On the one hand, yes, anyone who complains about a company that stops providing a free services is a whiner who deserves the scorn people send them.
On the other hand, there are a lot of sites that make use of all the various APIs going around. Some of which may not even be maintained anymore. If google dropped it's maps api tomorrow, a massive number of websites would break, or parts of them would break. It's the internet equivalent of the world economy. There is functionality now that other sites *can't* replicate, because it's not worth doing so on the scale of an individual website. But I have yet to see a single one of these APIs that could be considered essential. The web worked just fine before all these APIs appeared.
People will have to learn that these services are not actually free, and start paying for the privilege of using them, or they should learn to do without.
Does this mean Android will FINALLY have decent out of the box carddav/caldav support?
That's one of the biggest things that I've preferred iOS to Android. That, and the stupid way applications are stored on the system partition so you 'run out of free space' despite having gigabytes free.
I want to say that I'm glad the guy got fired, because he's now become a martyr and a very visible example of how corrupt everything has become.
Unfortunately, I'm just not that optimistic that it will amount to anything constructive. Things will need to get a whole lot worse before people finally start demanding real change.
Ok, now that I can agree with. Mostly. I'm not entirely convinced that completely abolishing patents would help... but a massive overhaul is definitely needed.
IMO: * For any patent being filed, the company must put out a product that actually uses that patent within 1 or 2 years of filing. * The patent itself is only good for up to, say, 5. If you haven't been able to make back your money off that patent by then, then it wasn't that good of a patent.
Those two simple changes would eliminate a massive amount of the crap going on. It would eliminate patent trolls completely, and would cause R&D spending to increase dramatically because companies couldn't just come up with one or two good ideas and then sit on their rears in perpetuity.
I can't decide if you're a troll or just plain stupid. Whether deliberately or not, you've managed to completely misread the story summary AND my post.
Let me reiterate for you: -Apple's at risk of having their portfolio of absurd patents squashed. -I said that this is a good thing.
Now, do you want to try this again? Maybe with a little less frothing at the mouth anti-Apple-ism and a little more reading comprehension?
The old school republicans that supported smaller government, fiscal responsibility, and that the rich have the responsibility to safeguard the economy of the country instead of milking everything they can while the rest of the country melts down around them.
So yeah, I guess that would be the *really* old school republicans.
As a (up till now) satisfied owner of Apple products, all I can say is: Good.
Maybe if they lose enough of these stupid patents, they'll start thinking less about suing the world into oblivion and go back to doing what made them the company they are now: Making products that delight their customers.
From recent events, it's clear that Apple forgot that part somewhere along the line.
I haven't seriously played with iOS since v4, when I had my iPhone 3GS, so it's hard for me to say. And yes, Apple REALLY screwed the pooch with the maps app, and recieved a devastating blow to their reputation as a result. But other companies are already stepping up to the plate with alternatives, so it's not a total wash.
But from my own experience, the above has been the exception, not the rule. You can still install the latest version of iOS on older phones, as far back as the 3GS. The 3GS was released in 2009? Google stopped supporting their own Nexus One (which is what I'm currently using), at 2.3.6. They couldn't even be bothered to release that last point release. And the phone was barely over a year old when they decided that they weren't even going to try to keep it updated.
While keeping the individual apps updated is nice, that's just not good enough when there are glaring flaws in the OS that desperately need to be fixed. Updates to preloaded apps like Google Play consume space in addition to the original version because the original is masked over instead of replaced. On my phone, the Google Play store app consumes almost 11 megabytes. Now, 11 megs isn't that bad, except that Android 2.3 forces all your apps to be squeezed into this stupidly small partition so even though I have a 16GB microSD card , I still have ~100mb of space to install apps. I can squeeze that somewhat by using Androids bizarre 'move to SD card' feature, but the majority of apps are only partially transferred. Some don't move, or can't be moved.
Assuming that later versions of Android have fixed that mindboggling stupid architectural defect (please tell me that they have), I can't use it on my Nexus One cause Google dropped support for it, and all the reports I've read indicate that the cyanogen version runs very poorly on the N1.
Can you tell me if Google finally allows you to set up caldav/carddav accounts in 4.2? iOS lets you do it out of the box.
I currently have a nexus one phone (cyanogenmod 2.3.7 since google frustratingly stopped at 2.3.6), and I'm thoroughly disappointed in it. Between not supporting standard protocols and the idiotic way applications are stored on a woefully undersized system partition, I'm left wondering, "What was Google thinking?"
Actually, Apple supports previous hardware *better* than pretty much everyone else. The only one that does better, is Microsoft. Well, for PCs at least. Their mobile devices... not so much.
The vast majority of devices receive either minimal updates, or most likely no updates at all.
I've been dithering on buying a tablet, and upgradability is one of the biggest sticking points. I know that if I buy an iOS tablet, I am going to get OS updates for at least 3 years. If I buy an Android device, there is a very strong likelyhood that there will be zero updates whatsoever, not even security fixes.
This wasn't an issue in the days of dumb (I mean feature) phones, because there was only so much you could do with them in the first place. But now we have phones and tablets which are basically full blown computers in their own right. Combine that with the intrinsically personal nature of data that people put on them, then operating system updates suddenly become WAY more important.
Cite sources? Look north for pete's sake. As a Canadian, you will take my socialized medicine from my cold dead hands.
It's not perfect, but at least I don't have to worry about being bankrupted by the cost of cancer treatments because insurance wouldn't cover it, saying that that wart I had when I was 5 constituted a 'pre-existing condition'.
Honestly, the entire *world* looks at America as a fantastic example of how NOT to run a national health care system.
That is true, except I think you're misunderstanding it, in the same way countless other people misunderstand it. The term "theory" in science has a much different meaning than "theory" in common vernacular.
A scientific "hypothesis" is much more in line with the commonly used version of "theory". In science, "theory" is used to denote that everyone pretty much agrees that that is how a given thing works. You take your hypothesis and test the empirical crap out of it. If it still holds true then you can call it a theory.
Of course, it doesn't help that there are branches of scientists themselves who mangle the definition further. Such as the supposed String Theory which I believe has now fallen to pieces thanks to experiments done at the LHC.
But ultimately, the point is that evolution reached a point of ultimate credibility a long time ago. The only thing left is to fill in the gaps that we still arn't sure about, such as what was mitochondria before it got fused with our cells, and how did that fusion occur? There's a massive difference between, "We don't yet know the details of every scrap of everything" and "You don't know this tiny crumb of detail, therefore you don't know anything and therefore God did it!"
I have no mod points but I just wanted to say I agree with your comments regarding abuse. Real abuse is a truely traumatic thing that no one should have to experience.
I think the problem is a unique one. Well, almost unique. There are (too many) people out there who not just deny evolution exists, but rabidly so. They go so far as to try to get local education ministries to change their curriculum to suit their own twisted world view.
You mention Newton's laws, but that's not comparable. There are no groups of people roaming the countryside with placards in hand trying to deny that gravity exists and insisting that schools teach students that an big invisible hand is coming out of the sky and pushing things down towards the ground.
There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the state of science education itself. The problem is all the whackjob morons out there that *think* they know better, trying to undermine the efforts of said education.
This is evolution we're talking about. It is an indisputable fact. If they were trying to pass legislation demanding that, say, pre-birth fetuses are actually parasitic organisms, then I can see it being a controversy. But to mandate that everyone is required to teach a fundamental, indisputable fact of our reality, to me makes sense, in the same way that teaching mathematics as defined by mathematicians (ie: NOT 2+2=67) makes sense.
I see it as an attempt to nip a potentially massive source of bullshit and future headaches in the bud.
Slashdot Mirror
On the one hand, yes, anyone who complains about a company that stops providing a free services is a whiner who deserves the scorn people send them.
On the other hand, there are a lot of sites that make use of all the various APIs going around. Some of which may not even be maintained anymore. If google dropped it's maps api tomorrow, a massive number of websites would break, or parts of them would break. It's the internet equivalent of the world economy. There is functionality now that other sites *can't* replicate, because it's not worth doing so on the scale of an individual website. But I have yet to see a single one of these APIs that could be considered essential. The web worked just fine before all these APIs appeared.
People will have to learn that these services are not actually free, and start paying for the privilege of using them, or they should learn to do without.
ouch. That really sucks. Sorry to hear. And Microsoft wonders why no one is clamouring for their Win8 phones?
Does this mean Android will FINALLY have decent out of the box carddav/caldav support?
That's one of the biggest things that I've preferred iOS to Android. That, and the stupid way applications are stored on the system partition so you 'run out of free space' despite having gigabytes free.
It took them 10 years to easily solve a problem that has bothered millions of people?
If they're so incompetent that it's that hard to solve a problem like this, there should be no wonder the US gov't can't balance their budget.
Whoa... companies are abusing their ability to obtain people's personal information? I'm shocked... SHOCKED I tell you!
As an aside, here is an incredibly undervalued service:
http://www.spamgourmet.com/
Lets you invent dynamic email addresses, so if someone wants your email address you can give them a specially crafted one right on the spot.
I want to say that I'm glad the guy got fired, because he's now become a martyr and a very visible example of how corrupt everything has become.
Unfortunately, I'm just not that optimistic that it will amount to anything constructive. Things will need to get a whole lot worse before people finally start demanding real change.
Ok, now that I can agree with. Mostly. I'm not entirely convinced that completely abolishing patents would help... but a massive overhaul is definitely needed.
IMO:
* For any patent being filed, the company must put out a product that actually uses that patent within 1 or 2 years of filing.
* The patent itself is only good for up to, say, 5. If you haven't been able to make back your money off that patent by then, then it wasn't that good of a patent.
Those two simple changes would eliminate a massive amount of the crap going on. It would eliminate patent trolls completely, and would cause R&D spending to increase dramatically because companies couldn't just come up with one or two good ideas and then sit on their rears in perpetuity.
I can't decide if you're a troll or just plain stupid. Whether deliberately or not, you've managed to completely misread the story summary AND my post.
Let me reiterate for you:
-Apple's at risk of having their portfolio of absurd patents squashed.
-I said that this is a good thing.
Now, do you want to try this again? Maybe with a little less frothing at the mouth anti-Apple-ism and a little more reading comprehension?
The old school republicans that supported smaller government, fiscal responsibility, and that the rich have the responsibility to safeguard the economy of the country instead of milking everything they can while the rest of the country melts down around them.
So yeah, I guess that would be the *really* old school republicans.
As a (up till now) satisfied owner of Apple products, all I can say is: Good.
Maybe if they lose enough of these stupid patents, they'll start thinking less about suing the world into oblivion and go back to doing what made them the company they are now: Making products that delight their customers.
From recent events, it's clear that Apple forgot that part somewhere along the line.
Maybe it's time to do a big reset and start the "Old School Republican" party?
Does this mean no more Crystal Singer books?
I haven't seriously played with iOS since v4, when I had my iPhone 3GS, so it's hard for me to say. And yes, Apple REALLY screwed the pooch with the maps app, and recieved a devastating blow to their reputation as a result. But other companies are already stepping up to the plate with alternatives, so it's not a total wash.
But from my own experience, the above has been the exception, not the rule. You can still install the latest version of iOS on older phones, as far back as the 3GS. The 3GS was released in 2009? Google stopped supporting their own Nexus One (which is what I'm currently using), at 2.3.6. They couldn't even be bothered to release that last point release. And the phone was barely over a year old when they decided that they weren't even going to try to keep it updated.
While keeping the individual apps updated is nice, that's just not good enough when there are glaring flaws in the OS that desperately need to be fixed. Updates to preloaded apps like Google Play consume space in addition to the original version because the original is masked over instead of replaced. On my phone, the Google Play store app consumes almost 11 megabytes. Now, 11 megs isn't that bad, except that Android 2.3 forces all your apps to be squeezed into this stupidly small partition so even though I have a 16GB microSD card , I still have ~100mb of space to install apps. I can squeeze that somewhat by using Androids bizarre 'move to SD card' feature, but the majority of apps are only partially transferred. Some don't move, or can't be moved.
Assuming that later versions of Android have fixed that mindboggling stupid architectural defect (please tell me that they have), I can't use it on my Nexus One cause Google dropped support for it, and all the reports I've read indicate that the cyanogen version runs very poorly on the N1.
Yeah... That's pretty much my thoughts too. :(
Apple: Gives us all ur moneyz!
Google: Gives us all ur dataz!
Can you tell me if Google finally allows you to set up caldav/carddav accounts in 4.2? iOS lets you do it out of the box.
I currently have a nexus one phone (cyanogenmod 2.3.7 since google frustratingly stopped at 2.3.6), and I'm thoroughly disappointed in it. Between not supporting standard protocols and the idiotic way applications are stored on a woefully undersized system partition, I'm left wondering, "What was Google thinking?"
Actually, Apple supports previous hardware *better* than pretty much everyone else. The only one that does better, is Microsoft. Well, for PCs at least. Their mobile devices... not so much.
The vast majority of devices receive either minimal updates, or most likely no updates at all.
I've been dithering on buying a tablet, and upgradability is one of the biggest sticking points. I know that if I buy an iOS tablet, I am going to get OS updates for at least 3 years. If I buy an Android device, there is a very strong likelyhood that there will be zero updates whatsoever, not even security fixes.
This wasn't an issue in the days of dumb (I mean feature) phones, because there was only so much you could do with them in the first place. But now we have phones and tablets which are basically full blown computers in their own right. Combine that with the intrinsically personal nature of data that people put on them, then operating system updates suddenly become WAY more important.
Gee, and I wonder why that is?
Cite sources? Look north for pete's sake. As a Canadian, you will take my socialized medicine from my cold dead hands.
It's not perfect, but at least I don't have to worry about being bankrupted by the cost of cancer treatments because insurance wouldn't cover it, saying that that wart I had when I was 5 constituted a 'pre-existing condition'.
Honestly, the entire *world* looks at America as a fantastic example of how NOT to run a national health care system.
Oh wait, Iran keep photoshopping those. Ok, let's just leave it at "it didn't happen" to save everyone wasting their time.
That is true, except I think you're misunderstanding it, in the same way countless other people misunderstand it. The term "theory" in science has a much different meaning than "theory" in common vernacular.
A scientific "hypothesis" is much more in line with the commonly used version of "theory". In science, "theory" is used to denote that everyone pretty much agrees that that is how a given thing works. You take your hypothesis and test the empirical crap out of it. If it still holds true then you can call it a theory.
Of course, it doesn't help that there are branches of scientists themselves who mangle the definition further. Such as the supposed String Theory which I believe has now fallen to pieces thanks to experiments done at the LHC.
But ultimately, the point is that evolution reached a point of ultimate credibility a long time ago. The only thing left is to fill in the gaps that we still arn't sure about, such as what was mitochondria before it got fused with our cells, and how did that fusion occur? There's a massive difference between, "We don't yet know the details of every scrap of everything" and "You don't know this tiny crumb of detail, therefore you don't know anything and therefore God did it!"
Yes
I have no mod points but I just wanted to say I agree with your comments regarding abuse. Real abuse is a truely traumatic thing that no one should have to experience.
I think the problem is a unique one. Well, almost unique. There are (too many) people out there who not just deny evolution exists, but rabidly so. They go so far as to try to get local education ministries to change their curriculum to suit their own twisted world view.
You mention Newton's laws, but that's not comparable. There are no groups of people roaming the countryside with placards in hand trying to deny that gravity exists and insisting that schools teach students that an big invisible hand is coming out of the sky and pushing things down towards the ground.
There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the state of science education itself. The problem is all the whackjob morons out there that *think* they know better, trying to undermine the efforts of said education.
This is evolution we're talking about. It is an indisputable fact. If they were trying to pass legislation demanding that, say, pre-birth fetuses are actually parasitic organisms, then I can see it being a controversy. But to mandate that everyone is required to teach a fundamental, indisputable fact of our reality, to me makes sense, in the same way that teaching mathematics as defined by mathematicians (ie: NOT 2+2=67) makes sense.
I see it as an attempt to nip a potentially massive source of bullshit and future headaches in the bud.
All I can say is, "Thank you Al Gore for inventing global warming!"