It is the same as some wall-warts: they are just wide enough to block the socket to the site (so block two extra sockets if installed in the middle of a strip). The plug for my speakers is currently in one of those cube shaped 3-way adaptors: I don't use it as a three-way, just as a riser so that wart doesn't get in the way of the plugs either size.
I've not bought a phone through a network in at least 6 years, since the last one I got that way partly as an MP3 player as well as phone wouldn't let me load my own audio files (until I found the relevant hack, of course) - I have to re-buy them from the relevant store otherwise! I buy my phones outright instead of having them subsidised by my contract, though I do have a contract rather than PAYG (for my current use it works out better for me) and get the contract subsidised phone when offered every 12-to-18 months rather than wasting it - I get the best phone offered for free and flog it to subsidise the contract a bit (or keep it as my spare and flog the one I currently keep as my spare).
As for the manufacturers, until they *all* pull Motorola's trick (not releasing updates, and explicitly blocking OS updates from other sources) which they won't then there are other options. My current Android phone is a Motorola, but only because it was on a very good special offer (there is no way I'd have paid full price for it) - if a time comes when I need to upgrade the upgrade will most likely be done by buying a competitor's model. This won't stop them, of course, as I'm only one angry nerd and the general public are not aware of the issue (I know people who upgrade annually anyway, just to have the latest bling phone at what-ever cost, so they won't care for a start), but it means I (and others who care about such things) have options other than just putting up with what one particular manufacturer dictates.
But you don't need to break Android out of a jail to install stuff from other sources, and have to re-break-it-out every time an update is released (though as most manufacturers using Android on their phone don't update the OS, instead expecting you to buy a new phone when you want to change, mentioning no Motorolas in particular, this second point may be moot).
He may have used some old equipment that had a different radar freq, but he also got lucky that Political stupidity played a major role(flights into and out of the region where very limited, which areas they could and couldn't fly over).
I'd give the guy a bit more credit than that: he spotted a flaw in his enemy's situation and found a way to take advantage of it. The trick might only have been able to be used once, but that it worked that once and counted for something.
As close to break-even as makes no odds for some players at least. If you are big enough to make a large enough order of licenses to pre-install on your kit the price per individual unit is insanely small compared to what you or I buy a single boxed copy for. Possibly single figures per license for the really big orders - MS still make profit on this because multiplied up that is still a shed-load of money and all they have to ship is a box of the holographic "certificate of authenticity" stickers. If you've only paid a few $ per license then you only have to make a few $ back on installing crap-ware to break even.
The smaller manufacturers just have to eat the extra cost (of getting Windows slightly less cheap due to reduced order size and not being able to negotiate the same sort of price per unit for installing the junk) in order to compete.
When you are not far off break even on the cost-per-unit for Windows+junk the expense of having two different lines, even if the only difference is putting in a different drive (one without the Windows image present) and not putting on the sticker is a cost large enough to consider, and possibly large enough to push you past that break even point. Your procedures staff at the factory need to know which boxes to put what stickers on, you need a procedure for dealing with errors in that process, your online ordering system needs to deal with the two options correctly, you need to maintain an amount of stock of both units at your distribution centres to allow for smooth handling of orders, your brochures need to be written to account for the option, and your support staff need to deal with people who bought the wrong one because they didn't know what the wanted. This all needs to be factored in to the "is it worth offering both options?" decision and how you price the minority option - your customers wanting Windows won't pay extra to cover your side costs when they can save that couple of dollars extra by buying from someone else instead. Andy that is all before you consider any shady practises, the likes of which MS has been found guilty of perpetrating in the past.
There are also driver issues with other OSs (what if you can shave 10c off each machine by using a cheaper wireless chipset, but that chipset is not well supported under anything other than Windows as the manufacturer has done something odd and won't release specs so even if other people wanted to replicate the "something odd" to make it work elsewhere that would not be an easy job?). While your official line might be "sorry, your OS is your problem, we told you what the hardware was before you bought" you still have to pay someone to take the call and parrot the line and someone in PR to defend it if it causes a stink later. There was a bit of a stink when many laptops originally sold with XP wouldn't work properly under Vista because manufacturers of cheap chips wouldn't make updated drivers for their older ranges, and the laptop/desktop builders (not the cheap chipset providers) took the support hit from the public on that one - it might only have been a minor costs but it was still a cost and one they might not want to invite again through offering a non-Windows option.
lt;dr;: Yes, it can cost less per unit to not include Windows when you factor everything in. I don't like it myself, but it is the way things currently work.
having people complain they want to buy MacOSX without the hardware
...but can't you just go to Amazon or wherever and buy a shrink-wrapped version of OS X?
Not to run, unhacked, on a PC not made by Apple. The installer makes certain checks. There are hacks out there to get around this bit you are not supported by Apple at all if you have done this.
As for the charging content providers, I'm also a content provider and would love it if I could offer my clients the option of a faster web-site by just paying dollars to ISPs in their markets. That's awesome.
You and every other provider in those areas. I may be missing something but I fail to see how that could work out any other way than costing a fortune for little return - your competitors will be bidding against you and everyone trying to game the system by other means will be against you to. Good luck with that.
Well until this actually happens (unless it has already) it is a moot point, but mentioning it in an interview with a magazine does not (legally or otherwise) constitute a product description or advertising.
and most importantly it's on the terms of service when you purchase the product/service. That's the only place it needs to be.
Actually not, under most jurisdictions around the world including the UK there are limits to what you can enforce via a terms of service, especially when the terms could be seen as transforming the product away from what is seen by the costumer from the advertising.
Reading is required. Not sorry.
As long as the service is opaquely advertised as selective I would agree. If it is sold just as any other Internet service then I don't.
I do get to decide which sites have priority because I get to call my ISP and tell them I'm willing to pay more for some than for others. I get to decide with my dollars. I get to fund the ISP that makes the most sense to me.
But that is not what is happening here. Here they are talking about charging the content providers for access to you, not the other way around. You don't get to chose, the size of the content provider's wallet chooses.
That's the choice in a free market. I get to choose between the big bad ISP that expedites youtube, and the small one that doesn't.
Until youtube decides to stop paying for such expediation or another company pays more to replace them. This is not about you having a choice, it is about BT and TalktTalk making extra money by selling the same chunk of bandwidth twice - once to you and once to someone else.
And that's precisely how smaller ISPs will compete. Especially when businesses don't want their employees to access the big consumer sites. So a savvy business ISP will simply offer faster access to business-worthy sites, and lesser access to consumer-valued sites. Makes a lot of sense.
Such a product would not sell enough units to be more than a niche operation, and no company wants to just be a small niche operation. What is business worthy to you will differ to what is business worthy to others, and if an ISP caters for all markets you have the same problem at the ISPs peering arrangements: the same sets of traffic coming in and needing to be prioritised so you would not see benefit due to the ISPs backbone not carrying the other traffic so you'd pay extra for a filtering service that doesn't actually work.
And that's why they are cohosing to tell people, making it very clear indeed.
I'll buy "very clear indeed" when the half-way educated man on the street is aware of the situation.
We're talking about that connection being managed by the provider -- which is the added value of making the best connections possible.
Fair enough. If you want you ISP to decide which sites you have a decent connection to then their offering is right for you, but I prefer to access what sites I chose to access no the ones that pay my ISP. This is what it is really about. They want to make money out of both ends of the spectrum: you and the content provider, essentially selling the same thing to two different entities at the same time. Three entities, if you remember that these ISPs are two of the ones that were in bed with Phorm until it became clear that such schemes could attract negative publicity in an audience wider than a few techies.
Your TV analogy doesn't quite work. The reason TV access is like that is because the content providers and distributors are in control and the companies that provide access to us have to pay for the privilege. Internet access is more like the telephone model - I would not like to find I could not make a good quality call to Peter & Peter Inc. because Paul & & Paul Co. have paid BT for priority. While it may cost a little more for cross network talk (well, a lot more when they covertly arrange price fixing, but regulators are cracking down on that a good bit these days) but that is expected as there are extra complications for them to deal with in this case and they pass that cost on to me, they don't just silently reduce the quality of the line because I'm not calling their preferred partner.
The TV/phone difference suggests another reason for this stance though: they might simply be heading off the content providers at the pass to ensure that the phone model wins out as that fits their current business model better. By making it clear that they are able to, and are willing to, differentiate traffic in this way they are telling the content people that they should not think about doing the same. This could be the start of a cold war style dance with the threat of mutually assured inconvenience!
It is intended to stop the casual teenager from opening the device to see how it works.
I agree except for this point. They don't care if said teenager knows how it works or not, but it does make a difference to them if said teenager can't easily replace an ailing battery or dodgy screen cheaply so instead needs to either buy a new device (more money to Apple) or pay over the odds for the existing device to be fixed by an Apple licensed repair shop (not as much extra money to Apple per teenager, but still some).
Apple's rabid thirst for control is not about knowledge (most people with a bit of technical knowledge have a basic idea about the inner workings of a phone, unless iStuff is powered by magic imps or some such instead of the electronics the rest of the industry uses), it is about making sure that after selling you the expensive device to start with every other opportunity you have to spend money on something related to the device is an opportunity to pay money to Apple (directly or indirectly via licensed establishments) and absolutely no one else.
Nothing personal. It is just business. And they are very good at working the business this way while keeping the slightly sinister undertones of "lack of choice/control/freedom/what-ever-you-think-it-should-be-classed-as" out of the general public's view of the product range or just convincing said public not to care.
Fringe isn't science based. Fringe is pseudoscientific bullshit based
Fringe to my mind is fantasy. Magic. The vague link to current science is essentially material around which the writers have hooked their rules about how this particular fantasy universe works. Within the framework of that fantasy universe (well, multiverse or at least a small sub-set of a multiverse) they have written a pretty good (IMO) fantasy drama show.
the much more reasonable and sensible "you pay for what you use"
That this isn't what this is about, you appear to be conflating two different issues there.
This isn't about someone signing up of TalkTalk or BT for Internet access (which, BTW, would never happen unless all other ISPs suddenly turned up and they were the only options left) and transferring several terabytes each week just for the hell of it. This is about them selling to the customer "open access to the Internet" but giving to the customer "access to the bits of the Internet we can make money from", and I see there being a case for investigation for false advertising under the Trades Descriptions Act if they go ahead with anything like this without making it very clear to the consumer from the outset (though I have no official legal training, so don't take my word on that without a few pinches of salt.
You can bet your last penny that if a user reports iPlayer (to pluck one of the common examples at random) being slow, the support drone would say "yeah, their site is unreliable at times" rather than "yeah, they didn't pay the right bribe so we are giving priority to their competitors who did pay the bribe".
Assuming it is the same on other Android versions as it is on my phone (a Motorola running 2.1, though if they don't put out an upgrade at some point and they keep up their locking so I can upgrade later by other means, I'll buy from another manufacturer next time) then yes it is quite clear, at least first time you install a non-marketplace app.
You can't install an app from a source other than Marketplace from a default install. First time you try it explains and takes you to the options screen where you can turn off the limitation, and when you turn if off you get another warning.
I put the option straight back on once I'd installed the tool I was intending to add (a rooting tool from a trusted source, so I could setup wireless tethering) so next time an app from elsewhere tries to install I'll know - but it would be easy for people to leave the setting off so drive-by installs are easier after that point. The protection could be improved with an "allow for a few minutes" option common on bluetooth devices.
Of course the app could ask the system for the extra info (I'd hope the system would prompt the user before handing it over), and apps you newly allow in might request it too - but you can always say "no" to the stupid app/quiz/whatever and get on with the rest of your life. Anyone who clicks "yeah, go on then" to an app having access to their info then not being happy about the app maker using that info are their own worse enemy.
Top tip: don't give FB *anything* you don't want the rest of the world to know, then there is no need to worry. Other than what your contacts may post about you, of course...
I've never said "yes" to an app as they *all* seem to request basic details about my friends. Not that my friends care (half of the idiots say "yes" to every app/quiz/other-shite anyway so there info is as good as public) but I'm old fashioned enough to think it is not my place to give the app permission to access the info. I don't care if the info is public anyway. If you want to just take it, then just take it and deal with your conscience yourself if it has trouble, but if you feel the need to ask then you should be asking *them* not me.
Though I'll admit I'm biased as my eyes don't see 3D all that well in real life, never mind when they are expected to see things as out here while still focusing on a point over there...
- Data intensive JS processing/DOM manipulation is about 10x slower then in either of the alternatives
Any significant Javascript and/or DOM manipulation is a lot slower in IE8 than the competition. IE8 is better than IE6 in this respect but still dog slow. IE9 is said to be much more comparable to the competition in this regard, but I'll wait until it is actually released to see rather than basing expectations on the beta cycle.
Not matter how fast IE9 is though, I'll still be stuck supporting IE6 at work as there is no way our clients (large banks) will drag themselves out of the stone age in that respect until MS officially drop security patches and paid support for it (which is due to happen in April 2014 for those running it on XPsp3, IIRC, and major corporate contracts may effectively extend that by a few months).
Or, you could use POST requests like you're supposed to.
Which in my experience are really slow in browsers as compared to GETs, especially in IE.
That really shouldn't be the case in any browser, unless there us something wrong with the web server, browser, a proxy in between, or some difference in caching behaviour (i.e. your GET requests are being cached somewhere unbeknownst to you so appear faster than equivalent POST requests in your tests). The amount of data sent in equivalent GET and POST requests should be more-or-less the same (i.e. the same give or take a few bytes hear or there due to encoding differences). Can you cite/show any examples of where you've seen this behaviour?
A modern dual core chip may consume less power on average than an older single core model, especially if the OS is bright enough to let one of the cores properly idle when it can. Anyway, if my cheap Android based phone is anything to go by, most of the battery charge seems to go into powering the screen when in use and keeping the radios running - only when I run something gamey or access web pages that really aren't designed for small low power devices does the CPU really do a lot.
The fact that there are a couple of significant players and several smaller ones give the Android marketplace a level of survivability that a single competitor would not have.
Survivability of Android or survivability of the hardware makers? What kind of survivability? Gateway still survives, so I hear. Is this survivability good?
The fact that the like of Gateway and Compaq (now part of HP) survive while IMB's PC hardware business does not is precisely my point. Individual companies in the smartphone/tablet arena may fall by the wayside but there will always be more to compete with Apple at their own game or take the low-end of the market that they simply don't cater for (I understand why they don't cater for the low end of any market, and it works out well for them at the moment, but Android could hit critical mass in terms of competing for mind-share at some point with the help of that end of the market).
How about Windows? It still survives. That's good right?
I wasn't stating what is good and what isn't, just why I think that Android as a general entity in the market is much more of a problem for Apple than the individual phone/tablet manufacturers would be it all still working purely on their own OS.
It depends what you get. The really cheap ones that can't run anything above Android 1.5 are going to give you compatibility problems, and of course no one tells you this unless you dig for yourself before buying. Really you need at least v2.1. This could be very bad for Androids reputation in the long run as there are a lot of cheap shoddy tablets out there - this is where Apple's tight control of everything really helps them (and the customers that are willing to pay their prices and be locked in).
Another problem that affects some apps is screen resolution, though this is usually games and relative screen sizes is something a buyer really should think about. A lot of cheaper Android phones have a QVGA (320*240) screen and if you plan to use the phone for apps/games a lot then you want at least the next common size up (480*320, like all iPones prior to the 4th edition).
My phone (bought on offer for £150, though the RRP is more like £290 IIRC, running Android 2.1) only has a QVGA screen which I'm told some apps won't like - with that small a screen I'd *expect* some apps not to work well but I've not run into any that I want to run that have failed (caveat: I didn't get it for apps/games so I'm not representative of that sort of user - it was the cheapest phone at the time with a qwerty keypad and 3G capability that I could tether to my netbook, while it being a 'droid was attractive for "play" potential that wasn't why I bought the thing).
Fair point. But the same could have been said (and probably was) about IBM and the clone manufacturers at various points in the intel-based PC industry. The fact that there are a couple of significant players and several smaller ones give the Android marketplace a level of survivability that a single competitor would not have. Also Android reduces the hight of the entry barriers, making it easier for new wannabe competitors to join the game.
Apple are far from in trouble on this one, but they need to be careful as that could change quite quickly if their control starts to garner significant bad publicity among the general public, or if significant numbers of people realise that a £150-to-£300 Android based devices will do what they want well enough compared to a £600 iOS based one for the price/utility ratios issue to raise its ugly head.
At least it shows it is the real thing or close to - rather than a "based on" with just enough changes to make upgrading later when it is no longer supported by the hardware manufacturer a pain.
Slashdot Mirror
It is the same as some wall-warts: they are just wide enough to block the socket to the site (so block two extra sockets if installed in the middle of a strip). The plug for my speakers is currently in one of those cube shaped 3-way adaptors: I don't use it as a three-way, just as a riser so that wart doesn't get in the way of the plugs either size.
Simple solution to both issues though.
I've not bought a phone through a network in at least 6 years, since the last one I got that way partly as an MP3 player as well as phone wouldn't let me load my own audio files (until I found the relevant hack, of course) - I have to re-buy them from the relevant store otherwise! I buy my phones outright instead of having them subsidised by my contract, though I do have a contract rather than PAYG (for my current use it works out better for me) and get the contract subsidised phone when offered every 12-to-18 months rather than wasting it - I get the best phone offered for free and flog it to subsidise the contract a bit (or keep it as my spare and flog the one I currently keep as my spare).
As for the manufacturers, until they *all* pull Motorola's trick (not releasing updates, and explicitly blocking OS updates from other sources) which they won't then there are other options. My current Android phone is a Motorola, but only because it was on a very good special offer (there is no way I'd have paid full price for it) - if a time comes when I need to upgrade the upgrade will most likely be done by buying a competitor's model. This won't stop them, of course, as I'm only one angry nerd and the general public are not aware of the issue (I know people who upgrade annually anyway, just to have the latest bling phone at what-ever cost, so they won't care for a start), but it means I (and others who care about such things) have options other than just putting up with what one particular manufacturer dictates.
But you don't need to break Android out of a jail to install stuff from other sources, and have to re-break-it-out every time an update is released (though as most manufacturers using Android on their phone don't update the OS, instead expecting you to buy a new phone when you want to change, mentioning no Motorolas in particular, this second point may be moot).
But that's nonsense, atheists addicts have comparable chances to believing addicts, at quitting.
Do we? Hic. Bugger. Hic. There goes hic that excuse. Hic.
He may have used some old equipment that had a different radar freq, but he also got lucky that Political stupidity played a major role(flights into and out of the region where very limited, which areas they could and couldn't fly over).
I'd give the guy a bit more credit than that: he spotted a flaw in his enemy's situation and found a way to take advantage of it. The trick might only have been able to be used once, but that it worked that once and counted for something.
As close to break-even as makes no odds for some players at least. If you are big enough to make a large enough order of licenses to pre-install on your kit the price per individual unit is insanely small compared to what you or I buy a single boxed copy for. Possibly single figures per license for the really big orders - MS still make profit on this because multiplied up that is still a shed-load of money and all they have to ship is a box of the holographic "certificate of authenticity" stickers. If you've only paid a few $ per license then you only have to make a few $ back on installing crap-ware to break even.
The smaller manufacturers just have to eat the extra cost (of getting Windows slightly less cheap due to reduced order size and not being able to negotiate the same sort of price per unit for installing the junk) in order to compete.
When you are not far off break even on the cost-per-unit for Windows+junk the expense of having two different lines, even if the only difference is putting in a different drive (one without the Windows image present) and not putting on the sticker is a cost large enough to consider, and possibly large enough to push you past that break even point. Your procedures staff at the factory need to know which boxes to put what stickers on, you need a procedure for dealing with errors in that process, your online ordering system needs to deal with the two options correctly, you need to maintain an amount of stock of both units at your distribution centres to allow for smooth handling of orders, your brochures need to be written to account for the option, and your support staff need to deal with people who bought the wrong one because they didn't know what the wanted. This all needs to be factored in to the "is it worth offering both options?" decision and how you price the minority option - your customers wanting Windows won't pay extra to cover your side costs when they can save that couple of dollars extra by buying from someone else instead. Andy that is all before you consider any shady practises, the likes of which MS has been found guilty of perpetrating in the past.
There are also driver issues with other OSs (what if you can shave 10c off each machine by using a cheaper wireless chipset, but that chipset is not well supported under anything other than Windows as the manufacturer has done something odd and won't release specs so even if other people wanted to replicate the "something odd" to make it work elsewhere that would not be an easy job?). While your official line might be "sorry, your OS is your problem, we told you what the hardware was before you bought" you still have to pay someone to take the call and parrot the line and someone in PR to defend it if it causes a stink later. There was a bit of a stink when many laptops originally sold with XP wouldn't work properly under Vista because manufacturers of cheap chips wouldn't make updated drivers for their older ranges, and the laptop/desktop builders (not the cheap chipset providers) took the support hit from the public on that one - it might only have been a minor costs but it was still a cost and one they might not want to invite again through offering a non-Windows option.
lt;dr;: Yes, it can cost less per unit to not include Windows when you factor everything in. I don't like it myself, but it is the way things currently work.
having people complain they want to buy MacOSX without the hardware
Not to run, unhacked, on a PC not made by Apple. The installer makes certain checks. There are hacks out there to get around this bit you are not supported by Apple at all if you have done this.
As for the charging content providers, I'm also a content provider and would love it if I could offer my clients the option of a faster web-site by just paying dollars to ISPs in their markets. That's awesome.
You and every other provider in those areas. I may be missing something but I fail to see how that could work out any other way than costing a fortune for little return - your competitors will be bidding against you and everyone trying to game the system by other means will be against you to. Good luck with that.
Half-way educated deserves nothing. It's said, it's advertized,
Well until this actually happens (unless it has already) it is a moot point, but mentioning it in an interview with a magazine does not (legally or otherwise) constitute a product description or advertising.
and most importantly it's on the terms of service when you purchase the product/service. That's the only place it needs to be.
Actually not, under most jurisdictions around the world including the UK there are limits to what you can enforce via a terms of service, especially when the terms could be seen as transforming the product away from what is seen by the costumer from the advertising.
Reading is required. Not sorry.
As long as the service is opaquely advertised as selective I would agree. If it is sold just as any other Internet service then I don't.
I do get to decide which sites have priority because I get to call my ISP and tell them I'm willing to pay more for some than for others. I get to decide with my dollars. I get to fund the ISP that makes the most sense to me.
But that is not what is happening here. Here they are talking about charging the content providers for access to you, not the other way around. You don't get to chose, the size of the content provider's wallet chooses.
That's the choice in a free market. I get to choose between the big bad ISP that expedites youtube, and the small one that doesn't.
Until youtube decides to stop paying for such expediation or another company pays more to replace them. This is not about you having a choice, it is about BT and TalktTalk making extra money by selling the same chunk of bandwidth twice - once to you and once to someone else.
And that's precisely how smaller ISPs will compete. Especially when businesses don't want their employees to access the big consumer sites. So a savvy business ISP will simply offer faster access to business-worthy sites, and lesser access to consumer-valued sites. Makes a lot of sense.
Such a product would not sell enough units to be more than a niche operation, and no company wants to just be a small niche operation. What is business worthy to you will differ to what is business worthy to others, and if an ISP caters for all markets you have the same problem at the ISPs peering arrangements: the same sets of traffic coming in and needing to be prioritised so you would not see benefit due to the ISPs backbone not carrying the other traffic so you'd pay extra for a filtering service that doesn't actually work.
And that's why they are cohosing to tell people, making it very clear indeed.
I'll buy "very clear indeed" when the half-way educated man on the street is aware of the situation.
We're talking about that connection being managed by the provider -- which is the added value of making the best connections possible.
Fair enough. If you want you ISP to decide which sites you have a decent connection to then their offering is right for you, but I prefer to access what sites I chose to access no the ones that pay my ISP. This is what it is really about. They want to make money out of both ends of the spectrum: you and the content provider, essentially selling the same thing to two different entities at the same time. Three entities, if you remember that these ISPs are two of the ones that were in bed with Phorm until it became clear that such schemes could attract negative publicity in an audience wider than a few techies.
Your TV analogy doesn't quite work. The reason TV access is like that is because the content providers and distributors are in control and the companies that provide access to us have to pay for the privilege. Internet access is more like the telephone model - I would not like to find I could not make a good quality call to Peter & Peter Inc. because Paul & & Paul Co. have paid BT for priority. While it may cost a little more for cross network talk (well, a lot more when they covertly arrange price fixing, but regulators are cracking down on that a good bit these days) but that is expected as there are extra complications for them to deal with in this case and they pass that cost on to me, they don't just silently reduce the quality of the line because I'm not calling their preferred partner.
The TV/phone difference suggests another reason for this stance though: they might simply be heading off the content providers at the pass to ensure that the phone model wins out as that fits their current business model better. By making it clear that they are able to, and are willing to, differentiate traffic in this way they are telling the content people that they should not think about doing the same. This could be the start of a cold war style dance with the threat of mutually assured inconvenience!
It is intended to stop the casual teenager from opening the device to see how it works.
I agree except for this point. They don't care if said teenager knows how it works or not, but it does make a difference to them if said teenager can't easily replace an ailing battery or dodgy screen cheaply so instead needs to either buy a new device (more money to Apple) or pay over the odds for the existing device to be fixed by an Apple licensed repair shop (not as much extra money to Apple per teenager, but still some).
Apple's rabid thirst for control is not about knowledge (most people with a bit of technical knowledge have a basic idea about the inner workings of a phone, unless iStuff is powered by magic imps or some such instead of the electronics the rest of the industry uses), it is about making sure that after selling you the expensive device to start with every other opportunity you have to spend money on something related to the device is an opportunity to pay money to Apple (directly or indirectly via licensed establishments) and absolutely no one else.
Nothing personal. It is just business. And they are very good at working the business this way while keeping the slightly sinister undertones of "lack of choice/control/freedom/what-ever-you-think-it-should-be-classed-as" out of the general public's view of the product range or just convincing said public not to care.
Fringe isn't science based. Fringe is pseudoscientific bullshit based
Fringe to my mind is fantasy. Magic. The vague link to current science is essentially material around which the writers have hooked their rules about how this particular fantasy universe works. Within the framework of that fantasy universe (well, multiverse or at least a small sub-set of a multiverse) they have written a pretty good (IMO) fantasy drama show.
the much more reasonable and sensible "you pay for what you use"
That this isn't what this is about, you appear to be conflating two different issues there.
This isn't about someone signing up of TalkTalk or BT for Internet access (which, BTW, would never happen unless all other ISPs suddenly turned up and they were the only options left) and transferring several terabytes each week just for the hell of it. This is about them selling to the customer "open access to the Internet" but giving to the customer "access to the bits of the Internet we can make money from", and I see there being a case for investigation for false advertising under the Trades Descriptions Act if they go ahead with anything like this without making it very clear to the consumer from the outset (though I have no official legal training, so don't take my word on that without a few pinches of salt.
You can bet your last penny that if a user reports iPlayer (to pluck one of the common examples at random) being slow, the support drone would say "yeah, their site is unreliable at times" rather than "yeah, they didn't pay the right bribe so we are giving priority to their competitors who did pay the bribe".
Assuming it is the same on other Android versions as it is on my phone (a Motorola running 2.1, though if they don't put out an upgrade at some point and they keep up their locking so I can upgrade later by other means, I'll buy from another manufacturer next time) then yes it is quite clear, at least first time you install a non-marketplace app.
You can't install an app from a source other than Marketplace from a default install. First time you try it explains and takes you to the options screen where you can turn off the limitation, and when you turn if off you get another warning.
I put the option straight back on once I'd installed the tool I was intending to add (a rooting tool from a trusted source, so I could setup wireless tethering) so next time an app from elsewhere tries to install I'll know - but it would be easy for people to leave the setting off so drive-by installs are easier after that point. The protection could be improved with an "allow for a few minutes" option common on bluetooth devices.
The screenshots I've seen (like the one here: http://nexus404.com/Blog/2011/01/16/facebook-applications-can-now-get-your-phone-number-address-change-in-facebook-code-lets-developers-access-your-home-address-mobile-number/) suggest that it is a new option when adding applications. So unless they were criminally stupid (and I'm not discounting that as a possibility, but let us follow the other train of thought for a moment) and setup some form of grandfathering whereby apps with certain existing rights to access your account can just request the new right without your intervention, Zynga got their disreputable mits on nothing by default.
Of course the app could ask the system for the extra info (I'd hope the system would prompt the user before handing it over), and apps you newly allow in might request it too - but you can always say "no" to the stupid app/quiz/whatever and get on with the rest of your life. Anyone who clicks "yeah, go on then" to an app having access to their info then not being happy about the app maker using that info are their own worse enemy.
Top tip: don't give FB *anything* you don't want the rest of the world to know, then there is no need to worry. Other than what your contacts may post about you, of course...
I've never said "yes" to an app as they *all* seem to request basic details about my friends. Not that my friends care (half of the idiots say "yes" to every app/quiz/other-shite anyway so there info is as good as public) but I'm old fashioned enough to think it is not my place to give the app permission to access the info. I don't care if the info is public anyway. If you want to just take it, then just take it and deal with your conscience yourself if it has trouble, but if you feel the need to ask then you should be asking *them* not me.
If you can't make it good, make it 3D!
Though I'll admit I'm biased as my eyes don't see 3D all that well in real life, never mind when they are expected to see things as out here while still focusing on a point over there...
- Data intensive JS processing/DOM manipulation is about 10x slower then in either of the alternatives
Any significant Javascript and/or DOM manipulation is a lot slower in IE8 than the competition. IE8 is better than IE6 in this respect but still dog slow. IE9 is said to be much more comparable to the competition in this regard, but I'll wait until it is actually released to see rather than basing expectations on the beta cycle.
Not matter how fast IE9 is though, I'll still be stuck supporting IE6 at work as there is no way our clients (large banks) will drag themselves out of the stone age in that respect until MS officially drop security patches and paid support for it (which is due to happen in April 2014 for those running it on XPsp3, IIRC, and major corporate contracts may effectively extend that by a few months).
Or, you could use POST requests like you're supposed to.
Which in my experience are really slow in browsers as compared to GETs, especially in IE.
That really shouldn't be the case in any browser, unless there us something wrong with the web server, browser, a proxy in between, or some difference in caching behaviour (i.e. your GET requests are being cached somewhere unbeknownst to you so appear faster than equivalent POST requests in your tests). The amount of data sent in equivalent GET and POST requests should be more-or-less the same (i.e. the same give or take a few bytes hear or there due to encoding differences). Can you cite/show any examples of where you've seen this behaviour?
Battery life.
A modern dual core chip may consume less power on average than an older single core model, especially if the OS is bright enough to let one of the cores properly idle when it can. Anyway, if my cheap Android based phone is anything to go by, most of the battery charge seems to go into powering the screen when in use and keeping the radios running - only when I run something gamey or access web pages that really aren't designed for small low power devices does the CPU really do a lot.
Survivability of Android or survivability of the hardware makers? What kind of survivability? Gateway still survives, so I hear. Is this survivability good?
The fact that the like of Gateway and Compaq (now part of HP) survive while IMB's PC hardware business does not is precisely my point. Individual companies in the smartphone/tablet arena may fall by the wayside but there will always be more to compete with Apple at their own game or take the low-end of the market that they simply don't cater for (I understand why they don't cater for the low end of any market, and it works out well for them at the moment, but Android could hit critical mass in terms of competing for mind-share at some point with the help of that end of the market).
How about Windows? It still survives. That's good right?
I wasn't stating what is good and what isn't, just why I think that Android as a general entity in the market is much more of a problem for Apple than the individual phone/tablet manufacturers would be it all still working purely on their own OS.
It depends what you get. The really cheap ones that can't run anything above Android 1.5 are going to give you compatibility problems, and of course no one tells you this unless you dig for yourself before buying. Really you need at least v2.1. This could be very bad for Androids reputation in the long run as there are a lot of cheap shoddy tablets out there - this is where Apple's tight control of everything really helps them (and the customers that are willing to pay their prices and be locked in).
Another problem that affects some apps is screen resolution, though this is usually games and relative screen sizes is something a buyer really should think about. A lot of cheaper Android phones have a QVGA (320*240) screen and if you plan to use the phone for apps/games a lot then you want at least the next common size up (480*320, like all iPones prior to the 4th edition).
My phone (bought on offer for £150, though the RRP is more like £290 IIRC, running Android 2.1) only has a QVGA screen which I'm told some apps won't like - with that small a screen I'd *expect* some apps not to work well but I've not run into any that I want to run that have failed (caveat: I didn't get it for apps/games so I'm not representative of that sort of user - it was the cheapest phone at the time with a qwerty keypad and 3G capability that I could tether to my netbook, while it being a 'droid was attractive for "play" potential that wasn't why I bought the thing).
Fair point. But the same could have been said (and probably was) about IBM and the clone manufacturers at various points in the intel-based PC industry. The fact that there are a couple of significant players and several smaller ones give the Android marketplace a level of survivability that a single competitor would not have. Also Android reduces the hight of the entry barriers, making it easier for new wannabe competitors to join the game.
Apple are far from in trouble on this one, but they need to be careful as that could change quite quickly if their control starts to garner significant bad publicity among the general public, or if significant numbers of people realise that a £150-to-£300 Android based devices will do what they want well enough compared to a £600 iOS based one for the price/utility ratios issue to raise its ugly head.
I base my decision for not buying Intel chips partly on things like http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/08/01/09/1352214/Negroponte-vs-Intel and http://news.slashdot.org/story/08/01/12/1424209/Intel-Employee-Caught-Running-OLPC-News-Site - the only Intel chip I personally run is the Atom in my netbook (as there was no CPU competition in that arena at the time).
If we are jumping SciFi, she is also the daughter of a cow that wants to be eaten. It was her old man in the prosthetics. My I recommend my rump?
At least it shows it is the real thing or close to - rather than a "based on" with just enough changes to make upgrading later when it is no longer supported by the hardware manufacturer a pain.