Yes and No. Apple refused to allow AT&T to modify iOS from the get go. No ads, shovelware, or AT&T bloat which the cell providers always thing is a great idea and the consumer can't wash themselves of fast enough. I wish Google had used a heavier hand earlier on in this area.
Exactly. It's still the data creators responsibility to ensure they have proper backups. The ISP is definitely negligent for not removing access of a former employee (changing passwords, revoking account access, etc), as well as not ensuring proper backups were in place. That's assuming these folks had a proper legal agreement with said ISP to retain backups.
That said the creators should have at least a disaster recovery run or a simple audit to ensure their data was properly secured.
From TFA:
The problems started in February 2009 when CyberLynk terminated Jewson's employment for an undisclosed reason. One month later, on March 26, Jewson allegedly logged back into his former employer's systems and went on a data-wiping rampage.
The lost data included an entire season of "Zodiac Island" -- 6,480 files -- that was stored on a CyberLynk FTP server. The show's producers had been using the server for nearly a year as a drop box where contributors from the U.S., Manila, Beijing and Hong Kong could collaborate on episodes.
CyberLynk was supposed to have backed up the data, but CEO Adam Hobach told WeR1 that his company's backup procedure "had failed and/or was not properly instituted," WeR1 said in a lawsuit filed last week in U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii.
About 65GB of the data was permanently lost, leaving the production company with only snippets of its 14-episode season. "Because this destroyed data includes fragments from each of the 14 episodes, it is now impossible to re-assemble any of the episodes in its entirety," WeR1 said.
I'm of two minds on this one. When you purchase a CD, you do get license to play that CD, fair use, etc. In this case, Amazon is acting as an intermediary for the end user, and providing the infrastructure for that functionality, but Amazon themselves do not have license for these.
I somehow think Amazon is going to pull back a bloody stump on this one. There are differences between taking your bought and paid for music collection and putting on a file server you own, and streaming your own music to your devices. It's a whole different ballgame when a for-profit company takes music it doesn't own, stores it, and streams it out, even if you are the one who is asking them to do so.
Seems to me (IANAL), that this is very shaky ground, especially if they are not validating that the licenses for these are valid to begin with (verifying the end users bought the music themselves).
If I understand the process correctly (unlikely), the control rods dampen the reaction and keep things generally under control in the reactor?
Seems like I recall there was a lot of news a few years ago about safer designs where the control rods themselves are elevated by the power that the plant produces, and if that fails, they they fall into the reactor automatically when power fails. Seems like some designs with natural failover systems like those would be a good place to start, so that safety systems themselves don't in turn rely on power to function at a basic level. You would think gravity fed water for cooling in the event of a failure systems would also be a given.
Probably because the iPhone had already been on the market for three tears before Nokia sued Apple? You have to admit it doesn't reflect well on Nokia to have delayed as long as they did and they still ended up losing the case in court. They waited until their market share took a huge nose dive.
They would have been promotional videos if they had stated the people in them were actors. This used to be a common practice for product ads. The fact that they skipped that bit is misleading and I happen to agree this practice is no better than dishonest astroturphing. Surely they could have found actual people pleased with the tablet had they spent chump change out of the Samsung budget.
There is no reason a company of Samsung's size should do this.
You do realize that Apple licensed any number of patents from I would imagine a large list of companies for the basic phone bits? You make it sound as if they just threw some tech in a box and sold it without a care. That just doesn't happen. Apple also built quite a list of their own patents related to smart phone technology in the iPhone.
This lawsuit was specific to 5 areas that Nokia felt Apple didn't properly license. Turns out Nokia was wrong according to the courts. Nokia also had no entries in the smartphone market, being primarily a dumb phone vendor. They were caught with their pants down and without a good product. Their huge market losses and these lawsuits just look like desperation to break back into the game.
Actually Nokia started this with Apple, not the other way around. From what I recall, Apple's countersuit against Nokia involved unreasonable licensing terms (Nokia wanted more from Apple than from others it had licensed the tech to including demands for generous cross licensing from the iPhone patent pool), and they also accused Nokia of pulling a Rambus (establishing a standard and then later coming in with submarine patents on their own designs).
From TFA:
In October 2009 Nokia sued Apple for patent infringement claiming that a number of Apple products used Nokia technology as it pertains to wireless connectivity and GSM networks. Never one to back down from a legal fight, Apple countersued and accused Nokia of infringing on 13 patents held by Apple.
Apple also says Nokia wanted unreasonable license terms for the patents, including a cross-license for Apple's various iPhone device patents as part of any deal, which Apple clearly wasn't willing to do. That's in stark contrast to what Nokia says it wants in its lawsuit -- all it's asked the court for is past due license fees on its patents. (Which is odd, if you think about it: Nokia wouldn't come to terms on a license that didn't include iPhone patents, but it'll spend the cash on litigation for past due fees? That seems silly.) Oh, and if you're just in this for the bitchy quotes, here you go:
As Anssi Vanjoki, Nokia's executive Vice President and General Manager of Multimedia, stated at Nokia's GoPlay event in 2007 when asked about the similarities of Nokia's new offerings to the already released iPhone:"[i]f there is something good in the world, we copy with pride." True to this quote, Nokia has demonstrated its willingness to copy Apple's iPhone ideas as well as Apple's basic computing technologies, all while demanding Apple pay for access to Nokia's purported standards essential patent.
Nokia wasn't interested in just getting fees for it's patents. They badly needed an 'in' into the smartphone market and they knew it. They also demanded the rights to cross license various iPhone patents as part of their lawsuit against Apple. They basically were shut out of the smartphone industry and Apple being the new guy on the block in the phone industry probably looked like their best chance at that.
I disagree. All companies build patent portfolios to strengthen their positions and for bargaining power. I don't consider someone a patent troll unless that's all they do is try to profit off of a patent with no actual product, which applies to neither of these two companies. Both still have a large product line that they actively sell. While most folks on here assume all patents are leveraged for trolling purposes, I think this kind of wrangling is common among any companies that are long in the tooth with a long history of patented ideas. It basically makes those involved more willing to come to the table and make sane bargains, or if the opposing company is lacking in a strong portfolio, they end up weak at the table and end up making larger concessions. It's just business in most cases.
I don't particularly like what they've turned the patent system into, but I can see it's usefulness to any business.
Of the two businesses here though. I've got to admit that Nokia seems to be coming at this from weakness and huge loss of market share and profits. This seems more of an act of desperation to get them through the onslaught of Android and iOS. They started this back and forth when they started taking huge losses to the iPhone, which of course brought a response from Apple. On the surface, it appears that they panicked and weren't prepared for the beating they took. They have been one of the bigger losers in the Smartphone wars and were caught sleeping at the wheel so to speak. They have a strong dumb-phone presence but not so much on the smartphone market. Looking at their product line it still look rather dated compared to current offerings (ease of use, form factor, etc). Android in turn just made things worse for them and neither Apple nor any of the numerous companies selling Android based phones shows any signs of real letting up.
I don't think these patent wars have anything to do with Open Source other than their main competitor happens to use an open source OS. Android is a bit of an industry freak in that regard. It's become huge and is open source, but the entire market has been closed source for years and thrived. Androids success derives from it's similarity and close competition with iOS. The interface on both is strikingly similar (no flames please, just stating the obvious and not implying anything), and the fact that it has Google backing it which would be a boon to almost any product. I almost wish Google had dedicated time to a real desktop OS like they have with the mobile market. Linux could be huge (sorry, I'm wandering but I think about that missed opportunity every time this comes up). Cloud OS's are just not of interest yet in the mainstream. If they could get their hooks into a solid linux Distro they could clean house or at least shake up the desktop arena and the big players.
I agree wholeheartedly with your last statement. Nokia seems to have been so used to being top dog in the 90's and early 2000's that they lost that competitive edge they so easily held before smart phones emerged as the new bread winner. They just seem to be stumbling about at the moment. Patents aren't inherently anti-competetive. They actually do have a purpose, although it's been twisted over the years. I do believe it's necessary to give a company time to recoup it's research/investments and they can do that with patents, but the current and lengthy times that they can hold these now has throttle innovation. I still hope for a little sanity at some point but I suspect that won't happen in my lifetime.
I think the parents point is that there isn't a single Android model that comes close to the sales of any iPhone. The same is true in the Tablet arena. iOS is king and there is no risk from any Android device of toppling that. If I owned a business I would always be looking for possible contenders.
From Motorola's perspective, it's great that Android was so well accepted, but the OS hasn't given them a huge selling model. FOSS fans love it, but from a business perspective, it's good, but they can and should be looking for the next best thing if they are still losing market share, and every other phone manufacturer is selling the same OS on every phone. It's become common.
I think the gist of this was that Google is digging for data that isn't normally allowed for transactions. Google is in the business of mining data and profiting off of it. It becomes dangerous when they start expecting such concessions without people realizing the risks involved. I've become more hesitant to use their services over the last year due to stories like these. At some point they have to at least be making people nervous with the various online activities. they end up collecting information for.
Part of my fear is that they have the tech community so enamored of them that they tend to gloss over or overlook something that would raise a firestorm if someone else did it like Microsoft or Apple. Search info, email accounts, calendars, chat, authentication services for various websites. All of these leave a huge fingerprint especially when you are logging in via your Google accounts to use them. All in the hands of a single company who profits off of such data.
To claim these worries make one paranoid as many are often doing on/. while ignoring the risk just seems foolish. Although Google may not have crossed the line into 'evil', they could easily do so without anyone being the wiser. They may be doing so today. It should raise alarms and caution when someone brings up such stories rather than scorn for the poster, assuming it's a reasoned argument.
Interesting. Google recently removed malware apps. Is that censorship? Why was the offending app removed? The answer was that it caused potential harm to the end user. Ideally any app that causes emotional distress can be just as harmful. The simple fact remains that both shops are curated to some extent and by the extremely generous definition, they are both censoring. You can't be all hurray for one while slamming the other when the end result is the same under that broad definition. Both companies have always had control over content within their own stores, although they may exercise it differently. To my knowledge, Apple has never removed an app from a iDevice, while Google has using their kill switch. Does that make Google more evil? No. Do I think the kill switch equates to censorship? No.
I happen to agree with this decision, and no one here can claim that this app wasn't already under review once a complaint was filed. The petition is probably incidental.
The fact that they would rate the above post insightful by implying that Apple will destroy free society, and equating it to 'Jews' and visions of death camps, and totalitarian rule all because a store refuses to sell a product is blatantly ridiculous.
You don't protest Toys-R-Us because they don't have porn racks with Hustler displayed out front. They never promised to be your one-stop sex shop. The same is true for Apple. It clearly states in the developer agreement that any controversial apps would be subject to removal. Apple has always presented the App store as child safe either via content control, or parental control. Someone published an app that clearly fell into the 'controversial' bucket, and surprise, folks are in an uproar because Apple help true to their word. It is not censorship any more than Toys-R-Us is censoring your right to view porn. If you want to see it, go to a porn store. if you want to view this type of info, go to their web site or buy a phone that supports that App.Hell, do it on an iPhone via the safari browser while jacking off to gay porn and reading about being 'cured' from the 'gay cure app' website all at the same time. Apple won't stop you.
I still dislike Firefox for failing to implement h.264. Did they resolve that so that you can at least use your OS support for it? I would imagine that Firefox will be swallowed up by Chrome if nothing else, and if Chrome fails to support h.264 they are also taking a risk of losing user base.
They largely are. These offers of protection tend to download.EXE's since these fake antivirus companies don't waste time on anything that's non-Windows. In addition, a large majority of Mac users don't bother with Antivirus so they simply ignore these. Last but not least, they tend to be less gullible than Windows users.
Last but not least, these types of attacks tend to be fear driven and Windows users simply have more to fear from Viruses than Mac users at the moment. After years of sustained attacks, they are simply much to jumpy and easily frightened to pass up.
I agree with some of your points but disagree with a few:
MS was largely successful with DirectX, and the goal of allowing developers to largely ignore the graphics hardware while concentrating on a standard API was successful. For ill or good, it's driven game design on the dominant platform for years, and arguably kept OpenGL on the defensive. MS may provider driver support with their OS because it is to their benefit to have out of the box support, but they have never been best in driver support. They leave that to the GPU vendors and rightly so. MS is often months or years out of date when it comes to drivers. Last but not least, developers are not a slave to the MS API. They can always choose OpenGL with the added benefit of portability to other platforms. They simply choose not to, whether that involves cost, development time, or simple unfamiliarity with OpenGL as opposed to DirectX.
I think a large part of the lack of perceived difference between consoles and PC's these days have a bit to do with the least common denominator, which unfortunately also happens to be an aging dedicated gaming console, and lack of money, time, & resources by developers and publishers to fully stretch the legs of the newest hardware when they can target the lowest common denominator and get by with 'ok' on a PC.
Without a standard in place, I can't say I blame them. If Apple backs a technology that may change entirely over the course of a year, which in turn is based on hardware in the phones themselves, I can see why they are hesitant. It seems backwards that they wouldn't establish a standard first, and then go about putting the specs into their handsets.
Why does it seem like they are going about this a bit backward? Not Apple in general, but the industry in general. Typically if there is a need for a standard, a board is established and they draft out a spec. Why hasn't this happened yet?
Not only that but I'm guessing the reviewer wasn't familiar enough with the iOS settings for Mail to know that iOS does indeed let you sync contacts, mail, and calendar with GMail over the air via WiFi or 3G. It will do so with ActiveSync, GMail, Yahoo, and AOL accounts without issue. The only app they indicated was perceptibly better was the navigation app, which I happen to agree with. Apple's navigation app is in desperate need of some updates as it's essentially unchanged since the first version of iOS.
He also goes on about the Finder like column views for folders indicating it's a strength over iOS but doesn't appear to know you can simply click a button and drop a message in any folder on iOS without having to leave your finger in constant contact with the touchpad while you browse through your folder structure. In addition he indicated that Honeycomb doesn't allow nested folders so a significant number of folders would make dragging and dropping a message to a folder in the bottom of the list from the top of the folder list tedious at best.He also indicates that embedded font sizes override your font preferences as he apparently does not know that you can set a minimum font size in the mail preferences.
In the App section, I also agree with the poster above. Even if the number of apps doubled from 16 to 37, it still pales in comparison to the full library available to the iPad. The scoring difference here was very slanted as the difference was almost non-existent. I was also curios about the statement regarding 'lack of popups' on the iOS UI. Push notifications have existed for quite a long time, and various apps like Facebook, twitter, email clients, etc all typically support them.
On the web browser section, nearly every section showed an advantage to the iPad yet it was declared a tie? He does state the Xoom score better on the benchmarks and then immediately states that the iPad felt much snappier even though the Xoom scored higher in benchmarks. In fact that was the only item where the Xoom seemed to win where every other feature was done better in iOS or simply lacking in the Xoom, yet it was declared a tie for web browsing.
On the location piece I probably would have called a tie although I much prefer the Android navigation app, I also see a great need to control individual app's ability to use location services. Leaving the option out to control that access at the app level seems like a glaring omission, where a large number of comparable navigation apps which do include voice capabilities are available for iPad for free or a small fee.
Under the UI, Operational UI, and Text tools, the reviewer again shows an advantage for the iPad again, while at the same time knocking the widget area which he praised in the proceeding paragraph and earlier in the review for taking up too much screen real-estate. He states the settings are difficult to read on the Xoom, and that the keyboard is not full size, unlike the iPad, making it more difficult to type on. In the text section he again calls the iPad superior on text handling capabilities. He then proceeds to call it a tie yet again.
The hardware section shows many flaws in Xoom, from it's plastic casing, it's back facing power switch, and a battery time that's half the iPad's while weighing significantly more. He also failed to test the graphics capabilities of the tablets which are becoming a key area in mobile performance for gaming. Had he done so he would have found that the iPad 2 rips the Xoom to pieces by a huge margin.
I think the Xoom has a lot of potential, but it is a far cry from 'close' to the iPad 2. Candy coated reviews aren't doing anyone any favors, and they remove pressure from hardware manufacturer's to improve their products faster.
A scoring system for the review would have been a good place to start, rather than the fluffy numbers this review is giving.
Except we do not live in a perfect world, and altruistic statements claiming that peace, love, and harmony would result if there were no secrets have no basis in fact since no such state of mind and openness exists, and most likely never will due to the human nature. Claiming that it would be that way with no proof to that effect (since such a condition has never existed in Man's written history) is a bit disingenuous and it also happens to be based on simple beliefe rather than any social models that actually exist.
Humans by nature always have private thoughts that they do not share. Unless we were all telepathic or had some other means to know others private thoughts, such a utopia simply cannot exist.
The Mac version has a Bookmarks menu, but that's simply due to the fact that the menu bar shows context menus for any open app. The minimalist approach to chrome is a bit irritating sometimes. I also get irritated with the single 'options' button on IE. Sometimes it makes sense to have various context menus available for easy access. I have to wonder why they didn't take the same approach with IE that they did with explorer, where a hotkey would cause the menu's to appear when needed, and disappear when the key was released.
States secrets cannot simply be shouted about because you happen to know them. You are implying that anyone should have the right to any state secrets (or any information for that matter), which would clearly never work in a society that relies on state secrets for a variety of reasons ranging from Treaty Negotiations, Espionage, Research, Military Operations, etc. There are clearly valid reasons for such state secrets to exist.
Section 793 of the Espionage Act specifically addresses classified information and what the press can and can't print. SCOTUS clarified a lot of that specifically around the case between the U.S. Government and the N.Y. Times. In that case, it was deemed that the information that was reprinted by the New York Times did not meet the classification of a state secret that related to Defense secrets, or that could give a foreign power an advantage. The state failed to meet it's burden of proof and the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the NY Times.
In this case, the order that was sought specifically excluded 'content' because the DOJ knew that if they did not specifically narrow the order they sought, they woud run afoul of privacy issues, where the information they are requesting here is much more narrow in scope. It easily meets the criteria of being 'of interest' in an ongoing investigation. I think the biggest concern here is the fact that they can effectively gather contacts who may be related (or not) to the case at hand, hence the 'chilling effect' on free speech. Although this type of information gathering doesn't violate the letter of the law, I can see both sides of the argument, but I can't imagine that the folks involved could claim that they were unaware of what Wikileaks did, or the potential that users who willingly communicate with them might one day be made available to interested parties due to a court order of some sort.
Is it valid for a judge to consider the effect a ruling might have on others, rather than the actual law involved in a case? I'm genuinely curious if they are supposed to consider the effect of a ruling when the letter of the law hasn't been violated?
The forums are full of frustrated users who will not be receiving a vendor supplied update to the latest versions. Not a big deal for a typical/. user, but a bit daunting to a non-techie. The vendors have no incentive to upgrade a phone once they lock someone into a contract. It is actually desirable that they don't upgrade a device to enable new features since it creates a horse and carrot effect.
The numbers are closer to 42% below version 2.2 according to Google, rather than 60% but still nothing to be happy about.
It's difficult to argue though, that the tax payer should subsidize exploratory ventures for companies which make some of the largest profits on the planet. In short, they could afford these ventures on their own with no help from the taxpayer. It is to their benefit to keep the taxpayer addicted to oil as long as possible. About the only karmic result of all this is that the oil industry will eventually have to expand into other energy sources or face extinction.
As a taxpayer, I say the sooner the better. Total dependency on an energy source that we do not and cannot control is borderline insanity.
That said, I happen to agree that some government incentives for alternate fuels is absolutely necessary. Sometimes they do 'hit the jackpot' so to speak, and if such ventures into solar prove to be a feasible alternative fuel, then I would consider that money well spent.
Although this release might have some puerile value for hard core fans, the cynic in me can't help but think it will turn into a 'Clash of the Titans' 3D hack job. The very thing that James Cameron warned studio's against. Granted if they spend enough time on it, it might be decent, but then it has the stigma associated with Jar-Jar to overcome as well.
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Yes and No. Apple refused to allow AT&T to modify iOS from the get go. No ads, shovelware, or AT&T bloat which the cell providers always thing is a great idea and the consumer can't wash themselves of fast enough. I wish Google had used a heavier hand earlier on in this area.
Exactly. It's still the data creators responsibility to ensure they have proper backups. The ISP is definitely negligent for not removing access of a former employee (changing passwords, revoking account access, etc), as well as not ensuring proper backups were in place. That's assuming these folks had a proper legal agreement with said ISP to retain backups.
That said the creators should have at least a disaster recovery run or a simple audit to ensure their data was properly secured.
From TFA:
I'm of two minds on this one. When you purchase a CD, you do get license to play that CD, fair use, etc. In this case, Amazon is acting as an intermediary for the end user, and providing the infrastructure for that functionality, but Amazon themselves do not have license for these.
I somehow think Amazon is going to pull back a bloody stump on this one. There are differences between taking your bought and paid for music collection and putting on a file server you own, and streaming your own music to your devices. It's a whole different ballgame when a for-profit company takes music it doesn't own, stores it, and streams it out, even if you are the one who is asking them to do so.
Seems to me (IANAL), that this is very shaky ground, especially if they are not validating that the licenses for these are valid to begin with (verifying the end users bought the music themselves).
Frankly made more confusing by the fact that he didn't just install Linux on his Mac if he wanted a 'pure' platform?
If I understand the process correctly (unlikely), the control rods dampen the reaction and keep things generally under control in the reactor?
Seems like I recall there was a lot of news a few years ago about safer designs where the control rods themselves are elevated by the power that the plant produces, and if that fails, they they fall into the reactor automatically when power fails. Seems like some designs with natural failover systems like those would be a good place to start, so that safety systems themselves don't in turn rely on power to function at a basic level. You would think gravity fed water for cooling in the event of a failure systems would also be a given.
Probably because the iPhone had already been on the market for three tears before Nokia sued Apple? You have to admit it doesn't reflect well on Nokia to have delayed as long as they did and they still ended up losing the case in court. They waited until their market share took a huge nose dive.
They would have been promotional videos if they had stated the people in them were actors. This used to be a common practice for product ads. The fact that they skipped that bit is misleading and I happen to agree this practice is no better than dishonest astroturphing. Surely they could have found actual people pleased with the tablet had they spent chump change out of the Samsung budget.
There is no reason a company of Samsung's size should do this.
You do realize that Apple licensed any number of patents from I would imagine a large list of companies for the basic phone bits? You make it sound as if they just threw some tech in a box and sold it without a care. That just doesn't happen. Apple also built quite a list of their own patents related to smart phone technology in the iPhone.
This lawsuit was specific to 5 areas that Nokia felt Apple didn't properly license. Turns out Nokia was wrong according to the courts. Nokia also had no entries in the smartphone market, being primarily a dumb phone vendor. They were caught with their pants down and without a good product. Their huge market losses and these lawsuits just look like desperation to break back into the game.
Actually Nokia started this with Apple, not the other way around. From what I recall, Apple's countersuit against Nokia involved unreasonable licensing terms (Nokia wanted more from Apple than from others it had licensed the tech to including demands for generous cross licensing from the iPhone patent pool), and they also accused Nokia of pulling a Rambus (establishing a standard and then later coming in with submarine patents on their own designs).
From TFA:
An interesting read regarding the back and forth between Nokia and Apple:
[ref: http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/11/apple-countersues-nokia-for-infringing-13-patents/ ]
Nokia wasn't interested in just getting fees for it's patents. They badly needed an 'in' into the smartphone market and they knew it. They also demanded the rights to cross license various iPhone patents as part of their lawsuit against Apple. They basically were shut out of the smartphone industry and Apple being the new guy on the block in the phone industry probably looked like their best chance at that.
I disagree. All companies build patent portfolios to strengthen their positions and for bargaining power. I don't consider someone a patent troll unless that's all they do is try to profit off of a patent with no actual product, which applies to neither of these two companies. Both still have a large product line that they actively sell. While most folks on here assume all patents are leveraged for trolling purposes, I think this kind of wrangling is common among any companies that are long in the tooth with a long history of patented ideas. It basically makes those involved more willing to come to the table and make sane bargains, or if the opposing company is lacking in a strong portfolio, they end up weak at the table and end up making larger concessions. It's just business in most cases.
I don't particularly like what they've turned the patent system into, but I can see it's usefulness to any business.
Of the two businesses here though. I've got to admit that Nokia seems to be coming at this from weakness and huge loss of market share and profits. This seems more of an act of desperation to get them through the onslaught of Android and iOS. They started this back and forth when they started taking huge losses to the iPhone, which of course brought a response from Apple. On the surface, it appears that they panicked and weren't prepared for the beating they took. They have been one of the bigger losers in the Smartphone wars and were caught sleeping at the wheel so to speak. They have a strong dumb-phone presence but not so much on the smartphone market. Looking at their product line it still look rather dated compared to current offerings (ease of use, form factor, etc). Android in turn just made things worse for them and neither Apple nor any of the numerous companies selling Android based phones shows any signs of real letting up.
I don't think these patent wars have anything to do with Open Source other than their main competitor happens to use an open source OS. Android is a bit of an industry freak in that regard. It's become huge and is open source, but the entire market has been closed source for years and thrived. Androids success derives from it's similarity and close competition with iOS. The interface on both is strikingly similar (no flames please, just stating the obvious and not implying anything), and the fact that it has Google backing it which would be a boon to almost any product. I almost wish Google had dedicated time to a real desktop OS like they have with the mobile market. Linux could be huge (sorry, I'm wandering but I think about that missed opportunity every time this comes up). Cloud OS's are just not of interest yet in the mainstream. If they could get their hooks into a solid linux Distro they could clean house or at least shake up the desktop arena and the big players.
I agree wholeheartedly with your last statement. Nokia seems to have been so used to being top dog in the 90's and early 2000's that they lost that competitive edge they so easily held before smart phones emerged as the new bread winner. They just seem to be stumbling about at the moment. Patents aren't inherently anti-competetive. They actually do have a purpose, although it's been twisted over the years. I do believe it's necessary to give a company time to recoup it's research/investments and they can do that with patents, but the current and lengthy times that they can hold these now has throttle innovation. I still hope for a little sanity at some point but I suspect that won't happen in my lifetime.
I think the parents point is that there isn't a single Android model that comes close to the sales of any iPhone. The same is true in the Tablet arena. iOS is king and there is no risk from any Android device of toppling that. If I owned a business I would always be looking for possible contenders.
From Motorola's perspective, it's great that Android was so well accepted, but the OS hasn't given them a huge selling model. FOSS fans love it, but from a business perspective, it's good, but they can and should be looking for the next best thing if they are still losing market share, and every other phone manufacturer is selling the same OS on every phone. It's become common.
I think the gist of this was that Google is digging for data that isn't normally allowed for transactions. Google is in the business of mining data and profiting off of it. It becomes dangerous when they start expecting such concessions without people realizing the risks involved. I've become more hesitant to use their services over the last year due to stories like these. At some point they have to at least be making people nervous with the various online activities. they end up collecting information for.
Part of my fear is that they have the tech community so enamored of them that they tend to gloss over or overlook something that would raise a firestorm if someone else did it like Microsoft or Apple. Search info, email accounts, calendars, chat, authentication services for various websites. All of these leave a huge fingerprint especially when you are logging in via your Google accounts to use them. All in the hands of a single company who profits off of such data.
To claim these worries make one paranoid as many are often doing on /. while ignoring the risk just seems foolish. Although Google may not have crossed the line into 'evil', they could easily do so without anyone being the wiser. They may be doing so today. It should raise alarms and caution when someone brings up such stories rather than scorn for the poster, assuming it's a reasoned argument.
Interesting. Google recently removed malware apps. Is that censorship? Why was the offending app removed? The answer was that it caused potential harm to the end user. Ideally any app that causes emotional distress can be just as harmful. The simple fact remains that both shops are curated to some extent and by the extremely generous definition, they are both censoring. You can't be all hurray for one while slamming the other when the end result is the same under that broad definition. Both companies have always had control over content within their own stores, although they may exercise it differently. To my knowledge, Apple has never removed an app from a iDevice, while Google has using their kill switch. Does that make Google more evil? No. Do I think the kill switch equates to censorship? No.
I happen to agree with this decision, and no one here can claim that this app wasn't already under review once a complaint was filed. The petition is probably incidental.
The fact that they would rate the above post insightful by implying that Apple will destroy free society, and equating it to 'Jews' and visions of death camps, and totalitarian rule all because a store refuses to sell a product is blatantly ridiculous.
You don't protest Toys-R-Us because they don't have porn racks with Hustler displayed out front. They never promised to be your one-stop sex shop. The same is true for Apple. It clearly states in the developer agreement that any controversial apps would be subject to removal. Apple has always presented the App store as child safe either via content control, or parental control. Someone published an app that clearly fell into the 'controversial' bucket, and surprise, folks are in an uproar because Apple help true to their word. It is not censorship any more than Toys-R-Us is censoring your right to view porn. If you want to see it, go to a porn store. if you want to view this type of info, go to their web site or buy a phone that supports that App.Hell, do it on an iPhone via the safari browser while jacking off to gay porn and reading about being 'cured' from the 'gay cure app' website all at the same time. Apple won't stop you.
Just don't expect them to sell it to you.
I still dislike Firefox for failing to implement h.264. Did they resolve that so that you can at least use your OS support for it? I would imagine that Firefox will be swallowed up by Chrome if nothing else, and if Chrome fails to support h.264 they are also taking a risk of losing user base.
They largely are. These offers of protection tend to download .EXE's since these fake antivirus companies don't waste time on anything that's non-Windows. In addition, a large majority of Mac users don't bother with Antivirus so they simply ignore these. Last but not least, they tend to be less gullible than Windows users.
http://www.daniweb.com/hardware-and-software/networking/news/218521
http://techcrunch.com/2009/12/10/microsoft-users-gullible-advertising/
Last but not least, these types of attacks tend to be fear driven and Windows users simply have more to fear from Viruses than Mac users at the moment. After years of sustained attacks, they are simply much to jumpy and easily frightened to pass up.
I agree with some of your points but disagree with a few:
MS was largely successful with DirectX, and the goal of allowing developers to largely ignore the graphics hardware while concentrating on a standard API was successful. For ill or good, it's driven game design on the dominant platform for years, and arguably kept OpenGL on the defensive.
MS may provider driver support with their OS because it is to their benefit to have out of the box support, but they have never been best in driver support. They leave that to the GPU vendors and rightly so. MS is often months or years out of date when it comes to drivers.
Last but not least, developers are not a slave to the MS API. They can always choose OpenGL with the added benefit of portability to other platforms. They simply choose not to, whether that involves cost, development time, or simple unfamiliarity with OpenGL as opposed to DirectX.
I think a large part of the lack of perceived difference between consoles and PC's these days have a bit to do with the least common denominator, which unfortunately also happens to be an aging dedicated gaming console, and lack of money, time, & resources by developers and publishers to fully stretch the legs of the newest hardware when they can target the lowest common denominator and get by with 'ok' on a PC.
Without a standard in place, I can't say I blame them. If Apple backs a technology that may change entirely over the course of a year, which in turn is based on hardware in the phones themselves, I can see why they are hesitant. It seems backwards that they wouldn't establish a standard first, and then go about putting the specs into their handsets.
Why does it seem like they are going about this a bit backward? Not Apple in general, but the industry in general. Typically if there is a need for a standard, a board is established and they draft out a spec. Why hasn't this happened yet?
Not only that but I'm guessing the reviewer wasn't familiar enough with the iOS settings for Mail to know that iOS does indeed let you sync contacts, mail, and calendar with GMail over the air via WiFi or 3G. It will do so with ActiveSync, GMail, Yahoo, and AOL accounts without issue. The only app they indicated was perceptibly better was the navigation app, which I happen to agree with. Apple's navigation app is in desperate need of some updates as it's essentially unchanged since the first version of iOS.
He also goes on about the Finder like column views for folders indicating it's a strength over iOS but doesn't appear to know you can simply click a button and drop a message in any folder on iOS without having to leave your finger in constant contact with the touchpad while you browse through your folder structure. In addition he indicated that Honeycomb doesn't allow nested folders so a significant number of folders would make dragging and dropping a message to a folder in the bottom of the list from the top of the folder list tedious at best.He also indicates that embedded font sizes override your font preferences as he apparently does not know that you can set a minimum font size in the mail preferences.
In the App section, I also agree with the poster above. Even if the number of apps doubled from 16 to 37, it still pales in comparison to the full library available to the iPad. The scoring difference here was very slanted as the difference was almost non-existent. I was also curios about the statement regarding 'lack of popups' on the iOS UI. Push notifications have existed for quite a long time, and various apps like Facebook, twitter, email clients, etc all typically support them.
On the web browser section, nearly every section showed an advantage to the iPad yet it was declared a tie? He does state the Xoom score better on the benchmarks and then immediately states that the iPad felt much snappier even though the Xoom scored higher in benchmarks. In fact that was the only item where the Xoom seemed to win where every other feature was done better in iOS or simply lacking in the Xoom, yet it was declared a tie for web browsing.
On the location piece I probably would have called a tie although I much prefer the Android navigation app, I also see a great need to control individual app's ability to use location services. Leaving the option out to control that access at the app level seems like a glaring omission, where a large number of comparable navigation apps which do include voice capabilities are available for iPad for free or a small fee.
Under the UI, Operational UI, and Text tools, the reviewer again shows an advantage for the iPad again, while at the same time knocking the widget area which he praised in the proceeding paragraph and earlier in the review for taking up too much screen real-estate. He states the settings are difficult to read on the Xoom, and that the keyboard is not full size, unlike the iPad, making it more difficult to type on. In the text section he again calls the iPad superior on text handling capabilities. He then proceeds to call it a tie yet again.
The hardware section shows many flaws in Xoom, from it's plastic casing, it's back facing power switch, and a battery time that's half the iPad's while weighing significantly more. He also failed to test the graphics capabilities of the tablets which are becoming a key area in mobile performance for gaming. Had he done so he would have found that the iPad 2 rips the Xoom to pieces by a huge margin.
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/03/12/dual_core_sgx543_dramatically_boosts_ipad_2_graphics.html
I think the Xoom has a lot of potential, but it is a far cry from 'close' to the iPad 2. Candy coated reviews aren't doing anyone any favors, and they remove pressure from hardware manufacturer's to improve their products faster.
A scoring system for the review would have been a good place to start, rather than the fluffy numbers this review is giving.
Except we do not live in a perfect world, and altruistic statements claiming that peace, love, and harmony would result if there were no secrets have no basis in fact since no such state of mind and openness exists, and most likely never will due to the human nature. Claiming that it would be that way with no proof to that effect (since such a condition has never existed in Man's written history) is a bit disingenuous and it also happens to be based on simple beliefe rather than any social models that actually exist.
Humans by nature always have private thoughts that they do not share. Unless we were all telepathic or had some other means to know others private thoughts, such a utopia simply cannot exist.
The Mac version has a Bookmarks menu, but that's simply due to the fact that the menu bar shows context menus for any open app. The minimalist approach to chrome is a bit irritating sometimes. I also get irritated with the single 'options' button on IE. Sometimes it makes sense to have various context menus available for easy access. I have to wonder why they didn't take the same approach with IE that they did with explorer, where a hotkey would cause the menu's to appear when needed, and disappear when the key was released.
States secrets cannot simply be shouted about because you happen to know them. You are implying that anyone should have the right to any state secrets (or any information for that matter), which would clearly never work in a society that relies on state secrets for a variety of reasons ranging from Treaty Negotiations, Espionage, Research, Military Operations, etc. There are clearly valid reasons for such state secrets to exist.
Section 793 of the Espionage Act specifically addresses classified information and what the press can and can't print. SCOTUS clarified a lot of that specifically around the case between the U.S. Government and the N.Y. Times. In that case, it was deemed that the information that was reprinted by the New York Times did not meet the classification of a state secret that related to Defense secrets, or that could give a foreign power an advantage. The state failed to meet it's burden of proof and the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the NY Times.
In this case, the order that was sought specifically excluded 'content' because the DOJ knew that if they did not specifically narrow the order they sought, they woud run afoul of privacy issues, where the information they are requesting here is much more narrow in scope. It easily meets the criteria of being 'of interest' in an ongoing investigation. I think the biggest concern here is the fact that they can effectively gather contacts who may be related (or not) to the case at hand, hence the 'chilling effect' on free speech. Although this type of information gathering doesn't violate the letter of the law, I can see both sides of the argument, but I can't imagine that the folks involved could claim that they were unaware of what Wikileaks did, or the potential that users who willingly communicate with them might one day be made available to interested parties due to a court order of some sort.
Is it valid for a judge to consider the effect a ruling might have on others, rather than the actual law involved in a case? I'm genuinely curious if they are supposed to consider the effect of a ruling when the letter of the law hasn't been violated?
The forums are full of frustrated users who will not be receiving a vendor supplied update to the latest versions. Not a big deal for a typical /. user, but a bit daunting to a non-techie. The vendors have no incentive to upgrade a phone once they lock someone into a contract. It is actually desirable that they don't upgrade a device to enable new features since it creates a horse and carrot effect.
The numbers are closer to 42% below version 2.2 according to Google, rather than 60% but still nothing to be happy about.
http://www.betanews.com/article/Fragmentation-is-root-cause-of-Androids-recent-malware-problems/1299518685
It's difficult to argue though, that the tax payer should subsidize exploratory ventures for companies which make some of the largest profits on the planet. In short, they could afford these ventures on their own with no help from the taxpayer. It is to their benefit to keep the taxpayer addicted to oil as long as possible. About the only karmic result of all this is that the oil industry will eventually have to expand into other energy sources or face extinction.
As a taxpayer, I say the sooner the better. Total dependency on an energy source that we do not and cannot control is borderline insanity.
That said, I happen to agree that some government incentives for alternate fuels is absolutely necessary. Sometimes they do 'hit the jackpot' so to speak, and if such ventures into solar prove to be a feasible alternative fuel, then I would consider that money well spent.
Although this release might have some puerile value for hard core fans, the cynic in me can't help but think it will turn into a 'Clash of the Titans' 3D hack job. The very thing that James Cameron warned studio's against. Granted if they spend enough time on it, it might be decent, but then it has the stigma associated with Jar-Jar to overcome as well.
http://geektwins.blogspot.com/2010/04/controversy-over-3d-in-clash-of-titans.html
I would much prefer someone write Episodes 7-9 instead. Quit with all the remakes.