I am a bit paranoid and don't like the idea of being trackable. For this reason I typically have my phone in airplane mode and turn off this mode when I expect phone calls or want to browse / check mails. I still do not fully trust the proprietary firmware not to transmit any signals. I would really like to check whether it still transmits anything in airplane mode. Does anybody know an easy and inexpensive way of how to do that?
I'd believe that only Maemo offers moderately convenient gpg encrypted mobile email, not via the default email client sadly, although maybe you could hack that.
The Android Privacy guard offers convenient gpg encrypted email for Android too: http://www.thialfihar.org/projects/apg/
It works together with the K9 email client. Also not the default email client but much better.
Still this is really bad news for MeeGo. With at least two other strong competitors in the field, MeeGo actually needs all the support it can get. Instead the netbook UX was already canceled by Nokia and now MeeGo will definitely not be the premium system of the top notch smartphones. It is true that as free software MeeGo cannot really die but it can become insignificant. Without a critical mass working on the system MeeGo cannot be competitive in the long run. I was hoping that it would become a huge success because having the complete desktop ecosystem in your pocket can have nice advantages.
I don't think Android would form the right basis. It was basically designed to be an entertainment consumption OS. It is not designed for IT productivity which would be an important part for kids in third-world countries (not the only one but an essential part). The goal should not be to create countries of consumption drones.
At higher levels, then science or whatever does touch into 'you have to think', but for the first few years, the idea implanted into your head is that the exam is the most important thing, and it is a test of memory. Not logic. That's where it fails.
That depends on the exam. Exams are not a bad thing. You just have to design the exams such that logic and reasoning are tested as well.
Yes, it is tempting to take shortcuts. But I think as a scientist it is your obligation to do good research and to be honest about your results. Always remember that you get to do the interesting stuff.
I'm also a scientist and my track record so far is ok but not overwhelming. Therefore, my career is uncertain and I may be forced to leave academia in a couple of years. Of course, I could have had more publications if I had taken those shortcuts. Granted, I don't have a family to support but I have no sympathy for people who fake their results for their personal benefit.
Of course, RMS has a point here. And this is not the first time he is arguing against cloud computing. As can be seen in his recorded talks he has been doing this for quite some time now.
The problem is that cloud computing has a couple of advantages which makes it attractive. You don't need to have backups of your data and you can access your data everywhere given that you have an internet connection. So this is very convenient for the user. But then you are giving up some of your freedoms for convenience which is not really a good thing.
Again, that is a deficiency of the hardware and of phone manufacturers / carriers changes to Android and not a deficiency of Android itself. Android is in fact so open that it allows manufacturers to do these nasty things that to Android. It should be the people buying the right Android devices to vote with their wallets for the phones that do not impose those restrictions on the users. You did not even have to install an app to root the Google Nexus One for instance.
Well, MeeGo goes a step beyond and you can actually contribute code to it, you can see it being developed in open. In the end, It's all relative: iOS is less open than Android and Android is less open than MeeGo.
To call Android less open than MeeGo is rubbish. Software is as open as it can get when it is FOSS. Android is licensed under the Apache license and the GPL. So, by definition Android is totally FOSS. There is nothing that could be more FOSS than something that is already FOSS.
The fact that Google develops Android behind closed doors is a different matter and doesn't make the released software less open. You can take the current Android release, fork it and contribute code to it just as it was the case for Cyanogen mod and a dozen other mods. That the main developer of the project (Google) works in privacy doesn't change the openness of the software project.
You must be trolling. It's not Android that is locked down. It's the phone manufacturers that abuse the openness of Android to lock their phones down. Granted, there are proprietary drivers on every Android phone at the bottom and there are proprietary apps at the top (which can be removed from rooted phones). Moreover, Android itself is developed by Google behind closed doors. But still Android itself is open. That is the reason why forks of Android like the Cyanogen mod can emerge. And this is something that did not even happen with Maemo. On its internet tablets Nokia used mostly FOSS but kept enough closed so that it did not loose control over the platform. For instance 1/3 of the software on the Nokia 770 was actually proprietary. There was even a project called Mamona that tried to replace the closed source components with open source ones and it never reached a stage were it could be called usable. I would say Android has a lot of potential.
Perhaps Big Brother is precisely what we, as a civilization, need in order to realize that it's a horrible thing to live like that. After all, experience is a good teacher.
The problem is, once we have it in place it is very hard to get rid of it. When the government watches your every step you cannot form a successful resistance. Even today it is prohibited to assemble a great crowd without letting the police force know about it (at least in Germany).
I am against geolocation of wine. I think that GNU/Linux users should be able to keep their privacy.
Why do I have the feeling that I am off-topic here...
The only Ubuntu/Nexus installations I can find are running in a chroot, like the Debian that grandparent mentions. Win95 wouldn't run natively anyway.
There is a tutorial at http://www.irregular-expression.com/ for installing Debian on a Nexus One that runs directly on the hardware, no chroot. The only catch is that you need a PC hooked up to the device in order to initiate booting. So the only thing that is missing to be usable in the field is a bootloader that is able to boot an alternative OS. Or you could try to keep the device running without rebooting, but I guess that Debian without chroot is a bit too power hungry for that.
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I am a bit paranoid and don't like the idea of being trackable. For this reason I typically have my phone in airplane mode and turn off this mode when I expect phone calls or want to browse / check mails. I still do not fully trust the proprietary firmware not to transmit any signals. I would really like to check whether it still transmits anything in airplane mode. Does anybody know an easy and inexpensive way of how to do that?
I'd believe that only Maemo offers moderately convenient gpg encrypted mobile email, not via the default email client sadly, although maybe you could hack that.
The Android Privacy guard offers convenient gpg encrypted email for Android too: http://www.thialfihar.org/projects/apg/ It works together with the K9 email client. Also not the default email client but much better.
And where's the Free Android distribution? With an own market with only Open Source apps? No, there's MeeGo instead... yet.
There is a fully free Android distribution called Replicant: http://replicant.us/
Then there is a free software repository for Android at http://f-droid.org/
Still this is really bad news for MeeGo. With at least two other strong competitors in the field, MeeGo actually needs all the support it can get. Instead the netbook UX was already canceled by Nokia and now MeeGo will definitely not be the premium system of the top notch smartphones. It is true that as free software MeeGo cannot really die but it can become insignificant. Without a critical mass working on the system MeeGo cannot be competitive in the long run. I was hoping that it would become a huge success because having the complete desktop ecosystem in your pocket can have nice advantages.
Sure it does. That's why the Germans went there: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeAfoiN5SDw
I don't think Android would form the right basis. It was basically designed to be an entertainment consumption OS. It is not designed for IT productivity which would be an important part for kids in third-world countries (not the only one but an essential part). The goal should not be to create countries of consumption drones.
Dude, that is totally useless. ed is the standard editor.
http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/ed.msg.html
Either that, or this loosed organism is already messing with our heads. I say, KILL IT!
Strange, I was about to post the exact same comment, character for character...
At higher levels, then science or whatever does touch into 'you have to think', but for the first few years, the idea implanted into your head is that the exam is the most important thing, and it is a test of memory. Not logic. That's where it fails.
That depends on the exam. Exams are not a bad thing. You just have to design the exams such that logic and reasoning are tested as well.
Yes, it is tempting to take shortcuts. But I think as a scientist it is your obligation to do good research and to be honest about your results. Always remember that you get to do the interesting stuff. I'm also a scientist and my track record so far is ok but not overwhelming. Therefore, my career is uncertain and I may be forced to leave academia in a couple of years. Of course, I could have had more publications if I had taken those shortcuts. Granted, I don't have a family to support but I have no sympathy for people who fake their results for their personal benefit.
Le Wiki Koumbit: https://wiki.koumbit.net/AndroidFreeSoftware
The Replicant for Android list: http://trac.osuosl.org/trac/replicant/wiki/ListOfKnownFreeSoftwareApps
The Wikiperdia list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Open_Source_Android_Applications
Of course, RMS has a point here. And this is not the first time he is arguing against cloud computing. As can be seen in his recorded talks he has been doing this for quite some time now. The problem is that cloud computing has a couple of advantages which makes it attractive. You don't need to have backups of your data and you can access your data everywhere given that you have an internet connection. So this is very convenient for the user. But then you are giving up some of your freedoms for convenience which is not really a good thing.
Hamming code was the first discovery in an immense field called coding theory
First discovery? I would say Shannon's historic paper on coding theory "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" from 1948 was earlier.
Every innovation is based on numerous previous innovations. I must agree with the Chinese here.
I would go for Chinese.
So far my definition of a fully functional computer was based on Turing completeness. How is a serial port important for that?
Again, that is a deficiency of the hardware and of phone manufacturers / carriers changes to Android and not a deficiency of Android itself. Android is in fact so open that it allows manufacturers to do these nasty things that to Android. It should be the people buying the right Android devices to vote with their wallets for the phones that do not impose those restrictions on the users. You did not even have to install an app to root the Google Nexus One for instance.
Well, MeeGo goes a step beyond and you can actually contribute code to it, you can see it being developed in open. In the end, It's all relative: iOS is less open than Android and Android is less open than MeeGo.
To call Android less open than MeeGo is rubbish. Software is as open as it can get when it is FOSS. Android is licensed under the Apache license and the GPL. So, by definition Android is totally FOSS. There is nothing that could be more FOSS than something that is already FOSS.
The fact that Google develops Android behind closed doors is a different matter and doesn't make the released software less open. You can take the current Android release, fork it and contribute code to it just as it was the case for Cyanogen mod and a dozen other mods. That the main developer of the project (Google) works in privacy doesn't change the openness of the software project.
You must be trolling. It's not Android that is locked down. It's the phone manufacturers that abuse the openness of Android to lock their phones down. Granted, there are proprietary drivers on every Android phone at the bottom and there are proprietary apps at the top (which can be removed from rooted phones). Moreover, Android itself is developed by Google behind closed doors. But still Android itself is open. That is the reason why forks of Android like the Cyanogen mod can emerge. And this is something that did not even happen with Maemo. On its internet tablets Nokia used mostly FOSS but kept enough closed so that it did not loose control over the platform. For instance 1/3 of the software on the Nokia 770 was actually proprietary. There was even a project called Mamona that tried to replace the closed source components with open source ones and it never reached a stage were it could be called usable. I would say Android has a lot of potential.
So there is an app for everything? The long list of diseases in the summary did sound like a joke.
Perhaps Big Brother is precisely what we, as a civilization, need in order to realize that it's a horrible thing to live like that. After all, experience is a good teacher.
The problem is, once we have it in place it is very hard to get rid of it. When the government watches your every step you cannot form a successful resistance. Even today it is prohibited to assemble a great crowd without letting the police force know about it (at least in Germany).
I am against geolocation of wine. I think that GNU/Linux users should be able to keep their privacy. Why do I have the feeling that I am off-topic here...
The only Ubuntu/Nexus installations I can find are running in a chroot, like the Debian that grandparent mentions. Win95 wouldn't run natively anyway.
There is a tutorial at http://www.irregular-expression.com/ for installing Debian on a Nexus One that runs directly on the hardware, no chroot. The only catch is that you need a PC hooked up to the device in order to initiate booting. So the only thing that is missing to be usable in the field is a bootloader that is able to boot an alternative OS. Or you could try to keep the device running without rebooting, but I guess that Debian without chroot is a bit too power hungry for that.
Shit! All those asteroids. We are so screwed. We're all gonna die!