There hasn't been a new major architecture in like 20 years
Did you miss the part about ARMv7? I suppose you could turn off all optimizations in your compiler and get something that'll run on every different generation of a given major architecture, but it'll perform horribly. You might notice you can't run desktop programs on a x386 CPU these days, even though it's theoretically the same architecture.
a couple of megabytes, on a desktop computer where people have 2TB hard drives
App developers won't mind that compiling their app takes 100X as long. Of course. What was I thinking?
They already have your IDE. The auto updater opens up and lets them download the newest version.
Whatever world you live in, where major updates take no effort, never introduce any bugs, and everyone just does it for no benefit to themselves, with everyone who has ever written an app just sitting around with everything ready to go, just waiting to recompile their app again and again for no benefit to themselves. doesn't even remotely resemble reality. It's beyond idiotic. Either you're just trying massively too hard to argue to the point of ridiculousness, or you are some kid who has zero experience and a world view of about arms' length. Either way, I'm just wasting my time on your stupid contrived alternate universe scenarios.
don't think anybody is really interested in running Android apps on their desktops -- because if they were, people would just release a desktop version of the same app which uses a desktop UI API instead of a mobile one.
Pretty much anywhere a crappy javascript + flash web page has been turned into an Android apps, there is lots of interest in running it on a desktop. People complain endlessly about how much CPU power is wasted by Youtube, but not an issue if you have a native app. Ditto for Pandora, and many, many others.
you can always just implement the Android API on whatever OS in the same way as you would write a VM for it and then run Android programs on whatever you want the same as you can run Windows programs under WINE
Right... Instead of a Dalvik wrapper to allow android programs to run on any JRE anywhere... you just need to port the entire platform... it's as easy as writing WINE!
It's pretty clear you're just being contrarian for the hell of it. Nobody could be this stupid, so I'll just ignore you now.
trampolines, plastic bow and arrows, etc. are deadly, but rifles and shotguns are okay for children?
To tell you the truth... yes. Go look up some casualty statistics for yourself. It's not unusual to see rather young kids walking around carrying their own rifles when up in hunting country. And yet accidents are exceptionally rare.
Now, if rifles shot candy 90% of the time, and live ammo 10% of the time, you'd have a real point... There's a big difference when you're talking about a dangerous tool, versus a toy that is supposed to be safe, but which sometimes does maim (or kill) when used (at least mostly...) as instructed.
If this is falling on deaf ears, and "gun" is just a scary word to you, many parents also give their kids knives, matches/lighters, hatchets, axes, etc., etc. at fairly early ages. If you're still aghast at the very idea, all I can say is that life in rural areas just doesn't resemble life in the city, and kids learning how to be responsible and take care of themselves at an early age is actually a good thing. You're worried about the kid innocently walking around carrying his hunting rifle, I'd be more worried about the kid without one, walking through bear and cougar territory.
With the majority of people living in cities, and the ratio only rising, I can't help but wonder what's being lost. On the other hand, absolutely everybody moving out to the country would be devastating, so it's actually a good thing for the rest of it.
You mean to say you're going to sell everything as just one package deal, with no app store. I find that hard to believe.
So I take it you don't and have never owned a car? That's exactly the status quo, so what you think is "hard to believe" is what everyone else calls "reality".
These days, the consumer is just getting too used to the free up-to-date maps and the free turn-by-turn navigation provided by Google.
Google Navigation isn't free. That's why you don't have it on your iPhone. It's a loss-leader, to get people to use the Google App Store, which you DID pay to get access to (hidden in the cost of your phone/tablet).
Cars are no different. You buy a car and you get navigation software that's just as "FREE" as Google Navigation, except the user experience can be far better on a nice big screen in your car, tied to your sound system, with highly integrated controls (eg on the steering wheel), no battery life issues, etc., etc.
I replied in the hopes you're just loud and ignorant, and not stupid, but you're pretty tiresome either way, so don't expect further follow-ups.
At the moment it's not too significant, as there's quite a monoculture of hardware. However, should another arch prove to be significantly superior, such as China's Longsoon MIPS CPU, it could be a huge advantage.
All you would have to do is configure the IDE to automatically produce a binary for each hardware platform, put them all in the market, then detect the user's device architecture to give them the right version when they download it.
Right, you only have to massively balloon the IDE / SDK with cross-compilers for every single possible architecture out there, keep copies of every single one forever, and hope nobody tries to install the APK from their phone on another device, ever...
but that's really not worth very much since the next version of any given app will get them automatically as soon as you put support in the compiler
Are you even talking about the same subject? How are you planning on forcing 100 million app developers to go download your latest IDE / SDK and recompile all their programs?
Last I checked, QT apps have to be recompiled when you're moving from one architecture to another. Basing Android on a VM means you can quickly port Android to MIPS or x86, and most apps can be downloaded from the market and run, unmodified.
The few exceptions are multimedia, like Flash, which has ARMv7 optimizations, and won't even run on a slightly older ARMv6 (ARM11) CPU, as you see in very low-end Android phones... The LG Optimus Prime would be a great phone if not for this (and the lack of brightness sensor, and lack of camera flash).
In addition, basing it on a subset of java in particular means most platforms already have the basic VM, and unmodified Android apps can be run with just a modest wrapper around them.
It only has a 5 MP camera. I don't actually care about the MP per se (it's already greater than the resolution of an HD screen after all) but they don't really give you any other specs to go by so i don't know how else to judge it.
The spec you want is LENSE SIZE. You can tell at a glance if it's decent, or crap. The problem being that a decent lense takes lots of space, and sticks way out. With any luck, you can find a case that'll even that out...
In your strange world, "different" turns into "better" in your head?
And my example of Toyota being inferior to GM was also somehow in support of your claim? So "nimble" means poorly organized, unstable and vulnerable to you?
Then find a new place, or help organize and clean-up your neighborhood. For the crappy neighbors, complain to the landlord. In living spaces as well, supply and demand works just fine, so threaten to leave and see what happens.
I'm spending £1100/month to rent a place that would cost me 240000 quid to buy.
I'm paying slightly less than that to rent, in an area where buying the cheapest of homes costs more than twice that (plus HOA fees, taxes, etc). So what? Welcome to the world. The US is an expensive place to live, too, if you don't want a painfully long daily commute.
My solution? Rent a decent place and work for a while (rather than getting a huge mortgage I'd be paying on forever) and then in a few years, move away to a nice cheap spot with decent property prices... Not $1,000, but still very, very cheap...
I'm happy for you. you've got your fucking house and you like to gloat from your "trickle-down" economy (the other word for that is "feudalism".. it's not good for economics).
I don't have a house, and I'm not gloating about anything, except for being smart enough not to over-leverage myself into slavery, all for the dogmatic belief that one needs to own their own home in an insanely pricey area.
You're either rich enough to live in orange county, stupid enough to live in an area where your life is in danger, or dumb enough to waste your time on slashdot whilst you evidently made it.
Orange county has fairly cheap places to live too, including some unsightly neighborhoods you clearly wouldn't want to be seen in. The more expensive houses are more of a status symbol than practical places to live, avoid that, and you can do fine.
"Dangerous areas" are vastly overblown. At least here in the US, the cheapest places to live happen to be the same places where not-so-white people congregate. It's mostly racism that people avoid those areas. High crime rates tend to be a reflection of fewer young, single people, and a lot of unemployed, retirees, and large families in the area, because most crime is familial. In short, the father who flipped out and murdered his whole family, wouldn't have behaved any differently if he could have afforded a nicer home, so you're really not much better off.
I WORK for a living.
As do I. I just made smart enough decisions that I'm comfortable and secure, and obviously have some ideas about how I can stretch my money to ridiculous proportions.
Honestly, no matter how much money you're making, I'm sure there are people living on less. People are bad with money and get stuck in a rut of spending every last penny they earn, and making themselves feel poor and financially unstable, to sustain their lifestyle... It's always a good idea to take a big step back and figure out how those making less than you, are making ends meet... you might well find that you could be comfortable spending far less money. And you should really do it while you're making good money, rather than being suddenly forced into it one day, when you no longer are, and need to suddenly learn, and without a safety net to help the transition.
Your solution is to buy a home (which is probably in desperate need of replair) in the slums where there are no jobs? That doesn't even make any sense. o.O
Town that have a labor surplus aren't "slums". I singled out Detroit as being entirely different than most cases, NOT my suggestion.
If you're retiring, which you specifically mentioned, the lack of jobs should be a total non-issue for you.
And no, the fact that they're incredibly cheap is not a reflection of them requiring non-trivial repairs... Once it's clear there's no market for them, giving them away becomes a better option than the banks paying to maintain them.
I live in a modest home, under 100k in 1999, and I make six figure salary.
Fair enough, but then why are you even replying to a comment about being perpetually in-debt to a bank on mortgage and credit card? For that matter, why are you even in-debt if your annual salary exceeds your entire mortgage, and you've had about 12 years now? I don't understand that one. Making over 100k and can't put 5% of your salary towards your house, and just pay it off? Instead staying in-debt and needing to service that debt for years and years?
My neighborhood wasn't "horendously expensive" but my taxes are, they are currently higher then my mortage payment.
I also can't figure out the math on that one, unless you're bundling HOA fees or some other fees in with the property taxes on your home.
Hey! What happened to the second part? The part where you show me where I was "claiming that Android systems couldn't be used be used"? I was looking forward to seeing your quotes on that one.
You do have an interesting talent of finding all kinds of off-the-wall meanings, which nobody else sees, in what other people write.
Your assertion is not a counter point, it's vague marketing fluff. I'm sure GM would be happy to tell you how their command structure makes them superior as well. It's vague, fact-free dogma, if not all out propaganda, with no relationship to rality.
I have no idea how my very direct refutation of everything you said, you somehow read as my agreeing with you.
Japanese companies were 50 years ahead of US companies in trying to remain flexible while large and successful.
Japanese manufacturers have a different style. They have different pros/cons than US manufacturer. Neither is head or behind the other, they are different, not directly comparable.
Toyota had a major blow with the tsunami hobbling their production capacity. GM in a similar situation wouldn't have been notably affected, because they aren't nearly as centralized as Toyota.
The terms in which you even talk about the subject are fluff and far too vague to even have a rational discussion about.
Amazing how even with a quote stating exactly what you claim wasn't said, you still claim otherwise.
My statement is fine, your interpretation is just completely wrong, and that won't change no matter how hard you try to take it out of context. Did you notice you are the only one here going around ranting about it? Everyone else got it...
You were claiming that Android systems couldn't be used be used
I absolutely, positively NEVER said anything of the sort, and I don't see how you could possibly have read that into anything I said. Did you notice the subject line in every single comment in this thread?
I'm well aware of the difference. This story is about MPEG, so at best the original statement is off-topic and meaningless. Secondly, they're (unfortunately) very closely related anyhow, and everything I said still stands.
yes, I'm a victim of the requirement to have somewhere to live when I retire. I had this requirement as a juvenile, and I still have it now as an adult
No, you're a victim of wanting to own a house in a horendously expensive area.
There are plenty of depressed areas. Detroit is the one people hear about the most, but there are LOTS of others. Because there are few or no jobs available in the area (after a plant closing, or whatnot) homes are very nearly given away. I think everyone can muster $1,000 for a place to live, and a little bit more for maintenance. No slavery needed. If you're already set for retirement, the problem of no jobs is a non-issue, and the savings is huge.
That's not the only choice, either. Here in CA, moving to Arizona or Colorado after retirement is pretty common.
And if you insist on living in an expensive area, you still have options. Moving out a bit further from the city centers always helps. Living high-density, ala condos or long-term apartment rental might end up cheaper. There's even the option of mobile homes.
So, you're not a slave of needing a place to live. You're a slave of your desire to live in a certain style and location.
Social networking itself is not the bubble. Facebook might die out, but it needs a real competitor first.
Yes and no.
but the basic function they provide is something that lots of people find useful, and will continue to find useful.
No. Communicating with other people is the useful part. Social networking is a very specific subset of that, and not one that provides any real value, other than being a popular fad.
Even Slashdot itself is a kind of social network,
Congratulations, you've succesfully underminded your own statement by redefining the term to include, well, everything and anything. Sorry, we had e-mail and instant messaaging, and image sharing from the very beginning of the internet... the internet itself is the real underlying "social network" of which you speak, and yes, it won't go away. Anything and everything that fits the real definition of "social networking" however, most certainly can go away at a moments notice, with nothing to replace it, and life will go on.
Do you really want to engender a feeling of disgust every time one of your customers browses your app store?
In-car systems don't have app stores. There's no way you're going to know the real price of any of the applications included, any more than you'll know how much the in-car computer system itself costs.
Will that be a Japanese manufacturer again? May be, it's sad to say, but unless Google steps in, and does some of its magic, I don't expect much leadership coming from any of the big car manufacturers here in the US.
Japanese car companies are just as big and entrenched as US car companies. I don't know why you think they've got some magic abilities that US-based car companies do. And it must be a small world you live in, because US/Japan most certainly aren't the only countries with big car manufacturers. In fact Volkswagen (Germany) is on-course to become the largest car manufacturer in the world.
What is there to think about it? It's an H.264 implementation, so it comes with all the patent problems that go with it.
Most people find it to be the best video codec out there. Personally, I have some reservations... It does a couple things like include a small amount of high frequency random noise that I find very unsightly and distracting, and it also washes out the picture a bit, and there are no settings to allow you to adjust this behavior (afaik). Whether these two issues are obvious depends on the video itself, but generally, I avoid it for videos I want high quality and have a high enough bitrate to make that happen with other codecs.
The real problem is that the hardware will be hilariously outdated in 18-24 months, whereas the car has a much longer expected lifespan.
Manufacturers have been churning-out ~1GHz ARMv7 Android v2.x smartphones for 24 months now, and there's no sign of that changing for the next few months here... The first change will likely be the OS to 4.0, then maybe dual-core CPUs, but otherwise, things aren't changing very much.
The part that gets me is SD cards... We've been stuck at 32GB max for years and years, and there's no sign of anything else on the horizon. You can pay a couple grand for your smartphone or tablet if you want, and you'll still be limited to 32GB of space per-card, just like all the low-end ($100) Android devices. No way to turn those cheap Android phones running Winamp into a super-awesome solid-state device that one-up's an iPod.
The OP claimed that ALL parts of a car must function the same 10 years in as the do the day the car is sold.
Except he didn't...
The law basically boils down to the OEM must provide EXACT replacement parts for at least 10 years. They can't provide the newer, version 2.0 in-car computer system. They can't insist that you upgrade to version 3.1.9 of the maps and navigator app when it stops working in a few years. They are locked in to being able to repair anything that breaks, back to working EXACTLY like it did on day one, for 10 years... completely unthinkable in computer / tablet markets.
Slashdot Mirror
Did you miss the part about ARMv7? I suppose you could turn off all optimizations in your compiler and get something that'll run on every different generation of a given major architecture, but it'll perform horribly. You might notice you can't run desktop programs on a x386 CPU these days, even though it's theoretically the same architecture.
App developers won't mind that compiling their app takes 100X as long. Of course. What was I thinking?
Whatever world you live in, where major updates take no effort, never introduce any bugs, and everyone just does it for no benefit to themselves, with everyone who has ever written an app just sitting around with everything ready to go, just waiting to recompile their app again and again for no benefit to themselves. doesn't even remotely resemble reality. It's beyond idiotic. Either you're just trying massively too hard to argue to the point of ridiculousness, or you are some kid who has zero experience and a world view of about arms' length. Either way, I'm just wasting my time on your stupid contrived alternate universe scenarios.
Pretty much anywhere a crappy javascript + flash web page has been turned into an Android apps, there is lots of interest in running it on a desktop. People complain endlessly about how much CPU power is wasted by Youtube, but not an issue if you have a native app. Ditto for Pandora, and many, many others.
Right... Instead of a Dalvik wrapper to allow android programs to run on any JRE anywhere... you just need to port the entire platform... it's as easy as writing WINE!
It's pretty clear you're just being contrarian for the hell of it. Nobody could be this stupid, so I'll just ignore you now.
To tell you the truth... yes. Go look up some casualty statistics for yourself. It's not unusual to see rather young kids walking around carrying their own rifles when up in hunting country. And yet accidents are exceptionally rare.
Now, if rifles shot candy 90% of the time, and live ammo 10% of the time, you'd have a real point... There's a big difference when you're talking about a dangerous tool, versus a toy that is supposed to be safe, but which sometimes does maim (or kill) when used (at least mostly...) as instructed.
If this is falling on deaf ears, and "gun" is just a scary word to you, many parents also give their kids knives, matches/lighters, hatchets, axes, etc., etc. at fairly early ages. If you're still aghast at the very idea, all I can say is that life in rural areas just doesn't resemble life in the city, and kids learning how to be responsible and take care of themselves at an early age is actually a good thing. You're worried about the kid innocently walking around carrying his hunting rifle, I'd be more worried about the kid without one, walking through bear and cougar territory.
With the majority of people living in cities, and the ratio only rising, I can't help but wonder what's being lost. On the other hand, absolutely everybody moving out to the country would be devastating, so it's actually a good thing for the rest of it.
So I take it you don't and have never owned a car? That's exactly the status quo, so what you think is "hard to believe" is what everyone else calls "reality".
Google Navigation isn't free. That's why you don't have it on your iPhone. It's a loss-leader, to get people to use the Google App Store, which you DID pay to get access to (hidden in the cost of your phone/tablet).
Cars are no different. You buy a car and you get navigation software that's just as "FREE" as Google Navigation, except the user experience can be far better on a nice big screen in your car, tied to your sound system, with highly integrated controls (eg on the steering wheel), no battery life issues, etc., etc.
I replied in the hopes you're just loud and ignorant, and not stupid, but you're pretty tiresome either way, so don't expect further follow-ups.
At the moment it's not too significant, as there's quite a monoculture of hardware. However, should another arch prove to be significantly superior, such as China's Longsoon MIPS CPU, it could be a huge advantage.
Right, you only have to massively balloon the IDE / SDK with cross-compilers for every single possible architecture out there, keep copies of every single one forever, and hope nobody tries to install the APK from their phone on another device, ever...
Are you even talking about the same subject? How are you planning on forcing 100 million app developers to go download your latest IDE / SDK and recompile all their programs?
Desktops...
I find you comment is endlessly amusing.
Last I checked, QT apps have to be recompiled when you're moving from one architecture to another. Basing Android on a VM means you can quickly port Android to MIPS or x86, and most apps can be downloaded from the market and run, unmodified.
The few exceptions are multimedia, like Flash, which has ARMv7 optimizations, and won't even run on a slightly older ARMv6 (ARM11) CPU, as you see in very low-end Android phones... The LG Optimus Prime would be a great phone if not for this (and the lack of brightness sensor, and lack of camera flash).
In addition, basing it on a subset of java in particular means most platforms already have the basic VM, and unmodified Android apps can be run with just a modest wrapper around them.
The spec you want is LENSE SIZE. You can tell at a glance if it's decent, or crap. The problem being that a decent lense takes lots of space, and sticks way out. With any luck, you can find a case that'll even that out...
In your strange world, "different" turns into "better" in your head?
And my example of Toyota being inferior to GM was also somehow in support of your claim? So "nimble" means poorly organized, unstable and vulnerable to you?
Then find a new place, or help organize and clean-up your neighborhood. For the crappy neighbors, complain to the landlord. In living spaces as well, supply and demand works just fine, so threaten to leave and see what happens.
I'm paying slightly less than that to rent, in an area where buying the cheapest of homes costs more than twice that (plus HOA fees, taxes, etc). So what? Welcome to the world. The US is an expensive place to live, too, if you don't want a painfully long daily commute.
My solution? Rent a decent place and work for a while (rather than getting a huge mortgage I'd be paying on forever) and then in a few years, move away to a nice cheap spot with decent property prices... Not $1,000, but still very, very cheap...
I don't have a house, and I'm not gloating about anything, except for being smart enough not to over-leverage myself into slavery, all for the dogmatic belief that one needs to own their own home in an insanely pricey area.
Orange county has fairly cheap places to live too, including some unsightly neighborhoods you clearly wouldn't want to be seen in. The more expensive houses are more of a status symbol than practical places to live, avoid that, and you can do fine.
"Dangerous areas" are vastly overblown. At least here in the US, the cheapest places to live happen to be the same places where not-so-white people congregate. It's mostly racism that people avoid those areas. High crime rates tend to be a reflection of fewer young, single people, and a lot of unemployed, retirees, and large families in the area, because most crime is familial. In short, the father who flipped out and murdered his whole family, wouldn't have behaved any differently if he could have afforded a nicer home, so you're really not much better off.
As do I. I just made smart enough decisions that I'm comfortable and secure, and obviously have some ideas about how I can stretch my money to ridiculous proportions.
Honestly, no matter how much money you're making, I'm sure there are people living on less. People are bad with money and get stuck in a rut of spending every last penny they earn, and making themselves feel poor and financially unstable, to sustain their lifestyle... It's always a good idea to take a big step back and figure out how those making less than you, are making ends meet... you might well find that you could be comfortable spending far less money. And you should really do it while you're making good money, rather than being suddenly forced into it one day, when you no longer are, and need to suddenly learn, and without a safety net to help the transition.
Town that have a labor surplus aren't "slums". I singled out Detroit as being entirely different than most cases, NOT my suggestion.
If you're retiring, which you specifically mentioned, the lack of jobs should be a total non-issue for you.
And no, the fact that they're incredibly cheap is not a reflection of them requiring non-trivial repairs... Once it's clear there's no market for them, giving them away becomes a better option than the banks paying to maintain them.
Fair enough, but then why are you even replying to a comment about being perpetually in-debt to a bank on mortgage and credit card? For that matter, why are you even in-debt if your annual salary exceeds your entire mortgage, and you've had about 12 years now? I don't understand that one. Making over 100k and can't put 5% of your salary towards your house, and just pay it off? Instead staying in-debt and needing to service that debt for years and years?
I also can't figure out the math on that one, unless you're bundling HOA fees or some other fees in with the property taxes on your home.
Hey! What happened to the second part? The part where you show me where I was "claiming that Android systems couldn't be used be used"? I was looking forward to seeing your quotes on that one.
You do have an interesting talent of finding all kinds of off-the-wall meanings, which nobody else sees, in what other people write.
Your assertion is not a counter point, it's vague marketing fluff. I'm sure GM would be happy to tell you how their command structure makes them superior as well. It's vague, fact-free dogma, if not all out propaganda, with no relationship to rality.
I have no idea how my very direct refutation of everything you said, you somehow read as my agreeing with you.
I wouldn't call either a gunshot or gaping hole "natural causes."
Japanese manufacturers have a different style. They have different pros/cons than US manufacturer. Neither is head or behind the other, they are different, not directly comparable.
Toyota had a major blow with the tsunami hobbling their production capacity. GM in a similar situation wouldn't have been notably affected, because they aren't nearly as centralized as Toyota.
The terms in which you even talk about the subject are fluff and far too vague to even have a rational discussion about.
My statement is fine, your interpretation is just completely wrong, and that won't change no matter how hard you try to take it out of context. Did you notice you are the only one here going around ranting about it? Everyone else got it...
I absolutely, positively NEVER said anything of the sort, and I don't see how you could possibly have read that into anything I said. Did you notice the subject line in every single comment in this thread?
No. But I know how fast it's going...
I'm well aware of the difference. This story is about MPEG, so at best the original statement is off-topic and meaningless. Secondly, they're (unfortunately) very closely related anyhow, and everything I said still stands.
Your inability to read or ignorance of the subject doesn't change what was said. Others obviously understood the statement just fine.
You're just splitting hairs. Put "functionally" before every "exact" and the point remains the same.
No, you're a victim of wanting to own a house in a horendously expensive area.
There are plenty of depressed areas. Detroit is the one people hear about the most, but there are LOTS of others. Because there are few or no jobs available in the area (after a plant closing, or whatnot) homes are very nearly given away. I think everyone can muster $1,000 for a place to live, and a little bit more for maintenance. No slavery needed. If you're already set for retirement, the problem of no jobs is a non-issue, and the savings is huge.
That's not the only choice, either. Here in CA, moving to Arizona or Colorado after retirement is pretty common.
And if you insist on living in an expensive area, you still have options. Moving out a bit further from the city centers always helps. Living high-density, ala condos or long-term apartment rental might end up cheaper. There's even the option of mobile homes.
So, you're not a slave of needing a place to live. You're a slave of your desire to live in a certain style and location.
Yes and no.
No. Communicating with other people is the useful part. Social networking is a very specific subset of that, and not one that provides any real value, other than being a popular fad.
Congratulations, you've succesfully underminded your own statement by redefining the term to include, well, everything and anything. Sorry, we had e-mail and instant messaaging, and image sharing from the very beginning of the internet... the internet itself is the real underlying "social network" of which you speak, and yes, it won't go away. Anything and everything that fits the real definition of "social networking" however, most certainly can go away at a moments notice, with nothing to replace it, and life will go on.
In-car systems don't have app stores. There's no way you're going to know the real price of any of the applications included, any more than you'll know how much the in-car computer system itself costs.
Japanese car companies are just as big and entrenched as US car companies. I don't know why you think they've got some magic abilities that US-based car companies do. And it must be a small world you live in, because US/Japan most certainly aren't the only countries with big car manufacturers. In fact Volkswagen (Germany) is on-course to become the largest car manufacturer in the world.
What is there to think about it? It's an H.264 implementation, so it comes with all the patent problems that go with it.
Most people find it to be the best video codec out there. Personally, I have some reservations... It does a couple things like include a small amount of high frequency random noise that I find very unsightly and distracting, and it also washes out the picture a bit, and there are no settings to allow you to adjust this behavior (afaik). Whether these two issues are obvious depends on the video itself, but generally, I avoid it for videos I want high quality and have a high enough bitrate to make that happen with other codecs.
Quick, somebody find my tin-foil hat!
Manufacturers have been churning-out ~1GHz ARMv7 Android v2.x smartphones for 24 months now, and there's no sign of that changing for the next few months here... The first change will likely be the OS to 4.0, then maybe dual-core CPUs, but otherwise, things aren't changing very much.
The part that gets me is SD cards... We've been stuck at 32GB max for years and years, and there's no sign of anything else on the horizon. You can pay a couple grand for your smartphone or tablet if you want, and you'll still be limited to 32GB of space per-card, just like all the low-end ($100) Android devices. No way to turn those cheap Android phones running Winamp into a super-awesome solid-state device that one-up's an iPod.
Except he didn't...
The law basically boils down to the OEM must provide EXACT replacement parts for at least 10 years. They can't provide the newer, version 2.0 in-car computer system. They can't insist that you upgrade to version 3.1.9 of the maps and navigator app when it stops working in a few years. They are locked in to being able to repair anything that breaks, back to working EXACTLY like it did on day one, for 10 years... completely unthinkable in computer / tablet markets.