I welcome that kind of pressure to keep Google honest. Something has to push back against the many pressures to keep Google dishonest, and to keep Android source unavailable. Pressure from the large geek community is good.
I make apps for the corporate market, and started making wireless apps for it in 1999. The "corporate market" doesn't really want "rock solid" Blackberries if they cost more than commodity Android phones, and if their users are unusual among the general public - and without the skills to use them coming into the corp. That's why the corp market wanted Windows phones - until those became clearly not solid at all, and without a dynamic developer community. Android is plenty rock solid, and QNX is overkill.
Android is not fragmented for a given carrier, like RIM is. Sprint has to target only one Android. Even the OS versions that max out on different phone models per carrier isn't "fragmentation", it's simple backwards/forwards compatibility as in any platform. But QNX + a limited Android runtime is clearly fragmented: some apps are Android, some Android apps won't run, and some apps are QNX and work different from the runnable Android apps. And not all devices run Android apps at all. That's fragmented.
The costs are of course higher for supporting both QNX and Android. I'm not going to bother explaining that perfectly obvious point. But your contesting it shows that you're not being realistic, you're looking for arguments to support a preconceived decision.
Yeah, why not? After all, Android is the most popular mobile OS, even more than Apple's superbrand. And since they get the source and rights to change it however they want (within the limited open source constraints), Google doesn't hold any "keys" to any castle. Why shouldn't they get their OS for free, including ongoing updates keeping it in sync with the modern world, spending their OS budget on making their version more attractive to consumers.
The other side of that is "why not just do something different". The reasons to do what others are doing, when it's working, are better than the reasons to do something different.
They've already tapped into that community to a degree.
But not really. And their costs are higher for supporting both. Without getting much, if anything, of benefit from it. But getting drawbacks, like a fragmented platform and incomplete coverage of the more popular platform.
I don't think RIM devices are any more reliable than the Android devices from HTC and the other major manufacturers. And RIM's network outages (not on QNX) have given Blackberry a reputation for downtime that's worse than the competing Android devices on competing networks.
Betamax was better than VHS technically and feature-wise. But the single vendor / proprietary nature of it made it less accessible to the market, and it failed. Which is what Sony cared about, not its technical merits. QNX is likely going the same way. But worse, since the developer and security community deficits are much worse than with a videotape standard.
I think that Android phones on the RIM network would sell more than this new QNX Blackberry in today's competitive environment. I don't know why RIM doesn't act that way.
I'm not attacking his credentials. I'm questioning his expertise. He doesn't have any, outside his very narrow scientific/engineering field.
Space exploration is transitioning. What he points out is cherry picking.
You're sure there are plenty of credible experts? Sounds like you've decided the answer without any expertise, or experts. Answer the question: what's his track record in predicting space development growth? None. Just another whiner. End of story.
1: Our enemy was putting comms satellites and soon enough weapons in space, which made them look more powerful than us (for good reason), and beating them to the moon helped us keep our side of the war together enough to win it
2: The resulting economic growth and convenience (and lifesaving necessities for some) in return was well worth the investment, even if the American public was the only entity that could invest it
and
3: Because SpaceX, Rutan and the rest would be 50 years behind where they are now, without the 50 years the US government spent driving us all into space. A 50 year hurdle no private effort would ever invest in, until maybe 100-200 years from now. If we weren't all speaking Russian.
Yes, anything the government does is "communist". If you're a Republican, and stupid - er, redundant.
And NASA's existence prohibited private companies from going into space, which is why only governments ever succeeded in doing it. Right? Because one of them was a Communist government. Though, despite what you say, the US space programme was more successful. And despite the fact that private interests have succeeded only through the vast and long public subsidy of space development.
Now NASA is "communist". You Republicans, er, "libertarians", are stupid.
This guy's arguments in the article are a few shots in the dark, against the consensus expectation of human aspirations. But he's arguing from his soapbox as a scientist.
So, what has he predicted correctly? Not about lunar science, which is his field (and it's hard, which shows how exceptionally smart he is). But about economics, infrastructure development, or civilization.
Nothing? Oh. Who cares what he thinks about something where he's as likely to be an expert as the majority of Slashdotters posting in this thread?
If RIM is going to switch OSes, why wouldn't they go with Android? Cheaper to obtain and support, far larger app and developer base, easier to market it than "QNX? What's that?", bigger security community.
RIM is just trying to protect its "different" status, despite the actual cost/benefit.
How do you explain that 97% (AKA unusual and overwhelming percentage) of climate scientists concur that humans are driving the climate to change in catastrophic ways? Because they aren't listening to the science?
Or some other reality-denying argument that says your armchair climatology is more reliable than the actual field of expert climatology.
Of course it has to be the right fix. The wrong fix is what we need? And of course the scientists have to "bless" it. They're the ones who know better what's happening, and what's likely to happen depending on what we do.
The Federal government built their sea walls, because New Orleans is the nation's second largest port, and by far the main port for the entire middle of the continent. It was the Feds who got cheap, designing a Cat-3 sea wall in Cat-5 hurricane country - that collapsed under a Cat-2 storm.
And then the Feds failed to do their part to rescue them.
Everyone knows this. You Republicans will lie about anything, including the negligent murder of a major American city. Why do you hate America?
People stopped calling it "Global Warming" because fools couldn't get over the fact that "Global" meant "on average", and pointed to local cold events as if they proved Global Warming wrong. It didn't, but the noise from fools made it harder to talk about doing something about it.
But calling it "climate change" confused the fools even more. Convinced them even more that they were right.
The actual scientists, climatologists (not podiatrists or some other person who doesn't study climate), practically all agree that the climate is changing catastrophically, and that we're running out of time to do something to save ourselves from it. The fools say different foolish things.
No it's not. Rich NY'ers live in NY. LI'ers are the people not rich enough, not ambitious enough, not competent enough, not able to deal with diversity enough.
"Wall Street" is located several stories, mostly several dozen stories, above street level. The bankers will have golden gondolas taxiing them in their glass 3rd Millennium Venice.
Or, more likely, they'll just move somewhere else. Because the neighborhood will be ransacked by the migrating hordes who can't afford to find the silver lining in the calamity. That's the large majority of the 20-50 million people Wall Street is embedded in.
There is no upside to the climate change that we've bought. Except for some bankers, oil moguls and polluters in the short term. Longer than that it's all gargantuan collapse. Which is just what Wall Street does best.
Slashdot Mirror
This project is clearly socialism.
If you think anything a government does is socialism.
I welcome that kind of pressure to keep Google honest. Something has to push back against the many pressures to keep Google dishonest, and to keep Android source unavailable. Pressure from the large geek community is good.
I don't have any reading comp problem. You have a writing problem. And an attitude problem.
Goodbye.
I make apps for the corporate market, and started making wireless apps for it in 1999. The "corporate market" doesn't really want "rock solid" Blackberries if they cost more than commodity Android phones, and if their users are unusual among the general public - and without the skills to use them coming into the corp. That's why the corp market wanted Windows phones - until those became clearly not solid at all, and without a dynamic developer community. Android is plenty rock solid, and QNX is overkill.
Android is not fragmented for a given carrier, like RIM is. Sprint has to target only one Android. Even the OS versions that max out on different phone models per carrier isn't "fragmentation", it's simple backwards/forwards compatibility as in any platform. But QNX + a limited Android runtime is clearly fragmented: some apps are Android, some Android apps won't run, and some apps are QNX and work different from the runnable Android apps. And not all devices run Android apps at all. That's fragmented.
The costs are of course higher for supporting both QNX and Android. I'm not going to bother explaining that perfectly obvious point. But your contesting it shows that you're not being realistic, you're looking for arguments to support a preconceived decision.
What difference does that make to the users who buy the products?
Yeah, why not? After all, Android is the most popular mobile OS, even more than Apple's superbrand. And since they get the source and rights to change it however they want (within the limited open source constraints), Google doesn't hold any "keys" to any castle. Why shouldn't they get their OS for free, including ongoing updates keeping it in sync with the modern world, spending their OS budget on making their version more attractive to consumers.
The other side of that is "why not just do something different". The reasons to do what others are doing, when it's working, are better than the reasons to do something different.
But not really. And their costs are higher for supporting both. Without getting much, if anything, of benefit from it. But getting drawbacks, like a fragmented platform and incomplete coverage of the more popular platform.
I don't think RIM devices are any more reliable than the Android devices from HTC and the other major manufacturers. And RIM's network outages (not on QNX) have given Blackberry a reputation for downtime that's worse than the competing Android devices on competing networks.
Betamax was better than VHS technically and feature-wise. But the single vendor / proprietary nature of it made it less accessible to the market, and it failed. Which is what Sony cared about, not its technical merits. QNX is likely going the same way. But worse, since the developer and security community deficits are much worse than with a videotape standard.
I think that Android phones on the RIM network would sell more than this new QNX Blackberry in today's competitive environment. I don't know why RIM doesn't act that way.
I'm not attacking his credentials. I'm questioning his expertise. He doesn't have any, outside his very narrow scientific/engineering field.
Space exploration is transitioning. What he points out is cherry picking.
You're sure there are plenty of credible experts? Sounds like you've decided the answer without any expertise, or experts. Answer the question: what's his track record in predicting space development growth? None. Just another whiner. End of story.
It's important because
1: Our enemy was putting comms satellites and soon enough weapons in space, which made them look more powerful than us (for good reason), and beating them to the moon helped us keep our side of the war together enough to win it
2: The resulting economic growth and convenience (and lifesaving necessities for some) in return was well worth the investment, even if the American public was the only entity that could invest it
and
3: Because SpaceX, Rutan and the rest would be 50 years behind where they are now, without the 50 years the US government spent driving us all into space. A 50 year hurdle no private effort would ever invest in, until maybe 100-200 years from now. If we weren't all speaking Russian.
Yes, anything the government does is "communist". If you're a Republican, and stupid - er, redundant.
And NASA's existence prohibited private companies from going into space, which is why only governments ever succeeded in doing it. Right? Because one of them was a Communist government. Though, despite what you say, the US space programme was more successful. And despite the fact that private interests have succeeded only through the vast and long public subsidy of space development.
Now NASA is "communist". You Republicans, er, "libertarians", are stupid.
I don't think it'll take 500 years to get from where we are now to there.
Unless we give up now. This guy's prophecy is designed for self-fulfillment.
This guy's arguments in the article are a few shots in the dark, against the consensus expectation of human aspirations. But he's arguing from his soapbox as a scientist.
So, what has he predicted correctly? Not about lunar science, which is his field (and it's hard, which shows how exceptionally smart he is). But about economics, infrastructure development, or civilization.
Nothing? Oh. Who cares what he thinks about something where he's as likely to be an expert as the majority of Slashdotters posting in this thread?
If RIM is going to switch OSes, why wouldn't they go with Android? Cheaper to obtain and support, far larger app and developer base, easier to market it than "QNX? What's that?", bigger security community.
RIM is just trying to protect its "different" status, despite the actual cost/benefit.
You're not an engineer.
When you're wrong by 2014, will you post a story that shows your wrong and apologize for your unwarranted certainty?
How do you explain that 97% (AKA unusual and overwhelming percentage) of climate scientists concur that humans are driving the climate to change in catastrophic ways? Because they aren't listening to the science?
Or some other reality-denying argument that says your armchair climatology is more reliable than the actual field of expert climatology.
Of course it has to be the right fix. The wrong fix is what we need? And of course the scientists have to "bless" it. They're the ones who know better what's happening, and what's likely to happen depending on what we do.
You Republicans are stupid.
The Federal government built their sea walls, because New Orleans is the nation's second largest port, and by far the main port for the entire middle of the continent. It was the Feds who got cheap, designing a Cat-3 sea wall in Cat-5 hurricane country - that collapsed under a Cat-2 storm.
And then the Feds failed to do their part to rescue them.
Everyone knows this. You Republicans will lie about anything, including the negligent murder of a major American city. Why do you hate America?
Except you have a livable environment, but not money. So keeping your environment should be more important than the money you don't have.
Maybe your bad logic, economics and values is the reason you're poor.
People stopped calling it "Global Warming" because fools couldn't get over the fact that "Global" meant "on average", and pointed to local cold events as if they proved Global Warming wrong. It didn't, but the noise from fools made it harder to talk about doing something about it.
But calling it "climate change" confused the fools even more. Convinced them even more that they were right.
The actual scientists, climatologists (not podiatrists or some other person who doesn't study climate), practically all agree that the climate is changing catastrophically, and that we're running out of time to do something to save ourselves from it. The fools say different foolish things.
You're a fool.
No it's not. Rich NY'ers live in NY. LI'ers are the people not rich enough, not ambitious enough, not competent enough, not able to deal with diversity enough.
You're not from NYC.
Maybe The Ice Schooner by Michael Moorcock?
Ah, the American Dream: a stupid mistake that gets you something for nothing. And purely imaginary.
"Wall Street" is located several stories, mostly several dozen stories, above street level. The bankers will have golden gondolas taxiing them in their glass 3rd Millennium Venice.
Or, more likely, they'll just move somewhere else. Because the neighborhood will be ransacked by the migrating hordes who can't afford to find the silver lining in the calamity. That's the large majority of the 20-50 million people Wall Street is embedded in.
There is no upside to the climate change that we've bought. Except for some bankers, oil moguls and polluters in the short term. Longer than that it's all gargantuan collapse. Which is just what Wall Street does best.