The camera app on my Droid was slower than hell until I installed custom 2.1-based firmware, a new kernel, and a mild overclock. The screen would never scroll as smoothly as with my first-gen iPod Touch, but it's a little better with CFW. The device still takes forever to boot up, and then isn't even quite ready to use even after the GUI comes up (which reminds me more of Windows 95 than anything else).
Even the touchscreen has issues (which may be fixable with calibration, but such tools don't seem to exist) -- both the iPod Touch and my 10-year-old Palm Pilot seem to be more accurate. (According to my research, this is more of a design fault affecting the A855 than something broken about my particular device.)
All of these with stock 2.0 and 2.0.1. (I never did try stock 2.1, so there's a chance that they may have actually fixed it themselves in the newest version.)
Meanwhile, sometimes things get confused and force me to reboot the phone, though that seems to happen less frequently than it used to.
I like the Droid to such an extent that I'm prone to fits of blatant fanboi-ism where I'll go on for hours about just how cool it is. But to say that it's trouble-free, or has a user experience that is as polished as Apple's offerings, would be a lie.
I do that, too: iPod Touch and laptop running over wifi supplied by my (rooted) Droid. AFAICT, there's no silly arbitrary limit on the number of connected devices (it is a Linux box, after all), unlike commercially-supported options.
It's not a cure-all, though: The tethering app presents the phone not as an access point, but just an ad-hoc device. Both Windows and the iPod are willing to request a DHCP address with this arrangement, and work fine. My PSP is not so happy with it, however, since Sony seems to think that the only 802.11 ad-hoc connection you'll ever want is to another PSP -- it therefore refuses to accept that it's got a working connection to Teh Intarwebs.
Install Swype, and you may just find that you don't like the physical keyboard on the Droid so well after all. I used to use the keyboard on my Droid most of the time, until I installed that.
I still use the keyboard occasionally (for typing of technical terms, part numbers, using SSH, etc), and I'm very happy to have it despite the fact that it makes the phone bigger, more complex, and more fragile...but Swype is so fast and easy that I strongly prefer it.
Around here, GSM coverage is mostly absent once you get away from small cities or major roadways. CDMA, meanwhile, works just fine, with reasonably-fast 3G coverage even out in the middle of Amish country.
For me, it's not even so much that AT&T is a deal-breaker, but that GSM (in general) is.
So, I guess I'll just stick with my Droid and actually-unlimited (for now, at least) data package.
Elsewhere in the past on Slashdot, I've seen it argued that if you leave your house unlocked, and someone takes your things, it's you're own fault and your insurance company won't care.
It's somewhat like the difference between "joyriding" and "grand theft auto."
[How these oranges of statements and opinions apply to the Apples in this argument is left as an exercise for the reader.]
It's easy to get people to use your Google Voice phone number instead of your real number: Just change your real number to something else.
I've done it. It's not so hard, but I didn't have a choice: My employer provides my cell phone service, and during a phone shuffle to save money, I got a new number.
Fortunately, I had already been using Google Voice (then Grand Central) for awhile, and a lot of my personal contacts were already up-to-speed with it, and the rest were just a quick phone call or SMS away. Banks and utilities were already set up to use the GV number, my wife used the GV number, and my own fly-by-night PC fix'em clients all used my GV number.
Business contacts of my employer (whom I never give my Google Voice number to) were a harder bunch to shuffle over to the new number, but I just figured that any money lost due to this would be that of my employer, who decided to do the shuffling in the first place. *shrug*
What's more, though, it's a transition that I only had to make once. I can keep my Google Voice number wherever I go, if I change jobs, move to a different side of the country, am stuck working in a DoD facility where I can't have a cell phone but do have a DID extension nearby, or whatever.
From now on, for the people who are personally important to me, the transition is done. I should never, ever have to do it again.
Disclaimer: I install these systems as part of my income.
According to some Federal statute that I can't be bothered to look up right now, an officer's use of an in-car camera must be indicated by a light. What light? Where?
In one county I work for, it's a bright yellow light behind the grill of the car. If the light is on, the system is recording.
In another, it's part of the camera: A bright, green LED that shines through the windshield whenever the system is recording.
In the latter case, most (perhaps all) of the deputies have placed black tape over the light and insist that the law doesn't apply to them.
The common Slashdot mindsets of "teh Gubament shouldn't have that data!!" and "if they didn't want anyone to see it, folks should've encrypted it!!" are not mutually exclusive.
Fact is, if the government(s) really wanted to sniff cleartext data broadcast via Wifi, they'd be doing it. In fact, I'd be very surprised if they haven't been sniffing things for a long time.
So if someone else happens to gather up some cleartext data by accident, and the government(s) demand it to be delivered to them, all I can say is this: Gosh, folks. As far as we can tell, WPA2 with AES is plenty safe at the moment, and you're a fool if you're using neither that nor some other form of encryption. And while I don't think that the government(s) should be able to do demand that the data be turned over to them, it is rather in-keeping with the general rule of things: When the government learns that you have a pile of stuff that doesn't belong to you, do they simply ask you to destroy it? No! They take it away.
Meanwhile, I've been doing a lot of wardriving for a while, recording SSIDs, BSSIDs, and GPS coordinates on my Droid, just because it's interesting to me. Even in the short time (half a year, or so) that I've been doing this, I've seen a big increase in encryption usage in my area. This is a Good Thing, An important unintended side-effect of stories about this Google oops is that they will certainly help keep the trend toward encryption moving.
I don't have an iPhone, and I don't always have $10 for an iPod Touch upgrade. Furthermore, as of 4.0, feature disparity (read: "even more fragmentation") will begin on this hardware line, starting most prominently with the lack of multitasking on my iPod Touch 1G.
If only your experience were universal. I am also currently a caffeine addict, proudly so, and I've got no trouble drinking a 10-pot cup of strong coffee and then sleeping for 8 hours, if the time is right, though I seldom drink that much lately.
And, I've been with and without caffeine for long-enough periods during my adult life to understand what it does for me (and, as far as I know, me alone):
It helps me wake up faster. It really doesn't do much of anything else. I've had a sleeping "disorder" (I call it a feature) that keeps me from sleeping until the wee hours of the morning, coupled with an inability to wake up properly. This is a problem: For instance, it's currently creeping up on 3:30AM here and I'll need to be up at 6:45 for work.
First thing when I do when I get out of the house for work, is find coffee, which is only a few blocks away from my house. If I'm unable to do this (say, because I've slept in a bit), my first several waking hours are a groggy mess. However, with a bit of coffee in the morning, everything's cool.
And after that, typically these days, I don't drink any coffee or any soda unless that's all that's available. The rest of my work day goes fine.
Without it, though, again: I'm a tired mess. And, again again, I've tried life with and without. YMMV, best of luck, but this bloke needs coffee in the morning to fit in with everyone else's schedule (which is really a issue altogether, being that I'm geared toward a noon-to-8 shift and I'm expected to perform an 8-to-noon sort of duty).
Mmmm. Cold-turkey addiction-stopping: Of course you were an ass.
When someone stops doing something they're familiar with (girlfriend of some years, heroin, tobacco, coffee, soda, cocaine, masturbation, wife, Intarwebs, talk radio, Slashdot - pick one), they're going to experience withdrawl.
So, don't do that. Scale back. Substitute something else some of the time. And enjoy your soda when you get some.
Then, tomorrow, enjoy less of it.
And the day after that, a little less.
I've beat my share of addictions, I think: For instance, I've quit smoking several times, each time for at least a year or two. I've scaled up and down on coffee, and at different times, soda. I've gone with and without alcoholism. (Somehow, I've avoided forming habits with harder drugs...) None of these things are easily left cold, and every time I've tried to leave them cold, I failed immediately. So, again: Don't.
If you need caffeine, there's lots of other ways to get a small fix to help cure a migraine. Hot tea, for example: It's unavailable most places (in the US, at least), so it's easier to do without than some other things (soda pop is everywhere). Scale back. Don't change everything: If you're trying to cure a years-long caffeine binge, don't try to eliminate your sugar intake at the same time. Want to drink a soda in the morning? Go ahead. Afternoon? Have a cup of tea. Evening? Who knows: I'm not you.
Changing a lifestyle (ie: treating an addiction) doesn't happen overnight. Realize this, plan for it, and enjoy life.
It's not necessarily something that's easy to do, but it doesn't have to be the hell you've put yourself through in the past.
AFAICT, using a press isn't about getting a stronger brew. It's about getting all of the coffee to be equally brewed in a coffee-snob way, and using boiling water to get as much out of it as possible (which may or may not be a good thing), while having a method to stop the brewing process at the exact moment you choose.
In a regular drip coffee maker, there's a lot of different ways to change various aspects of the quality of the brew:
1. Vary the input water temperature. Cold water goes through the machine more slowly than warm water, though the brewing temperature remains about the same. (I use warm water @ probably 90F; YMMV.) 2. Vary the grind. Finer means faster and more complete flavor extraction, which may or may not be a good thing. 3. Use more or less coffee. 4. Use more or less water to vary overall extraction. 5. Use different filters, or perhaps more than one of them, so that the hot water mingles with the beans for a greater or lesser period. 6. Some machines, like the not-so-fancy Mr. Coffee I use, have a button that offers a couple of different settings for duty cycle. Mine has "regular" and "strong." "regular" keeps the heating element on 100%, "strong" is closer to 75%, which moves the water more slowly. Brewing temperature remains about the same, while time required increases proportionately. (A real geek might use a Variac to do something similar with any random machine.) 7. All of these things are interdependent.
I've used a press. I got pretty good at making excellent coffee with it, but it always seemed like a lot of work (though it was admittedly rather fun work). One day, it fell off of a shelf and broke, so I started trying different ways to make drip coffee.
Since then, I've learned how to make good, consistent coffee 10 cups at a time. I never bought another press.
As always, YMMV. I, for one, am very aware that I must die from something, and therefore don't worry much about cholesterol. It's a matter of taste and convenience.
And of course if you have to target a newer API, presumably because it has a feature that you can't live without, you limit your app to that version and above
Indeed. There have been several occasions on which I was forced to upgrade the OS on my iPod Touch, just to use a new app. ("Forced" as in: The app would not bloody install on the software version I was running.)
And, of course: On the iPod Touch, OS upgrades sometimes cost actual money.
So. If we assume that fragmentation is a problem, then it is very plain that it is not an Android-specific problem.
I played it a few of times (using the refresh button), and it worked fine (and apparently identically) all of those times. I never did any goofing with ABP, which is using Easylist US.
And in case anybody is actually, you know, trying to make this thing more livable, here's a synopsis of the computer in question:
Firefox 3.6.3 32-bit, Windows 7 x64, Q6600, nVidia, X-Fi.
(I'd also like to take this time to point out that performance-related bug reports are more-or-less useless without performance-related data to go with them. It just takes a second, really.)
FYI: I got the same (non-)behavior with my Droid (running the Dolphin browser), and on my iPod Touch. It works fine with Firefox on my PC, but I've already got Flash installed there, so meh.
It is Apple's fault: They're the ones that hired Foxconn.
If I'm building a house, and my general contractor hires a subcontractor to install the flooring and they do a lousy fucking job, I blame the contractor, not the sub.
Likewise, with Apple: If Apple is building Ipads and hires a subcontractor to put them together, and that subcontractor has unsavory conditions that foster suicidal tendancies, I blame Apple. Why? At the end of the day, it's their name on the box -- not Foxconn.
I'd walk it, too. I'd just stay the way over to the right, or the left, whichever seemed safest at the time.
The city folk that seem so common on Slashdot may not realize this, but (surprise!) most roads in rural America aren't lined with sidewalks and curbs, and don't have crosswalks. So, if you want to get from A to B on foot, you're going to have to walk along the side of the road.
It sucks that they got hit by a car. Shit happens all the time, but that doesn't always mean that anyone did anything particularly wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
Mmmmm...no.
The camera app on my Droid was slower than hell until I installed custom 2.1-based firmware, a new kernel, and a mild overclock. The screen would never scroll as smoothly as with my first-gen iPod Touch, but it's a little better with CFW. The device still takes forever to boot up, and then isn't even quite ready to use even after the GUI comes up (which reminds me more of Windows 95 than anything else).
Even the touchscreen has issues (which may be fixable with calibration, but such tools don't seem to exist) -- both the iPod Touch and my 10-year-old Palm Pilot seem to be more accurate. (According to my research, this is more of a design fault affecting the A855 than something broken about my particular device.)
All of these with stock 2.0 and 2.0.1. (I never did try stock 2.1, so there's a chance that they may have actually fixed it themselves in the newest version.)
Meanwhile, sometimes things get confused and force me to reboot the phone, though that seems to happen less frequently than it used to.
I like the Droid to such an extent that I'm prone to fits of blatant fanboi-ism where I'll go on for hours about just how cool it is. But to say that it's trouble-free, or has a user experience that is as polished as Apple's offerings, would be a lie.
I do that, too: iPod Touch and laptop running over wifi supplied by my (rooted) Droid. AFAICT, there's no silly arbitrary limit on the number of connected devices (it is a Linux box, after all), unlike commercially-supported options.
It's not a cure-all, though: The tethering app presents the phone not as an access point, but just an ad-hoc device. Both Windows and the iPod are willing to request a DHCP address with this arrangement, and work fine. My PSP is not so happy with it, however, since Sony seems to think that the only 802.11 ad-hoc connection you'll ever want is to another PSP -- it therefore refuses to accept that it's got a working connection to Teh Intarwebs.
My Dell laptop has a 15.4" 1920x1200 display that offers just about 120DPI.
It is five years old.
I agree with GP: We could use more pixels any day now.
Install Swype, and you may just find that you don't like the physical keyboard on the Droid so well after all. I used to use the keyboard on my Droid most of the time, until I installed that.
I still use the keyboard occasionally (for typing of technical terms, part numbers, using SSH, etc), and I'm very happy to have it despite the fact that it makes the phone bigger, more complex, and more fragile...but Swype is so fast and easy that I strongly prefer it.
Perhaps you've heard of CDMA?
Around here, GSM coverage is mostly absent once you get away from small cities or major roadways. CDMA, meanwhile, works just fine, with reasonably-fast 3G coverage even out in the middle of Amish country.
For me, it's not even so much that AT&T is a deal-breaker, but that GSM (in general) is.
So, I guess I'll just stick with my Droid and actually-unlimited (for now, at least) data package.
Elsewhere in the past on Slashdot, I've seen it argued that if you leave your house unlocked, and someone takes your things, it's you're own fault and your insurance company won't care.
It's somewhat like the difference between "joyriding" and "grand theft auto."
[How these oranges of statements and opinions apply to the Apples in this argument is left as an exercise for the reader.]
Fix your monitor, and you'll see it just fine.
It's been a lot closer to 20 years since the Valdez spill, which happened in early 1989.
I otherwise have nothing of value to add to this discussion. :)
TFA is a good example of why everyone should have the Readability bookmarklet handy.
It's easy to get people to use your Google Voice phone number instead of your real number: Just change your real number to something else.
I've done it. It's not so hard, but I didn't have a choice: My employer provides my cell phone service, and during a phone shuffle to save money, I got a new number.
Fortunately, I had already been using Google Voice (then Grand Central) for awhile, and a lot of my personal contacts were already up-to-speed with it, and the rest were just a quick phone call or SMS away. Banks and utilities were already set up to use the GV number, my wife used the GV number, and my own fly-by-night PC fix'em clients all used my GV number.
Business contacts of my employer (whom I never give my Google Voice number to) were a harder bunch to shuffle over to the new number, but I just figured that any money lost due to this would be that of my employer, who decided to do the shuffling in the first place. *shrug*
What's more, though, it's a transition that I only had to make once. I can keep my Google Voice number wherever I go, if I change jobs, move to a different side of the country, am stuck working in a DoD facility where I can't have a cell phone but do have a DID extension nearby, or whatever.
From now on, for the people who are personally important to me, the transition is done. I should never, ever have to do it again.
YMMV.
Disclaimer: I install these systems as part of my income.
According to some Federal statute that I can't be bothered to look up right now, an officer's use of an in-car camera must be indicated by a light. What light? Where?
In one county I work for, it's a bright yellow light behind the grill of the car. If the light is on, the system is recording.
In another, it's part of the camera: A bright, green LED that shines through the windshield whenever the system is recording.
In the latter case, most (perhaps all) of the deputies have placed black tape over the light and insist that the law doesn't apply to them.
FYI, FWIW, etc, so on, and so forth.
I approach the whole thing with a big "meh."
The common Slashdot mindsets of "teh Gubament shouldn't have that data!!" and "if they didn't want anyone to see it, folks should've encrypted it!!" are not mutually exclusive.
Fact is, if the government(s) really wanted to sniff cleartext data broadcast via Wifi, they'd be doing it. In fact, I'd be very surprised if they haven't been sniffing things for a long time.
So if someone else happens to gather up some cleartext data by accident, and the government(s) demand it to be delivered to them, all I can say is this: Gosh, folks. As far as we can tell, WPA2 with AES is plenty safe at the moment, and you're a fool if you're using neither that nor some other form of encryption. And while I don't think that the government(s) should be able to do demand that the data be turned over to them, it is rather in-keeping with the general rule of things: When the government learns that you have a pile of stuff that doesn't belong to you, do they simply ask you to destroy it? No! They take it away.
Meanwhile, I've been doing a lot of wardriving for a while, recording SSIDs, BSSIDs, and GPS coordinates on my Droid, just because it's interesting to me. Even in the short time (half a year, or so) that I've been doing this, I've seen a big increase in encryption usage in my area. This is a Good Thing, An important unintended side-effect of stories about this Google oops is that they will certainly help keep the trend toward encryption moving.
Step 1: Remove drywall.
Step 2: Staple up metal lath. Ground it. Apply plaster.
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Profit!
I don't have an iPhone, and I don't always have $10 for an iPod Touch upgrade. Furthermore, as of 4.0, feature disparity (read: "even more fragmentation") will begin on this hardware line, starting most prominently with the lack of multitasking on my iPod Touch 1G.
Therefore, your argument is void.
Thank you for playing.
Coffee enema.
What a nonsensical mess.
Please substitute "noon-to-8" and "8-to-4", as appropriate
Thanks.
If only your experience were universal. I am also currently a caffeine addict, proudly so, and I've got no trouble drinking a 10-pot cup of strong coffee and then sleeping for 8 hours, if the time is right, though I seldom drink that much lately.
And, I've been with and without caffeine for long-enough periods during my adult life to understand what it does for me (and, as far as I know, me alone):
It helps me wake up faster. It really doesn't do much of anything else. I've had a sleeping "disorder" (I call it a feature) that keeps me from sleeping until the wee hours of the morning, coupled with an inability to wake up properly. This is a problem: For instance, it's currently creeping up on 3:30AM here and I'll need to be up at 6:45 for work.
First thing when I do when I get out of the house for work, is find coffee, which is only a few blocks away from my house. If I'm unable to do this (say, because I've slept in a bit), my first several waking hours are a groggy mess. However, with a bit of coffee in the morning, everything's cool.
And after that, typically these days, I don't drink any coffee or any soda unless that's all that's available. The rest of my work day goes fine.
Without it, though, again: I'm a tired mess. And, again again, I've tried life with and without. YMMV, best of luck, but this bloke needs coffee in the morning to fit in with everyone else's schedule (which is really a issue altogether, being that I'm geared toward a noon-to-8 shift and I'm expected to perform an 8-to-noon sort of duty).
Mmmm. Cold-turkey addiction-stopping: Of course you were an ass.
When someone stops doing something they're familiar with (girlfriend of some years, heroin, tobacco, coffee, soda, cocaine, masturbation, wife, Intarwebs, talk radio, Slashdot - pick one), they're going to experience withdrawl.
So, don't do that. Scale back. Substitute something else some of the time. And enjoy your soda when you get some.
Then, tomorrow, enjoy less of it.
And the day after that, a little less.
I've beat my share of addictions, I think: For instance, I've quit smoking several times, each time for at least a year or two. I've scaled up and down on coffee, and at different times, soda. I've gone with and without alcoholism. (Somehow, I've avoided forming habits with harder drugs...) None of these things are easily left cold, and every time I've tried to leave them cold, I failed immediately. So, again: Don't.
If you need caffeine, there's lots of other ways to get a small fix to help cure a migraine. Hot tea, for example: It's unavailable most places (in the US, at least), so it's easier to do without than some other things (soda pop is everywhere). Scale back. Don't change everything: If you're trying to cure a years-long caffeine binge, don't try to eliminate your sugar intake at the same time. Want to drink a soda in the morning? Go ahead. Afternoon? Have a cup of tea. Evening? Who knows: I'm not you.
Changing a lifestyle (ie: treating an addiction) doesn't happen overnight. Realize this, plan for it, and enjoy life.
It's not necessarily something that's easy to do, but it doesn't have to be the hell you've put yourself through in the past.
AFAICT, using a press isn't about getting a stronger brew. It's about getting all of the coffee to be equally brewed in a coffee-snob way, and using boiling water to get as much out of it as possible (which may or may not be a good thing), while having a method to stop the brewing process at the exact moment you choose.
In a regular drip coffee maker, there's a lot of different ways to change various aspects of the quality of the brew:
1. Vary the input water temperature. Cold water goes through the machine more slowly than warm water, though the brewing temperature remains about the same. (I use warm water @ probably 90F; YMMV.)
2. Vary the grind. Finer means faster and more complete flavor extraction, which may or may not be a good thing.
3. Use more or less coffee.
4. Use more or less water to vary overall extraction.
5. Use different filters, or perhaps more than one of them, so that the hot water mingles with the beans for a greater or lesser period.
6. Some machines, like the not-so-fancy Mr. Coffee I use, have a button that offers a couple of different settings for duty cycle. Mine has "regular" and "strong." "regular" keeps the heating element on 100%, "strong" is closer to 75%, which moves the water more slowly. Brewing temperature remains about the same, while time required increases proportionately. (A real geek might use a Variac to do something similar with any random machine.)
7. All of these things are interdependent.
I've used a press. I got pretty good at making excellent coffee with it, but it always seemed like a lot of work (though it was admittedly rather fun work). One day, it fell off of a shelf and broke, so I started trying different ways to make drip coffee.
Since then, I've learned how to make good, consistent coffee 10 cups at a time. I never bought another press.
As always, YMMV. I, for one, am very aware that I must die from something, and therefore don't worry much about cholesterol. It's a matter of taste and convenience.
Indeed. There have been several occasions on which I was forced to upgrade the OS on my iPod Touch, just to use a new app. ("Forced" as in: The app would not bloody install on the software version I was running.)
And, of course: On the iPod Touch, OS upgrades sometimes cost actual money.
So. If we assume that fragmentation is a problem, then it is very plain that it is not an Android-specific problem.
Feh.
I'm on Verizon, no contract, and I still want updates.
I played it a few of times (using the refresh button), and it worked fine (and apparently identically) all of those times. I never did any goofing with ABP, which is using Easylist US.
And in case anybody is actually, you know, trying to make this thing more livable, here's a synopsis of the computer in question:
Firefox 3.6.3 32-bit, Windows 7 x64, Q6600, nVidia, X-Fi.
(I'd also like to take this time to point out that performance-related bug reports are more-or-less useless without performance-related data to go with them. It just takes a second, really.)
FYI: I got the same (non-)behavior with my Droid (running the Dolphin browser), and on my iPod Touch. It works fine with Firefox on my PC, but I've already got Flash installed there, so meh.
It is Apple's fault: They're the ones that hired Foxconn.
If I'm building a house, and my general contractor hires a subcontractor to install the flooring and they do a lousy fucking job, I blame the contractor, not the sub.
Likewise, with Apple: If Apple is building Ipads and hires a subcontractor to put them together, and that subcontractor has unsavory conditions that foster suicidal tendancies, I blame Apple. Why? At the end of the day, it's their name on the box -- not Foxconn.
I'd walk it, too. I'd just stay the way over to the right, or the left, whichever seemed safest at the time.
The city folk that seem so common on Slashdot may not realize this, but (surprise!) most roads in rural America aren't lined with sidewalks and curbs, and don't have crosswalks. So, if you want to get from A to B on foot, you're going to have to walk along the side of the road.
It sucks that they got hit by a car. Shit happens all the time, but that doesn't always mean that anyone did anything particularly wrong.