There are a fair number of active posters who posture themselves to raise that score, appealing to the majority view.
What if... those posters where actually expressing their very own views and it happened that it was shared by some moderators.
The problem with the moderation is that most people use it as a vote to upmod post that are in sync with their personal opinions or belief system while they should use it to highlight properly constructed post that actively enrich the debate. Can it give fair result in a polarized environment such as this one?
I admit i replied a little bit outside of the point and with some disregard to the actual article source and or content. I also recognize that my comment has been inspired by my very own impression that chinese bashing has become an olympic sport in our western culture. French or American.. same.
I don't see why you're differentiating between RMS demand that the source be free an the chinese demand to have access. In one case you don't get access to RMS controlled environment (gNewSense is it?) and in the other case you eventually don't get access to the chinese market. You're right companies are free to chose their business model and clients are free to request different conditions. It's still the prerogative of a country to decide what can or cannot cross it's border and under which conditions.
Would you see it differently if they had said that every pharmaceutical product should have it's formula disclosed and be tested by the chinese government before being released for sale in their country? Happens like that in Europe at least.
I'd be happy if Bush, Blair, Puttin, Sarkozy and Ahmadinejad and King Abdullah did the same.
I still strongly believe it's good. Not because I believe the Chinese government is up to any good. I don't even believe they are doing it for anything but their own benefit. Whether it's internal security (Which I believe) or corporate espionage (Which can happen since China's government is heavily corrupted and anything you give them will eventually leak.) or something else like baiting us to see how much power they have actually acquired in the market.
What I hope is that it will have a snowball effect and encourage other government to do the same. Because the US, Japan, Russia, Brazil and Iran for all I care will realize that relying on un-trustable platform for anything put them somehow at risk (perceived or real) and finally I hope that in time it will trickle down to the private and corporate consumers. For that to happen someone had to start asking for the source. It's the Chinese. Fine with me.
Someone said that preventing Chinese to access the source code was for the benefit of the Chinese citizen. I don't believe it will have much impact either way. Somehow it seems they managed to police their country quite well already and sometime with help from western owned interest. In my mind it's somewhere up there with the people who think PGP should be banned because terrorist might use it.
If a chinese freedom fighter gets his hand on the IOS source at least he'll know that there's no intercepting trojan on his router. see.. works both way.
Onto the moral high-ground, ask someone from another country (Doesn't matter where you're from) what is wrong with yours and then see who has the moral high-ground. Chances are no one has it but everyone believe he does. The US have the Irak war and Guantamo fiasco to answer to the "fascist" chinese internet proxy and political activist arrest. Chinese are still waiting for the Japanese to apologize for the Nanjing massacre and so on and so on.
Sending stuff out with virus has happened countless of time, that kind of story is recurring at least on slashdot and I doubt it's been done out of anything but carelessness.
When RMS wants the printer driver source code it's freedom protection.
When the chinese government wants his printer driver source code their trying to embezzle the gentle and caring westerners...
I thought source should be free?
I know American are scared, losing world leader status, economy going down the drain, hockey mom for vp and everything but seriously it's a great move on the Chinese government that you should be applauding. You should be hoping it will be replicated by ALL other governments and that distributing the source becomes an habit for HW manufacturer.
China has its issue (police state, freedom of the press...), but they seem sometime to have the balls to go where no other lobbyist sponsored government in the "free world" would go and when it's a good move at least have the intellectual honesty to recognize it.
The device looks ok.. but I didn't realize during the hype building process that HTC's device would be sim-locked to a network. So much for an open handset alliance product...
Is that thing going to be sold retail worldwide without having to go through an operator? Operator don't subsidize phone where I live anyway.:|
All those client personal information and social security numbers will be put to good use. The rest will be scrapped for parts.
Re:Everyone should try the other side
on
Tech Vs. Business?
·
· Score: 1
It was my point.:)
But most tech like me before don't have a clue about the business side of things. Most of them don't realize where the money for their salary and budget comes from and why sometime they need to make compromise. On the other side, if you give free reign to a sales guy, you'll often end up having to graft a kitchen sink on a baby giraffe because the prospect like the idea.. That would obviously not work, client would feel betrayed, sue the company into bankruptcy and so on.;)
Everyone should try the other side
on
Tech Vs. Business?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
During my career I have been on many side of the fence and it all boils down to what we think is important to get the job down and a lack of understanding of the other guy's role.
I have been a tech, developer in a software house, and the internal fight with the sale dept were daily occurrence. Some promises to a customer or some awful technical wording made it so we (tech) had to step up to the plate and "fix" something or implement some dumb feature overnight bypassing QA and all other SOP.
I hated those guys.. can't they have their fact straights?
Then I ended up in pre-sale and sale. I started with perfect technical speak, and it failed, message didn't register with the customers, so I dumbed it down, focused on the great colors, business efficiency, ROI, all that crap. It worked. And if you've done sale you know that every customer has a wish of x features your product can not do, so you try to explain to him how he could do otherwise with what's already there. Sometime the customer will be dead set and you know the concurrent can do xyz, and it's a 5 million dollar project and crap the profit will still be good even if you factor in tasking a dev for ten days to implements it. So you say yes. The company needs money and if it means annoying a guy in the dev team, well... screw him.
As an IT admin, there is nothing more annoying that a user who thinks that opening port xyz because he wants to use so and so application or doesn't understand why he cannot bittorent the latest whatever.
As a non-IT admin, I don't really care what's your problem, if it gets in the way of me making money, you're a problem, not a solution.
Having been on both side, I think it's all a matter of misunderstanding of how a company work and what makes it proficient. I think everyone should try to assess the question in term of "Is it good for the company" (efficiency and risk). And for their sake techies needs to take business classes and be able to lay down their analysis in terms someone from management can care about and cut on the tech speak.
hm, well on track it is. I can't say they are not working on it. The original release date was a little bit different.
"The Palm Island Dubai will officially be handed over at the end of May 2007."
(http://www.articlesbase.com/travel-articles/dubai-palm-island-109318.html)
It customary here to push back the release date, modify every "visible" document and proudly announce that "We are right on track, exactly as we planed it.". Since local news outlet play the self-censoring, government praising game there is no one to deny any of it. By law it is forbidden to criticize the government or any "friendly nation".
In the case of palm island they did something a little more subtle. They announced an initial date for completion and let everyone assume that date meant complete completion, release of the villa's and so on. When in fact it meant (or they decided it would mean afterward) first release of the first building on the trunk of the palm as close to the shore as possible (They were a good year off anyway). But hey, that's SOP for master developers worldwide who can't gives a damn about the guy who's paying his mortgage for two more years while patiently waiting for his house to be "released". A good chunk of the real estate investment in Dxb can be linked to money laundering anyway, a lot of investors don't really care if the houses are released. But that's another topic.
Apparently they opened the first "crescent" to the public earlier this week and I plan to go check it out during the week end. It's still is an interesting curiosity.
Yes, it happens everywhere. That was my point, Dubai has nothing special, some qualities, some flaws. Beaches, desert, night clubs, cinema, traffic jam. It's not too bad to live there provided you have a decent salary. We get 4 months of scorching hot weather and the rest of the year is delicious.
My point was that Dubai is the only town of 3 millions inhabitants (75% expatriates on temporary visa) where they announce a new revolutionary mega-project every week even though Dubai's economy register as 17 times smaller than that of NYC.
I just get tired of stupid newspaper reporting on every dreamy Dubai PR as something that "will happen" when the town can barely manage itself at the moment.
Welcome to Dubai everyone where the greatest design meets the big money and the best projects a build out of nothing but desert sands.... OR NOT...
I can answer his question about whether "food supply and waste system are taken care for" the answer is NO. Dubai sewerage system has been operating at twice its capacity for a couple of years and the new plant which is due in a couple of years is already not enough.
This was only one "small" issue amongst too many to list. The government and whatever service in charge were overwhelmed and incapable to do anything to fix it. Or didn't care. Let's note that the residential complex has been built about 250 meters away from the sewerage treatment plant. Smell of shit can be enjoyed night and day there even where there is no flood. glitzy..
Dubai is about glitz and money, big tower and man made island but all that is nothing but smoke and mirror, the reality is that the town has not much to live up to the reputation it is trying to build for itself by announcing mega-project over mega-project while finishing none of them.
Palm Island: Delayed. Some apartments were released and the outside walls started cracking due to foundation issues. Who would have thought building on wet sand would be tough.:)
World shaped Island: Delayed.. no one talks about it anymore around here. Full media blackout. Official statement is "Everything has been sold, we are on track". On track for what? when? no one knows. I doubt anyone ever bought any of those island. For half the price you'd get your own real island in SE Asia where the weather is nicer and the repression is much gentler.
Burj Dubai, biggest tower in the world. Well according the the view by my window... Delayed
Dubai Mall (biggest mall in the world, or so it says): Was supposed to open two weeks back in August but when I passes by it yesterday they were still busy pouring concrete.
I could go on and on with my rant. I just want to add that we live behind a filtering proxy that bars any website that dares commenting against the UAE and it is very well possible that slashdot will go bye bye for a few days because of this comment. Just as it already did last year.
Forget about mega-projects announced by Dubai Gov or related entities. It's nothing but an attention whoring press release from a city that would love to play in the big league.
If you care to come around to verify that by yourself you're welcome but be careful what you pack though: http://thetruthaboutdubai.com/?p=4
I know JavaScript is the future of everything only because it's the only language that is available on "The Cloud" access devices (read "web browser" for you non web3.0 equipped reader) and it's good it get some optimization but when I see image manipulation software written in javascript and running inside a browser I mentally form the image of a giant rubber hammer trying to force a screw into a concrete wall.
I've done *a lot* of javascript dev over the last 10 years, and I can tell one thing, execution speed of javascript has never really been my most important issue. In order network communications, DOM manipulation and that retarded single thread execution model where way higher on my annoyance list.
My hope is that someone will come up with a "pluggable" script engine that can be updated on demand so that I actually use those latest feature instead of having to target 5 years old tech if I don't want to lose potential clients.
And yes I imply they should port their engine to IE.:)
I was roaming around electronic shops in Singapore a few months back and I've seen hundredth of Chinese iphone copies. Some of them even added nice features like FM radio and TV tuners on top of an already 3G phone. Some of them look really decent from a physical point of view but in all of them the operating system and interface seemed clumsy and literally rushed out of the door when compared to a UIQ, Windows Mobile or Iphone.
It's not that difficult to put together a physical phone since most chipsets are fully integrated little marvel. Building an operating system and all the applications a user expects takes a while. Polishing them until they shine, ala apple, takes even longer.
Now I am just wondering what will happen, if Google keep its promises, when those manufacturers will get access to the Android system for free. I saw at least 5 or 6 iclones that I would gladly use if the system was decent. It could very well be a revolution.
We do in fact have a dedicated server for subversion and a couple other for demo/testing/playground whatever.
When I say Google App, I'm only talking about the email service. I don't believe in "the cloud" for everything and there is no way I would use their crude online text editor and spreadsheet. I do most of my work in plane and airport and I need to have my data and software with me. Heck, I'm reading my mail in outlook or thunderbird (depending on the OS) with google app IMAP. Never used the gmail interface unless I need to do some deep search that neither outlook nor thunderbird can handle.
I don't need to imagine it. I worked there.:) Google Apps is as far as email hosting goes a few orders of magnitude better than what any ISP cares to provide. It's a god sent gift to any SOHO. Probably not the ideal solution for a fortune 500 or companies with privacy issue (lawyers, Al-qaeda).
We use google Apps for email and to be really honest no one here noticed the issue and I trust the email that could not reach gmail server during the outage will be retransmitted in time.
The reliability of our mail server was far worse when we hosted it ourselves, particularly when some of the SEA-ME-WE cables got cut and our provider lost all connectivity for a couple of days.
I am certain that if I had big money to waste I could build my own email servers farms and target the five nines but right now we are paying $0 and we are getting a pretty decent service.
Those IT manager using the free service and expecting mission critical uptime should really go out more often and get a grip on reality.
Let's see, to set up my own five/nine email servers I would need at least two hosting location on different backbone, each of them should have at least two redundant servers. And of course I should have one spare that I can ship express whenever one fail.
Fixed Cost (Investment)
Decent server (RAID, Redudant PS): $3,500x5= $17,500
Operating system license: RHEL Standard subscription: $799 (optional of course)
Software license: $0 (sendmail etc..)
Monthly Recurring Cost
Hosting with decent SLA: $500x2= $1,000
Email Administrator (IT Admin): $10,000(?)
Replacement Parts: $100(?)
Implementation time
2 to 6 months (including, research, documentation)
Of course I pulled the numbers out of my hat but it should be enough to show that there is no way a SOHO will ever have the mean to do it and that it is unrealistic to expect that kind of service for free or cheap.
It's not exactly related but Al Jazeera just had a piece about a pedophile who got arrested last year after interpol "unwarped" some picture he had put online.
Maybe those new tech might be used to produce that kind of useful result and not only better pops and moms holiday pictures..
Old article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/oct/19/ukcrime.internationalcrime
Ok, my mistake, it seems Android is using apache harmony classlib. I was still on the old impression that they were not using a classic jvm but only a java compiler to "dalvik" and had their own API instead of sun's classic library. From what I've read very quickly because I don't care so much:)
Let's then hope then, they'll be the first one to make java not suck so badly on a mobile phone.:)
AFAIK Android doesn't run Java(TM) the platform by SUN(TM). The primary (only for now) development language has the same syntax as Java but none of the Java "JRE" API. The compiled bytecode is not the same and your pre-existing Java mobile application will not run nor can you recompile for it.
Java, Objective C, C#, Python, whatever. It takes few hours to pick up a new language syntax but much longer to properly use a complex API. Since Android is no more Java than C++ is the STL I don't think it's giving much of a headstart to the mobile bean head out there.:)
I want to love this handset (not *make* love. You are a freak) but I'll reserve my opinion until there is a video where I can actually see something.
Slashdot Mirror
There are a fair number of active posters who posture themselves to raise that score, appealing to the majority view.
What if... those posters where actually expressing their very own views and it happened that it was shared by some moderators.
The problem with the moderation is that most people use it as a vote to upmod post that are in sync with their personal opinions or belief system while they should use it to highlight properly constructed post that actively enrich the debate. Can it give fair result in a polarized environment such as this one?
I admit i replied a little bit outside of the point and with some disregard to the actual article source and or content. I also recognize that my comment has been inspired by my very own impression that chinese bashing has become an olympic sport in our western culture. French or American.. same.
:)
I don't see why you're differentiating between RMS demand that the source be free an the chinese demand to have access. In one case you don't get access to RMS controlled environment (gNewSense is it?) and in the other case you eventually don't get access to the chinese market. You're right companies are free to chose their business model and clients are free to request different conditions. It's still the prerogative of a country to decide what can or cannot cross it's border and under which conditions.
Would you see it differently if they had said that every pharmaceutical product should have it's formula disclosed and be tested by the chinese government before being released for sale in their country? Happens like that in Europe at least.
I'd be happy if Bush, Blair, Puttin, Sarkozy and Ahmadinejad and King Abdullah did the same. I still strongly believe it's good. Not because I believe the Chinese government is up to any good. I don't even believe they are doing it for anything but their own benefit. Whether it's internal security (Which I believe) or corporate espionage (Which can happen since China's government is heavily corrupted and anything you give them will eventually leak.) or something else like baiting us to see how much power they have actually acquired in the market.
What I hope is that it will have a snowball effect and encourage other government to do the same. Because the US, Japan, Russia, Brazil and Iran for all I care will realize that relying on un-trustable platform for anything put them somehow at risk (perceived or real) and finally I hope that in time it will trickle down to the private and corporate consumers. For that to happen someone had to start asking for the source. It's the Chinese. Fine with me.
Someone said that preventing Chinese to access the source code was for the benefit of the Chinese citizen. I don't believe it will have much impact either way. Somehow it seems they managed to police their country quite well already and sometime with help from western owned interest. In my mind it's somewhere up there with the people who think PGP should be banned because terrorist might use it.
If a chinese freedom fighter gets his hand on the IOS source at least he'll know that there's no intercepting trojan on his router. see.. works both way.
Onto the moral high-ground, ask someone from another country (Doesn't matter where you're from) what is wrong with yours and then see who has the moral high-ground. Chances are no one has it but everyone believe he does. The US have the Irak war and Guantamo fiasco to answer to the "fascist" chinese internet proxy and political activist arrest. Chinese are still waiting for the Japanese to apologize for the Nanjing massacre and so on and so on.
Sending stuff out with virus has happened countless of time, that kind of story is recurring at least on slashdot and I doubt it's been done out of anything but carelessness.
Ok, now I seriously need to go back to work...
I thought source should be free?
I know American are scared, losing world leader status, economy going down the drain, hockey mom for vp and everything but seriously it's a great move on the Chinese government that you should be applauding. You should be hoping it will be replicated by ALL other governments and that distributing the source becomes an habit for HW manufacturer.
China has its issue (police state, freedom of the press...), but they seem sometime to have the balls to go where no other lobbyist sponsored government in the "free world" would go and when it's a good move at least have the intellectual honesty to recognize it.
doesn't seem to bother those people much. see: http://www.fcuk.com/
The device looks ok.. but I didn't realize during the hype building process that HTC's device would be sim-locked to a network. So much for an open handset alliance product...
:|
Is that thing going to be sold retail worldwide without having to go through an operator? Operator don't subsidize phone where I live anyway.
All those client personal information and social security numbers will be put to good use. The rest will be scrapped for parts.
It was my point. :) ;)
But most tech like me before don't have a clue about the business side of things. Most of them don't realize where the money for their salary and budget comes from and why sometime they need to make compromise. On the other side, if you give free reign to a sales guy, you'll often end up having to graft a kitchen sink on a baby giraffe because the prospect like the idea.. That would obviously not work, client would feel betrayed, sue the company into bankruptcy and so on.
During my career I have been on many side of the fence and it all boils down to what we think is important to get the job down and a lack of understanding of the other guy's role.
... screw him.
I have been a tech, developer in a software house, and the internal fight with the sale dept were daily occurrence. Some promises to a customer or some awful technical wording made it so we (tech) had to step up to the plate and "fix" something or implement some dumb feature overnight bypassing QA and all other SOP.
I hated those guys.. can't they have their fact straights?
Then I ended up in pre-sale and sale. I started with perfect technical speak, and it failed, message didn't register with the customers, so I dumbed it down, focused on the great colors, business efficiency, ROI, all that crap. It worked. And if you've done sale you know that every customer has a wish of x features your product can not do, so you try to explain to him how he could do otherwise with what's already there. Sometime the customer will be dead set and you know the concurrent can do xyz, and it's a 5 million dollar project and crap the profit will still be good even if you factor in tasking a dev for ten days to implements it. So you say yes. The company needs money and if it means annoying a guy in the dev team, well
As an IT admin, there is nothing more annoying that a user who thinks that opening port xyz because he wants to use so and so application or doesn't understand why he cannot bittorent the latest whatever. As a non-IT admin, I don't really care what's your problem, if it gets in the way of me making money, you're a problem, not a solution.
Having been on both side, I think it's all a matter of misunderstanding of how a company work and what makes it proficient. I think everyone should try to assess the question in term of "Is it good for the company" (efficiency and risk).
And for their sake techies needs to take business classes and be able to lay down their analysis in terms someone from management can care about and cut on the tech speak.
Did you try contacting Dell to get another copy of the cd?
I don't know what their policy is. Just curious.
Not letting you use a product you didn't pay for is lack of respect?
If you don't want to pay for a product for sale use something else but don't say the publisher should give you tea and cookie to go with your theft.
hm, well on track it is. I can't say they are not working on it. The original release date was a little bit different.
"The Palm Island Dubai will officially be handed over at the end of May 2007." (http://www.articlesbase.com/travel-articles/dubai-palm-island-109318.html)
It customary here to push back the release date, modify every "visible" document and proudly announce that "We are right on track, exactly as we planed it.". Since local news outlet play the self-censoring, government praising game there is no one to deny any of it. By law it is forbidden to criticize the government or any "friendly nation".
In the case of palm island they did something a little more subtle. They announced an initial date for completion and let everyone assume that date meant complete completion, release of the villa's and so on. When in fact it meant (or they decided it would mean afterward) first release of the first building on the trunk of the palm as close to the shore as possible (They were a good year off anyway). But hey, that's SOP for master developers worldwide who can't gives a damn about the guy who's paying his mortgage for two more years while patiently waiting for his house to be "released". A good chunk of the real estate investment in Dxb can be linked to money laundering anyway, a lot of investors don't really care if the houses are released. But that's another topic.
Apparently they opened the first "crescent" to the public earlier this week and I plan to go check it out during the week end. It's still is an interesting curiosity.
Yes, it happens everywhere. That was my point, Dubai has nothing special, some qualities, some flaws. Beaches, desert, night clubs, cinema, traffic jam. It's not too bad to live there provided you have a decent salary. We get 4 months of scorching hot weather and the rest of the year is delicious.
My point was that Dubai is the only town of 3 millions inhabitants (75% expatriates on temporary visa) where they announce a new revolutionary mega-project every week even though Dubai's economy register as 17 times smaller than that of NYC.
I just get tired of stupid newspaper reporting on every dreamy Dubai PR as something that "will happen" when the town can barely manage itself at the moment.
Btw, did you know Dubai will have the world largest fountain in the whole entire world? http://www.sizzledcore.com/2008/07/01/worlds-largest-fountain-building-in-dubai/
Actually in Dubai we put our finger in our hears and shout "Lalalala" until the problem goes away.
I can answer his question about whether "food supply and waste system are taken care for" the answer is NO. Dubai sewerage system has been operating at twice its capacity for a couple of years and the new plant which is due in a couple of years is already not enough.
For a quick overview of how glitzy this town really is you can check those:
2 weeks sewerage flood
http://www.gulfnews.com/Nation/Society/10225546.html
This was only one "small" issue amongst too many to list. The government and whatever service in charge were overwhelmed and incapable to do anything to fix it. Or didn't care. Let's note that the residential complex has been built about 250 meters away from the sewerage treatment plant. Smell of shit can be enjoyed night and day there even where there is no flood. glitzy..
Dubai is about glitz and money, big tower and man made island but all that is nothing but smoke and mirror, the reality is that the town has not much to live up to the reputation it is trying to build for itself by announcing mega-project over mega-project while finishing none of them.
I could go on and on with my rant. I just want to add that we live behind a filtering proxy that bars any website that dares commenting against the UAE and it is very well possible that slashdot will go bye bye for a few days because of this comment. Just as it already did last year.
Forget about mega-projects announced by Dubai Gov or related entities. It's nothing but an attention whoring press release from a city that would love to play in the big league.
If you care to come around to verify that by yourself you're welcome but be careful what you pack though: http://thetruthaboutdubai.com/?p=4
Or maybe he realized getting anything trivial approved through Debian super-democratic process takes longer than electing an American president...
I guess that's already way past my abilities.
I know JavaScript is the future of everything only because it's the only language that is available on "The Cloud" access devices (read "web browser" for you non web3.0 equipped reader) and it's good it get some optimization but when I see image manipulation software written in javascript and running inside a browser I mentally form the image of a giant rubber hammer trying to force a screw into a concrete wall.
:)
I've done *a lot* of javascript dev over the last 10 years, and I can tell one thing, execution speed of javascript has never really been my most important issue. In order network communications, DOM manipulation and that retarded single thread execution model where way higher on my annoyance list.
My hope is that someone will come up with a "pluggable" script engine that can be updated on demand so that I actually use those latest feature instead of having to target 5 years old tech if I don't want to lose potential clients. And yes I imply they should port their engine to IE.
The politician who will vote to let you opt out of political telemarketing call will never be elected due to lack of funding.. aaaah paradox.. :)
I was roaming around electronic shops in Singapore a few months back and I've seen hundredth of Chinese iphone copies. Some of them even added nice features like FM radio and TV tuners on top of an already 3G phone. Some of them look really decent from a physical point of view but in all of them the operating system and interface seemed clumsy and literally rushed out of the door when compared to a UIQ, Windows Mobile or Iphone.
It's not that difficult to put together a physical phone since most chipsets are fully integrated little marvel. Building an operating system and all the applications a user expects takes a while. Polishing them until they shine, ala apple, takes even longer.
Now I am just wondering what will happen, if Google keep its promises, when those manufacturers will get access to the Android system for free. I saw at least 5 or 6 iclones that I would gladly use if the system was decent. It could very well be a revolution.
We do in fact have a dedicated server for subversion and a couple other for demo/testing/playground whatever.
When I say Google App, I'm only talking about the email service. I don't believe in "the cloud" for everything and there is no way I would use their crude online text editor and spreadsheet. I do most of my work in plane and airport and I need to have my data and software with me. Heck, I'm reading my mail in outlook or thunderbird (depending on the OS) with google app IMAP. Never used the gmail interface unless I need to do some deep search that neither outlook nor thunderbird can handle.
I don't need to imagine it. I worked there. :)
Google Apps is as far as email hosting goes a few orders of magnitude better than what any ISP cares to provide. It's a god sent gift to any SOHO. Probably not the ideal solution for a fortune 500 or companies with privacy issue (lawyers, Al-qaeda).
Those IT manager using the free service and expecting mission critical uptime should really go out more often and get a grip on reality.
Let's see, to set up my own five/nine email servers I would need at least two hosting location on different backbone, each of them should have at least two redundant servers. And of course I should have one spare that I can ship express whenever one fail.
Fixed Cost (Investment)
Monthly Recurring Cost
Implementation time
Of course I pulled the numbers out of my hat but it should be enough to show that there is no way a SOHO will ever have the mean to do it and that it is unrealistic to expect that kind of service for free or cheap.
It's not exactly related but Al Jazeera just had a piece about a pedophile who got arrested last year after interpol "unwarped" some picture he had put online.
Maybe those new tech might be used to produce that kind of useful result and not only better pops and moms holiday pictures..
Old article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/oct/19/ukcrime.internationalcrime
Ok, my mistake, it seems Android is using apache harmony classlib. I was still on the old impression that they were not using a classic jvm but only a java compiler to "dalvik" and had their own API instead of sun's classic library. From what I've read very quickly because I don't care so much :)
:)
Let's then hope then, they'll be the first one to make java not suck so badly on a mobile phone.
AFAIK Android doesn't run Java(TM) the platform by SUN(TM). The primary (only for now) development language has the same syntax as Java but none of the Java "JRE" API. The compiled bytecode is not the same and your pre-existing Java mobile application will not run nor can you recompile for it.
:)
Java, Objective C, C#, Python, whatever. It takes few hours to pick up a new language syntax but much longer to properly use a complex API. Since Android is no more Java than C++ is the STL I don't think it's giving much of a headstart to the mobile bean head out there.
I want to love this handset (not *make* love. You are a freak) but I'll reserve my opinion until there is a video where I can actually see something.