Not only double secure, but if you're caught doing something nefarious, they put you on double secret probation. They have also contacted Double Mint Gum about possible trademark licensing.
wxwidgets might be great, might even be the best tool for the job, but just calling Flash bloated without giving a reason isn't really informative IMHO. Flash has one of the nicest scripting languages around and is a amazingly fast vector rendering engine. The Flex UI components are pretty good too. The problems come when it's used to play the latest HD trailer on top of a browser which is in-itself a large application. You can hate on Adobe, hate on advertising, hate on Flash cookies, or security risks to the plugin model, but the technology behind Flash is anything but bloated.
... should do the trick. Preferably one without any hardware buttons (other than volume/power).
In the app you can already disable the back button and menu button. The trick will be removing the Home button, Task Switcher button and notifications.
Now that Honeycomb/ICS source is available you should be able to find where they have the "fullscreen" code. This code is designed so that an app like YouTube can go full-screen -- but, once the user touches the screen, the soft buttons will return.
Hardware manufacturers can also set a flag to enable or disable the soft keys, so you may be able to find this flag and just turn off the keys.
All of this wouldn't prevent a user from booting into recovery or some such, but should provide a decently predictable experience for informational videos and whatnot.
The one part I'm not so sure on is how to disable notifications. Hopefully this will help though.
This is part of the picture but there is more to it. One of the major problems is the fact that a lot of devs are unaware of, or forgot about, the fact that certain API objects like Drawable are bound to a View (which is bound to the larger UI (and Activity). So what seems like a simple ArrayList of thumbnails that really shouldn't put much of any pressure on memory ends up holding references to the entire UI/Activity. This is called "Leaking the Activity" and is very common. Some of the blame rests with the devs, but I think some could be argued to be the fault of the API and/or GC.
The AC post sums it up well, there's more money in iOS for sure. I wouldn't dispute that. Thought certainly there is a different revenue model via ads vs paid apps. Still, I think the conclusion there is correct, though note they quote the flurry study.... To be honest, I have a hard time ever taking any *World article seriously though.
With all due respect, you don't understand what you're talking about. The greater fragmentation threat revolves around custom implementations of core parts of the OS. Most specifically "ContenProviders" (the API, not media companies, although those are a problem for everyone of a different sort). This is even a problem with Google not following their own APIs but asking developers to use the MediaStore API (but that's a different discussion).
With regards to upgrades, certain older devices had limited inter protected storage for the OS an apps. The original Samsung Galaxy S is one of these. Right after that phone came out more and more devices were implementing larger internal storage. This particular problem with upgrades, is an unfortunate one-time-only growing pain. That's not to say those devices cannot receive security updates, just that they cannot fit the entire ICS image + apps + a skin on the protected storage.
You can sit back and play monday-morning-quarterback, but the truth is the internal storage+SD had some nice advantages for the user, but ultimately it was decided (rightly so) that there needs to be more room for apps and the OS.
Finally, the point of this article, which has little to do with upgrades, is that app makers now have some more reliable and consistent APIs for UI widget appearance. There is nothing bad about this. Sure it's a small step, but it's a step in the right direction. It even allows devs to maintain a style inline with whatever skin the user is currently using, or use the more stock looking one. Finally, when you consider many apps use their own look and feel above and beyond any OS look and feel, this is probably not a huge deal regardless.
Your tirade again fragmentation, especially being so uninformed on the issue, just seems irrational. iOS is great, Android is great. They have different strengths and weaknesses.
Flurry is a joke to Android devs. They specifically cater to iOS devs, and were embroiled in a privacy scandal in early 2010 on Android. Further, Google Analytics provides a similar service for free, and one that is already hugely popular among web developers. Flurry puts out that same press release every year to garner press about themselves. This is absolutely the worst kind of skewed statistic. "Iphone analytics company that was previous burned by bad behavior on Android, says more of its customers are iphone devs than in the past" It was sad to see so many media companies pick up the PR release.
With regards to who does the most web surfing, you would need a statistic that accounts for the fact that many Android phones used to report the UA string as "mobile safari" and that many Android users use a variety of browsers: Firefox, Opera, Dolphin, xScope, and more. I'd look to admob or comScore as at least decent approximations. Certainly
There are some very valid fragmentation and bloatware arguments to be made against Android, but none of what you brought up holds any water when you dig a little deeper.
Full disclosure: I'm and Android dev myself, as you can see in my sig.
I think (not 100% sure on this) that for at least some Android phones, the browser was reporting a UA string like "mobile safari"
Additionally, not sure if opera reports a different string on iOS vs Android. Certainly a lot alternative Android of browsers too. This may not be enough to invalidate your assertion, but I'd be curious where you got the statistic. If it's Flurry then it's wholly unreliable. (I can explain in a follow up post) If it's something like admob or comscore that might hold some truth.
It's only 15 minutes for the auto-refund. You can always email the dev and ask nicely. In fact, many apps state they adhere to a 24hr "no questions asked" refund policy.
But how? If they use a license that forbids locking the phones and/or removing features and/or adding bloatware, who would make the phones? What carriers would sell them? Not saying your wrong at all. In fact I very much hope they drive carriers more towards being dumb pipes -- but the devil is in the details on something like this. What would the license need to be? GPLv3?
It's not, it's not even very common either. This is the WSJ regurgitating an annual article about injustice and scams on the "interwebs." The/. crowd knows better but this article is like one of those "they almost cured cancer this year" types: It happens every year. The story never changes and the profit of Facebook and Google are hardly affected by this.
In fact, several years ago The NY Times even brought a case against some spam-adware company that would install a toolbar or somehow modded the browser and launched popups to competing sites. IIRC The NY Times lost the court case, and there was a bit of the Streisand effect, but ultimately people dont use this kinda crap, and it all just went away in the end. The funniest part is how the WSJ journalist spins it as a "new unexpected side-effect." Welcome to the internet, lady:)
While I agree with the spirit of your rant, AT&T did just show us this past spring that we might already be in such a dystopia. They challenged a customer's right to partake in a class-action lawsuit (when a customer had signed an binding arbitration contract. AT&T took it to the supreme court and won.
There are a couple apps out there that do this (most needing root). They essentially re-write the manifest to not ask for the permission -- sometimes by decompiling/recompiling. This crashes a lot of apps as devs dont expect to need to check for a SecurityException. The other problem with this level of granularity comes user confusion. The more granularity, the more confused a user can get. It also breaks the "agreement" between the dev/publisher and the user, much like ad-blocking in web browsers does. This is unfortunate because it's really hard to fault users for wanting that kind of control when "permission creep" is growing wildly out of control. Honestly, I'm not sure there is an easy answer/fix to this. Open markets mean a bit of chaos is likely to emerge -- that's a good thing. But the only way to combat the unscrupulous is through educating users and having the community diligent in it's policing and reporting.
The worst offenders though are the carrier bloatware apps (IMHO).
Full disclosure: I have myself written a security guide for Android (CC license), and have an app for sale that provides information for novice users as well as permission search (to see what apps are using what permissions). I say this because obviously my work will bias my thoughts on the matter.
Well I can see a valid use for a "This software is provided as-is" clause. It's clauses like this that are bad: "you can only use this yourself, never re-sell, rent, trade, and must only use it on one computer from the hours of 1pm-2pm with one hand tied behind your back..."
Well it could be, I'm not sure what "pffical collaboration" matters other than as a label. While I have no idea why the GP brought up Siri, we did just read about Apple buying lots of map software companies. And Apple has been openly hostile towards Google over the past two years. Strategically it might make sense to force Apple into a mad rush to finish their map project -- the writing is on the wall that they will be ditching Google Maps soon. I dont know financially how much of a difference it would make to lost revenue for Google, but squeezing every dime out of Apple and/or forcing them to finish their map project in a rush is an entirely plausible strategy.
The reason it's valuable to advertisers is that it improves what's called "conversion rates." On a typical ad buy of say 100,000 impressions, you might get 1-100 people actually buying the product after seeing the ad. That percentage is called the "conversion rate", and it's tracked thoroughly. There are also two types of ad campaigns: acquisition and awareness. When most people think about advertising, they think about acquisition -- the ads meant to get people to actually buy the product not long after seeing the ad.
Awareness is harder to track, but it also benefits from targets ad buys (and is also tracked to the fullest extent that they can). If I want people to remember my sports store the next time they need new cleats or sports clothes, it helps if my ad is shown to people who like football.
Whether this is good or bad is up to you, but I'm just trying to explain the motivations behind targeting.
Slashdot Mirror
Not only double secure, but if you're caught doing something nefarious, they put you on double secret probation. They have also contacted Double Mint Gum about possible trademark licensing.
wxwidgets might be great, might even be the best tool for the job, but just calling Flash bloated without giving a reason isn't really informative IMHO. Flash has one of the nicest scripting languages around and is a amazingly fast vector rendering engine. The Flex UI components are pretty good too. The problems come when it's used to play the latest HD trailer on top of a browser which is in-itself a large application. You can hate on Adobe, hate on advertising, hate on Flash cookies, or security risks to the plugin model, but the technology behind Flash is anything but bloated.
Looks like you got a thorn in your side.... or not....in this case.
... should do the trick. Preferably one without any hardware buttons (other than volume/power).
In the app you can already disable the back button and menu button. The trick will be removing the Home button, Task Switcher button and notifications.
Now that Honeycomb/ICS source is available you should be able to find where they have the "fullscreen" code. This code is designed so that an app like YouTube can go full-screen -- but, once the user touches the screen, the soft buttons will return.
Hardware manufacturers can also set a flag to enable or disable the soft keys, so you may be able to find this flag and just turn off the keys.
All of this wouldn't prevent a user from booting into recovery or some such, but should provide a decently predictable experience for informational videos and whatnot.
The one part I'm not so sure on is how to disable notifications. Hopefully this will help though.
This is part of the picture but there is more to it. One of the major problems is the fact that a lot of devs are unaware of, or forgot about, the fact that certain API objects like Drawable are bound to a View (which is bound to the larger UI (and Activity). So what seems like a simple ArrayList of thumbnails that really shouldn't put much of any pressure on memory ends up holding references to the entire UI/Activity. This is called "Leaking the Activity" and is very common. Some of the blame rests with the devs, but I think some could be argued to be the fault of the API and/or GC.
The AC post sums it up well, there's more money in iOS for sure. I wouldn't dispute that. Thought certainly there is a different revenue model via ads vs paid apps. Still, I think the conclusion there is correct, though note they quote the flurry study.... To be honest, I have a hard time ever taking any *World article seriously though.
With all due respect, you don't understand what you're talking about. The greater fragmentation threat revolves around custom implementations of core parts of the OS. Most specifically "ContenProviders" (the API, not media companies, although those are a problem for everyone of a different sort). This is even a problem with Google not following their own APIs but asking developers to use the MediaStore API (but that's a different discussion).
With regards to upgrades, certain older devices had limited inter protected storage for the OS an apps. The original Samsung Galaxy S is one of these. Right after that phone came out more and more devices were implementing larger internal storage. This particular problem with upgrades, is an unfortunate one-time-only growing pain. That's not to say those devices cannot receive security updates, just that they cannot fit the entire ICS image + apps + a skin on the protected storage.
You can sit back and play monday-morning-quarterback, but the truth is the internal storage+SD had some nice advantages for the user, but ultimately it was decided (rightly so) that there needs to be more room for apps and the OS.
Finally, the point of this article, which has little to do with upgrades, is that app makers now have some more reliable and consistent APIs for UI widget appearance. There is nothing bad about this. Sure it's a small step, but it's a step in the right direction. It even allows devs to maintain a style inline with whatever skin the user is currently using, or use the more stock looking one. Finally, when you consider many apps use their own look and feel above and beyond any OS look and feel, this is probably not a huge deal regardless.
Your tirade again fragmentation, especially being so uninformed on the issue, just seems irrational. iOS is great, Android is great. They have different strengths and weaknesses.
Flurry is a joke to Android devs. They specifically cater to iOS devs, and were embroiled in a privacy scandal in early 2010 on Android. Further, Google Analytics provides a similar service for free, and one that is already hugely popular among web developers. Flurry puts out that same press release every year to garner press about themselves. This is absolutely the worst kind of skewed statistic. "Iphone analytics company that was previous burned by bad behavior on Android, says more of its customers are iphone devs than in the past" It was sad to see so many media companies pick up the PR release.
With regards to who does the most web surfing, you would need a statistic that accounts for the fact that many Android phones used to report the UA string as "mobile safari" and that many Android users use a variety of browsers: Firefox, Opera, Dolphin, xScope, and more. I'd look to admob or comScore as at least decent approximations. Certainly
There are some very valid fragmentation and bloatware arguments to be made against Android, but none of what you brought up holds any water when you dig a little deeper.
Full disclosure: I'm and Android dev myself, as you can see in my sig.
I think (not 100% sure on this) that for at least some Android phones, the browser was reporting a UA string like "mobile safari"
Additionally, not sure if opera reports a different string on iOS vs Android. Certainly a lot alternative Android of browsers too. This may not be enough to invalidate your assertion, but I'd be curious where you got the statistic. If it's Flurry then it's wholly unreliable. (I can explain in a follow up post) If it's something like admob or comscore that might hold some truth.
I would imagine it to work much like cruise control too. Any force applied by the driver disengages the system.
It's only 15 minutes for the auto-refund. You can always email the dev and ask nicely. In fact, many apps state they adhere to a 24hr "no questions asked" refund policy.
But how? If they use a license that forbids locking the phones and/or removing features and/or adding bloatware, who would make the phones? What carriers would sell them? Not saying your wrong at all. In fact I very much hope they drive carriers more towards being dumb pipes -- but the devil is in the details on something like this. What would the license need to be? GPLv3?
It's not, it's not even very common either. This is the WSJ regurgitating an annual article about injustice and scams on the "interwebs." The /. crowd knows better but this article is like one of those "they almost cured cancer this year" types: It happens every year. The story never changes and the profit of Facebook and Google are hardly affected by this.
In fact, several years ago The NY Times even brought a case against some spam-adware company that would install a toolbar or somehow modded the browser and launched popups to competing sites. IIRC The NY Times lost the court case, and there was a bit of the Streisand effect, but ultimately people dont use this kinda crap, and it all just went away in the end. The funniest part is how the WSJ journalist spins it as a "new unexpected side-effect." Welcome to the internet, lady :)
While I agree with the spirit of your rant, AT&T did just show us this past spring that we might already be in such a dystopia. They challenged a customer's right to partake in a class-action lawsuit (when a customer had signed an binding arbitration contract. AT&T took it to the supreme court and won.
Thanks - it's in need of an update (the screenshots anyways) but am working on a tablet version :)
There are a couple apps out there that do this (most needing root). They essentially re-write the manifest to not ask for the permission -- sometimes by decompiling/recompiling. This crashes a lot of apps as devs dont expect to need to check for a SecurityException. The other problem with this level of granularity comes user confusion. The more granularity, the more confused a user can get. It also breaks the "agreement" between the dev/publisher and the user, much like ad-blocking in web browsers does. This is unfortunate because it's really hard to fault users for wanting that kind of control when "permission creep" is growing wildly out of control. Honestly, I'm not sure there is an easy answer/fix to this. Open markets mean a bit of chaos is likely to emerge -- that's a good thing. But the only way to combat the unscrupulous is through educating users and having the community diligent in it's policing and reporting.
The worst offenders though are the carrier bloatware apps (IMHO).
Full disclosure: I have myself written a security guide for Android (CC license), and have an app for sale that provides information for novice users as well as permission search (to see what apps are using what permissions). I say this because obviously my work will bias my thoughts on the matter.
The link in case anyone is interested: http://alostpacket.com/2010/02/20/how-to-be-safe-find-trusted-apps-avoid-viruses/ :)
Please note the guide is intened for novice users, which is unlikely to apply to most of the Slashdot crowd
Well I can see a valid use for a "This software is provided as-is" clause. It's clauses like this that are bad: "you can only use this yourself, never re-sell, rent, trade, and must only use it on one computer from the hours of 1pm-2pm with one hand tied behind your back..."
_nomodunderrated_nomodflamebait_modawesome_doubleawesome_kthx
Were they really upset about that guy? Sounded like he did top-notch work from the Wikipedia references.
Well it could be, I'm not sure what "pffical collaboration" matters other than as a label. While I have no idea why the GP brought up Siri, we did just read about Apple buying lots of map software companies. And Apple has been openly hostile towards Google over the past two years. Strategically it might make sense to force Apple into a mad rush to finish their map project -- the writing is on the wall that they will be ditching Google Maps soon. I dont know financially how much of a difference it would make to lost revenue for Google, but squeezing every dime out of Apple and/or forcing them to finish their map project in a rush is an entirely plausible strategy.
Are we measuring denial at retail or wholesale?
A Mac Trojan and a Bitcoin story in one! Quick someone tie this into global warming!
Just FYI, Dolphin (while not OSS itself) is a wrapper for Webkit...
I do believe they are aggregating the data but IMO even that is crossing the line for an ISP.
The reason it's valuable to advertisers is that it improves what's called "conversion rates." On a typical ad buy of say 100,000 impressions, you might get 1-100 people actually buying the product after seeing the ad. That percentage is called the "conversion rate", and it's tracked thoroughly. There are also two types of ad campaigns: acquisition and awareness. When most people think about advertising, they think about acquisition -- the ads meant to get people to actually buy the product not long after seeing the ad.
Awareness is harder to track, but it also benefits from targets ad buys (and is also tracked to the fullest extent that they can). If I want people to remember my sports store the next time they need new cleats or sports clothes, it helps if my ad is shown to people who like football.
Whether this is good or bad is up to you, but I'm just trying to explain the motivations behind targeting.
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