Isn't the topic of discussion the lack of optical drives on *new* computers? I mean... the optical drive on your old computer that won't boot from USB isn't going to shrivel and die just because new devices no longer include obsolete tech...
That really is reassuring. Here the router/pipe owner is responsible for any and all traffic, so if someone logs in and downloads kiddie porn or anything else illegal, the owner is screwed - doesn't matter if they left the AP open. So... not many open hotspots. And the ones in commercial establishments are often quite expensive - 10€ an hour. Last time I paid that much for WiFi was on an intercontinental flight in 2006...
I don't know about having to try, but I'd sure as hell feel compelled to if I had no other prepaid options... the situation seems very tourist-unfriendly. Then again, you have far more open WiFi networks, so it might balance out... those are pretty rare here in Germany.
I have a whole box full of prepaid SIM cards (one or two per country) that I've picked up in Asia and Europe, pretty much all of which provided cheap mobile data at decent speeds (i.e. fast enough to support VoIP within the city limits)...
How much is the device you need to buy in order to get the prepaid SIM you're referring to? How much data does that $25/mo buy?
Well that sucks. I've been wondering where I'll be able to get a dumb pipe in the form of a SIM card next time I visit the States, but it looks like I might just have to rely on wifi:(
Welcome to yesterday. Sipdroid or some other SIP client on your phone and a router with SIP that allows you to connect a phone, et voila. Even works over 3G...
The issue isn't space on my machine for additional lossy versions, but rather a system for keeping it all organized:(
Using Subsonic or Winamp to transcode on demand seems easier because that way I don't need any duplicates... and transcoding on the fly for streaming is even easier;)
For the US people, however, buying music from Google Music and then streaming it is easier than downloading it somewhere else, uploading it to Google Music and then streaming it...
Only applies if you want to use Google Music whether or not you buy the music there, of course, but there is a certain convenience factor that's undeniable.
I mostly have FLAC music, and transcoding every time I sync to my phone is a pain. Figuring 500MB per album, I can only fit so and so much on a 32GB memory card (about 16GB of which is filled with other junk anyway)... and then when the mood strikes, the album I'd like to listen to usually isn't on my SD card. Google Music or Subsonic are great for those situations...
So... where is this Google-published list of SSID*s you speak of? Google doesn't provide the SSIDs and their locations to the public... it uses them internally for geolocation - your smartphone sends a list of the SSIDs around it and their signal strengths to the Google servers, and those send back your approximate location. No contents of the original transmission (not even the parts that you broadcast in clear text for anyone driving by to pick up) are ever divulged, so according to your Communications Act, it's just fine.
*SSID in this context meaning SSID and MAC Address and whatever else Google collects for geolocation purposes.
The packet sniffing issue was a whole other snafu - a big mistake on Google's part, and they were (IIRC?) rightly punished for it. This is a situation in which your eavesdropping metaphor applies, and AFAIK, Google no longer collects this information (and hasn't for a while)...
Marking down SSID & MAC Address locations, on the other hand, is completely benign IMO. More comparable to remembering the screaming couple on the lawn of that red brick house with the white picket fence;)
"So in your view, Google should use my hardware and info for free (no payment to me), while they charge me by selling my information in order for me to use their services? At least I can Opt-In to Google. Apparently you have to Opt-Out in their case."
How are they using your hardware? They're simply taking note of the fact that YOU are using your own hardware, and making a note of where you're using it.
"The latitude that the nerd crowd give google is amazing to me. If this was any other company they would be all up in arms. Google throws the geeks a bone by using a Linux kernel for the purpose of whoring out your personal data for a profit, and the geeks are falling over themselves to defend this sort of practice."
Not sure where you're going with this, but it's pretty much the other way around with me - Android is the first Linuxy product I've used, and is the only reason I've been exposed to open source operating systems at all...
"A home AP is NOT put out in public for the purpose of broadcasting it's info to the world. Typical wifi rarely reaches past someone's property at any usable range, just as someone might be able to get a glimpse in your window, but to sit there and peek in your windows would be an invasion of privacy, just as the police found when they tried to use heat sensing equipment that picked up thermal radiation through homes in order to detect the use of heat lamps and such equipment to grow weed. The supreme court agreed that a warrant was required to use thermal imaging. This doesn't strike me as being much different."
How is creating a location database the same thing as trying to determine what a person is doing inside their own home? You're drawing parallels that aren't really there...
A broadcast SSID + MAC address is comparable to a street address or the color of your fence... anyone can come by and take a gander, and nobody in their right mind would stop someone from saying, "Oh, I'm in front of that corner house with the white picket fence, so I must be 4 blocks away from where I want to go." - which is, essentially, all Google is doing.
And as for wifi typicially not reaching outside of people's property: If that were the case, WiFi geolocation wouldn't work and this whole discussion would be irrelevant.
Why for the love of God would you say that? WiFi geolocation is very useful, and extremely important these days, especially if you're having trouble getting a GPS fix.
Furthermore: An SSD is broadcasted - it's public. Why would you have any expectation of privacy?
If I hang a big sign that says "Bemymonkeyland" out in front of my house, do I have a right to stop people from using that as a location marker? Do I need to opt in to letting people say "Oh yeah, sure, the nearest McDonald's is three blocks down that way, right next to the Bemymonkeyland sign."? Same thing goes for "By the house with the red door and white picket fence." and "Next to the ugly ass broken down shack."
This. I've been using an X series tablet for my note taking needs for about two years now, and my productivity has skyrocketed since then... and the weight of my bag has plummeted, even with a 90W power supply, two 8-cell batteries and a regular X-Series Thinkpad in addition to the tablet.
Add OneNote and PDF Annotator to the mix and I'm taken care of perfectly.
Now all we need is Windows 8 ARM slates with Wacom digitizers - that would further cut the weight while keeping battery life the same and hopefully giving us a full MS Office Suite (for OneNote) and hopefully also PDF Annotator for ARM:)
The configuration in build.prop is exactly what waffle.zero was talking about: "declared screen dpi" is exactly the line "ro.sf.lcd_density=xxx" from build.prop;)
High resolution & low density in build.prop => tablet High resolution & high density in build.prop => big-ass phone
For all intents and purposes: Two. One is a Tegra2 device with 1GB of RAM and a WXGA screen that runs Android, sold by companies like Samsung, ASUS and Motorola. The other is the iPad...
I'm curious: Why did you go with X86? Wouldn't an ARM based system be much more power efficient? Hell, just slapping an Android tablet or one of the larger phones into the dash sounds pretty slick to me...
Were you really worried that Google wouldn't release Ice Cream Sandwich's source code because they didn't release Honeycomb's? The reasons for holding back HC were openly stated and quite equitable... Could you have imagined the chaos resulting from people trying to hack a tablet-only OS into their smartphone with half the phone functionality, and everything that makes the form factor work, missing completely?
Also: Ice Cream Sandwich practically *is* Honeycomb, but ready for public release due to being suitable for phone AND tablet form factors...
There is nothing available on Android that's anywhere near as functional as Siri (seems to be in the ads). Voice recognition is OK (but largely dependent on the quality of your device - if the manufacturer [HTC, cough] used cheap mics, no chance), but unless you want to call someone or search Google, you're going to need to do it the old fashioned way.
And yes, I'm one of the rabid Android fanboys you seem to be encountering so often;)
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Isn't the topic of discussion the lack of optical drives on *new* computers? I mean... the optical drive on your old computer that won't boot from USB isn't going to shrivel and die just because new devices no longer include obsolete tech...
That really is reassuring. Here the router/pipe owner is responsible for any and all traffic, so if someone logs in and downloads kiddie porn or anything else illegal, the owner is screwed - doesn't matter if they left the AP open. So... not many open hotspots. And the ones in commercial establishments are often quite expensive - 10€ an hour. Last time I paid that much for WiFi was on an intercontinental flight in 2006...
I don't know about having to try, but I'd sure as hell feel compelled to if I had no other prepaid options... the situation seems very tourist-unfriendly. Then again, you have far more open WiFi networks, so it might balance out... those are pretty rare here in Germany.
That sucks :(
I have a whole box full of prepaid SIM cards (one or two per country) that I've picked up in Asia and Europe, pretty much all of which provided cheap mobile data at decent speeds (i.e. fast enough to support VoIP within the city limits)...
How much is the device you need to buy in order to get the prepaid SIM you're referring to? How much data does that $25/mo buy?
Well that sucks. I've been wondering where I'll be able to get a dumb pipe in the form of a SIM card next time I visit the States, but it looks like I might just have to rely on wifi :(
I'm on prepaid (Germany)... 15€ per month for 5 gigs, tethering allowed, VoIP too.
I'm sure you could find a plan that's meant for 3G modems and just use that as well :)
Welcome to yesterday. Sipdroid or some other SIP client on your phone and a router with SIP that allows you to connect a phone, et voila. Even works over 3G...
Looks great!
The issue isn't space on my machine for additional lossy versions, but rather a system for keeping it all organized :(
Using Subsonic or Winamp to transcode on demand seems easier because that way I don't need any duplicates... and transcoding on the fly for streaming is even easier ;)
For the US people, however, buying music from Google Music and then streaming it is easier than downloading it somewhere else, uploading it to Google Music and then streaming it...
Only applies if you want to use Google Music whether or not you buy the music there, of course, but there is a certain convenience factor that's undeniable.
I mostly have FLAC music, and transcoding every time I sync to my phone is a pain. Figuring 500MB per album, I can only fit so and so much on a 32GB memory card (about 16GB of which is filled with other junk anyway)... and then when the mood strikes, the album I'd like to listen to usually isn't on my SD card. Google Music or Subsonic are great for those situations...
So... where is this Google-published list of SSID*s you speak of? Google doesn't provide the SSIDs and their locations to the public... it uses them internally for geolocation - your smartphone sends a list of the SSIDs around it and their signal strengths to the Google servers, and those send back your approximate location. No contents of the original transmission (not even the parts that you broadcast in clear text for anyone driving by to pick up) are ever divulged, so according to your Communications Act, it's just fine.
*SSID in this context meaning SSID and MAC Address and whatever else Google collects for geolocation purposes.
The packet sniffing issue was a whole other snafu - a big mistake on Google's part, and they were (IIRC?) rightly punished for it. This is a situation in which your eavesdropping metaphor applies, and AFAIK, Google no longer collects this information (and hasn't for a while)...
Marking down SSID & MAC Address locations, on the other hand, is completely benign IMO. More comparable to remembering the screaming couple on the lawn of that red brick house with the white picket fence ;)
My point is that
a) rebroadcasting TV and
b) making a list of when and where shows are broadcast
are two completely different things.
Just like creating a list of access points (b) is different from cracking the networks and surfing the web over them (a)...
"So in your view, Google should use my hardware and info for free (no payment to me), while they charge me by selling my information in order for me to use their services? At least I can Opt-In to Google. Apparently you have to Opt-Out in their case."
How are they using your hardware? They're simply taking note of the fact that YOU are using your own hardware, and making a note of where you're using it.
"The latitude that the nerd crowd give google is amazing to me. If this was any other company they would be all up in arms. Google throws the geeks a bone by using a Linux kernel for the purpose of whoring out your personal data for a profit, and the geeks are falling over themselves to defend this sort of practice."
Not sure where you're going with this, but it's pretty much the other way around with me - Android is the first Linuxy product I've used, and is the only reason I've been exposed to open source operating systems at all...
"A home AP is NOT put out in public for the purpose of broadcasting it's info to the world. Typical wifi rarely reaches past someone's property at any usable range, just as someone might be able to get a glimpse in your window, but to sit there and peek in your windows would be an invasion of privacy, just as the police found when they tried to use heat sensing equipment that picked up thermal radiation through homes in order to detect the use of heat lamps and such equipment to grow weed. The supreme court agreed that a warrant was required to use thermal imaging. This doesn't strike me as being much different."
How is creating a location database the same thing as trying to determine what a person is doing inside their own home? You're drawing parallels that aren't really there...
A broadcast SSID + MAC address is comparable to a street address or the color of your fence... anyone can come by and take a gander, and nobody in their right mind would stop someone from saying, "Oh, I'm in front of that corner house with the white picket fence, so I must be 4 blocks away from where I want to go." - which is, essentially, all Google is doing.
And as for wifi typicially not reaching outside of people's property: If that were the case, WiFi geolocation wouldn't work and this whole discussion would be irrelevant.
A completely different issue which is no longer ongoing, AFAIK.
Isn't it really the MAC that they collect?
How is creating a list of WiFi access points and their locations the same as rebroadcasting TV? It's more like copying a page out of the TV Guide.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geolocation
Why for the love of God would you say that? WiFi geolocation is very useful, and extremely important these days, especially if you're having trouble getting a GPS fix.
Furthermore: An SSD is broadcasted - it's public. Why would you have any expectation of privacy?
If I hang a big sign that says "Bemymonkeyland" out in front of my house, do I have a right to stop people from using that as a location marker? Do I need to opt in to letting people say "Oh yeah, sure, the nearest McDonald's is three blocks down that way, right next to the Bemymonkeyland sign."? Same thing goes for "By the house with the red door and white picket fence." and "Next to the ugly ass broken down shack."
This. I've been using an X series tablet for my note taking needs for about two years now, and my productivity has skyrocketed since then... and the weight of my bag has plummeted, even with a 90W power supply, two 8-cell batteries and a regular X-Series Thinkpad in addition to the tablet.
Add OneNote and PDF Annotator to the mix and I'm taken care of perfectly.
Now all we need is Windows 8 ARM slates with Wacom digitizers - that would further cut the weight while keeping battery life the same and hopefully giving us a full MS Office Suite (for OneNote) and hopefully also PDF Annotator for ARM :)
Maybe HTC just used better mics on the Evo 4G. The ones on my Desire are pretty horrible...
The configuration in build.prop is exactly what waffle.zero was talking about: "declared screen dpi" is exactly the line "ro.sf.lcd_density=xxx" from build.prop ;)
High resolution & low density in build.prop => tablet
High resolution & high density in build.prop => big-ass phone
For all intents and purposes: Two. One is a Tegra2 device with 1GB of RAM and a WXGA screen that runs Android, sold by companies like Samsung, ASUS and Motorola. The other is the iPad...
I'm curious: Why did you go with X86? Wouldn't an ARM based system be much more power efficient? Hell, just slapping an Android tablet or one of the larger phones into the dash sounds pretty slick to me...
Were you really worried that Google wouldn't release Ice Cream Sandwich's source code because they didn't release Honeycomb's? The reasons for holding back HC were openly stated and quite equitable... Could you have imagined the chaos resulting from people trying to hack a tablet-only OS into their smartphone with half the phone functionality, and everything that makes the form factor work, missing completely?
Also: Ice Cream Sandwich practically *is* Honeycomb, but ready for public release due to being suitable for phone AND tablet form factors...
There is nothing available on Android that's anywhere near as functional as Siri (seems to be in the ads). Voice recognition is OK (but largely dependent on the quality of your device - if the manufacturer [HTC, cough] used cheap mics, no chance), but unless you want to call someone or search Google, you're going to need to do it the old fashioned way.
And yes, I'm one of the rabid Android fanboys you seem to be encountering so often ;)