Is RIM still forcing people to send information to their servers? If so, can anyone give me a single good reason for that, and why I, as a customer, would want that rather than a normal IMAP+SSL connection to my own mail server?
Yes, I'll give you two. Because of that permanent stateful connection to RIM's NOC, your e-mail is pushed to the device automatically rather when needed. Your IMAP/SSL connection only checks on a regular schedule (whatever you set it to be) and that can be too often or not often enough. On top of that, it allows BlackBerries to communicate with each other via a unique PIN address so even if your mail server/BlackBerry Enterprise Server is slammed or out of commission, you can still communicate with any other BlackBerry user if you know their PIN address.
On the downside it does represent a single point of failure, but RIM does a pretty good job of making their NOC highly available (of course not perfect). In the real world you're more likely to be out of cell coverage or have your corporate e-mail/BES down than for the RIM NOC to be down.
They do make satellite phones, and they don't require a generator and a parabolic dish to use.
True, but satellite networks present a lot of problems for networks like this that are used for government public safety/emergencies, such as:
Higher latency than terrestrial radio (GEO satellites have ~500 ms of round trip latency and LEO satellites still have 100+ ms in most systems). Bad for real-time applications and a killer for push-to-talk voice in "shoot or don't shoot" scenarios like this might be used for
With satellite you choose between big (2+ feet) high power (1-4 watt transmitter) dishes that can be used for broadband, or portable/handheld devices that can't squeak out much more than 9.6 kbps data rates
You're talking about $150-$300M per satellite for a private (government only) network... this is the cost structure that bankrupted Iridium and many other folks as well.
There are lots of needs in the government emergency network space that make it more complicated and difficult than it seems at first blush... of course that still doesn't entirely excuse the bungle that was made with IWN, though.
To do this (acting like a modem to make a secure call), your phone needs to use a nearly-obsolete feature of the GSM or CDMA specs called Circuit Switched Data (CSD) - otherwise your vocoder will east some of the modem frequencies and it won't connect between the two phones. If the phone doesn't have CSD in hardware, there are applications that do so (like Koolspan's, although I don't think they support Android). I haven't looked but I'm 99.99% sure that the Android API doesn't touch CSD functionality.
Separately, you would need CSD service from your carrier - which is not available in many countries (AT&T and T-Mobile do support it in the US). Note that CSD service will cost you extra, as it requires specialized equipment to support, and more CSD users requires more Inter-Working Function (IWF) capacity to be deployed by the carrier. Oh, and you'll need both of those things working on both phones....
I had the same problem you and your friend did, and it completely ruined my early playing experience (I set the game down in disgust and didn't get back into it for two months). But there are fixes for the glitch (at least for most people). Usually a combination of deleting save data and/or applying the 1.01 patch does the trick (it did for me). See more here:
Journalists don't get paid to document events. They're paid per story. And paid more per sensationalist story.
I think you must read the wrong newspapers.
Freelancers get paid per story, and maybe The Sun or The National Enquirer pays more for "sensationalist" stuff. But what most people would think of as mainstream media - AP, CNN, New York Times, etc. does not work that way at all. Reporters/producers are paid a salary and while they may have a quota of work to produce, they are in no way paid based on the sensationalism of those stories.
Look, I know it's popular to bash the media and all, but there really are a lot of good people (the majority, in fact) in these professions who you are trashing unnecessarily.*
It stands for "Information Assurance." It's what the Federal government calls IT security. And the OP was right - the Feds are in a world of their own with this stuff. Any time IT security can even possibly intersect with access to classified information, the paranoia level goes just off the charts.
If that doesn't matter to you, it probably isn't the phone for you. Others are more mature, and offer greater economies of scale. If you do want Freedom on the handset, the OpenMoko is it.
Fair enough, that is a reasonable rationale.
The reason that I asked the GGP question is that I don't see what the value is to "Joe Mobile Phone User." My personal belief is that mobile devices are one area where simplicity trumps openness/configurability for the everyday user.
My personal $.02 is that mobile devices (potentially excluding the iPhone) have been Exhibit A in the case against software developers understanding the value of usability. Nearly everyone - from RIM and Palm to WinMo and LiMo - developing smartphone platforms has gotten wrapped around the "smart" and forgotten the "phone." This isn't meant to say that added functionality is a negative... but to over-analogize, it's like all these developers have built software for toasters where "toasting" is an option three layers down in the GUI. And unfortunately, F/OSS GUIs have thus far been among the worst offenders when it comes to sacrificing usability at the expense of rich functionality. Again my personal belief is that this is a fine thing when it comes to PCs for geeks, but is an absolutely TERRIBLE thing when it comes to consumer purpose-built devices.
If a really "open" environment (a la OpenMoko) has some benefits for end users, I'd like to figure that out - as it is, I just can't see it. I'm a gadget geek and would love to see a reason to pick up one of these devices, but as someone who is not a developer "for the fun of it" I just don't get it yet.
Somebody help me out here. I get that the OpenMoko has great potential as a learning tool - that's unquestionable, and I applaud their efforts. But I'm really struggling to understand whether there is any use for this outside of the learning context.
In terms of platform, Symbian is on its way to being open-sourced, and Android is supposed to be F/OSS as well. I don't think LiMo is going anywhere, but it has the same virtues of openness. And if you care more about open development environments than license types, Windows Mobile already has a huge and growing smartphone applications ecosystem. On top of that, there are also easy ways into developing for the RIM, Palm and iPhone platforms.
In terms of hardware, this device seems to be lacking even a workable data connection - GPRS is tunneled packet data over channelized voice so you're looking at best case speeds of a 1994 modem (9.6 kbps or so). So broadband apps are out, as is useful e-mail/calendar syncing - at least over the GSM networks. It's also more expensive than the carrier-subsidized devices that everyone likes to complain about how overpriced they are with subsidies...
So this isn't a rhetorical question, it's a serious one. Other than for folks who just want to learn about the guts of GSM and mobile devices, who would get a practical benefit from buying this phone vs. a Nokia/Symbian, HTC/Android or any other devices from the WinMo, Palm or iPhone families?
My ISP happens to be the organisation that is the connection between me and the internet. How does that put him in a position to regulate in what way I may use the service?
You are using their bandwidth under terms of service they have set out. They are exactly the people in a position to regulate how you use the service.
Could you imagine your power provider telling you that you can't use that washing machine or AC because it gobbles up too much juice? Or demand that you should cook with gas instead of electricity because it reduces the strain on their power network? How about your phone company telling you to limit your long distance calls to the nights and other non-office hours to free up their lines for office use?
Actually, these things already happen. The power company can shut you off for draining too much juice and threatening the grid. And the phone company doesn't mandate that you call during off-peak hours, but they do charge you less to incentivize you to do it.
If you are getting a "home Internet" package of X bandwith for $Y, it is priced based on terms of service based around shaping your usage to approximately Z fraction of X actual usage (Z being a profitable number). If you want to use 2Z, 3Z or more bandwidth - then you can expect that your ISP will either throttle something to keep you around Z bandwidth or may ask you to buy a higher-grade (business) connection.
Now, I agree ISPs should do a better job of explaining what the "real" limits are. But it is essential for all of us who want to understand both sides in this debate that while we should be guaranteed the right to unfettered access to the Internet, that does not mean that we should be guaranteed the right to that at the lowest possible price. If you don't use the Internet like grandma, it's reasonable for ISPs to expect you to not pay like grandma. You or I may not like it as consumers, but there is a reason for this, it's not just ISPs being jerks for the fun of it. Just my $.02 as someone who used to work for small Internet Service Providers....
Seriously - what's wrong with wanting e-mail, IM, VoIP or other packets to be ranked as higher priority? So this device the guy is fronting can detect encrypted P2P traffic - is that what is now equal to "gagging the Internet?"
Of course, Evil Corporations(TM) can use this for Bad Things(TM), Bush administration must be somehow involved, this will cause the Earth to spin off its axis, etc. But with Comcast et. al. already throttling P2P, what is it that this guy is doing that's so evil? As long as they aren't blocking P2P entirely, I'd rather get my e-mail in a timely fashion that speed up my ISO downloads which aren't time sensitive.
My question is how does that affect the price of the other iPods, especially the Nano and the Touch.
It shouldn't affect the price at all. Apple isn't really cutting the price on these devices, the wireless carriers in those 22 countries are. Before, Apple wanted every carrier to fork over $$$ each month for each subscriber. That meant that the wireless carriers couldn't afford to BOTH pay Apple and discount the phones like they normally would... so the phones were sold unsubsidized (or subsidized very lightly).
Now Apple isn't asking for revenue sharing... or maybe they did but the carriers around the world finally had the clout to tell them to cut it out. Either way, you're now seeing the benefits of the carrier subsidies - that service plan you're signing up for allows the lower upfront price. Apple still gets its cash for the hardware, the customers get a cheaper device... everyone is theoretically happy. But that's also why you won't see a price dip on the other iPods, because there's no service provider to pay down the cost for you.
1) AT&T subsidized the development and/or production of the phones, thus offsetting the potential cost of lost business (one can only guess as to whether or not it was worth it).
AT&T did not subsidize the device development or production. What it did do in order to secure exclusivity was to agree to implement significant network changes to accommodate Apple's requests like Visual Voicemail and iTunes-based activation. These were non-trivial issues that AT&T had to accept well in advance of the time that it became clear that the iPhone would be popular at all. In addition, they had to agree to pay Apple a per-user fee, similar to what carriers do with Research In Motion (BlackBerry) although RIM provides a NOC service in exchange for this fee. Remember that Apple and AT&T had a prior relationship with the GSM-based Motorola phones that provided iTunes access, although neither the carrier or Apple was satisfied with the end product. Apple wanted more control - and AT&T was willing to give it. And that control by Apple was what enabled the iPhone to be a more "Mac-like" user experience of a controlled system where things "just worked."
2) Steve Jobs is a control freak who just LOVES any business model that includes any kind of vendor lock-in.
Close but not quite. El Jobso loves situations that Apple is able to control the user experience. That's why Apple controls their development environments more closely for the Mac platform, and that's why the iPhone started out with no third-party native apps. All that will of course change with the 2.0 software and the iPhone/iTunes software store, but that has been an Apple decision all the way and not one made by AT&T. AT&T already offers a DevCentral program for anyone wanting to publish apps for AT&T devices - Apple does not participate because they want control over the user experience. As always, this is the advantage and disadvantage of using Apple equipment: you are working with a more tightly controlled development environment, so hackers will be disappointed and "Joe Average" users will be presented with a more seamless experience. Your mileage - dependent upon your user type - will vary.
All this aside, I believe the iPhone 2.0 software environment will provide a superior smartphone experience to anything out there except possibly RIM (for enterprise usage). AT&T has the 3G network available in all major US markets plus Visual Voice Mail and other GSM benefits such as seamless international roaming. Every individual purchase decision will of course be based on specific local-area coverage, but for most people the tight integration between AT&T and Apple will probably be a benefit rather than a drawback.
I'm a little bit surprised that slashdot has Tivo users.
Fair supposition but I think the answer is the same reason many Slashdotters (myself included) have Macs - they have an intuitive UI and for the most part Just Work(TM). I have had a TiVo for six years now and have always found the ease of use in searching programs, setting up "Season Passes" and finding related programs to be better than any other DVR I have tried. My wife also finds it much more usable than the alternatives and we both a have a "if it isn't broke, don't fix it" attitude towards the setup.
It doesn't mean I won't put together a MythTV box someday, but given how little of my time I think TV is worth (and my time is in shorter supply than my money), TiVo works pretty nicely for me. Your mileage, of course, may vary...
Take a good long look at what the that foundation donates. a decent percentage of it is is windows software which costs bill G nothing to make another million copies of. He then writes off the full retail (not OEM, but retail) value of the software. As if someone was buying boxed copies of the software.
I have a long and proud history of Microsoft-bashing, but you've been modded +5 Insightful (as of when I write this) by alleging some really nasty things without a source. This is a very serious suggestion - you're basically saying that Bill Gates's foundation engages in tax fraud. Also - Bill Gates doesn't own Windows, Microsoft does. Maybe he gets a discount, but it certainly wouldn't be free as you suggest. Do you have a source or documentation for this?
Then Boeing would have competition and have to actually work to be in business... While Boeing was scheming how far they could gouge the tax payers with the new Military tanker, they just forgot they have work to do on the 'VaporLiner'.
Boeing already has more competition than they can handle. The fact that they lost the tanker bid to EADS/Northrop should tell you something. Boeing can NOT count on US military business, and they have huge amounts of competition in the commercial airliner business. BTW, the commercial and military programs are separated, so there's little likelihood that one actually impacted the other in terms of priorities.
Boeing is a terribly arrogant company but it's not for lack of competition or because they're a monopoly - it comes from a heritage of many years of market superiority that has only recently been challenged. I think, though, that between the tanker failure, the embarrassment over the Dreamliner schedule and debacles like their system integration work for the US government on Project 28 they're beginning to get the message that they may need to get focused again.
These restrictions are here to artificially limit competition between advanced communication applications and the telcos. It keeps you dependent on the old phone voice communications and the old SMS system which are obsolete and extremely expensive comparing to any IM and SIP solution.
These things aren't artificial and they aren't done (just) to get fractionally more money out of you. The fact of the matter is telcos don't want you running VoIP etc. on the packet network because the mobile packet networks are not built to handle it. This is their own fault(s) for not having more capacity, but they built their networks with X amount of channelized voice capacity and Y amount of packetized IP capacity based on customer usage. If everyone used VoIP, it would saturate the mobile data networks (at both the BTS and backhaul link levels) and reduce performance to unacceptable levels. Costs would go up to add more capacity on the packet side and you guessed it, that cost would be passed on to you - making voice not such a great deal compared to circuit-switched voice! I believe the long-term path for most carriers (at least in the US) is to make their 4G networks all IP-based with packetized voice, but until that's here (a few years yet at least), circuit switched voice is still the preference for a variety of reasons.
Also, just curious - in what way are circuit-switched voice and SMS on the Public Switched Telephone Network "obsolete?" My understanding is that word means something that cannot perform essential functions due to lack of essential functionality or interoperability, and literally hundreds of millions of people use these technologies daily just fine. Maybe you meant "more expensive than alternatives" rather than "obsolete?"
user reporting that even slashdot has proven to be closer to the truth
Closer to the truth only in small and selective ways... the rest of the time, Slashdot's standards of "journalism" are pathetic to the point of irresponsibility. Slashdot seems "truthier" to you because you can evaluate the content effectively, but most of the "news" in the world is outside of your personal areas of expertise where it is 100% essential to have a trusted professional organization to deliver the news (that big, awful "mainstream media" everyone loves to complain about). And remember, I'm talking about news - AP or UPI reports of actual things happening, not some morons on Fox News or whatever blathering about politics.
You personally may derive more use from Slashdot because it's mainly tech stories and you are an intelligent consumer of technology-related information who can sort through the crap, but for the majority of news subjects, the Slashdot approach is utterly disastrous. For example:
Case 1: It's a story about shooting down a satellite. The Associated Press writes a story which is more general and may even leave out some key technical points or introduce technical inaccuracies. The Slashdot commentaries on the story, however, include a more correct summarization and interesting details. (The Slashdot comments also include reams of trolls, pseudoscience bullsh*tters and raving political loonies. You, the intelligent technical reader, can general sift for yourself which user-generated technology content sounds plausible vs. which are trolls or cranks.
Case 2: It's a story about Pakistan's economy. The actual story itself comes from some jackass blogger who made the whole thing up. The Slashdot editor posted the summary without reading the actual story, which proves to be inaccurate. You the reader do not have enough first-hand knowledge or experience to effectively filter the information, so you walk away from the experience with (at best) no idea what to believe, or (at worst) believing something completely wrong.
The point is that the "Slashdot model" only works in limited areas where the community can sift through the crap themselves. It can never work for all stories in all areas, which is what that awful mainstream media provides a (mainly) trusted voice for.
I don't know about anyone else but I want hardware/software not an "experience" from Apple.
Then you don't want Apple, period. Apple's whole raison d'etre is to create a simple and elegant user experience out of complicated computer-related tasks. Apple is not interested in making the fastest or cheapest commodity computer product for other people to customize. Apple creates value to people who want their technology to "just work" by covering the whole product lifecycle with a system that - surprise - as a result limits choice! You want to deeply customize and significantly control your technology experience - you are not Apple's target customer. Buy another phone - you will be happier and Apple won't care or notice.
Seriously - if you want to buy an iPhone and complain about how you can't put Ubuntu on it or something, please don't bother. You're just wasting money and time. Just go buy some commodity hardware from somebody else who doesn't care about "experiences" - it will be cheaper and everybody will be happier.
Apple is trying to upset the traditional business model for handset makers in that they wish to get a cut of recurring subscriber revenues, not just a one-time equipment sale. Apple is able to get this revenue (which in the long term means more than the phone sale!) precisely because it has granted exclusivity to a single carrier. If AT&T was no longer guaranteed to capture the vast majority of iPhone subscribers, it would neither have (a) implemented the needed Voicemail and EGDE network upgrades and the billing system+iTunes interface, or (b) agreed to give a cut of subscriber MRC to Apple.
The simple calculus here is that carriers will do special things that Apple asks for (changing the way they bill and provision customers, plus handing over a cut of service revenue) in return for Apple doing something the carriers ask for (exclusivity). I don't think anyone would sensibly argue that carrier exclusivity is in the best interest of all customers, but that doesn't mean you're really tied to it. Those with the means and technical knowledge will continue to purchase and unlock phones to their hearts' content - that's the beauty of a GSM ecosystem (well at least for 2 of the 4 main US carriers). Apple and all the carriers internationally that it deals with - plus all the cellphone users who just want all of their cool Apple features to work with a minimum of hassle - will continue to pursue the exclusivity model for the foreseeable future.
So you cam mess with a phone but not in a way that that might harm other phones
FWIW... wireless carriers typically have two different certification processes for devices and applications. The scrutiny is extremely tight on device radio hardware/firmware (and OSes or other low-level apps which can access the radio), as those things really can FUBAR the cell network in a big way.
Most mobile SDKs (and presumably that of the iPhone as well) do not allow the app to change the fundamental behavior of the radio. Carriers and device developers still want to certify those apps anyway so they don't cause the device OS to crash or behave badly on the carrier's IP packet network and suck up bandwidth or cause other mess-ups.
You're at least as self righteous as I am. Re-read your post if you don't believe me. The only difference is I'm calm enough not to use all-caps. I hate TV's, you hate me for hating TV. Cool.
I think you're missing the GP's point. That poster doesn't care how you feel about TV, he cares about you surreptitiously turning it off against the wishes of the owner or whoever has the right to control it. It's no different than walking into a party and changing the music everyone is listening to without asking. You aren't a jerk for not liking TV, you're a jerk for being rude to others.
While I'm being pedantic I'll just go over the top and mention that I think you're misusing [sic].
I'm not just randomly shilling here. Even though you might not believe it, those people who go through journalism school in college (I don't include drones who go straight from beauty contests or White House jobs to Fox News etc.) really take this stuff seriously. For us, failing to fact-check or otherwise printing falsehoods is not only grounds for a lawsuit but also the academic equivalent to faking research.
I know it's fun to bash professional reporters and pretend that it's OK for every jackass with a blog to call themselves a "journalist," but within the trade there really are rules of conduct akin to those of academics. Within serious news outlets (e.g. every print newspaper or broadcast station except those owned by Rupert Murdoch), failure to fact-check or deliberate distortions of truth are anathema. These organizations really do self-police, even if you don't realize it, and there is a code of ethics involved that closely mirrors that of academia.
Mod me down if you want, but the Internet has a currency and that is credibility. The reason that "mainstream media" organizations thrive is because they have this credibility (even if some badly abuse it). If you want to gain this same credibility (as Slashdot pretends to), you should at least conform to these general principles. Or maybe that's just my old-school outmoded ideals.
The quote DOES appear in the story. Click the linked newsweek story, click on Page two, scroll down halfway.
No, really. I didn't just make this up to screw with people. The Newsweek story you refer to is part of the first link. Slashdot's story attributes a quote to a linked story that has NOTHING to do with the quote it is supposed to include.
Sorry if I'm an old-timer or just not cool enough to get it, if I say that a link on a "news" site is supposed to contain the 'quote' that it is purported to contain. Once upon a time you were supposed to read and verify what you said before you threw it out in front of thousands or millions of people. My bad for not getting the new rules.
My issue was with the fact that they linked a quote to a story where it didn't appear, not that the quote was linked elsewhere in the summary. Maybe that doesn't seem like a big deal. But let me illustrate:
The point here is that linking quotes to wrong publications can, for the majority who doesn't bother to read beyond the summary, provide seeming endorsement or validation from an independent source when it really doesn't. It may seem like a fine distinction, but I don't think it is from a true "journalistic" standpoint.
Maybe it's just a typographical error. But given Slashdot's outstanding track record for balanced stories and scrupulous fact-checking, it seemed worthwhile to point out that maybe they should do a little more QA before publishing stories. Oh well, maybe it's just me...
'Google is so different that it was almost impossible to reprogram them into this culture,' says Google CEO Eric Schmidt of the experienced hires."
Great, provocative quote... except it doesn't appear anywhere in the linked story. Apologies for RTFA, but it's about a lawsuit by a 50-something who insists he was fired from Google for not working 14 hour days and/or having spiky hair and rollerblades. Interesting story, and I'd love to hear more about it... but it has no relation to the main story.
There's lots of stories on Slashdot about "citizen journalists" and how professional journalism is obsolete blah blah blah... here's a hint: people who are "professional journalists" (and I was one, before I realized tech marketing paid much better) actually believe it is their professional responsibility to read and/or verify things before posting them. Just a thought.
Slashdot Mirror
Is RIM still forcing people to send information to their servers? If so, can anyone give me a single good reason for that, and why I, as a customer, would want that rather than a normal IMAP+SSL connection to my own mail server?
Yes, I'll give you two. Because of that permanent stateful connection to RIM's NOC, your e-mail is pushed to the device automatically rather when needed. Your IMAP/SSL connection only checks on a regular schedule (whatever you set it to be) and that can be too often or not often enough. On top of that, it allows BlackBerries to communicate with each other via a unique PIN address so even if your mail server/BlackBerry Enterprise Server is slammed or out of commission, you can still communicate with any other BlackBerry user if you know their PIN address.
On the downside it does represent a single point of failure, but RIM does a pretty good job of making their NOC highly available (of course not perfect). In the real world you're more likely to be out of cell coverage or have your corporate e-mail/BES down than for the RIM NOC to be down.
They do make satellite phones, and they don't require a generator and a parabolic dish to use.
True, but satellite networks present a lot of problems for networks like this that are used for government public safety/emergencies, such as:
There are lots of needs in the government emergency network space that make it more complicated and difficult than it seems at first blush ... of course that still doesn't entirely excuse the bungle that was made with IWN, though.
To do this (acting like a modem to make a secure call), your phone needs to use a nearly-obsolete feature of the GSM or CDMA specs called Circuit Switched Data (CSD) - otherwise your vocoder will east some of the modem frequencies and it won't connect between the two phones. If the phone doesn't have CSD in hardware, there are applications that do so (like Koolspan's, although I don't think they support Android). I haven't looked but I'm 99.99% sure that the Android API doesn't touch CSD functionality.
Separately, you would need CSD service from your carrier - which is not available in many countries (AT&T and T-Mobile do support it in the US). Note that CSD service will cost you extra, as it requires specialized equipment to support, and more CSD users requires more Inter-Working Function (IWF) capacity to be deployed by the carrier. Oh, and you'll need both of those things working on both phones....
I had the same problem you and your friend did, and it completely ruined my early playing experience (I set the game down in disgust and didn't get back into it for two months). But there are fixes for the glitch (at least for most people). Usually a combination of deleting save data and/or applying the 1.01 patch does the trick (it did for me). See more here:
Journalists don't get paid to document events. They're paid per story. And paid more per sensationalist story.
I think you must read the wrong newspapers.
Freelancers get paid per story, and maybe The Sun or The National Enquirer pays more for "sensationalist" stuff. But what most people would think of as mainstream media - AP, CNN, New York Times, etc. does not work that way at all. Reporters/producers are paid a salary and while they may have a quota of work to produce, they are in no way paid based on the sensationalism of those stories.
Look, I know it's popular to bash the media and all, but there really are a lot of good people (the majority, in fact) in these professions who you are trashing unnecessarily.*
* Anyone working for Fox News not included
So what does "IA" stand for?
It stands for "Information Assurance." It's what the Federal government calls IT security. And the OP was right - the Feds are in a world of their own with this stuff. Any time IT security can even possibly intersect with access to classified information, the paranoia level goes just off the charts.
If that doesn't matter to you, it probably isn't the phone for you. Others are more mature, and offer greater economies of scale. If you do want Freedom on the handset, the OpenMoko is it.
Fair enough, that is a reasonable rationale.
The reason that I asked the GGP question is that I don't see what the value is to "Joe Mobile Phone User." My personal belief is that mobile devices are one area where simplicity trumps openness/configurability for the everyday user.
My personal $.02 is that mobile devices (potentially excluding the iPhone) have been Exhibit A in the case against software developers understanding the value of usability. Nearly everyone - from RIM and Palm to WinMo and LiMo - developing smartphone platforms has gotten wrapped around the "smart" and forgotten the "phone." This isn't meant to say that added functionality is a negative ... but to over-analogize, it's like all these developers have built software for toasters where "toasting" is an option three layers down in the GUI. And unfortunately, F/OSS GUIs have thus far been among the worst offenders when it comes to sacrificing usability at the expense of rich functionality. Again my personal belief is that this is a fine thing when it comes to PCs for geeks, but is an absolutely TERRIBLE thing when it comes to consumer purpose-built devices.
If a really "open" environment (a la OpenMoko) has some benefits for end users, I'd like to figure that out - as it is, I just can't see it. I'm a gadget geek and would love to see a reason to pick up one of these devices, but as someone who is not a developer "for the fun of it" I just don't get it yet.
Somebody help me out here. I get that the OpenMoko has great potential as a learning tool - that's unquestionable, and I applaud their efforts. But I'm really struggling to understand whether there is any use for this outside of the learning context.
In terms of platform, Symbian is on its way to being open-sourced, and Android is supposed to be F/OSS as well. I don't think LiMo is going anywhere, but it has the same virtues of openness. And if you care more about open development environments than license types, Windows Mobile already has a huge and growing smartphone applications ecosystem. On top of that, there are also easy ways into developing for the RIM, Palm and iPhone platforms.
In terms of hardware, this device seems to be lacking even a workable data connection - GPRS is tunneled packet data over channelized voice so you're looking at best case speeds of a 1994 modem (9.6 kbps or so). So broadband apps are out, as is useful e-mail/calendar syncing - at least over the GSM networks. It's also more expensive than the carrier-subsidized devices that everyone likes to complain about how overpriced they are with subsidies ...
So this isn't a rhetorical question, it's a serious one. Other than for folks who just want to learn about the guts of GSM and mobile devices, who would get a practical benefit from buying this phone vs. a Nokia/Symbian, HTC/Android or any other devices from the WinMo, Palm or iPhone families?
My ISP happens to be the organisation that is the connection between me and the internet. How does that put him in a position to regulate in what way I may use the service?
You are using their bandwidth under terms of service they have set out. They are exactly the people in a position to regulate how you use the service.
Could you imagine your power provider telling you that you can't use that washing machine or AC because it gobbles up too much juice? Or demand that you should cook with gas instead of electricity because it reduces the strain on their power network? How about your phone company telling you to limit your long distance calls to the nights and other non-office hours to free up their lines for office use?
Actually, these things already happen. The power company can shut you off for draining too much juice and threatening the grid. And the phone company doesn't mandate that you call during off-peak hours, but they do charge you less to incentivize you to do it.
If you are getting a "home Internet" package of X bandwith for $Y, it is priced based on terms of service based around shaping your usage to approximately Z fraction of X actual usage (Z being a profitable number). If you want to use 2Z, 3Z or more bandwidth - then you can expect that your ISP will either throttle something to keep you around Z bandwidth or may ask you to buy a higher-grade (business) connection.
Now, I agree ISPs should do a better job of explaining what the "real" limits are. But it is essential for all of us who want to understand both sides in this debate that while we should be guaranteed the right to unfettered access to the Internet, that does not mean that we should be guaranteed the right to that at the lowest possible price. If you don't use the Internet like grandma, it's reasonable for ISPs to expect you to not pay like grandma. You or I may not like it as consumers, but there is a reason for this, it's not just ISPs being jerks for the fun of it. Just my $.02 as someone who used to work for small Internet Service Providers....
Seriously - what's wrong with wanting e-mail, IM, VoIP or other packets to be ranked as higher priority? So this device the guy is fronting can detect encrypted P2P traffic - is that what is now equal to "gagging the Internet?"
Of course, Evil Corporations(TM) can use this for Bad Things(TM), Bush administration must be somehow involved, this will cause the Earth to spin off its axis, etc. But with Comcast et. al. already throttling P2P, what is it that this guy is doing that's so evil? As long as they aren't blocking P2P entirely, I'd rather get my e-mail in a timely fashion that speed up my ISO downloads which aren't time sensitive.
It shouldn't affect the price at all. Apple isn't really cutting the price on these devices, the wireless carriers in those 22 countries are. Before, Apple wanted every carrier to fork over $$$ each month for each subscriber. That meant that the wireless carriers couldn't afford to BOTH pay Apple and discount the phones like they normally would ... so the phones were sold unsubsidized (or subsidized very lightly).
Now Apple isn't asking for revenue sharing ... or maybe they did but the carriers around the world finally had the clout to tell them to cut it out. Either way, you're now seeing the benefits of the carrier subsidies - that service plan you're signing up for allows the lower upfront price. Apple still gets its cash for the hardware, the customers get a cheaper device ... everyone is theoretically happy. But that's also why you won't see a price dip on the other iPods, because there's no service provider to pay down the cost for you.
AT&T did not subsidize the device development or production. What it did do in order to secure exclusivity was to agree to implement significant network changes to accommodate Apple's requests like Visual Voicemail and iTunes-based activation. These were non-trivial issues that AT&T had to accept well in advance of the time that it became clear that the iPhone would be popular at all. In addition, they had to agree to pay Apple a per-user fee, similar to what carriers do with Research In Motion (BlackBerry) although RIM provides a NOC service in exchange for this fee. Remember that Apple and AT&T had a prior relationship with the GSM-based Motorola phones that provided iTunes access, although neither the carrier or Apple was satisfied with the end product. Apple wanted more control - and AT&T was willing to give it. And that control by Apple was what enabled the iPhone to be a more "Mac-like" user experience of a controlled system where things "just worked."
2) Steve Jobs is a control freak who just LOVES any business model that includes any kind of vendor lock-in.Close but not quite. El Jobso loves situations that Apple is able to control the user experience. That's why Apple controls their development environments more closely for the Mac platform, and that's why the iPhone started out with no third-party native apps. All that will of course change with the 2.0 software and the iPhone/iTunes software store, but that has been an Apple decision all the way and not one made by AT&T. AT&T already offers a DevCentral program for anyone wanting to publish apps for AT&T devices - Apple does not participate because they want control over the user experience. As always, this is the advantage and disadvantage of using Apple equipment: you are working with a more tightly controlled development environment, so hackers will be disappointed and "Joe Average" users will be presented with a more seamless experience. Your mileage - dependent upon your user type - will vary.
All this aside, I believe the iPhone 2.0 software environment will provide a superior smartphone experience to anything out there except possibly RIM (for enterprise usage). AT&T has the 3G network available in all major US markets plus Visual Voice Mail and other GSM benefits such as seamless international roaming. Every individual purchase decision will of course be based on specific local-area coverage, but for most people the tight integration between AT&T and Apple will probably be a benefit rather than a drawback.
Fair supposition but I think the answer is the same reason many Slashdotters (myself included) have Macs - they have an intuitive UI and for the most part Just Work(TM). I have had a TiVo for six years now and have always found the ease of use in searching programs, setting up "Season Passes" and finding related programs to be better than any other DVR I have tried. My wife also finds it much more usable than the alternatives and we both a have a "if it isn't broke, don't fix it" attitude towards the setup.
It doesn't mean I won't put together a MythTV box someday, but given how little of my time I think TV is worth (and my time is in shorter supply than my money), TiVo works pretty nicely for me. Your mileage, of course, may vary...
I have a long and proud history of Microsoft-bashing, but you've been modded +5 Insightful (as of when I write this) by alleging some really nasty things without a source. This is a very serious suggestion - you're basically saying that Bill Gates's foundation engages in tax fraud. Also - Bill Gates doesn't own Windows, Microsoft does. Maybe he gets a discount, but it certainly wouldn't be free as you suggest. Do you have a source or documentation for this?
Boeing already has more competition than they can handle. The fact that they lost the tanker bid to EADS/Northrop should tell you something. Boeing can NOT count on US military business, and they have huge amounts of competition in the commercial airliner business. BTW, the commercial and military programs are separated, so there's little likelihood that one actually impacted the other in terms of priorities.
Boeing is a terribly arrogant company but it's not for lack of competition or because they're a monopoly - it comes from a heritage of many years of market superiority that has only recently been challenged. I think, though, that between the tanker failure, the embarrassment over the Dreamliner schedule and debacles like their system integration work for the US government on Project 28 they're beginning to get the message that they may need to get focused again.
These things aren't artificial and they aren't done (just) to get fractionally more money out of you. The fact of the matter is telcos don't want you running VoIP etc. on the packet network because the mobile packet networks are not built to handle it. This is their own fault(s) for not having more capacity, but they built their networks with X amount of channelized voice capacity and Y amount of packetized IP capacity based on customer usage. If everyone used VoIP, it would saturate the mobile data networks (at both the BTS and backhaul link levels) and reduce performance to unacceptable levels. Costs would go up to add more capacity on the packet side and you guessed it, that cost would be passed on to you - making voice not such a great deal compared to circuit-switched voice! I believe the long-term path for most carriers (at least in the US) is to make their 4G networks all IP-based with packetized voice, but until that's here (a few years yet at least), circuit switched voice is still the preference for a variety of reasons.
Also, just curious - in what way are circuit-switched voice and SMS on the Public Switched Telephone Network "obsolete?" My understanding is that word means something that cannot perform essential functions due to lack of essential functionality or interoperability, and literally hundreds of millions of people use these technologies daily just fine. Maybe you meant "more expensive than alternatives" rather than "obsolete?"
Closer to the truth only in small and selective ways ... the rest of the time, Slashdot's standards of "journalism" are pathetic to the point of irresponsibility. Slashdot seems "truthier" to you because you can evaluate the content effectively, but most of the "news" in the world is outside of your personal areas of expertise where it is 100% essential to have a trusted professional organization to deliver the news (that big, awful "mainstream media" everyone loves to complain about). And remember, I'm talking about news - AP or UPI reports of actual things happening, not some morons on Fox News or whatever blathering about politics.
You personally may derive more use from Slashdot because it's mainly tech stories and you are an intelligent consumer of technology-related information who can sort through the crap, but for the majority of news subjects, the Slashdot approach is utterly disastrous. For example:
The point is that the "Slashdot model" only works in limited areas where the community can sift through the crap themselves. It can never work for all stories in all areas, which is what that awful mainstream media provides a (mainly) trusted voice for.
I don't know about anyone else but I want hardware/software not an "experience" from Apple.
Then you don't want Apple, period. Apple's whole raison d'etre is to create a simple and elegant user experience out of complicated computer-related tasks. Apple is not interested in making the fastest or cheapest commodity computer product for other people to customize. Apple creates value to people who want their technology to "just work" by covering the whole product lifecycle with a system that - surprise - as a result limits choice! You want to deeply customize and significantly control your technology experience - you are not Apple's target customer. Buy another phone - you will be happier and Apple won't care or notice.
Seriously - if you want to buy an iPhone and complain about how you can't put Ubuntu on it or something, please don't bother. You're just wasting money and time. Just go buy some commodity hardware from somebody else who doesn't care about "experiences" - it will be cheaper and everybody will be happier.
Apple is trying to upset the traditional business model for handset makers in that they wish to get a cut of recurring subscriber revenues, not just a one-time equipment sale. Apple is able to get this revenue (which in the long term means more than the phone sale!) precisely because it has granted exclusivity to a single carrier. If AT&T was no longer guaranteed to capture the vast majority of iPhone subscribers, it would neither have (a) implemented the needed Voicemail and EGDE network upgrades and the billing system+iTunes interface, or (b) agreed to give a cut of subscriber MRC to Apple.
The simple calculus here is that carriers will do special things that Apple asks for (changing the way they bill and provision customers, plus handing over a cut of service revenue) in return for Apple doing something the carriers ask for (exclusivity). I don't think anyone would sensibly argue that carrier exclusivity is in the best interest of all customers, but that doesn't mean you're really tied to it. Those with the means and technical knowledge will continue to purchase and unlock phones to their hearts' content - that's the beauty of a GSM ecosystem (well at least for 2 of the 4 main US carriers). Apple and all the carriers internationally that it deals with - plus all the cellphone users who just want all of their cool Apple features to work with a minimum of hassle - will continue to pursue the exclusivity model for the foreseeable future.
FWIW ... wireless carriers typically have two different certification processes for devices and applications. The scrutiny is extremely tight on device radio hardware/firmware (and OSes or other low-level apps which can access the radio), as those things really can FUBAR the cell network in a big way.
Most mobile SDKs (and presumably that of the iPhone as well) do not allow the app to change the fundamental behavior of the radio. Carriers and device developers still want to certify those apps anyway so they don't cause the device OS to crash or behave badly on the carrier's IP packet network and suck up bandwidth or cause other mess-ups.
I think you're missing the GP's point. That poster doesn't care how you feel about TV, he cares about you surreptitiously turning it off against the wishes of the owner or whoever has the right to control it. It's no different than walking into a party and changing the music everyone is listening to without asking. You aren't a jerk for not liking TV, you're a jerk for being rude to others.
While I'm being pedantic I'll just go over the top and mention that I think you're misusing [sic].
I'm not just randomly shilling here. Even though you might not believe it, those people who go through journalism school in college (I don't include drones who go straight from beauty contests or White House jobs to Fox News etc.) really take this stuff seriously. For us, failing to fact-check or otherwise printing falsehoods is not only grounds for a lawsuit but also the academic equivalent to faking research.
I know it's fun to bash professional reporters and pretend that it's OK for every jackass with a blog to call themselves a "journalist," but within the trade there really are rules of conduct akin to those of academics. Within serious news outlets (e.g. every print newspaper or broadcast station except those owned by Rupert Murdoch), failure to fact-check or deliberate distortions of truth are anathema. These organizations really do self-police, even if you don't realize it, and there is a code of ethics involved that closely mirrors that of academia.
Mod me down if you want, but the Internet has a currency and that is credibility. The reason that "mainstream media" organizations thrive is because they have this credibility (even if some badly abuse it). If you want to gain this same credibility (as Slashdot pretends to), you should at least conform to these general principles. Or maybe that's just my old-school outmoded ideals.
No, really. I didn't just make this up to screw with people. The Newsweek story you refer to is part of the first link. Slashdot's story attributes a quote to a linked story that has NOTHING to do with the quote it is supposed to include.
Sorry if I'm an old-timer or just not cool enough to get it, if I say that a link on a "news" site is supposed to contain the 'quote' that it is purported to contain. Once upon a time you were supposed to read and verify what you said before you threw it out in front of thousands or millions of people. My bad for not getting the new rules.
My issue was with the fact that they linked a quote to a story where it didn't appear, not that the quote was linked elsewhere in the summary. Maybe that doesn't seem like a big deal. But let me illustrate:
Dinosaurs first existed around 6,000 years ago God made the dinosaurs, along with the other land animals, on Day 6 of the Creation Week (Genesis 1:20-25, 31).The point here is that linking quotes to wrong publications can, for the majority who doesn't bother to read beyond the summary, provide seeming endorsement or validation from an independent source when it really doesn't. It may seem like a fine distinction, but I don't think it is from a true "journalistic" standpoint.
Maybe it's just a typographical error. But given Slashdot's outstanding track record for balanced stories and scrupulous fact-checking, it seemed worthwhile to point out that maybe they should do a little more QA before publishing stories. Oh well, maybe it's just me...
Great, provocative quote ... except it doesn't appear anywhere in the linked story. Apologies for RTFA, but it's about a lawsuit by a 50-something who insists he was fired from Google for not working 14 hour days and/or having spiky hair and rollerblades. Interesting story, and I'd love to hear more about it ... but it has no relation to the main story.
There's lots of stories on Slashdot about "citizen journalists" and how professional journalism is obsolete blah blah blah ... here's a hint: people who are "professional journalists" (and I was one, before I realized tech marketing paid much better) actually believe it is their professional responsibility to read and/or verify things before posting them. Just a thought.