I don't like to have to jump through hoops to get root on my phone (with iPhones it's a simple, automated process)
You do realise that the reason you have root on your iPhone is because hackers found a hole in Apple's security, one that soon got closed?
The "hoops" in getting root on Android are because they're the sanctioned way to do it. If there was a remote root exploit in Android's web browser, some other hacker could give you a one-step jailbreak too.
Besides, there's very little you actually need root for - for Apple users, it's to be able to install apps that aren't from the app store, or to run more than one thing at once. Android already does that without root.
It was a pejorative retasked to insult homosexuals from the start.
Neither of you are entirely right.
"gay" has meant "full of joy and mirth" or "brilliant, showy" since around the 13th century. Victorians used the words "mandrake" or "buggerer" to disparage homosexual men. Or just "homosexual"; that was bad enough.
However, "gay" began to take on the meaning of "promiscuous" or "male prostitute" (who sleeps with men or women, not exclusively men) around the late 19th century. It took until the 1930s to become established as slang for homosexual men.
Zork is somewhat overrated; it's from a time when adventure games were a grab-bag of fantasy cliches and "zany" objects. The past two decades have been spent retconning it into something grander than it actually was.
However, there's some amazing interactive fiction out there; atmospheric, tight writing. Totally immersive story. Brain-wrenching puzzles. It'd be great to read / play these on a Kindle. Some of my favourites:
Spider and Web by Andrew Plotkin - possibly the most unreliable narrator ever. See how long it takes you to work out what's really happening.
Varicella by Adam Cadre - renaissance period intrigue.
I hear you, and I agree almost entirely - especially, let's say, Doug Englebart's mother of all demos.
However, I'd say the closest reinvention of Xanadu is the WWW, not e-books. And the WWW succeeded where Xanadu failed because Tim Berners-Lee either didn't know or didn't care about all the use cases Xanadu tried to fulfill.
He got 'good enough' that let people experience the magic of hypertext, while Ted Nelson still isn't there yet, despite the 30 year head start, because he's still trying to solve problems like "how do I get paid when someone copies my work and includes it in their work?"
Take a look at the thickness of the line in Minard's graph, ebbing away as Napoleon's troops die. That was the main purpose of the graph, to visualise how someone could leave with 422,000 men and come back with 10,000. That's why it's famous.
Now take a look at Sauron ebbing away as he uses his power to create orcs, and how the orc armies and human armies ebb away as they're killed.
Why would someone, who is supposed to be a data visualisation researcher, not have seen this celebrated work of his own field before he saw a knock-off cartoon?
Sure: you are wrong. Apps on the SD card aren't run directly from the SD card, they're run from a loopback device that's mounted using the data from the SD card. It's a filesystem jail enforced by the kernel. Put some apps on the SD card, then connect your android device up and run "adb shell mount"; you'll see a pile of mounted filesystems at the end of the list, one for each app moved to the SD card.
Don't forget Cave Story, although that's old and free. It's still one of the best platform games ever. It was also recently released (for money) on the Wii, so get it there and support the game's author, Pixel.
Truth is a 100% defence against any defamation charge - but only if the defendant can prove it's true...
Sorry, you're talking bullshit.
"Absolute privilege" has the effect that a statement cannot be sued on as defamatory, even if it were made maliciously; a typical example is evidence given in court (although this may give rise to different claims, such as an action for malicious prosecution or perjury) or statements made in a session of the legislature (known as 'Parliamentary privilege' in Commonwealth countries).
"Qualified privilege" may be available to the journalist as a defense in circumstances where it is considered important that the facts be known in the public interest; an example would be public meetings, local government documents, and information relating to public bodies such as the police and fire departments. Qualified privilege has the same effect as absolute privilege, but does not protect statements that can be proven to have been made with malicious intent.
Simon Singh is a journalist and his comments weren't a report of Parliamentary or court proceedings. Therefore they are merely qualified, not absolutely privileged, therefore he can be found guilty of libel if it can be shown he made his comments with malicious intent.
TL;DR: Grandparents are entirely right, parent is talking out of his ass.
Iran has elections, but they matter not a jot as the public don't get to elect the Revolutionary Guard, the only ones with real power.
I dislike the US's hypocrisy, and their meddling in world affairs, but you have to admit that the people in charge of Iran are scumbags. Not scumbags that give the US the moral authority to invade the country and steal the oil, but scumbags nonetheless.
How many of those "pirates" live in places where $20 is a more than a whole day's wage?
Probably not many. Since they also probably won't have an internet connection or a PC in the first place. Think about it.
Have you never seen a Chinese net cafe? Hundreds and hundreds of people. They earn a pittance. They couldn't own their own PC or internet connection. But they can pay 1 yuan an hour to play internet games.
More than two thirds of Chinese net cafe visitors go there to play games. How many do you think pay 135 yuan ($20) on top of the hourly fee?
India is trolling - it can announce $35 tablets, even $0.00 tablets, but it sure as hell can't make any for that price. The components alone cost more than $35, and that's when China makes them with slaves paid less than India will pay.
Negroponte has been there, knows the truth, and knows that India is just there to swindle international news media to get attention for its own country. He's going to co-opt that attention for his own project. Good on him.
Apple don't look at the source code of apps, they just test the binary and scan it for badness.
Provided the binary encrypts its strings, and does nothing dodgy during the short testing window (less than two weeks), Apple approve it.
Apple's custodianship doesn't protect you from determined data thieves, only the incompetent ones.
Android market, while just as bad as Apple, at least gives you the opportunity to decide if you want an app based on what permissions it demands. If it demands too much, you reject it. Once you give it the "OK", it can't turn around and demand more. I'd prefer that Apple added that (telling you what permissions the code has, not letting it have more), even if they keep their approval process.
I wonder how much it costs to get your damage-limiting press release videos on to national television?
Apple are the brand that never make any mistakes. EXCEPT WHEN THEY DO. But that's because everybody makes mistakes, not just Apple.
It's important to know: all phones are susceptible to the "death grip"... it's just a tiny minor detail, not really worth mentioning, that the iPhone 4 "death grip" is "holding it normally in your left hand".
Users on 4chan use the suffix "-fag" to mean "obsessive fan". It may be related to them all being about twelve years old.
To someone who has seen the subculture before, it's unintentional bigotry rather than an intentional insult. If they were actually trying to call someone gay, they'd say "fagfag".
What the law actually stated was that nobody could "feed the horses of or belonging to any hackney carriage in any street, road or common passage, save only with corn out of a bag, or with hay which he shall hold or deliver with his hands".
There's a runtime reflection API for introspection of the class/object structure.
Runs interpreted/JIT-compiled bytecode that can be loaded and unloaded at runtime.
Designed around message-passing paradigm.
Built in windowing system using MVC paradigm.
This describes both Java and Smalltalk. Any questions?
(I was going to say "everything is an object", which was going to be the case for Java until they realised it was too damn slow, so they abandoned that and bolted on "native types".)
I knew I was going to get something full of bugs when the Rockstar Spouse told us about the mismanagement at Rockstar San Diego - burned out coders and testers working 6-7 days a week don't notice things like women with the face of a donkey, or dogs that shoot guns, or flying people.
Well, no. I use Google Maps on my home computer when I'm planning a tip. I get several directions for several places, Google has no idea when or if I will drive any of them.
However, if I use Google Maps with Navigation on my phone in the car, Google gets the route I have ACTUALLY taken, and exactly WHEN as well.
Who would you trust with a full itinerary of your movements today?
You don't need to audit Android to know it sends a lot of data back to Google. You just need to use it.
You need a Google account to use the phone. Every search you do with Google is logged-in and confirmed to be you. On the other hand, general browsing (including bookmarks and web history) is not logged to Google. You can check here if you like.
Your entire phonebook has to go into Google Contacts - or you don't get a phonebook. As this is a fancy smartphone, it's not just useful to have name and number, but also email addresses, social media login names and even postal address (e.g. for driving directions on Google Maps)
Every search you do with the multi-purpose search bar is sent to Google regularly as you type it - assuming, of course, that you don't turn off the Google Search provider, which you can do but it would make the search bar significantly less useful.
Google want you to use Buzz, and they'd ideally like you to give away your location when you do Buzz, even if what you're Buzzing is irrelevant to your location.
Google has a fantastic location-finding-without-GPS algorithm, which works by having millions of samples of "I was on this cell tower / wifi router and this is my GPS location". It used to be quid-pro-quo, where you couldn't get this estimated location for yourself without committing to uploading your location to Google for each cell tower / wifi router you encounter. However, now it's possible to check a box that says "use the location DB, but don't contribute to it".
Speaking of location, who the fuck uses Google Latitude? A tool for broadcasting to your "friends" where you are and when?
Even if you're not so mad as to use Latitude, you're still giving away your location to Google whenever you hit "My Location" - it shows you your location and it gets the map tiles to show from Google by asking for them with your logged-in identity. So Google knows roughly where you are whenever you look up your own location.
This happens constantly if you use Google Maps with Navigation to get your free sat nav.
Don't forget that Google reads all your mail if you use GMail. But there's also another regular email app on the phone, which never sends data to Google. Check for yourself.
On the bright side, all this data you have on your phone isn't available to all - Android is far more effectively sandboxed than the iPhone. Apps have to get the user to agree up front what access they're allowed to private data and phone features. For example, there are several games I wanted to install, but when I saw they wanted permission to get at my private phone data, I said "fuck that" and refused to install them.
If the user says "yes" to an app's permissions, the apps can't wangle any extra permissions. The developers need to release a new version begging for more permissions, and the user again gets the choice to say "yes" or "no". If they say "no", they still keep the old version, so you can't force them to say "yes".
Apps can't access other apps data, unless those other apps let them. So what Google collects on you is only available to Google, not any other Tom, Dick or Harry who writes an app, like on the iPhone.
Google is always looking to offer Faustian pacts - you give us an insight into aspects of your life, and we'll make your life better. And, like Steve Jobs' walled garden appstore, it's a take-it-or-leave-it approach.
Personally, I use my Android phone every day and love it, but that's because I already got hooked on Google Search and GMail years ago. Google already own me privacy. Uploading to their hivemind isn't so bad. But you don't have to if you don't want to.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't like to have to jump through hoops to get root on my phone (with iPhones it's a simple, automated process)
You do realise that the reason you have root on your iPhone is because hackers found a hole in Apple's security, one that soon got closed?
The "hoops" in getting root on Android are because they're the sanctioned way to do it. If there was a remote root exploit in Android's web browser, some other hacker could give you a one-step jailbreak too.
Besides, there's very little you actually need root for - for Apple users, it's to be able to install apps that aren't from the app store, or to run more than one thing at once. Android already does that without root.
It was a pejorative retasked to insult homosexuals from the start.
Neither of you are entirely right.
"gay" has meant "full of joy and mirth" or "brilliant, showy" since around the 13th century. Victorians used the words "mandrake" or "buggerer" to disparage homosexual men. Or just "homosexual"; that was bad enough.
However, "gay" began to take on the meaning of "promiscuous" or "male prostitute" (who sleeps with men or women, not exclusively men) around the late 19th century. It took until the 1930s to become established as slang for homosexual men.
Source: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=gay
The people receiving the money (middle managers at record labels) already have homes.
Or is it that you're an adherent of trickle-down Reaganomics, and think that homeless people will thrive on washing record executives' cars?
Zork is somewhat overrated; it's from a time when adventure games were a grab-bag of fantasy cliches and "zany" objects. The past two decades have been spent retconning it into something grander than it actually was.
However, there's some amazing interactive fiction out there; atmospheric, tight writing. Totally immersive story. Brain-wrenching puzzles. It'd be great to read / play these on a Kindle. Some of my favourites:
Other couple I like are A Day for Soft Food (have you ever wanted to roleplay as a cat?) and Trinity (a mix of high fantasy and nuclear history)
I hear you, and I agree almost entirely - especially, let's say, Doug Englebart's mother of all demos.
However, I'd say the closest reinvention of Xanadu is the WWW, not e-books. And the WWW succeeded where Xanadu failed because Tim Berners-Lee either didn't know or didn't care about all the use cases Xanadu tried to fulfill.
He got 'good enough' that let people experience the magic of hypertext, while Ted Nelson still isn't there yet, despite the 30 year head start, because he's still trying to solve problems like "how do I get paid when someone copies my work and includes it in their work?"
So perhaps there's value in youthful folly?
Take a look at the thickness of the line in Minard's graph, ebbing away as Napoleon's troops die. That was the main purpose of the graph, to visualise how someone could leave with 422,000 men and come back with 10,000. That's why it's famous.
Now take a look at Sauron ebbing away as he uses his power to create orcs, and how the orc armies and human armies ebb away as they're killed.
I thought that too.
The xkcd comic is itself inspired by Charles Minard's 1869 flow map of Napoleon's march to Moscow, a celebrated map in visualisation, and most recently popularised by Edward Tufte, one of the most well known data visualisation experts.
Why would someone, who is supposed to be a data visualisation researcher, not have seen this celebrated work of his own field before he saw a knock-off cartoon?
please correct me if I'm wrong.
Sure: you are wrong. Apps on the SD card aren't run directly from the SD card, they're run from a loopback device that's mounted using the data from the SD card. It's a filesystem jail enforced by the kernel. Put some apps on the SD card, then connect your android device up and run "adb shell mount"; you'll see a pile of mounted filesystems at the end of the list, one for each app moved to the SD card.
Well, the keys should be "Z" to jump and "X" to fire. Both keys speed up text. Down arrow operates things or talks to people.
Maybe your keyboard layout is different to a typical English keyboard?
Don't forget Cave Story, although that's old and free. It's still one of the best platform games ever. It was also recently released (for money) on the Wii, so get it there and support the game's author, Pixel.
Truth is a 100% defence against any defamation charge - but only if the defendant can prove it's true...
Sorry, you're talking bullshit.
Simon Singh is a journalist and his comments weren't a report of Parliamentary or court proceedings. Therefore they are merely qualified, not absolutely privileged, therefore he can be found guilty of libel if it can be shown he made his comments with malicious intent.
TL;DR: Grandparents are entirely right, parent is talking out of his ass.
an unavailable Wayback Machine archived page.
You mean http://web.archive.org/web/20030414090619/http://www.geocities.com/uvb76/uvb76.html ? It's not unavailable, it's just that the Wikieditor got the URL wrong.
Here it is Google-translated: http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fweb.archive.org%2Fweb%2F20030414090619%2Fhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.geocities.com%2Fuvb76%2Fuvb76.html&sl=ru&tl=en
Iran has elections, but they matter not a jot as the public don't get to elect the Revolutionary Guard, the only ones with real power.
I dislike the US's hypocrisy, and their meddling in world affairs, but you have to admit that the people in charge of Iran are scumbags. Not scumbags that give the US the moral authority to invade the country and steal the oil, but scumbags nonetheless.
How many of those "pirates" live in places where $20 is a more than a whole day's wage?
Probably not many. Since they also probably won't have an internet connection or a PC in the first place. Think about it.
Have you never seen a Chinese net cafe? Hundreds and hundreds of people. They earn a pittance. They couldn't own their own PC or internet connection. But they can pay 1 yuan an hour to play internet games.
More than two thirds of Chinese net cafe visitors go there to play games. How many do you think pay 135 yuan ($20) on top of the hourly fee?
India is trolling - it can announce $35 tablets, even $0.00 tablets, but it sure as hell can't make any for that price. The components alone cost more than $35, and that's when China makes them with slaves paid less than India will pay.
Negroponte has been there, knows the truth, and knows that India is just there to swindle international news media to get attention for its own country. He's going to co-opt that attention for his own project. Good on him.
"Comprehensive". You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Apple is doing an equally bad job of protecting its ecosystem.
There have been several customer-data-grabbing iPhone apps, and these have only been yanked after members of the public alerted Apple to them.
Pinchmedia: http://i-phone-home.blogspot.com/2009/07/pinchmedia-anatomy-of-spyware-vendor.html
Storm8: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/ybenjamin/detail??blogid=150&entry_id=51077
MogoRoad: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/30/iphone_security/
Smuggling tethering past the censors: http://top10.com/mobilephones/news/2010/07/app_smuggles_tethering_onto_iphone/
Apple don't look at the source code of apps, they just test the binary and scan it for badness.
Provided the binary encrypts its strings, and does nothing dodgy during the short testing window (less than two weeks), Apple approve it.
Apple's custodianship doesn't protect you from determined data thieves, only the incompetent ones.
Android market, while just as bad as Apple, at least gives you the opportunity to decide if you want an app based on what permissions it demands. If it demands too much, you reject it. Once you give it the "OK", it can't turn around and demand more. I'd prefer that Apple added that (telling you what permissions the code has, not letting it have more), even if they keep their approval process.
I wonder how much it costs to get your damage-limiting press release videos on to national television?
Apple are the brand that never make any mistakes. EXCEPT WHEN THEY DO. But that's because everybody makes mistakes, not just Apple.
It's important to know: all phones are susceptible to the "death grip"... it's just a tiny minor detail, not really worth mentioning, that the iPhone 4 "death grip" is "holding it normally in your left hand".
Users on 4chan use the suffix "-fag" to mean "obsessive fan". It may be related to them all being about twelve years old.
To someone who has seen the subculture before, it's unintentional bigotry rather than an intentional insult. If they were actually trying to call someone gay, they'd say "fagfag".
The bales of hay one is a real law. Introduced in the London Hackney Carriage Act 1831 s.51, repealed by the Statute Law (Repeals) Act 1976.
What the law actually stated was that nobody could "feed the horses of or belonging to any hackney carriage in any street, road or common passage, save only with corn out of a bag, or with hay which he shall hold or deliver with his hands".
This describes both Java and Smalltalk. Any questions?
(I was going to say "everything is an object", which was going to be the case for Java until they realised it was too damn slow, so they abandoned that and bolted on "native types".)
As a bonus, if you get the game now, you can also check out some of the hilarious bugs in the game, like the amazing donkey-lady or the woman flapping her wings.
I knew I was going to get something full of bugs when the Rockstar Spouse told us about the mismanagement at Rockstar San Diego - burned out coders and testers working 6-7 days a week don't notice things like women with the face of a donkey, or dogs that shoot guns, or flying people.
I'm also interested in privacy galoshes, privacy longjohns and privacy jodhpurs
Well, no. I use Google Maps on my home computer when I'm planning a tip. I get several directions for several places, Google has no idea when or if I will drive any of them.
However, if I use Google Maps with Navigation on my phone in the car, Google gets the route I have ACTUALLY taken, and exactly WHEN as well.
Who would you trust with a full itinerary of your movements today?
You don't need to audit Android to know it sends a lot of data back to Google. You just need to use it.
On the bright side, all this data you have on your phone isn't available to all - Android is far more effectively sandboxed than the iPhone. Apps have to get the user to agree up front what access they're allowed to private data and phone features. For example, there are several games I wanted to install, but when I saw they wanted permission to get at my private phone data, I said "fuck that" and refused to install them.
If the user says "yes" to an app's permissions, the apps can't wangle any extra permissions. The developers need to release a new version begging for more permissions, and the user again gets the choice to say "yes" or "no". If they say "no", they still keep the old version, so you can't force them to say "yes".
Apps can't access other apps data, unless those other apps let them. So what Google collects on you is only available to Google, not any other Tom, Dick or Harry who writes an app, like on the iPhone.
Google is always looking to offer Faustian pacts - you give us an insight into aspects of your life, and we'll make your life better. And, like Steve Jobs' walled garden appstore, it's a take-it-or-leave-it approach.
Personally, I use my Android phone every day and love it, but that's because I already got hooked on Google Search and GMail years ago. Google already own me privacy. Uploading to their hivemind isn't so bad. But you don't have to if you don't want to.