You DO realize what you basically said was "the difference is stealing from someone I like VS someone I hate" right?
No, I was interested in the difference between stealing and violating an unjust law out of necessity. I have no personal sympathy for tomtom.
I do have a personal interest in being able to use my mp3 player without paying people who have done no work at all for me. Although software patents do not exist in my country yet, it's just a matter of time before my legislation gets infected too.
In case you don't know your history in the late 70s MSFT bought QDOS, and with it the first FAT (now called FAT 12) and then they paid for R&D to create FAT16 and later FAT32. It didn't just magically come into existence you know.
The patent is not about FAT32. It's about a scheme for storing long filenames alongside short ones. Which is something everybody and his dog could devise in a few hours of work. The problem is that even if I, to respect MSFT's IP, invented a better one, it would be of no use to me, because the only scheme we're interested in is the MSFT one, because that's the only one Windows will understand.
And from what I understand MSFT licenses FAT dirt cheap, which is why the flash drive manufacturers never bothered coming up with something else. So like it or not there is NO difference between MSFT and Busybox when it comes to suing. None at all. Both paid good money to develop a product and in both cases someone else gave them the finger and took it, end of story.
Well, the fact that tomtom and MSFT settled out of court should at least give you some doubt about the simplicity of your reconstruction. Anyhow, I was more interested in the moral difference between the two cases. And by the way, IIRC the busybox developers are trying to stop the lawsuits against companies who, according to them, inadvertently violated their copyrights: that makes them different from a patent troll.
What I find funny is the FSF and other FLOSS advocates (like yourself) arguing over Mono VS Java and Theora VS H.264 when you are all about to get train fucked and don't even know it! You see MSFT came out with this little piece of tech called exFAT that even the drives at the local Big Lots are starting to come formatted with. And unlike FAT32 with its cheap license, or.NET which has the "we'll not sue" covenant exFAT IS patented up the ass and they WILL sue if you don't shell out for licenses. So while everyone at the FSF argues over whether binary blobs should be allowed they are about to find out how nasty things can be when no PMP, or cell phone, or flash drive, or pretty much any mobile device will work with FLOSS unless you break out your checkbook.
Now I don't understand, that's exactly my concern. Why doesn't that scream to you "software patents suck and need to be abolished"?
You know, I really hoped that Linux would present a "third way" and allow real competition in the X86/64 arena, but all this crap over Mono and H.264 and now exFAT (which I swear to God I had one FLOSSie say with straight face say to use EXT3 with all that overhead on flash drives) it is pretty obvious to me the zealots rule FLOSS and are determined to keep it a niche that fits their agenda. So please, don't use Mono, or H.264, and format all your flash drives with EXT3, whatever. In less than 3 years Linux won't be able to hook with jack shit as all drives will be coming with exFAT and Windows 8 will probably drop the old FAT32 leaving FLOSS swinging in the breeze. it is a damned shame, as the competition would have been nice, but zealotry never helps, only hurts.
I think that actually "FLOSS" isn't "ruled" by anyone. Everyone will do whatever he likes. In fact, the usage of mono among "FLOSSies" is growing. I personally use h264 because it's better than Theora and
I find no appeal in dynamic typing. It just makes programs harder to read and debug. Have you tried Scala? With type inference, it manages to get the type-safety of static typing along with the reduced verbosity traditionally associated to dynamically typed languages.
As for inconsistencies, how many mutually incompatible versions of Java are there?
Isn't extreme backward compatibility the reason Java gets most often bashed for? For what I know, any 1.1 source code should compile fine under java 1.7 (unless you used something like "assert" as a symbol name, but even then you should get away by using the -source switch for the compiler).
How many revamps compared to languages stewarded by standardization bodies or other neutral actors? (C has, what, 3 over it's 40 years of history?)
I'd say that the best thing Oracle could do for Java would be to give it to ISO, but I think it's 10 years too late. I'd love to be surprised, though.
To be honest, every single C compiler out there defines its own incompatible implementation of C. That's because the standards move so slowly that every manufacturer tends to put its own custom features in his compiler. I don't recall this happening with Java, only MS tried to do that with J++ IIRC, but Apache Harmony, the Eclipse compiler, OpenJDK, GNU Classpath and Sun's JDK all implement the very same language if I'm not wrong.
That said, I'm favorable to an independent standardization of Java, but I don't think it will solve any problem of Java.
Namespaces are useful, and custom namespaces cut down on a lot of the clutter in Java, but they shouldn't be necessary for basic functionality.
In fact they aren't. Java automatically imports the java.lang package, so for "basic functionality" all you might have to import are the java.net or java.io packages. Which is quite reasonable since Java is designed to work (and does work) on systems which might not have access to either the network or the file system. And a string like "java.net" is pretty far from the "fifteen layers deep classpath" you were grieving about.
The way I see it (YMMV, of course) K&R C provides pretty much the functionality that any language should have as part of the core language spec; if I can do something in n characters in C but it takes me 10n characters to do it in some newer and supposedly better language, I'm hard-pressed to consider that an improvement.
Leaving aside any considerations about the quality of C's standard library, which is apparent to anyone wo has used it, let's do a comparison.
In C, in order for your program to do any kind of interaction with the external world, you have to #include <stdio.h>. In Java, you don't import anything.
In C, in order to allocate some memory, you have to #include <stdlib.h> (otherwise, you won't even get NULL!), and <string.h> if you want to do anything useful with that memory. In Java, you don't import anything.
In C, if you want to use a socket, you #include <sys/types.h> and <sys/socket.h>. And <unistd.h> if you want to be able to read() from it. In Java, you import java.net, which is not only much shorter than that, but will also provide much nicer names for the imported symbols: and while you might like the terseness of names such as "fcntl", you'll agree that at least for higher level functionality, more informative names are needed, which is why all C-based high level libaries tend to have extremely long, reverse-polish names such as gtk_file_chooser_get_preview_filename_utf8. And unlike Java, where you can get away with importing the "namespace" just once, in C you'll have to repeat that stuff for every single use of your imported symbol.
Moreover, in Java, if you use a plain IDE, which is provided for free by the same people who develop the language, you can just right click the source code and select "fix imports" to have it automatically add import clauses for every external class you've been using.
You are ignoring the differences between a copyright violation and a patent violation.
That is, stealing somebody's work (busybox) versus using a decades-old idea, with zero R&D value, for interoperability reasons only (tomtom).
Furthermore, you're ignoring why tomtom resorted to fat32: not for its technical merits (in fact, fat32 is currently the *worst* filesystem currently available to a linux developer), but because of microsoft's monopoly on end-users' operating systems, which results in the fact that an ext3-formatted usb storage would be unusable for most people.
In the end, your post is a clear explanation of why one shouldn't use Mono. You say, "like it or not FAT32 rightfully belongs to MSFT". The same is true for.NET. "Dont' like it? Well there is EXT3". It's too late now to promote an open file system as a standard for information interchange over removable media, but it's not too late to avoid Mono and use Java (or something else).
Good luck using a bluetooth keyboard in the BIOS for example.
By the way, if you have a Bluetooth dongle with HID support, a Bluetooth keyboard will work even in the BIOS. It will be seen as a standard USB/HID device. Just tested it with Apple's wireless keyboard on two different PCs.
I always use Bluetooth to sync my phone with my PC. Whenever my phone enters the PC's range, it automatically syncs media and PIM data in the background with no intervention from me. I can also send text messages and receive phone calls using the PC - not that I use this feature very much, but it'd be nice if I was a heavy SMS user.
I also prefer a cable over the hassle of having to recharge two sets of batteries to keep my keyboard running. I think a nice solution would be to have Bluetooth devices recharge via USB, and work as USB/HID devices while doing so. That's how the PlayStation 3 controllers work. This way, when your keyboard's batteries are running out, you just plug the usb cable and keep using the keyboard in wired mode, until they're charged.
You care about the average Joe because he seemingly gets to decide which codec is hardware accelerated
Yes but "hardware acceleration" means cheap devices which only play media when encoded with certain codecs, only at some bitrates, only at certain resolutions and colour depths, and only when in certains containers: all of this, together with obscure, unfixable hardware bugs which result in defective playback when the media was encoded a hair differently from the streams the device was tested on.
I suppose fixed function decoders can be power efficient, but before my battery life, I care about a device that DOES play my stuff. Usually you can't know the details of the media supported by a device before buying it, because its box will probably read "plays h.264" instead of "plays h.264 baseline profile only, with resolutions from 128x128 to 512x512 and a framerate multiple of 16".
The right thing to do for video acceleration is to extend CPUs (GPUs, DSPs) instruction sets in order to provide general acceleration for any kind of media. This is perfectly possible with today's devices (my 2006 phone plays PAL-encoded DivX movies just fine, without any assistance from its manufacturer). Fixed function hardware is a thing of the past.
It's not entirely true. In Italy, the judges of the Court of Cassation, when in joint session, can make sentences which are very similar to common law precedents, and have a major importance. (Especially when they cover matters that aren't well specified by the written law.)
Perhaps this agreement is about ClearType. It's covered by known MS patents, and that's why subpixel font rendering is disabled in many Linux distributions.
Amazon might need it, or some related technology, for its Kindle.
Like other Android phones, there is no multitouch implemented in the touchscreen interface.
And that's BETTER! Three-finger gestures? How many fingers remain in my hand to hold the phone? I've never seen a really useful multi-touch gesture, apart from pinch-zooming. Which still is very uncomfortable if you hold your phone with a single hand.
For those who use their smartphones for gaming, this really limits the ability of the phone of as a gaming platform (with respect to touchscreen controls). Gaming on the iPhone has really been taking off, although I still think hardware buttons work best for fast-paced and twitch gaming.
You say everything. Hardware buttons work best, and Android phones have them. (Well, most of them.)
By the way, the most successful touchscreen gaming device, Nintendo DS, has a resistive touchscreen and hasn't got multitouch.
So then you have to carry around dozens of extra cards for different apps for different occasions, another thing to try-not-to-lose.
Why, you just buy a bigger SD card (currently you'd spend about 25 $ for an 8 GB one), put it in your phone once, and likely won't ever take it out until you want to upgrade to a larger one.
And they say its expandable up to 32gb, but i can't find any micro-sd that exceeds 16. Just me?
I don't think there are micro SD cards larger than 16 GB in shops yet. But the SDHC standard allows for cards up to 32 GB, so when the cards will be out (and affordable), they'll work. Larger cards will NOT work, though (unless the phone gets upgraded to the SDXC standard, which would support cards up to 2 TB, but I've never seen such an upgrade take place).
The reason apps are stored in internal memory is to prevent users from removing apps when they remove the SD card.
Why? Couldn't the phone just pop up a message box asking for confirmation to terminate all running apps using the SD card, before unmounting it? That's what all other phone manufacturers do.
My guess is that they did not include this feature because they did not have the time to test all of its implications, and will later implement it in an OS update if people complain loudly enough about it. They've fixed a lot of glitches during the 1.6 -> 2.0 upgrade, and it took them just a few months. I think it's quite probable that they will fix this too.
I agree. Moreover, you can find SD cards costing half as much as phone manufacturers would typically make you pay for the same amount of integrated flash memory.
And with removable media you can extend your phone's memory over time, as you need it: there's no need to drain your wallet by buying a phone with more memory than you need at the moment because you think you might need more in the future (only to discover after six months that flash prices went down by 50%). You just buy a new card if and when you need it, at lower prices.
Yes, but the Nexus-6 will have its lifespan artificially limited to four years, so you'll have to buy a new phone after that. Moreover, should its AI become aware of this, the phone might get mad and intentionally explode in your trousers' pocket.
It's 1.6. Thanks for the good news, I hope I'll be able to upgrade to 2.1 soon (either by official or "alternate" channels), looks like they've improved things quite a bit.
The main concern is that by all appearances, you made the Android sound as complex as possible (Open desk drawer, take out USB cable?).
But it's true! To transfer files from my phone to my PC, I have to either use the USB cable, or (would describing this seem less trollish?) open the phone shell, take out the microSD, and put it into the PC. These are the options the phone's designers gave me. You probably don't like this fact - as an owner of such a phone, I like it less than you do.
I was upset for having bought a € 300 phone with "bluetooth" written on its box, only to discover that it cannot send files as a € 30 phone would do - bluetooth is only there for headsets. Oh well - my fault, I should have done more research before buying. Then I went to a geek-oriented site and I found people praising my new phone's "usability" compared to my old phone "inusability". I posted a message saying "I actually found my old phone more usable sometimes", supporting my opinion with precise facts, and I got both addressed, and modded, as a troll.
For instance, I still see the name/surname thing as a somewhat strange example.
I do not have the time, competence and english skills to write a full review of the phone. Nor a slashdot comment would be the appropriate place for it. I just took the first three examples where I found my old phone was better. Want more strange examples?
- The phone will not turn itself on to make an alarm go off.
- The built-in mail client won't let me save mail attachments, it will only "play" them (I tried to send myself some mp3s via email as an alternative to the usb cable, before installing an ftp server application).
- The main menu and the home screen do not rotate.
- There is no built-in file browser.
- It is very difficult to distinguish between running programs and recently used, but closed, programs.
- Once my phone crashed, while using the built-in camera app. When it rebooted, it displayed a scary, non-dismissable notification saying "checking sd card for errors". And apparently did nothing (perhaps it was a wrong translation of "please check your sd card for errors?") - the only way to make it go away was to run chkdsk on the sd card. Additionally, when that happened, the phone "forgot" the mp3 I had chosen as ringtone and silently switched back to the default tone.
- The on-screen keyboard does not rotate in all applications - of course the qwerty keyboard is more comfortable in landscape mode, but sometimes you can use it that way (e.g. when browsing web), sometimes you can't (e.g. when editing a contact).
- Refusing an incoming call makes a "missed call" popup appear.
- Every time I turn on the phone, it says "your sim card has changed" and prompts me to change my operator settings.
- The phone does not see ad-hoc wifi networks (useful to exchange large data when you're far from home - especially since bluetooth is not there).
- There are no "profiles" for ringtone settings - only the default mode and the silent mode.
- No photo editing features.
- I can't create albums in my photo gallery? Why is it called "albums" then? I must be missing something here.
- Gmail contact groups do not appear as contact groups in my phone.
The actual phone does not care whether your contact is named Mario / Di Bella or Mario Di / Bella. When you get a call, the screen name will still say "Mario Di Bella," and when you search your contacts you can type in "Mario," "Bella," or even "Di" and still find the same person.
I do care if I am to sync my contacts with other devices that make the distinction, such as my previous phone which I am still using. For instance, because they allow you to sort the phonebook "by name" or "by surname".
Obviously, since gmail will allow you to enter both first and last name, the info is stored somewhere on the servers
Your Android workflow is deliberately skewed. Editing a contact in Android -> Press and hold on contact until menu dialog appears - Select "Edit Contact".
Select field to be edited with finger - and use virtual (or physical if present) keyboard to edit. Then press OK when edit completed to save.
Sigh. No. This will NOT let you edit the contact *name* and *surname*, as I clearly stated in my post. Try again.
I notice you didn't mention how to edit multiple contacts in Nokia S60 - or in fact how to sync your Nokia S60 with the PC - or in fact how you can't backup and restore contacts between different versions of S60 (for the same phone model) (XML schemas regularly change - and the importers can't perform the transformation properly - data is lost). Or in fact - how the Nokia PC apps - suck large.
I don't know what you are talking about.
My Nokia phone is able to export its contacts in the industry-standard vcard format. I regularly do it, and I've never lost information. Even the contact pictures get stored in the vcards. S60 also supports sending the contacts via bluetooth using OPP - not only it works between different Nokia phone models, it also works between phones of different manufacturers. In fact, exporting the contacts via bluetooth is the standard procedure I've followed every time I or some other member of my family bought a new phone. It just worked every time. I couldn't do this with my Android phone because it doesn't support ANY kind of transfer via bluetooth - but I just exported my contacts from my old Nokia phone as vcards, and then uploaded them to Gmail with no problem whatsoever. No XML schemas involved, no data loss.
To edit many contacts, of course you can use the Nokia PC suite which, unlike what you say, does perfectly its job: the contacts also get synced with Windows Vista Contacts, Outlook or whatever. You say it sucks - well, if it's so, then please explain to me why, and what other phone manufacturer offers a PC suite with more features.
I agree that.NET-based tools such as Nokia Photos and Nokia Music sucked badly, but they are being phased out, and never were needed at all since Nokia phones (just like Android) speak open protocols and don't need proprietary applications to manage their content.
The world has changed - and Nokia is way behind the curve.
I can't believe that an Android device is quite as hard as you make it out to be
It is not. I've just chosen some aspects that I found most disappointing on the usability side. I wasn't trying to demonstrate that Android is not good - I do not think this. My point was, that there is no "usability gap" between Android devices and S60 ones (at least for people like me).
The CSV hack was the only way I found to edit **surnames** in my contact list. The vast majority of people can live without it.
1) IIRC G1 has no bluetooth file transfer, unless you hacked it with an unofficial ROM, and I wouldn't point at this as an example of "usability", which was the focus of my post.
2) You can't edit the contact's *surname* as I stated in my post.
Slashdot Mirror
You DO realize what you basically said was "the difference is stealing from someone I like VS someone I hate" right?
No, I was interested in the difference between stealing and violating an unjust law out of necessity. I have no personal sympathy for tomtom. I do have a personal interest in being able to use my mp3 player without paying people who have done no work at all for me. Although software patents do not exist in my country yet, it's just a matter of time before my legislation gets infected too.
In case you don't know your history in the late 70s MSFT bought QDOS, and with it the first FAT (now called FAT 12) and then they paid for R&D to create FAT16 and later FAT32. It didn't just magically come into existence you know.
The patent is not about FAT32. It's about a scheme for storing long filenames alongside short ones. Which is something everybody and his dog could devise in a few hours of work. The problem is that even if I, to respect MSFT's IP, invented a better one, it would be of no use to me, because the only scheme we're interested in is the MSFT one, because that's the only one Windows will understand.
And from what I understand MSFT licenses FAT dirt cheap, which is why the flash drive manufacturers never bothered coming up with something else. So like it or not there is NO difference between MSFT and Busybox when it comes to suing. None at all. Both paid good money to develop a product and in both cases someone else gave them the finger and took it, end of story.
Well, the fact that tomtom and MSFT settled out of court should at least give you some doubt about the simplicity of your reconstruction. Anyhow, I was more interested in the moral difference between the two cases. And by the way, IIRC the busybox developers are trying to stop the lawsuits against companies who, according to them, inadvertently violated their copyrights: that makes them different from a patent troll.
What I find funny is the FSF and other FLOSS advocates (like yourself) arguing over Mono VS Java and Theora VS H.264 when you are all about to get train fucked and don't even know it! You see MSFT came out with this little piece of tech called exFAT that even the drives at the local Big Lots are starting to come formatted with. And unlike FAT32 with its cheap license, or .NET which has the "we'll not sue" covenant exFAT IS patented up the ass and they WILL sue if you don't shell out for licenses. So while everyone at the FSF argues over whether binary blobs should be allowed they are about to find out how nasty things can be when no PMP, or cell phone, or flash drive, or pretty much any mobile device will work with FLOSS unless you break out your checkbook.
Now I don't understand, that's exactly my concern. Why doesn't that scream to you "software patents suck and need to be abolished"?
You know, I really hoped that Linux would present a "third way" and allow real competition in the X86/64 arena, but all this crap over Mono and H.264 and now exFAT (which I swear to God I had one FLOSSie say with straight face say to use EXT3 with all that overhead on flash drives) it is pretty obvious to me the zealots rule FLOSS and are determined to keep it a niche that fits their agenda. So please, don't use Mono, or H.264, and format all your flash drives with EXT3, whatever. In less than 3 years Linux won't be able to hook with jack shit as all drives will be coming with exFAT and Windows 8 will probably drop the old FAT32 leaving FLOSS swinging in the breeze. it is a damned shame, as the competition would have been nice, but zealotry never helps, only hurts.
I think that actually "FLOSS" isn't "ruled" by anyone. Everyone will do whatever he likes. In fact, the usage of mono among "FLOSSies" is growing. I personally use h264 because it's better than Theora and
I find no appeal in dynamic typing. It just makes programs harder to read and debug. Have you tried Scala? With type inference, it manages to get the type-safety of static typing along with the reduced verbosity traditionally associated to dynamically typed languages.
If people were interested in high throughput math, we'd be all using FORTRAN now.
As for inconsistencies, how many mutually incompatible versions of Java are there?
Isn't extreme backward compatibility the reason Java gets most often bashed for? For what I know, any 1.1 source code should compile fine under java 1.7 (unless you used something like "assert" as a symbol name, but even then you should get away by using the -source switch for the compiler).
How many revamps compared to languages stewarded by standardization bodies or other neutral actors? (C has, what, 3 over it's 40 years of history?)
I'd say that the best thing Oracle could do for Java would be to give it to ISO, but I think it's 10 years too late. I'd love to be surprised, though.
To be honest, every single C compiler out there defines its own incompatible implementation of C. That's because the standards move so slowly that every manufacturer tends to put its own custom features in his compiler. I don't recall this happening with Java, only MS tried to do that with J++ IIRC, but Apache Harmony, the Eclipse compiler, OpenJDK, GNU Classpath and Sun's JDK all implement the very same language if I'm not wrong.
That said, I'm favorable to an independent standardization of Java, but I don't think it will solve any problem of Java.
Namespaces are useful, and custom namespaces cut down on a lot of the clutter in Java, but they shouldn't be necessary for basic functionality.
In fact they aren't. Java automatically imports the java.lang package, so for "basic functionality" all you might have to import are the java.net or java.io packages. Which is quite reasonable since Java is designed to work (and does work) on systems which might not have access to either the network or the file system. And a string like "java.net" is pretty far from the "fifteen layers deep classpath" you were grieving about.
The way I see it (YMMV, of course) K&R C provides pretty much the functionality that any language should have as part of the core language spec; if I can do something in n characters in C but it takes me 10n characters to do it in some newer and supposedly better language, I'm hard-pressed to consider that an improvement.
Leaving aside any considerations about the quality of C's standard library, which is apparent to anyone wo has used it, let's do a comparison.
In C, in order for your program to do any kind of interaction with the external world, you have to #include <stdio.h>. In Java, you don't import anything.
In C, in order to allocate some memory, you have to #include <stdlib.h> (otherwise, you won't even get NULL!), and <string.h> if you want to do anything useful with that memory. In Java, you don't import anything.
In C, if you want to use a socket, you #include <sys/types.h> and <sys/socket.h>. And <unistd.h> if you want to be able to read() from it. In Java, you import java.net, which is not only much shorter than that, but will also provide much nicer names for the imported symbols: and while you might like the terseness of names such as "fcntl", you'll agree that at least for higher level functionality, more informative names are needed, which is why all C-based high level libaries tend to have extremely long, reverse-polish names such as gtk_file_chooser_get_preview_filename_utf8. And unlike Java, where you can get away with importing the "namespace" just once, in C you'll have to repeat that stuff for every single use of your imported symbol.
Moreover, in Java, if you use a plain IDE, which is provided for free by the same people who develop the language, you can just right click the source code and select "fix imports" to have it automatically add import clauses for every external class you've been using.
Furthermore, you're ignoring why tomtom resorted to fat32: not for its technical merits (in fact, fat32 is currently the *worst* filesystem currently available to a linux developer), but because of microsoft's monopoly on end-users' operating systems, which results in the fact that an ext3-formatted usb storage would be unusable for most people.
In the end, your post is a clear explanation of why one shouldn't use Mono. You say, "like it or not FAT32 rightfully belongs to MSFT". The same is true for .NET. "Dont' like it? Well there is EXT3". It's too late now to promote an open file system as a standard for information interchange over removable media, but it's not too late to avoid Mono and use Java (or something else).
Good luck using a bluetooth keyboard in the BIOS for example.
By the way, if you have a Bluetooth dongle with HID support, a Bluetooth keyboard will work even in the BIOS. It will be seen as a standard USB/HID device. Just tested it with Apple's wireless keyboard on two different PCs.
Printers can, but it's uncommon. Trying to print any kind of photo would take forever.
Why, Bluetooth 2.0 transfers a 3 MP picture in 7 seconds, I guess the average desktop printer would take more time to print it.
I always use Bluetooth to sync my phone with my PC. Whenever my phone enters the PC's range, it automatically syncs media and PIM data in the background with no intervention from me. I can also send text messages and receive phone calls using the PC - not that I use this feature very much, but it'd be nice if I was a heavy SMS user.
I also prefer a cable over the hassle of having to recharge two sets of batteries to keep my keyboard running. I think a nice solution would be to have Bluetooth devices recharge via USB, and work as USB/HID devices while doing so. That's how the PlayStation 3 controllers work. This way, when your keyboard's batteries are running out, you just plug the usb cable and keep using the keyboard in wired mode, until they're charged.
You care about the average Joe because he seemingly gets to decide which codec is hardware accelerated
Yes but "hardware acceleration" means cheap devices which only play media when encoded with certain codecs, only at some bitrates, only at certain resolutions and colour depths, and only when in certains containers: all of this, together with obscure, unfixable hardware bugs which result in defective playback when the media was encoded a hair differently from the streams the device was tested on.
I suppose fixed function decoders can be power efficient, but before my battery life, I care about a device that DOES play my stuff. Usually you can't know the details of the media supported by a device before buying it, because its box will probably read "plays h.264" instead of "plays h.264 baseline profile only, with resolutions from 128x128 to 512x512 and a framerate multiple of 16".
The right thing to do for video acceleration is to extend CPUs (GPUs, DSPs) instruction sets in order to provide general acceleration for any kind of media. This is perfectly possible with today's devices (my 2006 phone plays PAL-encoded DivX movies just fine, without any assistance from its manufacturer). Fixed function hardware is a thing of the past.
That by definition you are using this content to turn a financial profit.
It's interesting to note that the video wasn't posted to YouTube, but on Google Video, which at the time did not contain ads.
It's not entirely true. In Italy, the judges of the Court of Cassation, when in joint session, can make sentences which are very similar to common law precedents, and have a major importance. (Especially when they cover matters that aren't well specified by the written law.)
Perhaps this agreement is about ClearType. It's covered by known MS patents, and that's why subpixel font rendering is disabled in many Linux distributions. Amazon might need it, or some related technology, for its Kindle.
Like other Android phones, there is no multitouch implemented in the touchscreen interface.
And that's BETTER! Three-finger gestures? How many fingers remain in my hand to hold the phone? I've never seen a really useful multi-touch gesture, apart from pinch-zooming. Which still is very uncomfortable if you hold your phone with a single hand.
For those who use their smartphones for gaming, this really limits the ability of the phone of as a gaming platform (with respect to touchscreen controls). Gaming on the iPhone has really been taking off, although I still think hardware buttons work best for fast-paced and twitch gaming.
You say everything. Hardware buttons work best, and Android phones have them. (Well, most of them.) By the way, the most successful touchscreen gaming device, Nintendo DS, has a resistive touchscreen and hasn't got multitouch.
So then you have to carry around dozens of extra cards for different apps for different occasions, another thing to try-not-to-lose.
Why, you just buy a bigger SD card (currently you'd spend about 25 $ for an 8 GB one), put it in your phone once, and likely won't ever take it out until you want to upgrade to a larger one.
And they say its expandable up to 32gb, but i can't find any micro-sd that exceeds 16. Just me?
I don't think there are micro SD cards larger than 16 GB in shops yet. But the SDHC standard allows for cards up to 32 GB, so when the cards will be out (and affordable), they'll work. Larger cards will NOT work, though (unless the phone gets upgraded to the SDXC standard, which would support cards up to 2 TB, but I've never seen such an upgrade take place).
The reason apps are stored in internal memory is to prevent users from removing apps when they remove the SD card.
Why? Couldn't the phone just pop up a message box asking for confirmation to terminate all running apps using the SD card, before unmounting it? That's what all other phone manufacturers do.
My guess is that they did not include this feature because they did not have the time to test all of its implications, and will later implement it in an OS update if people complain loudly enough about it. They've fixed a lot of glitches during the 1.6 -> 2.0 upgrade, and it took them just a few months. I think it's quite probable that they will fix this too.
And with removable media you can extend your phone's memory over time, as you need it: there's no need to drain your wallet by buying a phone with more memory than you need at the moment because you think you might need more in the future (only to discover after six months that flash prices went down by 50%). You just buy a new card if and when you need it, at lower prices.
Yes, but the Nexus-6 will have its lifespan artificially limited to four years, so you'll have to buy a new phone after that. Moreover, should its AI become aware of this, the phone might get mad and intentionally explode in your trousers' pocket.
It's 1.6. Thanks for the good news, I hope I'll be able to upgrade to 2.1 soon (either by official or "alternate" channels), looks like they've improved things quite a bit.
The main concern is that by all appearances, you made the Android sound as complex as possible (Open desk drawer, take out USB cable?).
But it's true! To transfer files from my phone to my PC, I have to either use the USB cable, or (would describing this seem less trollish?) open the phone shell, take out the microSD, and put it into the PC. These are the options the phone's designers gave me. You probably don't like this fact - as an owner of such a phone, I like it less than you do.
I was upset for having bought a € 300 phone with "bluetooth" written on its box, only to discover that it cannot send files as a € 30 phone would do - bluetooth is only there for headsets. Oh well - my fault, I should have done more research before buying. Then I went to a geek-oriented site and I found people praising my new phone's "usability" compared to my old phone "inusability". I posted a message saying "I actually found my old phone more usable sometimes", supporting my opinion with precise facts, and I got both addressed, and modded, as a troll.
For instance, I still see the name/surname thing as a somewhat strange example.
I do not have the time, competence and english skills to write a full review of the phone. Nor a slashdot comment would be the appropriate place for it. I just took the first three examples where I found my old phone was better. Want more strange examples?
- The phone will not turn itself on to make an alarm go off.
- The built-in mail client won't let me save mail attachments, it will only "play" them (I tried to send myself some mp3s via email as an alternative to the usb cable, before installing an ftp server application).
- The main menu and the home screen do not rotate.
- There is no built-in file browser.
- It is very difficult to distinguish between running programs and recently used, but closed, programs.
- Once my phone crashed, while using the built-in camera app. When it rebooted, it displayed a scary, non-dismissable notification saying "checking sd card for errors". And apparently did nothing (perhaps it was a wrong translation of "please check your sd card for errors?") - the only way to make it go away was to run chkdsk on the sd card. Additionally, when that happened, the phone "forgot" the mp3 I had chosen as ringtone and silently switched back to the default tone.
- The on-screen keyboard does not rotate in all applications - of course the qwerty keyboard is more comfortable in landscape mode, but sometimes you can use it that way (e.g. when browsing web), sometimes you can't (e.g. when editing a contact).
- Refusing an incoming call makes a "missed call" popup appear.
- Every time I turn on the phone, it says "your sim card has changed" and prompts me to change my operator settings.
- The phone does not see ad-hoc wifi networks (useful to exchange large data when you're far from home - especially since bluetooth is not there).
- There are no "profiles" for ringtone settings - only the default mode and the silent mode.
- No photo editing features.
- I can't create albums in my photo gallery? Why is it called "albums" then? I must be missing something here.
- Gmail contact groups do not appear as contact groups in my phone.
The actual phone does not care whether your contact is named Mario / Di Bella or Mario Di / Bella. When you get a call, the screen name will still say "Mario Di Bella," and when you search your contacts you can type in "Mario," "Bella," or even "Di" and still find the same person.
I do care if I am to sync my contacts with other devices that make the distinction, such as my previous phone which I am still using. For instance, because they allow you to sort the phonebook "by name" or "by surname".
Obviously, since gmail will allow you to enter both first and last name, the info is stored somewhere on the servers
Gmail doesn't allow you t
Complete and utter tosh.
Please go on.
Your Android workflow is deliberately skewed. Editing a contact in Android -> Press and hold on contact until menu dialog appears - Select "Edit Contact". Select field to be edited with finger - and use virtual (or physical if present) keyboard to edit. Then press OK when edit completed to save.
Sigh. No. This will NOT let you edit the contact *name* and *surname*, as I clearly stated in my post. Try again.
I notice you didn't mention how to edit multiple contacts in Nokia S60 - or in fact how to sync your Nokia S60 with the PC - or in fact how you can't backup and restore contacts between different versions of S60 (for the same phone model) (XML schemas regularly change - and the importers can't perform the transformation properly - data is lost). Or in fact - how the Nokia PC apps - suck large.
I don't know what you are talking about. My Nokia phone is able to export its contacts in the industry-standard vcard format. I regularly do it, and I've never lost information. Even the contact pictures get stored in the vcards. S60 also supports sending the contacts via bluetooth using OPP - not only it works between different Nokia phone models, it also works between phones of different manufacturers. In fact, exporting the contacts via bluetooth is the standard procedure I've followed every time I or some other member of my family bought a new phone. It just worked every time. I couldn't do this with my Android phone because it doesn't support ANY kind of transfer via bluetooth - but I just exported my contacts from my old Nokia phone as vcards, and then uploaded them to Gmail with no problem whatsoever. No XML schemas involved, no data loss.
To edit many contacts, of course you can use the Nokia PC suite which, unlike what you say, does perfectly its job: the contacts also get synced with Windows Vista Contacts, Outlook or whatever. You say it sucks - well, if it's so, then please explain to me why, and what other phone manufacturer offers a PC suite with more features.
I agree that .NET-based tools such as Nokia Photos and Nokia Music sucked badly, but they are being phased out, and never were needed at all since Nokia phones (just like Android) speak open protocols and don't need proprietary applications to manage their content.
The world has changed - and Nokia is way behind the curve.
I don't share this opinion.
I can't believe that an Android device is quite as hard as you make it out to be
It is not. I've just chosen some aspects that I found most disappointing on the usability side. I wasn't trying to demonstrate that Android is not good - I do not think this. My point was, that there is no "usability gap" between Android devices and S60 ones (at least for people like me).
The CSV hack was the only way I found to edit **surnames** in my contact list. The vast majority of people can live without it.
1) IIRC G1 has no bluetooth file transfer, unless you hacked it with an unofficial ROM, and I wouldn't point at this as an example of "usability", which was the focus of my post.
2) You can't edit the contact's *surname* as I stated in my post.
There is no "surname" field, and the "bluetooth" option is missing in my phone.