...and not one of them is broken font rendering. Hell, it actually seems to have gotten even worse since Beta 7. I used to love FIrefox, but I'm definitely sticking with Chrome until they get that cleared up. That blurry nonsense hurts my eyes.
Oh ok, so they actually cover somewhere between 3-10% (we know for a fact that it's 3% by subscribers; they say they cover 10% but this is a telecom we're talking about). That's still a fair bit below your "there is enough of this faster broadband for anyone who wants it" statement, unless you're suggesting that everyone should move to Tampa, New York, or LA just to have access to decent broadband.
I live in metro Orlando and the fastest broadband available here is $60 a month for a whopping 15/1.5, and it's cable so that comes with all the usual cable caveats. Not to mention Bright House (Time Warner) has atrocious uptime - I get thrown offline at least once a day.
The only commercial fiber that I know of in the US is FiOS, and the coverage area of FiOS is so laughably small I'd be surprised if even 1% of Americans can get it.
I meant by way of custom ROMs. I of course don't expect Samsung or the US carriers to be forthcoming with updates, but with kernel and driver sources it's not incredibly difficult to port between the various GSM Galaxy S devices.
...it's just a re-badged Galaxy S. So those of us with GT-i9000s, Captivates, and Vibrants can basically expect every future version of Android within days of the source release. That's very good news, since last I heard Samsung had sold over 8 million Galaxy S devices so far.
That's exactly what a smartphone is: a tiny computer that can fit in your pocket. Apple just happens to make one that is shiny and fairly idiot-proof, but is ultimately little more than a toy version and incredibly difficult for the user to repair if it does break down. Android devices are a little more involved and difficult to jump into, but a lot more powerful and resilient in the long run.
Which sounds an awful lot like the Apple-vs-some-other-big-software-company situation, doesn't it?
How about parents take all the "responsibility of protecting children." Seeing as they are the ones who want to decide what "protecting" means, why should the ISPs, or government, or anyone else have to "share" (or more accurately in this case, shoulder entirely by themselves) that responsibility?
Also: come on people, it's not like your children are going to be scarred for life if they see a penis. Get over yourselves.
In some browsers you can: In Dolphin HD for example, you can go to "Settings -> Advanced Settings -> Enable location" and clear the checkbox to disable it. You're also prompted the first time you visit each site that wants GPS location, which goes for the stock browser as well.
Of course this is irrelevant in Firefox mobile, as no site recognizes your Android phone as such anyways, and so won't ask for location access. I don't see an option pertaining to disabling this, however, for when they sort out the user agent.
So the important things first: Performance is VASTLY improved over the first beta. The first beta was basically unusable on my Captivate (AT&T Galaxy S). This beta, on the other hand, is actually fairly snappy. The JavaScript performance is excellent as well; in fact, on the Sunspider benchmark I scored around 3600 ms, which is a staggering 2000 ms faster than Dolphin HD. I can even run some of the IE9 Test Drive demos at acceptable framerates, bizarrely, and Google Instant works just fine on the desktop version of Google.com.
But therein lies a major problem: Firefox mobile still doesn't broadcast an Android user agent. I tried several sites that I know direct me to mobile versions in both the default browser and Dolphin, including Google, Engadget, and Ars. All of them take me to the desktop version of the page in Firefox. When you manually go to mobile versions, nothing recognizes your phone as an Android phone, so for example you get a generic version of Google.com/m rather than the special Android one. This beta still doesn't work with the Froyo flash plug-in, either. And while the font rendering is better, it's still nowhere near as easy to read as the stock browser.
Overall, I'm glad to see this project is being taken seriously and a lot of progress is being made. But it's still a long way from being able to replace the stock Android browser for most, I'm afraid.
I just tried this out on my Galaxy S. That is the highest-end Android phone on the market right now and guess what? Still runs slower than a one-legged dog. It certainly doesn't help that nothing loaded as mobile versions, either (I suspect that it's failing to broadcast an Android user agent).
The GSM Galaxy S models (i9000, Captivate, and Vibrant) are easily rootable, quad-band, and are slated to definitely be getting Froyo in the next month or so (leaked builds are already widely available). Technologically, they're the best Android phones on the market. They're not perfect (no hardware keyboard, GPS is a bit flaky, and only the i9000 has properly-functioning HSUPA right now) but they're overall very solid models.
Manual transmissions are more difficult to use and require more attention be paid to them, leading to more accidents.
Much like command-line interfaces.
This goes both ways. Use whatever works better for YOUR needs and stop pointlessly bickering over it.
The thing is, by your very logic, DRM will never help sales. The people who wouldn't know where to look or wouldn't care to look for the pirated versions are never going to pirate anything, no matter how lax or strict the DRM; the people who are going to pirate the game will wait for a crack - which will come eventually - no matter how harsh the DRM might be. Putting ultra-restrictive DRM on a game is like putting a dozen deadbolts on a glass door: Anyone who wants in is just going to break the glass, and anyone who is deterred by the locks wasn't intending to break in anyways.
How many teenagers from 13-15 are going to be on their own plan, though? Almost anyone that age is simply going to be on their parents' or other relative's plan as an extra line. Hell, I'm 22 and still just using an extra line on my aunt's plan because hey, it's only $30 a month that way instead of $80, and college isn't getting any cheaper.
Firefox has a "Preserve favorites data" option in its Ctrl+Shift+Del dialog. Sadly, it doesn't seem to work all that well, routinely deleting cookies for favorites anyways.
A massively multiplayer online game (also called MMO) is a multiplayer video game which is capable of supporting hundreds or thousands of players simultaneously. By necessity, they are played on the Internet, and feature at least one persistent world.
Oh lordy, I lived in Cleveland for a while, and whoever designed that Interstate should be drug out somewhere and shot. A sudden 90-degree curve on an Interstate highway leads to one of the highest traffic fatality spots in the nation? Who would have thought!
Living in Cleveland with family in West Virginia, I had a lot of experience on roads there as well. It isn't just curves - the roads in that state in general are downright frightening to drive on.
At least when I bought all of my EVGA video cards, their lifetime warranty wasn't voided by overclocking, cooling mods, or even power surges. Pretty much the only way to break the card and not have the warranty cover it was to take a hammer to it. Not sure if it's still that way, but it was certainly damned impressive service at the time.
The page for the GMA 950 even has this hilarious tidbit:
"With a powerful 400MHz core and DirectX* 9 3D hardware acceleration, Intel® GMA 950 graphics provides performance on par with mainstream graphics card solutions that would typically cost significantly more."
Whoever wrote that line must have been borrowing Steve's Reality Distortion Field.
...shouldn't it be Synaptics? Their touchpads have been multitouch-capable since Apple was still using PowerPC chips and the iPhone was just some obscure Cisco product.
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...and not one of them is broken font rendering. Hell, it actually seems to have gotten even worse since Beta 7. I used to love FIrefox, but I'm definitely sticking with Chrome until they get that cleared up. That blurry nonsense hurts my eyes.
Oh ok, so they actually cover somewhere between 3-10% (we know for a fact that it's 3% by subscribers; they say they cover 10% but this is a telecom we're talking about). That's still a fair bit below your "there is enough of this faster broadband for anyone who wants it" statement, unless you're suggesting that everyone should move to Tampa, New York, or LA just to have access to decent broadband.
I live in metro Orlando and the fastest broadband available here is $60 a month for a whopping 15/1.5, and it's cable so that comes with all the usual cable caveats. Not to mention Bright House (Time Warner) has atrocious uptime - I get thrown offline at least once a day.
The only commercial fiber that I know of in the US is FiOS, and the coverage area of FiOS is so laughably small I'd be surprised if even 1% of Americans can get it.
I meant by way of custom ROMs. I of course don't expect Samsung or the US carriers to be forthcoming with updates, but with kernel and driver sources it's not incredibly difficult to port between the various GSM Galaxy S devices.
...it's just a re-badged Galaxy S. So those of us with GT-i9000s, Captivates, and Vibrants can basically expect every future version of Android within days of the source release. That's very good news, since last I heard Samsung had sold over 8 million Galaxy S devices so far.
It's not a fucking PC
That's exactly what a smartphone is: a tiny computer that can fit in your pocket. Apple just happens to make one that is shiny and fairly idiot-proof, but is ultimately little more than a toy version and incredibly difficult for the user to repair if it does break down. Android devices are a little more involved and difficult to jump into, but a lot more powerful and resilient in the long run.
Which sounds an awful lot like the Apple-vs-some-other-big-software-company situation, doesn't it?
They could always just, you know, get jobs, like those of the rest of us who weren't born into privilege have to do.
Just a thought.
How about parents take all the "responsibility of protecting children." Seeing as they are the ones who want to decide what "protecting" means, why should the ISPs, or government, or anyone else have to "share" (or more accurately in this case, shoulder entirely by themselves) that responsibility?
Also: come on people, it's not like your children are going to be scarred for life if they see a penis. Get over yourselves.
I had a TracFone...
TracFone is one of those no-contract prepaid deals. Mini SIM wasn't very commonplace back then, so it was probably "locked" in that sense, though.
In some browsers you can: In Dolphin HD for example, you can go to "Settings -> Advanced Settings -> Enable location" and clear the checkbox to disable it. You're also prompted the first time you visit each site that wants GPS location, which goes for the stock browser as well.
Of course this is irrelevant in Firefox mobile, as no site recognizes your Android phone as such anyways, and so won't ask for location access. I don't see an option pertaining to disabling this, however, for when they sort out the user agent.
All browsers need GPS location to pass on to sites that use it, such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter.
So the important things first: Performance is VASTLY improved over the first beta. The first beta was basically unusable on my Captivate (AT&T Galaxy S). This beta, on the other hand, is actually fairly snappy. The JavaScript performance is excellent as well; in fact, on the Sunspider benchmark I scored around 3600 ms, which is a staggering 2000 ms faster than Dolphin HD. I can even run some of the IE9 Test Drive demos at acceptable framerates, bizarrely, and Google Instant works just fine on the desktop version of Google.com. But therein lies a major problem: Firefox mobile still doesn't broadcast an Android user agent. I tried several sites that I know direct me to mobile versions in both the default browser and Dolphin, including Google, Engadget, and Ars. All of them take me to the desktop version of the page in Firefox. When you manually go to mobile versions, nothing recognizes your phone as an Android phone, so for example you get a generic version of Google.com/m rather than the special Android one. This beta still doesn't work with the Froyo flash plug-in, either. And while the font rendering is better, it's still nowhere near as easy to read as the stock browser. Overall, I'm glad to see this project is being taken seriously and a lot of progress is being made. But it's still a long way from being able to replace the stock Android browser for most, I'm afraid.
I just tried this out on my Galaxy S. That is the highest-end Android phone on the market right now and guess what? Still runs slower than a one-legged dog. It certainly doesn't help that nothing loaded as mobile versions, either (I suspect that it's failing to broadcast an Android user agent).
Ok, but what about the billions and billions of dollars they don't lose to piracy? Doesn't that factor into the pricing somehow?
It's generally a bad idea to try to factor imaginary money into your pricing scheme.
The GSM Galaxy S models (i9000, Captivate, and Vibrant) are easily rootable, quad-band, and are slated to definitely be getting Froyo in the next month or so (leaked builds are already widely available). Technologically, they're the best Android phones on the market. They're not perfect (no hardware keyboard, GPS is a bit flaky, and only the i9000 has properly-functioning HSUPA right now) but they're overall very solid models.
Manual transmissions are more difficult to use and require more attention be paid to them, leading to more accidents. Much like command-line interfaces. This goes both ways. Use whatever works better for YOUR needs and stop pointlessly bickering over it.
The thing is, by your very logic, DRM will never help sales. The people who wouldn't know where to look or wouldn't care to look for the pirated versions are never going to pirate anything, no matter how lax or strict the DRM; the people who are going to pirate the game will wait for a crack - which will come eventually - no matter how harsh the DRM might be. Putting ultra-restrictive DRM on a game is like putting a dozen deadbolts on a glass door: Anyone who wants in is just going to break the glass, and anyone who is deterred by the locks wasn't intending to break in anyways.
How many teenagers from 13-15 are going to be on their own plan, though? Almost anyone that age is simply going to be on their parents' or other relative's plan as an extra line. Hell, I'm 22 and still just using an extra line on my aunt's plan because hey, it's only $30 a month that way instead of $80, and college isn't getting any cheaper.
Cameras, photos, and video
Video recording, HD (720p) up to 30 frames per second with audio; still photos (960 x 720) with back camera
There is no ambiguity whatsoever to that sentence; the rear camera is not the same as the iPhone 4's.
Firefox has a "Preserve favorites data" option in its Ctrl+Shift+Del dialog. Sadly, it doesn't seem to work all that well, routinely deleting cookies for favorites anyways.
A massively multiplayer online game (also called MMO) is a multiplayer video game which is capable of supporting hundreds or thousands of players simultaneously. By necessity, they are played on the Internet, and feature at least one persistent world.
Oh lordy, I lived in Cleveland for a while, and whoever designed that Interstate should be drug out somewhere and shot. A sudden 90-degree curve on an Interstate highway leads to one of the highest traffic fatality spots in the nation? Who would have thought! Living in Cleveland with family in West Virginia, I had a lot of experience on roads there as well. It isn't just curves - the roads in that state in general are downright frightening to drive on.
At least when I bought all of my EVGA video cards, their lifetime warranty wasn't voided by overclocking, cooling mods, or even power surges. Pretty much the only way to break the card and not have the warranty cover it was to take a hammer to it. Not sure if it's still that way, but it was certainly damned impressive service at the time.
Sigh, I know *I'm* the one actually feeding the troll here, but: http://www.intel.com/consumer/products/technology/graphics.htm
The page for the GMA 950 even has this hilarious tidbit:
"With a powerful 400MHz core and DirectX* 9 3D hardware acceleration, Intel® GMA 950 graphics provides performance on par with mainstream graphics card solutions that would typically cost significantly more."
Whoever wrote that line must have been borrowing Steve's Reality Distortion Field.
...shouldn't it be Synaptics? Their touchpads have been multitouch-capable since Apple was still using PowerPC chips and the iPhone was just some obscure Cisco product.