I agree with your last point but the "T-mobile has no 4G spectrum" is just a PR talking point from the merger slides. T-mobile does have extra spectrum and was providing HSPA+ on it which was faster than most of the competitors and had potential for 42Mbps -- clearly fast enough to compete. 4G/3G (now marketing terms) doesnt (in general) require specific frequency either AFAIK (other than not overlapping other frequencies/and providing a large enough band). So there is no specific "4G spectrum" rather there is just spectrum and the different technologies.
In our conversation, Ray noted there is a very good chance that U.S. consumers will be disappointed by the LTE roll out, mostly because Verizon and AT&T don’t have enough spectrum.
“Our competitors are launching LTE in fairly limited bandwidths of spectrum,” he pointed out. “So, 10 to 20 megahertz of LTE spectrum doesn’t give you a significant benefit in any manner, or form, from a performance perspective over and above HSPA+.”
...
“We have clean, uncluttered, untouched spectrum that we can leverage to support growth in smartphones and other devices into over the coming months and years,” Ray said. T-Mobile USA, he continued, has used only about a third of about 6030 MHz of spectrum it acquired for roughly $2.64 billion in the 2006 AWS auction. This gives them ample room to upgrade to 42 megabit per second capability next year, Ray pointed out.
I know what you're saying and generally that's a good thing to keep in mind about percentages. But that's not the case here. Specifically the article wasn't about price, it was about bandwidth consumed and the differences were from the 80MB to 4GB range. Also from the second link:
We'll note that AT&T is already facing a lawsuit for allegedly artificially inflating data usage and over billing wireless users.
See that sounds like an issue to me as a developer. All these different stores, with different approval processes, is far from ideal. Anyways I did read it but things change. My hope was that a lackluster number of Android developers willing to repackage their app for one specific device would make them rethink the policy. If they make it too much of a hassle they will end up with the same 1000 apps that you can get on any device. Netflix, Pandora, Where, NYTimes, NPR, Angry birds, etc. Which to me seems like it defeats the purpose of adding Android to the mix.
Amen. The question becomes how they are going to handle sideloading and competing markets. That recent Slasdot story about the guy trying to register & develop for them sounded like a nightmare.
I don't understand your second reason, hedge in what way? What could the iPhone release have to do with the Android tablet source? Can you explain that one a bit more?
The "piracy is marketing" argument I think is a half truth. While it does help get people known, what happens when the percentage of piracy far, far outpaces the purchases? I also don't think people purchase albums much anymore either. Hasn't that declined sharply? You just know there are some people out there getting widely pirated and seeing little to no money from their work. I know a lot of people claim they themselves particularly like to help the indies, but you know that not everyone does, and that some (a lot? just a few? I don't know) fall through the cracks.
Also, if a band wanted the kind of press and marketing one receives from giving away a free track they could give it away themselves. When pirates give away a track, they take that option away from the band. They also probably don't link back to the band's website or Amazon or iTunes or something where you can purchase a track or learn more about the band. Instead they, (and all the middlmen in the piracy chain), plaster their sites with ads (think piracy forums, megaupload, etc). So the whole "marketing" they are getting is being done without their interests in mind. And while this marketing is "virial" -- it is of dubious quality promoting interests of shady thirdy parties, rather than the bands. Though the RIAA/big labels might be just as toxic is this regard too, two wrongs don't make a right, there's no equivalency.
I think you're right in that there is benefit to getting your name out there, but realistically is that benefit worth the damage that piracy also causes? That's the real question we should be asking, isn't it? And honestly I don't know the answer. Because only some of those are lost sales it may well be not a big deal. But it's hard to imagine that piracy hasn't ruined at least one or two good bands. (While of course the RIAA has probably ruined quite a few more than that but again, it's not about equivalency).
And while I say all this, note the irony is not lost on me that the app in my sig is designed to share MP3s. (Though legally I believe it to fall under fair use). But I guess these are all the questions I have asked myself as well. Wondering if I too am a cog in the machine.
They didn't kill mixtape/cd sharing -- it's just uh....errr... all about Bluetooth now! *
Seriously though, it's really hard to tell how much of this is due to other sharing methods like YouTube, or good services like iTunes/Spotify/Pandora/etc. I'd guess both.
I think what they finally realized is that there are definitely people willing to spend money for convinience. And now that they have finally delivered on that convinience, especially to the disposable income demographic, they are seeing the profits. While of course a certain percentage will still 'pirate' (arrr excuse the term matey), these groups overlap -- and sometimes the pirates will buy. And in the places these two groups don't overlap, those are not customers -- they will pirate no matter what.
Here's the problem though... (And this was certainly a problem before and not necessarily caused by piracy). But how well are the indie bands doing? They are likely getting pirated as much as the more well-known artists (percentage-wise), but it's unlikely they have the marketing and popularity to make enough to ignore the losses. They also don't have legal teams filing DMCAs for them. And due to that overlap, there clearly are some lost sales. Not all pirated songs are lost sales, but neither are none of them.
So here's my question, (and I honestly don't even know where I fall on this one), is piracy disproportionally hitting indie bands more than the big corporate labels? Is it equal? It it the reverse? I'm not sure. I'm not even sure how one would measure that.
I guess put simply I'm just saying this: indie bands fight to pay the rent, and lost sales might make the difference. Meanwhile Puffdaddy's lost sales are the difference between renting and owning his own private jet.
*ok sorry shameless plug, please ignore, the rest of my post was srs though
Speaking as somine who did about 10 years of Flash Dev prior to Android I can assure you that Flash wont die any time soon. And that's a good thing. It's a very good technology that has a few drawbacks due to being controlled by a singular company. Those drawbacks have been loudly trumpted by its critics. It also has a bad rep because of its use (abuse) by advertisers who are already happily abusing HTML5. Nevertheless the core technology of Flash, the event based scriping language, and vector rendering engine, are top notch.
Still, Flash isn't quite the best tool for the job on Android -- but that could easily change as phones get faster. ActionScript is a wonderful language and has many advantages over Java (and many limitations, being a scripting language). But it is much nicer than JavaScript to work with.
My advice would be to learn Java. Syntactically they will feel very similar but there will be a few potholes along the way. For performance he'll need to understand multi-threaded programming anyways.
When it comes to getting a phone, I'd say a Nexus One, (like others have said), will pop up on ebay a lot and be great dev phone. But really any phone will do if he's going WiFi-only.
Spot on. I'm wondering where's the.graphicviolence domain? Surely naked bodies procreating is less of a moral concern than violence, right? I mean humans were made in God's image, right? (well, ok, not all of them, but Summer Glau is, and so is that photoshopped.... err nevermind)
I think copyright restrictions are only part of the problem. I feel like the ability for companies to designate the selling of products, (either tangible or digital) as license grants is just as serious an issue. How did we let it get so bad? I don't think the right to engage in contract would not be infringed by designating that goods sold to consumers for long term use must have the first sale doctrine applied and must be "sold" outright. And I dont think the "well just buy from someone who doesn't make the sale a license" really work either when effectively all media and products are being treated this way by all companies. The consumer here is at a clear disadvantage and this is something market forces seem unable to work out.
Clearly it might be somewhat difficult to define such products, but shouldn't be impossible to discern a service from a product.
It's one thing to say, "you may only sell the quantity which you purchased and may not resell or redisribute massive quantities of this."
Quite another to say "you may only use this as we specify."
LVL DRM was bypassed not long after it came out. From what I can tell the apps that seem to resist being pirated have to use multiple levels of DRM (including custom rolled solutions) which is also why so many apps request your IMEI.
It's is sad really. I dont think devs want to use this kinda stuff (I know I'd rather not) but the sting of piracy is hard to take when people buying $200-$500 phones wont spring $0.99 for an app.
You know, I made a joke out of my promotion, but your comment is just malicious and you clearly missed the joke. Not that it was some hilarious joke, but I think someone needs a time out.
Hehe yeah, I really do agree with what you're saying though but how do you propose to make people understand more? I think you run into legal issues by forcing companies to have simple privacy policies/eulas etc.
For me, I'd say there just need to be hard limits on what can be collected, how long that data can be held, who and what can be used. For instance I dont think it right for employers to get full credit history and to look people up on facebook and whatnot, it just seems wrong. References or LinkedIn is one thing but...
I dont really like the term "pirated", but they most certainly were distributed without the permission of the developer (not that I feel bad for this particular dev). Still, cost shouldn't really factor into whether something is "pirated" or not. Just because an app is free doesn mean anyone can take it and offer it for download in their store.
It is unclear where Symantec found this and whether the site caters to pirated apps or not. But if your were Symantec trying to drum up some PR for your anti-virus software, where would you go looking for apps with viruses? I'd wager this was indeed a site catering to "warez." But that's just a guess.
That was my first reaction as well but reading further into the article about how they (seem to have) tried to set him up to be the fall guy and rename his unit something that sounded more PR-ish, makes it definitely appear something fishy was going on here.
In the grand scheme of things it seems kinda SOP, and certainly not the most nefarious misuse of resources I've ever seen. (Sun Tzu would snooze through an idea like this). Nervertheless, at the very least this looks like it warrants an investigation into all those involved by neutral 3rd parties. The mere fact that they openly re-assigned and renamed a psy-ops unit to PR should raise an eyebrow or two. These guys are supposed to be the best of the best, the top brass representing our interests as a nation. If the Taliban/Al-qaeda reconstitutes while these generals and fscking around hosting PR events, they are dishonoring their accomplishments and rank. Still I don't want to pre-judge as it's hard to say from the limited hard evidence of what they psyops actually entailed, nor is my armchair-monday-morning-quarterbacking really a good perspective.
That's more of something the individual Flash devs should be fixing. Flash actually has excellent drag and drop support. Gestures are nice for some specific uses and some users (not all of them like it). Flash is actually a fantastic scripting and vector rending engine but they way it has been put to use in ads has given it a terrible reputation. And because of this people hold it up to imposible standards.
Does HTML5 support guestures natively? I cant find much info about it, but it seems not.
Slashdot Mirror
In our conversation, Ray noted there is a very good chance that U.S. consumers will be disappointed by the LTE roll out, mostly because Verizon and AT&T don’t have enough spectrum.
“Our competitors are launching LTE in fairly limited bandwidths of spectrum,” he pointed out. “So, 10 to 20 megahertz of LTE spectrum doesn’t give you a significant benefit in any manner, or form, from a performance perspective over and above HSPA+.”
...
“We have clean, uncluttered, untouched spectrum that we can leverage to support growth in smartphones and other devices into over the coming months and years,” Ray said. T-Mobile USA, he continued, has used only about a third of about 6030 MHz of spectrum it acquired for roughly $2.64 billion in the 2006 AWS auction. This gives them ample room to upgrade to 42 megabit per second capability next year, Ray pointed out.
From: T-Mobile USA CTO Disses AT&T, LTE and WiMAX
We'll note that AT&T is already facing a lawsuit for allegedly artificially inflating data usage and over billing wireless users.
IANAL but this was something a quick googling found: http://law.jrank.org/pages/6727/False-Advertising-Proof-Requirement.html
Doesn't really seem to quite make the cut for fraud.
I do not know of a good way to luck for such creatures, but I wish someone would figure one out
Follow the rainbow to the end for the pot of gold.
See that sounds like an issue to me as a developer. All these different stores, with different approval processes, is far from ideal. Anyways I did read it but things change. My hope was that a lackluster number of Android developers willing to repackage their app for one specific device would make them rethink the policy. If they make it too much of a hassle they will end up with the same 1000 apps that you can get on any device. Netflix, Pandora, Where, NYTimes, NPR, Angry birds, etc. Which to me seems like it defeats the purpose of adding Android to the mix.
Amen. The question becomes how they are going to handle sideloading and competing markets. That recent Slasdot story about the guy trying to register & develop for them sounded like a nightmare.
/Also, I'm in no way biased. :)
I don't understand your second reason, hedge in what way? What could the iPhone release have to do with the Android tablet source? Can you explain that one a bit more?
The "piracy is marketing" argument I think is a half truth. While it does help get people known, what happens when the percentage of piracy far, far outpaces the purchases? I also don't think people purchase albums much anymore either. Hasn't that declined sharply? You just know there are some people out there getting widely pirated and seeing little to no money from their work. I know a lot of people claim they themselves particularly like to help the indies, but you know that not everyone does, and that some (a lot? just a few? I don't know) fall through the cracks.
Also, if a band wanted the kind of press and marketing one receives from giving away a free track they could give it away themselves. When pirates give away a track, they take that option away from the band. They also probably don't link back to the band's website or Amazon or iTunes or something where you can purchase a track or learn more about the band. Instead they, (and all the middlmen in the piracy chain), plaster their sites with ads (think piracy forums, megaupload, etc). So the whole "marketing" they are getting is being done without their interests in mind. And while this marketing is "virial" -- it is of dubious quality promoting interests of shady thirdy parties, rather than the bands. Though the RIAA/big labels might be just as toxic is this regard too, two wrongs don't make a right, there's no equivalency.
I think you're right in that there is benefit to getting your name out there, but realistically is that benefit worth the damage that piracy also causes? That's the real question we should be asking, isn't it? And honestly I don't know the answer. Because only some of those are lost sales it may well be not a big deal. But it's hard to imagine that piracy hasn't ruined at least one or two good bands. (While of course the RIAA has probably ruined quite a few more than that but again, it's not about equivalency).
And while I say all this, note the irony is not lost on me that the app in my sig is designed to share MP3s. (Though legally I believe it to fall under fair use). But I guess these are all the questions I have asked myself as well. Wondering if I too am a cog in the machine.
They didn't kill mixtape/cd sharing -- it's just uh....errr... all about Bluetooth now! *
Seriously though, it's really hard to tell how much of this is due to other sharing methods like YouTube, or good services like iTunes/Spotify/Pandora/etc. I'd guess both.
I think what they finally realized is that there are definitely people willing to spend money for convinience. And now that they have finally delivered on that convinience, especially to the disposable income demographic, they are seeing the profits. While of course a certain percentage will still 'pirate' (arrr excuse the term matey), these groups overlap -- and sometimes the pirates will buy. And in the places these two groups don't overlap, those are not customers -- they will pirate no matter what.
Here's the problem though... (And this was certainly a problem before and not necessarily caused by piracy). But how well are the indie bands doing? They are likely getting pirated as much as the more well-known artists (percentage-wise), but it's unlikely they have the marketing and popularity to make enough to ignore the losses. They also don't have legal teams filing DMCAs for them. And due to that overlap, there clearly are some lost sales. Not all pirated songs are lost sales, but neither are none of them.
So here's my question, (and I honestly don't even know where I fall on this one), is piracy disproportionally hitting indie bands more than the big corporate labels? Is it equal? It it the reverse? I'm not sure. I'm not even sure how one would measure that.
I guess put simply I'm just saying this: indie bands fight to pay the rent, and lost sales might make the difference. Meanwhile Puffdaddy's lost sales are the difference between renting and owning his own private jet.
*ok sorry shameless plug, please ignore, the rest of my post was srs though
Not only that but he was wearing a fabulous suit made out of Monopoly. I wonder if that's 3 or 4 buttons....
Speaking as somine who did about 10 years of Flash Dev prior to Android I can assure you that Flash wont die any time soon. And that's a good thing. It's a very good technology that has a few drawbacks due to being controlled by a singular company. Those drawbacks have been loudly trumpted by its critics. It also has a bad rep because of its use (abuse) by advertisers who are already happily abusing HTML5. Nevertheless the core technology of Flash, the event based scriping language, and vector rendering engine, are top notch.
Still, Flash isn't quite the best tool for the job on Android -- but that could easily change as phones get faster. ActionScript is a wonderful language and has many advantages over Java (and many limitations, being a scripting language). But it is much nicer than JavaScript to work with.
My advice would be to learn Java. Syntactically they will feel very similar but there will be a few potholes along the way. For performance he'll need to understand multi-threaded programming anyways.
When it comes to getting a phone, I'd say a Nexus One, (like others have said), will pop up on ebay a lot and be great dev phone. But really any phone will do if he's going WiFi-only.
You don't have to be Nostradamus to see what debate that "reasons unknown" part is going to cause.
Yeah but if you were Nostradamus, the predictions would be much more fun.
Quatrain XI: The searching metal man roze to fell the mighty apple. Chrome, Fire, and Foxes all rejoiced at the silence atop the buffering hills.
Spot on. I'm wondering where's the .graphicviolence domain? Surely naked bodies procreating is less of a moral concern than violence, right? I mean humans were made in God's image, right? (well, ok, not all of them, but Summer Glau is, and so is that photoshopped.... err nevermind)
I think copyright restrictions are only part of the problem. I feel like the ability for companies to designate the selling of products, (either tangible or digital) as license grants is just as serious an issue. How did we let it get so bad? I don't think the right to engage in contract would not be infringed by designating that goods sold to consumers for long term use must have the first sale doctrine applied and must be "sold" outright. And I dont think the "well just buy from someone who doesn't make the sale a license" really work either when effectively all media and products are being treated this way by all companies. The consumer here is at a clear disadvantage and this is something market forces seem unable to work out.
Clearly it might be somewhat difficult to define such products, but shouldn't be impossible to discern a service from a product.
It's one thing to say, "you may only sell the quantity which you purchased and may not resell or redisribute massive quantities of this."
Quite another to say "you may only use this as we specify."
LVL DRM was bypassed not long after it came out. From what I can tell the apps that seem to resist being pirated have to use multiple levels of DRM (including custom rolled solutions) which is also why so many apps request your IMEI.
It's is sad really. I dont think devs want to use this kinda stuff (I know I'd rather not) but the sting of piracy is hard to take when people buying $200-$500 phones wont spring $0.99 for an app.
You know, I made a joke out of my promotion, but your comment is just malicious and you clearly missed the joke. Not that it was some hilarious joke, but I think someone needs a time out.
Hehe yeah, I really do agree with what you're saying though but how do you propose to make people understand more? I think you run into legal issues by forcing companies to have simple privacy policies/eulas etc.
For me, I'd say there just need to be hard limits on what can be collected, how long that data can be held, who and what can be used. For instance I dont think it right for employers to get full credit history and to look people up on facebook and whatnot, it just seems wrong. References or LinkedIn is one thing but...
I agree with your post. By reading these words you agree to check out the Android app in my sig.
I dont really like the term "pirated", but they most certainly were distributed without the permission of the developer (not that I feel bad for this particular dev). Still, cost shouldn't really factor into whether something is "pirated" or not. Just because an app is free doesn mean anyone can take it and offer it for download in their store.
It is unclear where Symantec found this and whether the site caters to pirated apps or not. But if your were Symantec trying to drum up some PR for your anti-virus software, where would you go looking for apps with viruses? I'd wager this was indeed a site catering to "warez." But that's just a guess.
Symantec found the cloned Steamy Windows app on a Web site hosted by Chinese servers.
They dont say what app store they are referring to, you're assuming those app stores. I doubt Amazon or Achos are hosted in China.
No it's 30% for apps, 10% for (the new) OnePass subscription/micropayment service transactions. Always been 30% for apps.
Somewhere Clippy is sitting unshaven, disheveled, and hung-over -- blowing soap bubbles and popping them in symbolic, disgusted jealousy.
Well, it is for pouring on the wounds of browser security
That was my first reaction as well but reading further into the article about how they (seem to have) tried to set him up to be the fall guy and rename his unit something that sounded more PR-ish, makes it definitely appear something fishy was going on here.
In the grand scheme of things it seems kinda SOP, and certainly not the most nefarious misuse of resources I've ever seen. (Sun Tzu would snooze through an idea like this). Nervertheless, at the very least this looks like it warrants an investigation into all those involved by neutral 3rd parties. The mere fact that they openly re-assigned and renamed a psy-ops unit to PR should raise an eyebrow or two. These guys are supposed to be the best of the best, the top brass representing our interests as a nation. If the Taliban/Al-qaeda reconstitutes while these generals and fscking around hosting PR events, they are dishonoring their accomplishments and rank. Still I don't want to pre-judge as it's hard to say from the limited hard evidence of what they psyops actually entailed, nor is my armchair-monday-morning-quarterbacking really a good perspective.
That's more of something the individual Flash devs should be fixing. Flash actually has excellent drag and drop support. Gestures are nice for some specific uses and some users (not all of them like it). Flash is actually a fantastic scripting and vector rending engine but they way it has been put to use in ads has given it a terrible reputation. And because of this people hold it up to imposible standards.
Does HTML5 support guestures natively? I cant find much info about it, but it seems not.