It's a myth that most geeks get high paying jobs. Just read any geek forum and you see incessant postings on how expensive non-OSS software is, or how expensive Macs are. If they have actual high paying jobs, but bitch about a $200 Windows license or a $1,300 notebook, they are mad.
There's no such thing like "x activations per day", unless you define the time period. It's just not reasonable to think such a number can actually be that predictable.
On smartphones iOS will be in second place, right were apple wants it. They want to be the up market trendy choice, they are all about image and high price. They want to be BMW, which means you will not see Toyota levels of sales.
Apple doesn't want "second place". They want whatever the most they can get is. Comparing Apple to BMW vs Toyota is not apt, as Android phones and iPhones are similarly priced, with the exception of sometimes highly discounted Android phones, and a few discount models. It's more like comparing Toyota (Apple) to Ford (Android) and sometimes Yugo (low end Android).
I'm only responding to the false implication made in the story. Android has not passed iOS as a platform.
Everytime a new stat comes up you'll want to aggregate as much as information as you can to show that a different stat that backs up your zealous nature.
iOS is ahead of Android, that's a fact. I don't see how the truth is some sign of zealotry.
On the contrary, each time Android reaches a milestone, while still lagging iOS, it gets touted here as "Android wins, Apple loses". There are plenty of people who have incorrectly stated that Android is outselling iOS for months now on Slashdot, due to stories like this which only really state that Android has reached another milestone on that road, not that it has actually passed iOS.
So, yeah, when people make their next claim, I'll point out that they still haven't reached the goal they are pretending to have. I'm simply injecting some truth and perspective. Just because you can guess the next claim that is going to be misinterpreted, which I will likely address, doesn't make it false.
FTA: "In the last quarter of 2010, manufacturers shipped 32.9 million Android devices"
Apple sold more iOS devices in their last quarter. 16.24 million iPhones, 7.33 million iPads, and over 9.25 million iPod touches (19.45 million iPods, over half of which were iPod touches, but they didn't give a breakdown). That's over 32.8 million iOS devices. I didn't include the 2 million Apple TVs.
Also, Apple's numbers are actual hard figures. Android sales figures are all based on estimates because there is no place to get proper numbers from. Samsung, for example, recently claimed to have sold 2 million Galaxy Tabs, but when pressed on it, stated that's how many are in stock at stores, not how many have been sold (elaborating that *actual* sales are much, much lower). This is from an analyst who has reported the highest numbers.
None of this is to say that Android is not doing great. It is. But reality is not quite what the headline states.
Geek culture can't really die or be popular, because what makes geeks will never go away, nor will it become the norm (unless evolution takes over here, or perhaps there's a monumental societal shift). What makes geeks is a confluence of intelligence, inquisitiveness, and an affinity for certain topics. Not many people will have these traits, but some always will.
People aren't going to care about things like Open Source software for the same reasons geeks do, for example. Whenever OSS has become popular, it's always been for non-geek centric reasons. So as non-geeks take up technology that was the purview of geeks just a few years ago, they aren't becoming geeks themselves. The technology is adapting to the non-geek, not the other way around.
At the end of the day, you should still be nice to geeks, because they will probably manage you one day.
That's the geek equivalent of the jocks who think it's ok to do poorly in school, because they'll just go pro. The odds are stacked against you, but it makes for a compelling fantasy.
People apparently like and want Apple's closed products. Nothing is forcing people to buy Apple products, and now with Android taking off, people who want 'open' platforms have a choice.
This is where the arguments about closed vs open, and history repeating itself breaks down. People have been choosing Apple's products for a decade now. iPods, iPhones and iPads may be slightly more closed than Android, but the difference in openness is not something most people remotely care about. Hacker-type geeks do, but they are a rarity (in places not called "Slashdot").
For history to repeat itself (either the PC vs Mac market shares of the past, or format wars like VHS vs BetaMax), there has to be sufficient similarities to begin taking the comparisons seriously. If "open always wins over closed", why isn't Linux the dominant consumer OS? Why isn't Firefox (which is the most successful major open source consumer product) even the dominant browser? To the overwhelming majority, being Open Source is entirely irrelevant. The relative openness of the App Store vs Android's multiple app sources is similarly irrelevant to most people, as is whether they can buy a phone from HTC or Motorola.
There are really only two aspects of not being open that have had any real impact on iPhone sales. One is the lack of a physical keyboard. Some people prefer those. The other is the lock-in with AT&T. That's just about to end. Beyond those, any limitations imposed on the iPhone are basically like selling a car that can't go over 120MPH. It's a theoretical concern, but not a practical one. If you have a private track you can drive on, or find yourself in high-speed chases from time to time, that's one thing, but most people will never, ever, be affected by the limitation.
Except around here. The biggest mistake geeks make is in thinking that the things that are important to them are universally important to everyone. A geek wouldn't dream of buying a computer without easy access to the internal components for replacement and upgrade, and can't understand why people love the iMac so much. Geeks complain that the battery isn't easily removable on the iPhone and iPod, while people buy them up by the millions every week. How many people do you think care that the OS they got with their Mac can't be installed on generic PC hardware (not by design, at least)?
People like and want jewelry too. Jewelry is just as useless as iPhone. There's not much you can do with jewelry -- it just sits there looking pretty. For some, looking pretty is enough for them.
For most people, iPhones are far more functional than any other phone, including Android. The potential to hack your OS is not something most people can take advantage of. However, the ability to run software written by others is. iOS has many more apps, and even for apps which eventually reach parity between platforms, iOS is targeted first, and is usually better supported.
Also, it's silly to denigrate jewelry. If that's your best criticism--that the iPhone looks too nice--you're really not making a compelling argument.
But where Apple goes "too far" with iProducts is that there is something like "Apple police" in that they attempt to force their will on the people who bought and own their products. They do this by force of legal action and other means.
Yes, if I had a million dollars for every jailbreaker who was targeted by Apple's legal department... I'd be broke.
The idea that Apple "attempts to force their will" on their customers is absurd. They make choices on their hardware and software in order to make their products less error prone, easier to use and more enjoyable to use. This is not "forcing their will", it's trying to make the best product they can, and hoping people choose them. And it seems to be working out phenomenally.
No, I'm not referring to any insurance offered by the financial institutions with regards to fraud.
Cash is secure so long as it is in your pocket.
That's a tautology. "Cash is secure so long as it's some place that is secure." Also, it assumes your pocket is secure, and additionally assumes you can't turn off NFC (thus making it 100% secure, and allowing for a similar tautology, "NFC is secure so long as you turn it off", although my point is that it's sufficiently secure without resorting to such measures).
But anything RFID isn't secure in your pocket unless you go to specific measures to secure it.
RFID is secured by encryption. Someone can potentially query your phone's RFID chip, but they can't use that to take your money without your permission. On the other hand, someone *can* steal your money right from out of your pocket.
That's what I mean by cash being less secure than NFC.
As for that last point, the British passports were cracked within the initial 12 hours of being released, that's hardly what I would call secure.
What's British passports got to do with NFC payment systems? They both use RFID and both use encryption. Beyond that, they differ significantly.
What was brilliant about it was that they didn't even have to open the envelopes. Sure you can enable the security mechanisms, but if the phone gets cracked you're pretty much screwed, likewise if there's a programming error.
NFC uses technology similar to SSL. Passports do not. They just had encrypted (probably more accurately described as encoded, if it was cracked so easily) data. Each connection to an NFC chip yields different responses, and unlike passports, the data itself isn't terribly valuable. With an NFC transaction, what you are doing is asking permission to debit an account. The user still has to respond, whereas with a passport, if you want someone's personal information, all you need to do is read the data and decipher it. Deciphering an NFC transaction will yield very little of value.
Normal people either don't give a shit, or actually prefer Apple's way.
Yeah only weird people buy android phones all the cool normal people buy apple.
What's the purpose of this straw man? I never said anything like that at all.
Its because android is a lowest common denominator (all other phones can be broken down in to groups of multiple android phones) but apple is built for the elite so its the absolute highest denominator.
I said Android is lowest common denominator, I never said anything silly like "Apple is built for the elite" or that it's the "absolute highest denominator".
Besides who needs a phone with all the freedom of android
Most people really, truly, just don't give a shit about the small amount of additional freedom offered by Android.
i'm perfectly happy restricted to only what Steve jobs wants.
Another straw man. iPhone doesn't restrict you to "only what Steve Jobs wants". Contrary to popular (around here) belief, iPhone users don't receive orders from Jobs and don't have to ask him for permission before doing something with their phones. You can do absolutely anything you want with an iPhone with a very few exceptions.
Geeks quite often do not like even the idea of restrictions, regardless of whether those restrictions have any practical impact on them. There's nothing terribly wrong with that, but it is important to understand this, and to realize that most other people aren't so inclined. That's at the heart of the disconnect between how Apple and Android are perceived here, and how they are perceived by the 99.999+% of the rest of the world. A commonly held position here is that Apple is evil and draconian, and people are flocking to Android as a result. Outside of here, nothing could be further from the truth.
The sort of geeks that value Android highly over iPhone are an extremely insignificant portion of the smartphone market.
Geeks, is that what you are going with?
Yes. Geeks are the only ones that really care about the App Store lock in, Open Source, and multiple hardware vendors. Pretty much anything that Android has over iOS are things that are only appealing to geeks. Normal people either don't give a shit, or actually prefer Apple's way.
You said yourself that Android phones are outselling iphones.
No, I didn't. Android is not outselling iOS. It *might* be outselling iPhone. Apple reports their numbers, Google does not.
So if android only appeals to a insignificant portion of the smartphone market, AND it is outselling iphone, then by your OWN reasoning iphone is an even more insignificant part of the smartphone market.
Your logic is flawed. iPhone is far more interesting (I never said "appeals") to far more people than Android is. Even if Android outsells iPhone, so does Nokia (and Nokia outsells Android as well), but that doesn't make Nokia more interesting.
Anyway, even *if* Android outsells iPhone, it's not by much, and either way, it doesn't mean consumers find Android more interesting than iPhone. It just means they bought more Android devices. Android is the lowest common denominator. That's pretty much the *opposite* of interesting.
Should? Google doesn't agree, obviously. Guess whose idea of "should" has more traction in Google search - yours or Google's.
Who said otherwise? Obviously I'm just giving my opinion. Likewise, guess who has more traction in what my opinion is, me or Google? It's me. Google has given their opinion, I'm giving mine.
I'm not sure exactly what it is you think is wrong or confusing about this.
So many other ways of Google search are popular, and arguably even more convenient than opeing www.google.com and typing in your query, that it isn't even funny.
Again, no one is saying otherwise. The point is that Google is deliberately degrading the quality of their search engine, and doing so in a way that has absolutely no value to the one doing the searching. It's just simply worse for their users. I'm not sure why you think there's something wrong in complaining about this.
that does not logically follow, except for very large values of "substantial disrespect".
Because the entertainment industry lobby is far bigger than the prosumer and librarian lobbies, it would take "very large values of 'substantial disrespect'" to change the major parties' position on copyright. I agree with you that such expression of disrespect has not yet materialized among the general public. Therefore, copyright has not yet "lost all respect", as heathen_01 had claimed.
The rampant so-called piracy people engage in would disagree with your conclusion.
People don't really respect copyright all that much (a term like, "lost all respect" is meaningless, so it's not terribly usefule to argue for or against it literally, but you know what he meant by that).
Your argument, on the other hand (and that which I was replying to), was that because the people haven't voted for candidates that reflect this view, then therefore it cannot be true. My point is that the one does not follow (and I think in this last post, you have agreed with me on this).
Voting and democracy in general, especially in its republican form, is not so simple and straightforward.
What you're saying is that there is no significant anti-copyright bloc. That's true. But that does not mean people haven't lost respect for copyright. If you want to argue over the use of hyperbole like "lost all respect", that entirely sidesteps the issue and isn't a very interesting topic.
A functional democracy needs a functional media.
Are the political news media functional in your estimation if they don't cover certain areas of law or serious candidates holding certain views? I don't think so.
That's my point. The media has failed us (and then blamed *us* for their failure). Anyway, they have failed us, and are one reason why people's votes don't necessarily match up with their beliefs and self-interests.
iOS is outselling Android everywhere. And more to the point, even if Android handsets are outselling iPhone handsets, it's not by much, and consumer interest is still much higher in iPhone than it is in Android.
The iPhone 5 will be obsolete upon release.
Who's the fanboi again? iPhone 4 is extremely successful. Apple is now the number 5 mobile phone manufacturer by units sold (and that includes non-smartphones), is the number 1 mobile phone manufacturer by profits. It takes an extremely warped view of reality to think iPhone 5 bill be obsolete.
Verizon alone is expected to sell 10-25 million iPhones this year.
For most consumers, Android is not terribly interesting, and is more of a lowest-common-denominator phone than something they actually desire. The only market that Android has any great strength in is the geek market (and they by no means have that wrapped up). The sort of geeks that value Android highly over iPhone are an extremely insignificant portion of the smartphone market.
Apple is not the leader in this technology. Google is. Google's NFC phone is already out. Apple's is just hinted ad.
Google isn't the leader in this, this has been around for many years now. You're making two mistakes here.
1. That anyone is claiming Apple is the first to do something. They are just saying that Apple is doing something. 2. That Apple doing something and Google/Android doing something are of equal interest to consumers. Far more people are interested in the next iPhone than they are in the next six dozen Android phones.
Better minds than Apple have been working on this for years.
Apple has the best minds in the industry. I don't mean that Apple has every smartest person in every category that they serve or anything silly like that, but just that the notion that Apple lacks for smarts is even sillier still.
Its been deployed widely in Japan for many years now.
Exactly! Long before Google became, in your words, "the leader in this".
Less secure? Neither cash nor credit cards can be scanned without removing them from my pocket.
Both can be removed from your pocket. Once removed, cash is 100% insecure, and credit cards can be easily used until fraud/theft is discovered and the card is disabled.
And neither of them can be hacked into without my knowledge.
Cash has no need to be hacked (though it actually can, and sometimes is). And every time you hand over your credit card, you open it up to exploit.
Sure I still have to look out for skimmers and be mindful who I allow to handle them, but all in all they're a lot more secure than NFC is. Remember NFC is just an extension to RFID which is known to be riddled with security problems.
Such as? It uses public key encryption. You can't just "clone" someone's NFC phone, and start making purchases. As a phone owner, you can enable further security mechanisms, which make it far more secure than either cash or traditional credit cards.
Search for "ubuntu torrent" and watch as autosuggest/autocomplete completely leaves you flat
But if you want to search for "ubuntu torrent", why not hit "enter" after typing those 2 words?
You shouldn't have to, that's not how Google works otherwise.
"HItting enter" is a workaround for a problem that was deliberately self-inflicted by Google. I could understand if doing something like this made Google's search service better for the consumer, but it doesn't. In fact, it does the exact opposite. There's absolutely no upside in this for the user. If they're going to make it worse, they should at least be able to show that it's in an attempt to make it notably better in some other way, and "appeasing the RIAA/MPAA" does not count.
If the majority of voters in the United States were to gain a substantial disrespect for copyright, then the majority of voters in the United States would support candidates in favor of copyright reform.
Again, that does not logically follow, except for very large values of "substantial disrespect". There are far too many other issues that few people are going to make this a litmus-test issue.
One arm of an industry protecting another arm?
How do you recommend that candidates in favor of copyright reform overcome media blacklists?
That's another example of why that does not necessarily follow. A functional democracy needs a functional media.
I don't see where GP was advocating Google _not returning results_ for a certain search, just that Google doesn't have to _suggest that search_ when the user types the first 3 letters of one of the terms.
You're splitting hairs. And as far as instant search goes, not showing anything there is the same as not returning results.
How about the argument that users should be able to search for what they want, but Google should have the right to not suggest certain controversial searches?
Wait, so users should be able to search for whatever they want, but not be able to actually receive results for what they search for?
To continue your "how about" argument, how about users should be able to bitch at Google and call them whatever bad names they want when they start doing something like this? And users should also be able to demand Google rectify this. And Google should[*] be able to deliberate give worse search results than Bing (of all things!).
[*] Actually, I don't know that I think something like this should be wholly without regulation, because the barrier to entry of making a search engine is high, there are so few search engines, and search engines have great power over a great number of people. However, that would require a government looking out for the people, not the corporations, so I guess it's better to put that off for the moment and rely on the people to complain loud enough for Google to reverse this...
Do notice that they -didn't censor anything! All they did is hide certain terms from the auto-complete.
That's exactly what "censor" means. Certain words are censored from their search results.
Big deal. There's plenty of other words in that "censored" list.
Such as? I know they filtered their search results to help weed out malware. Also, there may be some words (like "the") which are ignored, but I'm unaware of any legitimate words like "bittorrent" that are outright censored like this.
Now, they can claim to be "helping prevent piracy" or whatever without actually doing anything. I see it as a win-win situation.
Win (Google) - Win (MPAA/RIAA) - Lose (Google's actual users).
There's absolutely no way whatsoever that this helps anyone searching for bittorrent and the like. Search for "ubuntu torrent" and watch as autosuggest/autocomplete completely leaves you flat. Now try the same search on Bing. It's a dark, dark day when Microsoft (Microsoft!!!) provides an outright better search experience than Google, but that's exactly what they're doing.
He said: "Perhaps the Iphone has reached maximum saturation."
he stated that iphones are sold mostly (not all) to previous iphone owners, that's the statistics he showed. Plus apple sales are worldwide while his statistics might be just american.
Numbers he posted without citation. Quite likely they are numbers from the early days of the iPhone 4, but without citation there's no way to know.
IDK, "the iPhone will sell [...]" [citation needed].
That's silly, there's no citation for the future. But if you don't think Verizon will sell millions of iPhones this quarter, you haven't been paying attention. A quick Google search for expectations range from 9 million to 12 million Verizon iPhones for 2011. It's worthwhile to keep in mind the iPad was predicted to sell 3-8 million last year, and Apple sold around 14 million. Yes, the iPad situation was different from the Verizon iPhone situation, but it illustrates how industry experts tend to under-estimate consumer interest in Apple products.
I'm sure the network can do just fine, they are not amateurs in the network game, especially because they already know how to handle millions of androids, that was the point mjwx was trying to make
No, the point he was trying to make was that "the Iphone suxxors". As for Verizon's network, I never said they won't be able to handle it, just that they will find significantly increased load very soon. Verizon's network is slower than AT&T's, so that definitely has to help. Time will tell, and it will definitely be interesting to see how things unfold.
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It's a myth that most geeks get high paying jobs. Just read any geek forum and you see incessant postings on how expensive non-OSS software is, or how expensive Macs are. If they have actual high paying jobs, but bitch about a $200 Windows license or a $1,300 notebook, they are mad.
Android has 350k+ activations a day.
There's no such thing like "x activations per day", unless you define the time period. It's just not reasonable to think such a number can actually be that predictable.
On smartphones iOS will be in second place, right were apple wants it. They want to be the up market trendy choice, they are all about image and high price. They want to be BMW, which means you will not see Toyota levels of sales.
Apple doesn't want "second place". They want whatever the most they can get is. Comparing Apple to BMW vs Toyota is not apt, as Android phones and iPhones are similarly priced, with the exception of sometimes highly discounted Android phones, and a few discount models. It's more like comparing Toyota (Apple) to Ford (Android) and sometimes Yugo (low end Android).
I'm only responding to the false implication made in the story. Android has not passed iOS as a platform.
Everytime a new stat comes up you'll want to aggregate as much as information as you can to show that a different stat that backs up your zealous nature.
iOS is ahead of Android, that's a fact. I don't see how the truth is some sign of zealotry.
On the contrary, each time Android reaches a milestone, while still lagging iOS, it gets touted here as "Android wins, Apple loses". There are plenty of people who have incorrectly stated that Android is outselling iOS for months now on Slashdot, due to stories like this which only really state that Android has reached another milestone on that road, not that it has actually passed iOS.
So, yeah, when people make their next claim, I'll point out that they still haven't reached the goal they are pretending to have. I'm simply injecting some truth and perspective. Just because you can guess the next claim that is going to be misinterpreted, which I will likely address, doesn't make it false.
FTA: "In the last quarter of 2010, manufacturers shipped 32.9 million Android devices"
Apple sold more iOS devices in their last quarter. 16.24 million iPhones, 7.33 million iPads, and over 9.25 million iPod touches (19.45 million iPods, over half of which were iPod touches, but they didn't give a breakdown). That's over 32.8 million iOS devices. I didn't include the 2 million Apple TVs.
Also, Apple's numbers are actual hard figures. Android sales figures are all based on estimates because there is no place to get proper numbers from. Samsung, for example, recently claimed to have sold 2 million Galaxy Tabs, but when pressed on it, stated that's how many are in stock at stores, not how many have been sold (elaborating that *actual* sales are much, much lower). This is from an analyst who has reported the highest numbers.
None of this is to say that Android is not doing great. It is. But reality is not quite what the headline states.
Geek culture can't really die or be popular, because what makes geeks will never go away, nor will it become the norm (unless evolution takes over here, or perhaps there's a monumental societal shift). What makes geeks is a confluence of intelligence, inquisitiveness, and an affinity for certain topics. Not many people will have these traits, but some always will.
People aren't going to care about things like Open Source software for the same reasons geeks do, for example. Whenever OSS has become popular, it's always been for non-geek centric reasons. So as non-geeks take up technology that was the purview of geeks just a few years ago, they aren't becoming geeks themselves. The technology is adapting to the non-geek, not the other way around.
Geeks are outliers, pretty much by definition.
At the end of the day, you should still be nice to geeks, because they will probably manage you one day.
That's the geek equivalent of the jocks who think it's ok to do poorly in school, because they'll just go pro. The odds are stacked against you, but it makes for a compelling fantasy.
People apparently like and want Apple's closed products. Nothing is forcing people to buy Apple products, and now with Android taking off, people who want 'open' platforms have a choice.
This is where the arguments about closed vs open, and history repeating itself breaks down. People have been choosing Apple's products for a decade now. iPods, iPhones and iPads may be slightly more closed than Android, but the difference in openness is not something most people remotely care about. Hacker-type geeks do, but they are a rarity (in places not called "Slashdot").
For history to repeat itself (either the PC vs Mac market shares of the past, or format wars like VHS vs BetaMax), there has to be sufficient similarities to begin taking the comparisons seriously. If "open always wins over closed", why isn't Linux the dominant consumer OS? Why isn't Firefox (which is the most successful major open source consumer product) even the dominant browser? To the overwhelming majority, being Open Source is entirely irrelevant. The relative openness of the App Store vs Android's multiple app sources is similarly irrelevant to most people, as is whether they can buy a phone from HTC or Motorola.
There are really only two aspects of not being open that have had any real impact on iPhone sales. One is the lack of a physical keyboard. Some people prefer those. The other is the lock-in with AT&T. That's just about to end. Beyond those, any limitations imposed on the iPhone are basically like selling a car that can't go over 120MPH. It's a theoretical concern, but not a practical one. If you have a private track you can drive on, or find yourself in high-speed chases from time to time, that's one thing, but most people will never, ever, be affected by the limitation.
Except around here. The biggest mistake geeks make is in thinking that the things that are important to them are universally important to everyone. A geek wouldn't dream of buying a computer without easy access to the internal components for replacement and upgrade, and can't understand why people love the iMac so much. Geeks complain that the battery isn't easily removable on the iPhone and iPod, while people buy them up by the millions every week. How many people do you think care that the OS they got with their Mac can't be installed on generic PC hardware (not by design, at least)?
People like and want jewelry too. Jewelry is just as useless as iPhone. There's not much you can do with jewelry -- it just sits there looking pretty. For some, looking pretty is enough for them.
For most people, iPhones are far more functional than any other phone, including Android. The potential to hack your OS is not something most people can take advantage of. However, the ability to run software written by others is. iOS has many more apps, and even for apps which eventually reach parity between platforms, iOS is targeted first, and is usually better supported.
Also, it's silly to denigrate jewelry. If that's your best criticism--that the iPhone looks too nice--you're really not making a compelling argument.
But where Apple goes "too far" with iProducts is that there is something like "Apple police" in that they attempt to force their will on the people who bought and own their products. They do this by force of legal action and other means.
Yes, if I had a million dollars for every jailbreaker who was targeted by Apple's legal department... I'd be broke.
The idea that Apple "attempts to force their will" on their customers is absurd. They make choices on their hardware and software in order to make their products less error prone, easier to use and more enjoyable to use. This is not "forcing their will", it's trying to make the best product they can, and hoping people choose them. And it seems to be working out phenomenally.
You're confusing insured with secure.
No, I'm not referring to any insurance offered by the financial institutions with regards to fraud.
Cash is secure so long as it is in your pocket.
That's a tautology. "Cash is secure so long as it's some place that is secure." Also, it assumes your pocket is secure, and additionally assumes you can't turn off NFC (thus making it 100% secure, and allowing for a similar tautology, "NFC is secure so long as you turn it off", although my point is that it's sufficiently secure without resorting to such measures).
But anything RFID isn't secure in your pocket unless you go to specific measures to secure it.
RFID is secured by encryption. Someone can potentially query your phone's RFID chip, but they can't use that to take your money without your permission. On the other hand, someone *can* steal your money right from out of your pocket.
That's what I mean by cash being less secure than NFC.
As for that last point, the British passports were cracked within the initial 12 hours of being released, that's hardly what I would call secure.
What's British passports got to do with NFC payment systems? They both use RFID and both use encryption. Beyond that, they differ significantly.
What was brilliant about it was that they didn't even have to open the envelopes. Sure you can enable the security mechanisms, but if the phone gets cracked you're pretty much screwed, likewise if there's a programming error.
NFC uses technology similar to SSL. Passports do not. They just had encrypted (probably more accurately described as encoded, if it was cracked so easily) data. Each connection to an NFC chip yields different responses, and unlike passports, the data itself isn't terribly valuable. With an NFC transaction, what you are doing is asking permission to debit an account. The user still has to respond, whereas with a passport, if you want someone's personal information, all you need to do is read the data and decipher it. Deciphering an NFC transaction will yield very little of value.
Again, secure is not the same thing as insured.
And again, insurance never entered into it.
Normal people either don't give a shit, or actually prefer Apple's way.
Yeah only weird people buy android phones all the cool normal people buy apple.
What's the purpose of this straw man? I never said anything like that at all.
Its because android is a lowest common denominator (all other phones can be broken down in to groups of multiple android phones) but apple is built for the elite so its the absolute highest denominator.
I said Android is lowest common denominator, I never said anything silly like "Apple is built for the elite" or that it's the "absolute highest denominator".
Besides who needs a phone with all the freedom of android
Most people really, truly, just don't give a shit about the small amount of additional freedom offered by Android.
i'm perfectly happy restricted to only what Steve jobs wants.
Another straw man. iPhone doesn't restrict you to "only what Steve Jobs wants". Contrary to popular (around here) belief, iPhone users don't receive orders from Jobs and don't have to ask him for permission before doing something with their phones. You can do absolutely anything you want with an iPhone with a very few exceptions.
Geeks quite often do not like even the idea of restrictions, regardless of whether those restrictions have any practical impact on them. There's nothing terribly wrong with that, but it is important to understand this, and to realize that most other people aren't so inclined. That's at the heart of the disconnect between how Apple and Android are perceived here, and how they are perceived by the 99.999+% of the rest of the world. A commonly held position here is that Apple is evil and draconian, and people are flocking to Android as a result. Outside of here, nothing could be further from the truth.
The sort of geeks that value Android highly over iPhone are an extremely insignificant portion of the smartphone market.
Geeks, is that what you are going with?
Yes. Geeks are the only ones that really care about the App Store lock in, Open Source, and multiple hardware vendors. Pretty much anything that Android has over iOS are things that are only appealing to geeks. Normal people either don't give a shit, or actually prefer Apple's way.
You said yourself that Android phones are outselling iphones.
No, I didn't. Android is not outselling iOS. It *might* be outselling iPhone. Apple reports their numbers, Google does not.
So if android only appeals to a insignificant portion of the smartphone market, AND it is outselling iphone, then by your OWN reasoning iphone is an even more insignificant part of the smartphone market.
Your logic is flawed. iPhone is far more interesting (I never said "appeals") to far more people than Android is. Even if Android outsells iPhone, so does Nokia (and Nokia outsells Android as well), but that doesn't make Nokia more interesting.
Anyway, even *if* Android outsells iPhone, it's not by much, and either way, it doesn't mean consumers find Android more interesting than iPhone. It just means they bought more Android devices. Android is the lowest common denominator. That's pretty much the *opposite* of interesting.
Seriously, do you even read what you post?
Yes, and clearly you don't.
Should? Google doesn't agree, obviously. Guess whose idea of "should" has more traction in Google search - yours or Google's.
Who said otherwise? Obviously I'm just giving my opinion. Likewise, guess who has more traction in what my opinion is, me or Google? It's me. Google has given their opinion, I'm giving mine.
I'm not sure exactly what it is you think is wrong or confusing about this.
So many other ways of Google search are popular, and arguably even more convenient than opeing www.google.com and typing in your query, that it isn't even funny.
Again, no one is saying otherwise. The point is that Google is deliberately degrading the quality of their search engine, and doing so in a way that has absolutely no value to the one doing the searching. It's just simply worse for their users. I'm not sure why you think there's something wrong in complaining about this.
that does not logically follow, except for very large values of "substantial disrespect".
Because the entertainment industry lobby is far bigger than the prosumer and librarian lobbies, it would take "very large values of 'substantial disrespect'" to change the major parties' position on copyright. I agree with you that such expression of disrespect has not yet materialized among the general public. Therefore, copyright has not yet "lost all respect", as heathen_01 had claimed.
The rampant so-called piracy people engage in would disagree with your conclusion.
People don't really respect copyright all that much (a term like, "lost all respect" is meaningless, so it's not terribly usefule to argue for or against it literally, but you know what he meant by that).
Your argument, on the other hand (and that which I was replying to), was that because the people haven't voted for candidates that reflect this view, then therefore it cannot be true. My point is that the one does not follow (and I think in this last post, you have agreed with me on this).
Voting and democracy in general, especially in its republican form, is not so simple and straightforward.
What you're saying is that there is no significant anti-copyright bloc. That's true. But that does not mean people haven't lost respect for copyright. If you want to argue over the use of hyperbole like "lost all respect", that entirely sidesteps the issue and isn't a very interesting topic.
A functional democracy needs a functional media.
Are the political news media functional in your estimation if they don't cover certain areas of law or serious candidates holding certain views? I don't think so.
That's my point. The media has failed us (and then blamed *us* for their failure). Anyway, they have failed us, and are one reason why people's votes don't necessarily match up with their beliefs and self-interests.
You fanboi is getting in the way of the facts.
Android is outselling iphone everywhere.
iOS is outselling Android everywhere. And more to the point, even if Android handsets are outselling iPhone handsets, it's not by much, and consumer interest is still much higher in iPhone than it is in Android.
The iPhone 5 will be obsolete upon release.
Who's the fanboi again? iPhone 4 is extremely successful. Apple is now the number 5 mobile phone manufacturer by units sold (and that includes non-smartphones), is the number 1 mobile phone manufacturer by profits. It takes an extremely warped view of reality to think iPhone 5 bill be obsolete.
Verizon alone is expected to sell 10-25 million iPhones this year.
For most consumers, Android is not terribly interesting, and is more of a lowest-common-denominator phone than something they actually desire. The only market that Android has any great strength in is the geek market (and they by no means have that wrapped up). The sort of geeks that value Android highly over iPhone are an extremely insignificant portion of the smartphone market.
No sane person thinks that Apple invents a lot but they do refine things and do it better than others in most instances.
That's your answer right there.
Apple is not the leader in this technology. Google is. Google's NFC phone is already out. Apple's is just hinted ad.
Google isn't the leader in this, this has been around for many years now. You're making two mistakes here.
1. That anyone is claiming Apple is the first to do something. They are just saying that Apple is doing something.
2. That Apple doing something and Google/Android doing something are of equal interest to consumers. Far more people are interested in the next iPhone than they are in the next six dozen Android phones.
Better minds than Apple have been working on this for years.
Apple has the best minds in the industry. I don't mean that Apple has every smartest person in every category that they serve or anything silly like that, but just that the notion that Apple lacks for smarts is even sillier still.
Its been deployed widely in Japan for many years now.
Exactly! Long before Google became, in your words, "the leader in this".
Less secure? Neither cash nor credit cards can be scanned without removing them from my pocket.
Both can be removed from your pocket. Once removed, cash is 100% insecure, and credit cards can be easily used until fraud/theft is discovered and the card is disabled.
And neither of them can be hacked into without my knowledge.
Cash has no need to be hacked (though it actually can, and sometimes is). And every time you hand over your credit card, you open it up to exploit.
Sure I still have to look out for skimmers and be mindful who I allow to handle them, but all in all they're a lot more secure than NFC is. Remember NFC is just an extension to RFID which is known to be riddled with security problems.
Such as? It uses public key encryption. You can't just "clone" someone's NFC phone, and start making purchases. As a phone owner, you can enable further security mechanisms, which make it far more secure than either cash or traditional credit cards.
Honest how? More like naive.
Search for "ubuntu torrent" and watch as autosuggest/autocomplete completely leaves you flat
But if you want to search for "ubuntu torrent", why not hit "enter" after typing those 2 words?
You shouldn't have to, that's not how Google works otherwise.
"HItting enter" is a workaround for a problem that was deliberately self-inflicted by Google. I could understand if doing something like this made Google's search service better for the consumer, but it doesn't. In fact, it does the exact opposite. There's absolutely no upside in this for the user. If they're going to make it worse, they should at least be able to show that it's in an attempt to make it notably better in some other way, and "appeasing the RIAA/MPAA" does not count.
If the majority of voters in the United States were to gain a substantial disrespect for copyright, then the majority of voters in the United States would support candidates in favor of copyright reform.
Again, that does not logically follow, except for very large values of "substantial disrespect". There are far too many other issues that few people are going to make this a litmus-test issue.
One arm of an industry protecting another arm?
How do you recommend that candidates in favor of copyright reform overcome media blacklists?
That's another example of why that does not necessarily follow. A functional democracy needs a functional media.
I don't see where GP was advocating Google _not returning results_ for a certain search, just that Google doesn't have to _suggest that search_ when the user types the first 3 letters of one of the terms.
You're splitting hairs. And as far as instant search goes, not showing anything there is the same as not returning results.
Copyright law (and its associated enforcment and punishment) has been abused far too much by certain organisations that it has lost all respect.
Voters don't appear to think that way, or they'd have signed petitions for Pirate Party legislators' ballot access.
The one does not follow from the other.
But then the MPAA-controlled news media have been doing a good job of hiding the Pirate Party's existence from voters.
Hmm.... One arm of an industry protecting another arm? Who would've thought!
How about the argument that users should be able to search for what they want, but Google should have the right to not suggest certain controversial searches?
Wait, so users should be able to search for whatever they want, but not be able to actually receive results for what they search for?
To continue your "how about" argument, how about users should be able to bitch at Google and call them whatever bad names they want when they start doing something like this? And users should also be able to demand Google rectify this. And Google should[*] be able to deliberate give worse search results than Bing (of all things!).
[*] Actually, I don't know that I think something like this should be wholly without regulation, because the barrier to entry of making a search engine is high, there are so few search engines, and search engines have great power over a great number of people. However, that would require a government looking out for the people, not the corporations, so I guess it's better to put that off for the moment and rely on the people to complain loud enough for Google to reverse this...
Yeah, I know, that leaves us pretty much screwed.
Do notice that they -didn't censor anything! All they did is hide certain terms from the auto-complete.
That's exactly what "censor" means. Certain words are censored from their search results.
Big deal. There's plenty of other words in that "censored" list.
Such as? I know they filtered their search results to help weed out malware. Also, there may be some words (like "the") which are ignored, but I'm unaware of any legitimate words like "bittorrent" that are outright censored like this.
Now, they can claim to be "helping prevent piracy" or whatever without actually doing anything. I see it as a win-win situation.
Win (Google) - Win (MPAA/RIAA) - Lose (Google's actual users).
There's absolutely no way whatsoever that this helps anyone searching for bittorrent and the like. Search for "ubuntu torrent" and watch as autosuggest/autocomplete completely leaves you flat. Now try the same search on Bing. It's a dark, dark day when Microsoft (Microsoft!!!) provides an outright better search experience than Google, but that's exactly what they're doing.
he didnt say the market is saturated.
He said: "Perhaps the Iphone has reached maximum saturation."
he stated that iphones are sold mostly (not all) to previous iphone owners, that's the statistics he showed. Plus apple sales are worldwide while his statistics might be just american.
Numbers he posted without citation. Quite likely they are numbers from the early days of the iPhone 4, but without citation there's no way to know.
IDK, "the iPhone will sell [...]" [citation needed].
That's silly, there's no citation for the future. But if you don't think Verizon will sell millions of iPhones this quarter, you haven't been paying attention. A quick Google search for expectations range from 9 million to 12 million Verizon iPhones for 2011. It's worthwhile to keep in mind the iPad was predicted to sell 3-8 million last year, and Apple sold around 14 million. Yes, the iPad situation was different from the Verizon iPhone situation, but it illustrates how industry experts tend to under-estimate consumer interest in Apple products.
I'm sure the network can do just fine, they are not amateurs in the network game, especially because they already know how to handle millions of androids, that was the point mjwx was trying to make
No, the point he was trying to make was that "the Iphone suxxors". As for Verizon's network, I never said they won't be able to handle it, just that they will find significantly increased load very soon. Verizon's network is slower than AT&T's, so that definitely has to help. Time will tell, and it will definitely be interesting to see how things unfold.