardent Android fanatic does.
You think that *one* piece of malware, that got through Apple's testing, which was caught and removed, which can't even automatically affect people on iOS 6, and stands out as an exception which is nowhere nearly as common as malware on Android, is exactly the same as malware on Android?
Of course not.
So, please, take your own advice and quit being so foolish. iOS is vastly more secure than Android. Android is vastly more open. Both are that way by design. Anyone who denies either of those two facts are engaging in exactly what you seem to think SuperKendall is guilty of, or is just simply ignorant, and you don't appear ignorant, just biased.
I'm sitting in front our our Christmas tree here. I just shoot my head side to side quickly and saw the light streak. There's a decay time on the light sensitive chemicals on our retina; I don't think motion blur can be avoided if the speed is fast enough.
Yes, the motion blur is in your eyes, not the christmas lights. Your eyes will do the same thing with a motion picture of sufficiently high frame rate.
The primary reason we have motion blur in motion pictures is because the frame rate is so low that it's needed to help make the brain see the images as continuous, instead of discrete.
But with a higher frame rate, there's a point where motion blur is no longer needed to make our brains think the motion of the objects in the pictures are continuous.
At 48 fps (chosen for the obvious reason that it's double 24 fps), most motion appears smooth, and does not benefit from blur (in fact, blur will make things worse), but there's still some amount of high speed action or panning which would benefit from smoothing up until (supposedly) somewhere between 60 fps and 120 fps.
You could wear an eyepatch.
Until Apple came along, hardware and software companies armed themselves with patents to ward off threats from trolls, or as a defensive measure alone.
That's not true at all. Cell technologies (like CDMA, GSM) are all heavily patented, and not simply for defensive measures. And patent trolls really don't have much surface area to counter-attack with patents.
The main difference is that these become FRAND patents, allowing everyone equal opportunity to use these necessary technologies, while still encouraging innovation and participation in standards processes. Although I wonder if even these types of patents are sub-optimal, at least they tend to work out for most everyone involved.
It's likely new methods were discovered since 1972. Apple's patent, which I did not read, could be novel enough to merit a patents.
I don't think it's likely at all that any method for something so basic is novel enough to deserve being granted a patent.
The only thing Apple does in these sorts of things is be the first entity to think deeply about the problem at hand. In general, the solutions to these sorts of problems are either too obvious (to anyone who thinks about the problems) or too generic, to deserve being granted a monopoly for their "discovery".
Certain types of look and feel, design patents I can see making sense. But simply being the first person to do something doesn't justify granting them an artificial right to be the *only* person allowed to do that thing.
That's a separate phone from the one being discussed here.
It's funny because it's true!
Though I do like Motorola's slab designs, and at least some aspects of Google's Nexus devices (though it's not all that clear how much of that is Google's doing).
"Exercise and eat healthy food" is not a universal prescription for "control body fat." It's just a good start for baseline health.
Actually, it has almost nothing to do with controlling body fat, which is the exact disconnect you are pointing out, beyond directly affecting the body's energy balance.
By far, the most important factor in body fatness is caloric balance. It doesn't matter all that much if your calories or healthy or not, or whether you exercise or not. If you overeat on "healthy" food, you will get fat, and if you undereat on junk food you will get skinny. There are other factors, like you point out, but for the most part, they mostly just fine tune the details.
Those kids that are wolfing down $15 of McDonald's are burning off those calories and/or not eating a whole heck of a lot the rest of the day. It's not out of the ordinary for a teenager to burn off 3,000 calories per day (through activity and growth), and it's also not uncommon for a middle aged adult to burn less than 2,000 (almost entirely due to sitting all day at work, at home, and in the car). That's about 1/3 of a pound difference in fat gain/loss *per day* on the same food intake. It's got very little to do with basal metabolism, but with activity.
And a little-known fact: fat people have higher metabolisms than skinny people, all else remaining equal. The reason for that is that your body needs to burn calories to maintain your fat mass. Just lying in bed all day, a fat person will burn more calories than a skinny person (though muscle burns more than fat, so there's a certain variability here where a lighter person *can* burn more than a heavier person, it's more of a second-order variable).