And that is the whole point - for a legitimate user it is a one time irrelevancy. For a malicious intent it is probably not worth it not to mention the paper trail.
Nor is it intended to be "prevent" it from occurring but slow down the rate. It is just intended to add a high enough barrier that it *mostly* isn't worth it. It's like having a guard dog, house alarm system, and a myriad other things - its is easier and more effective to go somewhere else. More often than not it's just goofing off and having to pay (and give valid Credit Card information tracked to you) is going to have them go elsewhere. Stolen credit cards cost money, time, and often do not work.
It's a fairly decent move. The system is still open - you can make all you want and server them from your own web-page. If you want access to their "store" (market, repository, whatever you ant to call it) then you pay a one time truly minor fee. Its probably just enough to cover their costs of having a paper trail and the amount is *not* going to be a factor for *anyone* making a real extension (if it is then I doubt that you are going to spend the time making said extension). Some may balk at the whole idea, but at five dollars it is obviously just to get the paper trail and have the "protection" from submissions suddenly not being anonymous.
The problem here is that Mr Whiner was told things about it that were not true.
People above me keep saying it is a "Geeks View" he is expressing - no a geek would have known what you just wrote and purchased something else, a non-geek listened to Apple and a great deal of Apple fanatics talking about how life changing it is and believed them. Turns out to not be and now he is irritated. I have seen more than a few times the sales people at Best Buy telling people steering people away from notebooks towards and iPad telling them how wonderful it is going to be - better experience and smaller too! I always wondered when their kids sent them attachments they can't view, movies they can't watch, see flash based sites they can't see how they ended up feeling. They are learning what those of us that have been around since the 80's know about Apple and Steve Jobs the hard way.
He isn't the only one - plenty of people who went out got one, came home, and *still* can't figure out where it fits in their lives or what to do with it. They expected from all the talk to have a netbook in a more convenient form factor and touch screen and got an iPhone with a bigger screen. All those issues are fine on a phone, not so much on what is supposed to be your primary mobile computing experience.
Android may or may not suffer the same fate - Google seems to be doing everything they can to have it be a real replacement. It will still be a big phone, but Google is looking at complaints like this and *fixing* them when they can, not telling the people to suck it up. That's how Apple won the MP3 player war but will loose the phone/tablet war (I do not see them changing their phone/tablet strategy).
Certainly, without there being some that play nice there wouldn't be the terms "white hat" and "black hat" hackers - they would all be black hat.
It is kinda a Prisoners Dilemma - while yes you *could* get more if you you found the right buyer you have to *find* that buyer before the bug is found and patched. It isn't a remotely legal trade in most places so its not like they are going to advertise and chances are the people who would find this type of bug aren't in the day to day business of this type to know who would either. Really, how many of the security violations have been used for *monetarily* advantageous usages? Annoying exploits for sure, but something worth thousands of dollars to take advantage of? I suppose one could truthfully say the really good ones you do not hear about (and I'll buy that - the truly good black-hat hackers you do not hear about either), but I can't imagine any hack worth many thousands to *purchase* (with all the risks involved of law enforcement with Honey Pots) not being known to so few that a website with hundreds of thousands of posters doesn't get *one* post with it.
So you could spend months trying to find that big payout only to get arrested or you could get thousands for going through legitimate channels. Further if you found it chances are someone else will/can too and will report it for the thousands of dollars. Hmm, it's kinda like saying if you rat your partner out they get the death penalty and you get nothing, however if you both say nothing you both get the death penalty unless you can get your jury to all be ex cons - hard choice there isn't it? (yea a really simple "prisoner's dilemma" as it isn't really a dilemma what to take - both remaining silent doesn't get you anything).
As long as the money payed out for bugs is comparative low it is a brilliant business move, not much to loose and a great deal to gain. I bet on a per-bug metric they are MUCH cheaper to do this than pay a full QA team to test *and* more effective. Lots of unpaid testers out there. Now if they are riddled with simple to catch bugs not so much, but once they are in a hard to find mode for bugs - quite cheap and effective.
Slashdot has a nice page someplace in it's FAQs that describe the moderation system in place. Basically you set yourself in the pool of people who can do so, get randomly selected and given "mod points" to use as you see fit, and aren't allowed to moderate in any thread you post in. So you can't now even if you get them. Then there is the whole meta-moderation system too.
I, personally, removed myself from getting mod points. I have always felt some responsibility to use them properly and, thusly when i had points, to read at -1 and I *hate* that. IMO the better use is to keep controversial ideas out of the -1 and 0 category. I prefer to read at +3 and above, so I would rather let someone else have my mod points and hope they use them wisely.
There is also the friend/foe system that automatically mods individuals up or down relative to your view only. I will mostly suggest even if you feel like it to not do it with me from this post. I am fairly dogmatic about what I believe, I'm just not dogmatic about what others do (I'm more than willing to know it is only partially based on rational thought and that others can 100% with the rational part yet diverge to something radically different on the irrational part). Plus I will happily argue viewpoints I do not agree with too (though in this case I *do* agree with what I wrote) if I think someone has said something stupid enough.
Really, it isn't illegal and that isn't why Google removes them. He isn't going to get arrested so his willingness to have that done is irrelevant. What he is doing is being a a major asshole and justifying being proud of it under some "information wants to be free" meme.
My address, phone number, and a great deal of other information is certainly public knowledge - one can look it up on the internet (and I even use an abbreviated version of my real name so it isn't even that hard), yet I still wouldn't want all that attached to every post I made. There is a great deal of public information that we *all* would rather not telegraph in that well a concise and easy simple way to view. I'm willing to be this guy has a number of things about his life he considers private, is legally not, and would be royally pissed if people made a point of putting it on the internet. If someone walking down the raod asked politely to not be photographed few would call him a hero of anything if he then not only followed them taking all the photos he could but made sure that everyone singled them out to show what they would rather have private - no different here. I don't care about my picture being on Google Street View (well, other than the car was taking pictures when a police man was telling me to move my truck is parked in the road because someone up the street complained - we are on a dead end road. It's amusing as you can clearly tell I'm out on my front porch, the police car in the street, and the man in Blue talking to me - but then I find the thing more amusing than anything especially since I can pinpoint the exact time the car want by) and can't really see why anyone would care - but if they did it is called being a nice person to remove it.
If he wants to push a real cause go take photographs of military installations or secure places like nuclear power plants. But then there you are actually likely to have real consequences instead of just being a douche bag and making people mad. Plus it is places that are actually illegal to photograph, used to be legal to do so, and there is a great deal of debate on what should and should not be allowed. Peoples houses in mapping software? Not so much - as is he is simply trying to make himself feel better by doing something minor/worthless and rationalizing that it is somehow, in someway, actually edge and dangerous. Yea, go stick it to the man! Just wait until these people see their houses photographed on the Internet, that'll show !
"I have a hunch this has happened millions of times since the "first time"."
And someone else has a hunch that God did it, some have a hunch that it happened on an asteroid and was brought here, and some have a hunch the kool-aid man did it. Yours isn't any more scientific or credible that "God created it". You have as much evidence as they do - for the most part we all understand that the events that lead up to us being here are not very likely to happen - from the initial mix of matter/anti-matter to the likely hood of life forming and surviving to this point on such a chaotic planet. It either is going to require belief in some system that has most likely a near infinite number of attempts and we - by definition - are the ones here to see the one time it all worked or you need some form of a conscious guiding it (be it god, Gaia, or whatever).
Further, arguing evolution or religion is like arguing sports - it only matter because the arguers choose for it to. We can take a Gaia theory (or a Universia) and you have a conscious deity that certainly uses natural processes to achieve its goal. Unless the religion specifically says otherwise no reason why that can't be the case (and it is certainly even possible that is the only line they got wrong too). Then, armed with sure knowledge that your piece of a hoaky believe system based on how you feel is correct you will then go back to a group that shares that believe and congratulate each other on how fine, smart, and logical you are and everyone else is stupid. After all it is *obvious* to you that your own musings are correct.
Faith is faith, that yours happens to sound less mystical doesn't make it any more "scientific", it just makes it easier for you to believe in the absence of any evidence.
It's not within the scope of this (though I am happy to tell you what and why I believe as I do) if someone asks I will tell then and will happily debate. However I will not (for the most part - not all ideas are workable) think the other side is stupid because they believe something else.
Before Apple makes such a statement about not accepting un-ethical business practices they may want to revisit the whole Jobs/Wozniak deal and why the latter "left" the company.
But of course Apple is the Eco Friendly Company that Does the Right Thing whenever they can! There is nary an anti-competitive bone in their body and they are fully Open and on for the ride in Open Source technologies!
"I do have a problem with the damages awarded though... I mean - How in the world did they come up with this figure?"
Most of it is punitive - you may want to look that word up.
Punitive damages are typically rewarded when someone knowingly did something wrong or did something so wrong they should have known it was. Lets say for instance a court case I know of where a person flung a bottle into a crowd of random people, it beaned another person on the head with enough force to cause a concussion. The person who flung the bottle was on tape and got sued for hospital costs and punitive damages in small claims court, IIRC out of pocket hospital costs were less than 1k put the amount sued for was the max - 5k. The defense was that the person who flung the bottle didn't intend it to hit anyone so as far they were concerned that it did only mean they should have to pay actual medical costs. Turns out not so much - you get fines over and above the cost of the actual damages (and in this case had the individual sued in something other than small claims could have probably got more) for being that negligent/stupid.
Frankly the defendant here was more or less flinging said bottle - not much of a legal leg to stand on. Many of us here - and I'm not sure where I stand on this - would like to say that information wants to be free so bully for them, yet that isn't where our legal system sits nor has it ever sit there. If they were pushing the envelope for a civil rights case I would be apologetic (again, not sure where I sit on it), but one for profit? They made a bad risk/reward calculation as a for profit business and lost. As such the judgment was not not only with respect to actual damages but also with respect to punishment. Whilst they will most likely get it reduced in an appeal since their main source of income was not legal they are facing bankruptcy - might as well accept the judgment and liquidate.
"with game-changing technologies like the iPod, iTunes, iPhone, and iPad"
I'm glad to know Apple spent many hours inventing all these things and then gave away their ideas years - and sometimes - decades before they released their own version. Why, I bet the even told Xerox how to make a GUI!
Indeed, the few things Apple truly invented on their own flopped - though in their defense most truly new ideas *do* flop. Apples innovation is in marketing and their reality distortion machine, not their products (see antenna detuning, macbooks sharp front edge for a number of years, insistence on a one button mouse for years, etc).
"Anyone who is going hunting and camping (as the Asker said his dad would be doing) and doesn't know the basics of direction finding and survival in the wild has no business there, at least without a knowledgeable human guide."
Maybe, maybe not - we do not know where he is hunting.
I hunt on a 60 acre tract of land - I can see the highway from several of my stands and even in the places I couldn't I would have to walk in around a 10 acre circle to "get lost". It can be easy to get turned around and come out at a neighbors properties in a few places and that sucks, but reality is that I do not need dirction finding in wilderness to do this. Same thing with camping - I often do it in similar circumstances.
GPS units are still quite useful to me. I go into my stand/blinds around an hour before sunrise and even with a good quality flashlight I can't see far. I used to use orange ribbon or reflective tape but that just made it easy for thieves to find them (I've always found the occasional movie that talks about how stupid hunters are for using them - so stupid they can't even find their stands - I can point you to someone who isn't looking for a stand/blind that is designed to be low visibility during the brightest part of the day well before dawn). Hand held GPS units means I put the stand up, mark the location, and follow that. I find the stand faster than I used too (those bright orange ribbons aren't too bright at night and you have to have the beam of your flashlight hit the reflective tape), enough so that I can get an extra bit of sleep.
I do agree that if going into *real* wilderness that basic skills are vital. One needs to understand how the sun rises/sets, how to walk a straight line (actually hard to do) if in flat country or how to follow ridges/water if in the mountains, and how to read a map and compass and carry both. That GPS makes all that easy but is also a delicate piece of electronics no matter how hardened it is. A compass is MUCH more rugged and the sun and your eyes much more so. Indeed, if we loose the sun or you loose your eyes there isn't much out there is going to save you - best if you just sit and hope someone finds you (which often is the best advice anyway - proper planning and telling others your plan does WAY more than anything else).
A phone works just OK in the best of conditions, heck even the GPS antenna isn't very good and I often find I can't get a signal or location lock when a quality hand held is just fine. If you are in a rural area then it will probably work good enough, mine does. However if you are in a wilderness situation they are worthless. I love my droid - I have access to a decent bass guitar tuner, decent GPS, a decent calculator, a decent web browser, my e-mail, and all sorts of other apps/uses - but in *none* of those cases is it the best device for those jobs. In a few cases it does a good enough job I do not use the special purpose devices much, but they still have their place. For real work or things my life depends on I want to depend on special purpose high quality devices - not something that mostly does the job. I want to do more than probably live and probably keep my job. Hand held GPS have been field tested many years to actually get people home, phones haven't. Unless your dad is mostly hunting in places like I do and having MP3's and the web in my blind can pass the time when there is nothing but the wind blowing is more important than knowing which way is out of the woods then get him a real GPS and even ven then I like my garmin. If you life may depend on it then would you really want it to be on your phone?
Maybe maybe not - there are a great deal of conclusions being drawn from a VERY small part of the whole picture.
What is their consumption per capita? If it was low because of the cost of creating energy was so high (and theirs was high, I do not know their consumption though but price/consumption have a fairly large correlative - and IMO - causative link) once they adjust to this level of available energy it may become a real money sink. Their long term investment is paying off in the short term but it's not unusual for that to happen and a venture still die off. It takes time for adjustments to be made.
What are the environmental impacts going to be too - we know they have a reduced carbon footprint but contrary to what is popular in the media today carbon isn't the only pollutant and not even the worse of the bunch (heck it isn't even the worse greenhouse gas let alone pollutant). These technologies still are only a small part of our energy production and a number of them didn't scale too well (see tidal generators effect on long shore currents when implemented past an experimental level or large windmill farms effects on avians).
Assuming that they have growth how will this scale? Yes, they have excess now but in another 10 years will they be able to use this for their population? If you are at 90% of your capacity today chances are you are going to be screwed in a decade or more down the line. I do not know what their capacity is either, but it is a question that wasn't addressed in the press release.
The answer may very well be really really good to all those - I simply do not know and it isn't something easy to find (and may not even be done). One can find articles such as this, but I'll believe that as much as I do that BP cares about the environmental impact of the Gulf Oil leak. Well, not exactly true - I believe a negative with respect to BP's caring (that is they do not at all and it is a lie) and I'm simply neutral on those questions above - no reason why they can't come out quite positive (that is they have great justification but it wasn't in the scope of the article or other publications).
My main point is don't count your chickens before the eggs hatch. For a great deal of these things someone somewhere has to give it a go and see what happens. It is usually the medium sized countries with a severe lack of some resource that are a great large scale test and they are certainly doing that. Just, again, it is a bit premature to declare success and make fun of people who haven't gone to it.
In the long run that has been a good deal of what has killed many so called "special interest" groups that could have gotten a good 80% of what they wanted. They want it all, they want it now, and nothing less will suffice - turns out when you want "all or nothing" you are more likely to get "nothing". I think we could have had 70-80% of these "green" (I use quotes because more often than not all I see is how they reduce carbon emissions - while important so what if it raises sulfur emissions or sends 10 species of birds to extinction?) technologies if they were not tied to extremists that say things that anyone other than a True Believer can poke holes in, let alone someone that takes a bit of thought at it. It makes it easy to totally dismiss (another is we have to act now as it has to be better - tell that to people in the south about erosion and introducing kudzu to stop it).
I do not know, maybe the OP has some sort of special keyboard - maybe it has spikes for keys, he has to take steroids just to get enough muscle strength to push the keys, his computer is powered by a treadmill that he runs on to play, or some other thing to make him a "tough guy".
Though I guess that would make him stupid instead of a tough guy.
I have a Motorola droid. I plug a USB adapter into the phone and my computer, swipe the status bar down, and tell it to mount the SD card. I then get a removable drive on my PC. I opened my music directory, selected all my songs, right-clicked and selected copy. I then opened my SD card, created a directory called "music", and copied my MP3's there. Never once did I have any need to root my phone for that one so I can certainly load my own music and I do not need iTunes or some other application to get anything through, it is just a standard USB drive. Ring tones required an app from the Android market, I picked one called "Ringdroid" IIRC. I then can open any MP3 I have and one of the menu choices is "set as ringtone", if I press that choice it.... sets it as my ring tone. I still haven't rooted my phone at all. I can also check or uncheck a security feature that allows me to install unsigned applications, that still doesn't require root. So as far as I can see everything the person you are responding to says they can do one can regardless of what you may have heard.
Some manufacturers do have some applications you can't remove - Android is Open Source and people are allowed to extend it in ways they see fit and that includes that. However Android itself doesn't. Some manufacturers have also chosen to require rooting for other common functions too - again it is Open Source so they can modify to their hearts content. There are people who want a phone with no "dangerous" options and are fairly locked down (as many iPhone users say they want to be) and Android can accomodate that - indeed Motorola's answer to signing ROM's on the Droid-X is "If you want an extensible phone, purchase a different model" for that very reason. Android itself is open and it isn't hard to find currently sold models that are near as "free" (as in speech) as the nexus one is.
Maybe last you heard was from another Apple user that wishes Androids were not selling like they were? Or at the least you believed someone that was *very* misinformed and you should take what they say from now on with a large grain of skepticism as they were easily fooled.
"I didn't claim it's impossible but don't underestimate the strong mental association between getting apps and the App Store."
And I'm claiming never underestimate the stupidity of individuals to click on e-mail links and follow what the web page says. Indeed, I would have to look it up but there are a few studies where a large number of people will click even if it plainly and clearly tells you it is a virus/worm. Especially true when it is coming from a "friend" (who either was the first one going outside of the app store or was also following some e-mail sent to them too).
I rather suspect the vast majority (not just most) do not know or care about all of this. They want a sleek sexy looking phone they can surf the internet on. I bet the vast majority only have a strong sense to use the app store because it is *all* they can use and if the think someone has a neat app that requires clicking a few buttons on a web page they will click.
Further I bet the vast majority aren't geeks and have taken the Apple fanboi message of it being secure and "just works" to the point of assuming if it looks official and only takes a few clicks - then well it must be OK.
The whole point of this is that it *bypasses* all those things that Apple puts in to stop it, otherwise it wouldn't be so easy to do.
I also rather suspect Apple patches this fairly quickly for that reason too. They only drink some of their ow kool-aid.
"Your characterization of Apple users, taken is a whole, is just plain wrong; a stereotype used in "holy wars." "
No, it isn't, nor did I mean it as a "taken in whole" as many also see it as a tool, nothing else. Yet many also have some sense of contentment because "Apple is protecting them" (which they can't). Lots of Apple fanbois, Linux zealots, and other people who are otherwise quite intelligent and think thing through just don't with respect to that. It isn't all, so yea I guess taken as a whole that isn't correct, yet taken a "many" is quite true.
Ultimately you are making the same point too, they expect to be protected by the app store and anti-malware actions of the phone. Unfortunately this bypasses that and remotely roots the phone and shows said protection to be "magic" (that is only an illusion). If it becomes a worm before it gets patched then Apple is going to have problems, if they patch it quickly then few will even know about it.
"Apple using the number of OSX viruses in the wild is no different than Linux users gloating over the number of Windows vulnerabilities compared to Linux all these years: it's juvenile but makes for good PR."
"Or perhaps you gamble and show the world that the situation is under control by releasing your "plans" of withdrawal showing that those now in charge are very capable hands."
Eh? How does that show they are in very capable hands at all? If we are truly at the point of "time to do this" then it is a good thing, if we aren't then it shows the leadership is incompetent.
If we *aren't* ready then it isn't just "mission accomplished 2", it is going to leave us with a choice of looking like a bunch of HUGE idiots as we say "my bad" (and either give a new date or figure out that was stupid and pretend it didn't happen) or walking away from a moderately stable area and leaving it to be torn to shreds. In either case we look like idiots because of this
If we are ready then it shows we can finish this type of conflict in a modern era. Tentative troop withdrawals were scheduled from 12-18 months after the election so we are mostly on schedule - I suspect it is more of this one (and the people I know returning from this tour talk about Iraq VERY differently too).
Of course there is always the third option (and frankly this is kinda what we are doing) is declare us "out of Iraq" whilst leaving a sizable force there. In this case you expect your party base to figure out how to spin it and report it so that the meme sticks (we are leaving 50,000 or so there - a sizable force). The cynic in me notes the time frame for this "success" too (right before the elections) and says someone up there is expecting this to be something of the case. It isn't really much different than the "mission accomplished" gaffe Bush made - both the invasion and the tour of duty for that ship were over and that mission was accomplished, they were still dong the same operational things but it was called something different. In this case "combat operations" will be ceased, just the 50k troops left over there will be doing exactly the same thing except it will be called something different.
In either case it doesn't show we are in capable hands now anyway. Iraq was won (or lost) before Obama came into office and was his to mismanage (which he hasn't). Bush owns up to there for good or bad. Afghanistan is, right now, Obama's chance to show the competency of those in charge with respect to this type of war. Bush let it sit in a type of stasis whilst he focused on Iraq - not that I agree with that strategy but it is what happened. Iraq is won and all the current occupant (and the next one) can do is let it finish its course or screw it up. They now have Afghanistan to figure out what to do with (which right now appears to be whatever Petraeus wants to do as Obama has been VERY hands off with both McChrystal and now Petraeus - though IMO that's a feature, not a bug).
Yea, because people would *never* fall for something like this in their e-mail box: "Hey, I just found this *really* cool app for my iPhone. Apple will not allow it on their app store, they are afraid it would make them look bad for not putting on the phone in the firs place!!!! Just click on and install it!" (then it e-mails everyone in the person's contact list once installed). Nope, never in the history of computing have people fallen for things like that in their e-mail. Won't happen because Apple has an *app store*. Nor has any worm propagated around the internet that way either. No, nothing to worry about having a simple to use web-based root-kit that anyone can embed - the App Store will apply its magic shield to protect us.
The difference here is the number of people who consider this a *good thing* that is occurring. I've said many a time that as we begin to realize these are general purpose computers more and more of this will happen and *no* device is immune from it, if you think that you are going to get away from it with either an iPhone, Android, or SuperPhoneOS. For whatever reason many Apple users think they are safe from it because Apple will protect them from it in some mystical magical way (which that belief will make it easier to click on said links, after all *everyone* knows Apple doesn't have these things). Google doesn't talk about how they are immune to this type of thing and do not make a great deal of their sales from it either.
In Apples defense they do not totally buy the spin either, they just take advantage of it.
You have a remote rootkit running from simply visiting a website?
Wasn't it just yesterday or the day before we called rooting your android (which has to be tethered), erasing your old operating system, and installing a new "custom" one with a rootkit installed on it which allows remote activiation of root an attack vector (note that even a rooted Android device can't get outside the Dalvik VM)?
I'm certain, absolutely certain that there will be no abuses of this. There will not be any nefarious person have a "must have" app that is so good that the app store refused and all you have to do are these easy steps right here on this web page! No, never happen - users would *never* be stupid enough to run things from a website - this is a great feature!
Yea because if you jailbreak and iPhone we all know you can't install malicious software. If you could then we would all be making 500+ posts over it. Here not only do you have to root the phone but you have to erase your old OS and install theirs - obviously MUCH easier than on the iPhone (and there is a fix for this - it is called and eFuse on the Droid-X but that is Evil(TM) and shouldn't be allowed).
It is not a *new* attack vector nor a particularly interesting one any more than a rootkit on a jailbroken iPhone is. Nor do I believe knowing that there can be one like that on the iPhone would cause hundreds of "I hate Apple" posts - well anymore than this one created "I hate Android" ones (that is people who didn't bother to see how the "exploit" occurred assumed it was something it wasn't).
As long as the phones are tied to a two year contract - certainly. As long as they are conspiring with the hardware manufacturers certainly. I do not mind buying some new all the time, indeed I wouldn't mind upgrading my Droid to either an Incredible or a Droid-2 when it comes out, but unless I pay some extortionate price for the thing I can't. Yes, I said extortionate deliberately - their price for the device is inflated so as to only purchase in two year increments. There is no way that my Droid costs more than a lesser equipped iPad does.
When phones were, well, phones then I thought that it was a racket too but it wasn't that onerous. It was irritating, but the cost difference wouldn't have been that different. As "phones" move towards being general purpose computers that also have cell antenna's in them then things change.
The cell carriers in the US have such a strong lock on the vertical part of the market that they can dictate prices for "unlocked phones" (if you can even find them). IMO if they want to keep that lock on the market (otherwise known as a monopoly - we normally mostly worry and talk over horizontal ones but a vertical one is just as bad or worse) they either need (like other legal monopolies) consumer protection regulations or that market being broke up. Many - and I'm not necessarily including you - seek to increase competition horizontally and that isn't going to work, the collusion isn't amongst that carriers it is amongst the carriers and hardware manufacturers. You need competition in *both* markets.
The problem here is that so many aren't making their money from the consumer (well, sorta - read the rest) they are making it through manufacturer deals that artificially inflate the prices. Given that a cell phone is pretty near an inelastic market it means they can do pretty much what they want and people will do it. Similar markets are regulated for a reason, cell carriers need to be similarly regulated too. Either that or forced to break up the monopolistic practices (and again, it is a *vertical* monopoly so pointing out market share of the different carriers is irrelevant - plenty of horizontal competition).
In this particular case there is nothing to patch - the iPhone is *just* as vulnerable to this as Android too.
In order to run this particular "exploit" you have to first root the phone, wipe your old OS off the phone, and install the new one they provide. One can also jailbreak and iPhone and install a different OS or rootkit on their phone too. If you want to "patch" this do what Motorola did with the Droid-X - disallow a custom rom to be installed and not allow you outside the dalvik VM (and in that case your "secure" iPhone is *more* susceptible to this type of thing as the underlying OS is MUCH more accessible when rooted).
I do not know why anyone here is shocked, shocked I say to find that when someone roots their phone they can install apps that do malicious things and then want someone to "patch" it (but leave the ability to root). Poor reporting by the submitter and by the editors, though that has plagued here for a *long* time (which is why one should read the comments of a sensational story).
Though your question about updates is not a bad one you are, again, not saved by Apple. A great deal of them out there can not run iOS 4 and are end of lifed. In any computer that you are running an OS that is not updated, and Apple is no different here, then security fixes do not get put int. Lets face it, if you are running a 2.4 kernel and find a security issue that chances of it getting fixed are quite slim too. Our phones are computers that happen to have some form of a cell connection in them, not a phone that has some general purpose computing hardware added to it. The sooner we all realize this the better, though I guess I will have to say that many Apple fanbois also think their desktop or laptop is "different" and doesn't have any issues that a general purpose computer does.
You certainly can if you consider total cost of ownership. Speed isn't everything, indeed even reliability isn't. There is also basically what I would call "insurance". Lets, for instance, take a stock exchange. How many trillions of dollars flow through a very small number of computers and disks in that day. In that case you aren't paying for hardware and, frankly, you are only partially paying for redundancy. What you are paying for is the ability to *guarantee* that if something breaks you get it fixed now.
The host machine of a backup solution we build hardware/software has a plain old SCSI terminator cost 1500 US dollars. That sounds really excessive, but they operate in those environments above. They have regional stockpiles of equipment that is guaranteed to be in stock and, if needed, they will even do things like fly parts in on private jets and helicopters. Now, they have reliability too, their hardware has a global up time approaching nine nines, there is one stock exchange that has had the same file open, being written too, and continually backed up for over 20 years as it would costs millions in down time for the few seconds to switch over to something new and the system still can carry the capacity. But then you can build a large server farm with similar stats for less up front money but you could never build the worldwide distribution system they have for your company alone.
There aren't many places that need that but if your data center literally looses millions per *second* of downtime that cost is irrelevant compared to the possibility of running down to Best Buy and their shipment being late. 30 dollars per gigabyte is *cheap* for systems such as Citibanks credit card processing facilities, it is ludicrously expensive for most places. This market is shrinking rapidly too as many *were* paying for the reliability and didn't care so much about the distribution and for them clusters/clouds are a much cheaper solution, but there are certainly a number of data centers that would *love* to be able to go with 30 dollars be gigabyte and will for many many many years (the physical cost of the hardware and staff being the smallest part of the expenditure).
The problem here, and it is a logner term on Apple and many of supporters run into, is that the iPhone isn't remotely secure from this in any shape form or fashion.
So, you go tell someone who had this or this or this and see how far your credibility goes.
These phones are now general purpose computers that happen to have devices that make them capable of making phone calls. If you think that your general purpose computing device is immune to these types of things then you will most likely one day get a nice big shock. Apple is relly good about thier reality distortion field making people think they are somehow can't have this type of thing happen, mostly people who should really know better, but reality is that it doesn't.
Apple gets more apps submitted than their entire staff could filter to that level of security, indeed they would need to be one of the largest employers in the world to do so. Apple can't protect you, all they can do is make you feel good about having lousy security. It is not their fault it is lousy either, they simply can't provide non-lousy security for millions of devices and many many thousands of applications one may download. Personally the Android market place's significant difference in freedom more than outweighs the slight benefit in security and what little difference there is can be more than mitigated if you just read what the app accesses.
Were I too guess I would say the following. Obviously I am not the one modding you as troll nor would I - you just wouldn't have gotten any mod points for these reasons and I will conclude each section with my thoughts. Take them as you wish, I'm certainly one that hasn't avoided those same mods over the years either. I'm bored and a bit inebriated so you get my ramblings:)
Linking the article you did - not only has it bean beaten to death but the majority of those outside of the reality distortion field understand there were to issues: detuning and blocking the signal. The article mixes the two and is a favorite of the Apple fanbois. I would have figured you just didn't care enough to know the difference and are reporting a real signal loss (and not knowing enough to separate the reasons) and some crappy design I happen to disagree with for many cell phone manufacturers. Low user numbers do not mean much - I have one in your range but can no longer access the account (forgot the password and the associated e-mail address no longer exists), do not ask me about "intuitive user interfaces" at all as if I design one it will only make sense to other developers (and for those people I make quite decent ones). However for some a low ID means something and may get a troll whereas a high one may not.
Next is that you have an issue with two distortion fields combining - Linux and Apple. I guess I disagree with Android being like Linux (I find it has about the same feature set that Windows does - but YMMV) and the anti-Apple crowd find the whole "I like it because they tell me what to do" idea to be trollish to begin with. Can't say I disagree with them, but again I find that personal choice and not really being a troll too. I've found a great deal of nostalgia for a phone that works quite well as a phone. You couldn't pry my Droid from my cold dead hands but I do miss the simplicity of just a phone - the good more than outweighs the bad, it is just that I can't see why they can't get the phone part as good as before.
The rest - well that is personal opinion and is probably liked more than not here - few are going to fuss that you wished to stay with Apple.
In the end with a link to a poor article and the jab at Linux I suspect you didn't get the benefit of doubt. What you wrote could be classic "troll" - that is someone who writes something like a well informed question of "C or C++" expecting to get something of a fight. We have lost that definition and instead have "troll" to be something worse. With slashdot's moderation system it doesn't take much to fall under a threshold and not get the modding you deserve. I happened to look over this because one of your ancestor posts was something I was interested in and followed children. I do not have mod points (and since I had previously commented on this I couldn't use them anyway) so nothing I can do about it.
Lastly I generally expect that you had an anti-Apple person find your post first, it happens to the more pro-Android posts too. Slashdot's moderation system overall works decent but there are certainly posts that it breaks down at. No system is perfect and you seem to be caught in the bad part of it. Frankly, with your low user ID I would have expected you to know that by now - it doesn't mean much in how well you know some particular pieve of tech but you should have been here long enough to have some idea of the possibility of your modding. People even in the 750k+ id's know this, 5 digit ID's should have seen this possibility coming a mile away. At the lest known enough to not seriously asked this question (if you were also drunk and bored well then that is another story - what else is Slashdot for?).
There are a number of Android phones that can have custom (or vanilla) roms flashed onto them. It's not really any harder now than reinstalling a stock version of an OS on your pc (instead of the rescue disks crap they give you now). The vast majority of the process is quite automated now.
See http://www.mydroidworld.com/ and their forums for the current state of what phones can bee rooted and what phones can be reflashed and with what. Heck many of the phones can even be overclocked if you so desire:)
"When a person buys an iPhone, they get software that, in its stock form, is EXACTLY as Apple intended it."
That is both one of the features and faults of pretty much all of Apples products. If you think like Apple wants you to then they are the best interface and device on the planet, if you do not then you want to fling them through a wall.
I have always been in the latter group, the interface is one of the least useful ones I have ever used, nothing is where I expect it to be and I can't make it fit my notion of what I want to do. I know of a great deal of iPhone users that only mostly like the interface, as of right now it isn't like Android is much better (as you say many manufacturers force their interface on you too which has the same issues). However there is at least a wider selection and one can usually find an Android phone that fits fairly close to what you like. I do agree about the stock interface - I've yet to see anything that tops a slightly customized Droid or Nexus One (and those apps were free from the market place - I have a Droid).
Android will probably never have that one iPhone killer - it is just not positioned to do so. What it will eventually do is what the PC did to Apple - have so many out there that in total they will dominate. Give it another couple of years and when you really start getting Android based phones that cater to different users and you still have the one option for iPhone and it will "win" (what it does to RIM will depend on how much they can tailor one to the business world and RIM is hard to beat there - they nailed that market as much as Apple nailed the MP3 player market).
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And that is the whole point - for a legitimate user it is a one time irrelevancy. For a malicious intent it is probably not worth it not to mention the paper trail.
Nor is it intended to be "prevent" it from occurring but slow down the rate. It is just intended to add a high enough barrier that it *mostly* isn't worth it. It's like having a guard dog, house alarm system, and a myriad other things - its is easier and more effective to go somewhere else. More often than not it's just goofing off and having to pay (and give valid Credit Card information tracked to you) is going to have them go elsewhere. Stolen credit cards cost money, time, and often do not work.
It's a fairly decent move. The system is still open - you can make all you want and server them from your own web-page. If you want access to their "store" (market, repository, whatever you ant to call it) then you pay a one time truly minor fee. Its probably just enough to cover their costs of having a paper trail and the amount is *not* going to be a factor for *anyone* making a real extension (if it is then I doubt that you are going to spend the time making said extension). Some may balk at the whole idea, but at five dollars it is obviously just to get the paper trail and have the "protection" from submissions suddenly not being anonymous.
The problem here is that Mr Whiner was told things about it that were not true.
People above me keep saying it is a "Geeks View" he is expressing - no a geek would have known what you just wrote and purchased something else, a non-geek listened to Apple and a great deal of Apple fanatics talking about how life changing it is and believed them. Turns out to not be and now he is irritated. I have seen more than a few times the sales people at Best Buy telling people steering people away from notebooks towards and iPad telling them how wonderful it is going to be - better experience and smaller too! I always wondered when their kids sent them attachments they can't view, movies they can't watch, see flash based sites they can't see how they ended up feeling. They are learning what those of us that have been around since the 80's know about Apple and Steve Jobs the hard way.
He isn't the only one - plenty of people who went out got one, came home, and *still* can't figure out where it fits in their lives or what to do with it. They expected from all the talk to have a netbook in a more convenient form factor and touch screen and got an iPhone with a bigger screen. All those issues are fine on a phone, not so much on what is supposed to be your primary mobile computing experience.
Android may or may not suffer the same fate - Google seems to be doing everything they can to have it be a real replacement. It will still be a big phone, but Google is looking at complaints like this and *fixing* them when they can, not telling the people to suck it up. That's how Apple won the MP3 player war but will loose the phone/tablet war (I do not see them changing their phone/tablet strategy).
Certainly, without there being some that play nice there wouldn't be the terms "white hat" and "black hat" hackers - they would all be black hat.
It is kinda a Prisoners Dilemma - while yes you *could* get more if you you found the right buyer you have to *find* that buyer before the bug is found and patched. It isn't a remotely legal trade in most places so its not like they are going to advertise and chances are the people who would find this type of bug aren't in the day to day business of this type to know who would either. Really, how many of the security violations have been used for *monetarily* advantageous usages? Annoying exploits for sure, but something worth thousands of dollars to take advantage of? I suppose one could truthfully say the really good ones you do not hear about (and I'll buy that - the truly good black-hat hackers you do not hear about either), but I can't imagine any hack worth many thousands to *purchase* (with all the risks involved of law enforcement with Honey Pots) not being known to so few that a website with hundreds of thousands of posters doesn't get *one* post with it.
So you could spend months trying to find that big payout only to get arrested or you could get thousands for going through legitimate channels. Further if you found it chances are someone else will/can too and will report it for the thousands of dollars. Hmm, it's kinda like saying if you rat your partner out they get the death penalty and you get nothing, however if you both say nothing you both get the death penalty unless you can get your jury to all be ex cons - hard choice there isn't it? (yea a really simple "prisoner's dilemma" as it isn't really a dilemma what to take - both remaining silent doesn't get you anything).
As long as the money payed out for bugs is comparative low it is a brilliant business move, not much to loose and a great deal to gain. I bet on a per-bug metric they are MUCH cheaper to do this than pay a full QA team to test *and* more effective. Lots of unpaid testers out there. Now if they are riddled with simple to catch bugs not so much, but once they are in a hard to find mode for bugs - quite cheap and effective.
Slashdot has a nice page someplace in it's FAQs that describe the moderation system in place. Basically you set yourself in the pool of people who can do so, get randomly selected and given "mod points" to use as you see fit, and aren't allowed to moderate in any thread you post in. So you can't now even if you get them. Then there is the whole meta-moderation system too.
I, personally, removed myself from getting mod points. I have always felt some responsibility to use them properly and, thusly when i had points, to read at -1 and I *hate* that. IMO the better use is to keep controversial ideas out of the -1 and 0 category. I prefer to read at +3 and above, so I would rather let someone else have my mod points and hope they use them wisely.
There is also the friend/foe system that automatically mods individuals up or down relative to your view only. I will mostly suggest even if you feel like it to not do it with me from this post. I am fairly dogmatic about what I believe, I'm just not dogmatic about what others do (I'm more than willing to know it is only partially based on rational thought and that others can 100% with the rational part yet diverge to something radically different on the irrational part). Plus I will happily argue viewpoints I do not agree with too (though in this case I *do* agree with what I wrote) if I think someone has said something stupid enough.
...it is about not being a douche bag.
Really, it isn't illegal and that isn't why Google removes them. He isn't going to get arrested so his willingness to have that done is irrelevant. What he is doing is being a a major asshole and justifying being proud of it under some "information wants to be free" meme.
My address, phone number, and a great deal of other information is certainly public knowledge - one can look it up on the internet (and I even use an abbreviated version of my real name so it isn't even that hard), yet I still wouldn't want all that attached to every post I made. There is a great deal of public information that we *all* would rather not telegraph in that well a concise and easy simple way to view. I'm willing to be this guy has a number of things about his life he considers private, is legally not, and would be royally pissed if people made a point of putting it on the internet. If someone walking down the raod asked politely to not be photographed few would call him a hero of anything if he then not only followed them taking all the photos he could but made sure that everyone singled them out to show what they would rather have private - no different here. I don't care about my picture being on Google Street View (well, other than the car was taking pictures when a police man was telling me to move my truck is parked in the road because someone up the street complained - we are on a dead end road. It's amusing as you can clearly tell I'm out on my front porch, the police car in the street, and the man in Blue talking to me - but then I find the thing more amusing than anything especially since I can pinpoint the exact time the car want by) and can't really see why anyone would care - but if they did it is called being a nice person to remove it.
If he wants to push a real cause go take photographs of military installations or secure places like nuclear power plants. But then there you are actually likely to have real consequences instead of just being a douche bag and making people mad. Plus it is places that are actually illegal to photograph, used to be legal to do so, and there is a great deal of debate on what should and should not be allowed. Peoples houses in mapping software? Not so much - as is he is simply trying to make himself feel better by doing something minor/worthless and rationalizing that it is somehow, in someway, actually edge and dangerous. Yea, go stick it to the man! Just wait until these people see their houses photographed on the Internet, that'll show !
"I have a hunch this has happened millions of times since the "first time"."
And someone else has a hunch that God did it, some have a hunch that it happened on an asteroid and was brought here, and some have a hunch the kool-aid man did it. Yours isn't any more scientific or credible that "God created it". You have as much evidence as they do - for the most part we all understand that the events that lead up to us being here are not very likely to happen - from the initial mix of matter/anti-matter to the likely hood of life forming and surviving to this point on such a chaotic planet. It either is going to require belief in some system that has most likely a near infinite number of attempts and we - by definition - are the ones here to see the one time it all worked or you need some form of a conscious guiding it (be it god, Gaia, or whatever).
Further, arguing evolution or religion is like arguing sports - it only matter because the arguers choose for it to. We can take a Gaia theory (or a Universia) and you have a conscious deity that certainly uses natural processes to achieve its goal. Unless the religion specifically says otherwise no reason why that can't be the case (and it is certainly even possible that is the only line they got wrong too). Then, armed with sure knowledge that your piece of a hoaky believe system based on how you feel is correct you will then go back to a group that shares that believe and congratulate each other on how fine, smart, and logical you are and everyone else is stupid. After all it is *obvious* to you that your own musings are correct.
Faith is faith, that yours happens to sound less mystical doesn't make it any more "scientific", it just makes it easier for you to believe in the absence of any evidence.
It's not within the scope of this (though I am happy to tell you what and why I believe as I do) if someone asks I will tell then and will happily debate. However I will not (for the most part - not all ideas are workable) think the other side is stupid because they believe something else.
Before Apple makes such a statement about not accepting un-ethical business practices they may want to revisit the whole Jobs/Wozniak deal and why the latter "left" the company.
But of course Apple is the Eco Friendly Company that Does the Right Thing whenever they can! There is nary an anti-competitive bone in their body and they are fully Open and on for the ride in Open Source technologies!
"I do have a problem with the damages awarded though... I mean - How in the world did they come up with this figure?"
Most of it is punitive - you may want to look that word up.
Punitive damages are typically rewarded when someone knowingly did something wrong or did something so wrong they should have known it was. Lets say for instance a court case I know of where a person flung a bottle into a crowd of random people, it beaned another person on the head with enough force to cause a concussion. The person who flung the bottle was on tape and got sued for hospital costs and punitive damages in small claims court, IIRC out of pocket hospital costs were less than 1k put the amount sued for was the max - 5k. The defense was that the person who flung the bottle didn't intend it to hit anyone so as far they were concerned that it did only mean they should have to pay actual medical costs. Turns out not so much - you get fines over and above the cost of the actual damages (and in this case had the individual sued in something other than small claims could have probably got more) for being that negligent/stupid.
Frankly the defendant here was more or less flinging said bottle - not much of a legal leg to stand on. Many of us here - and I'm not sure where I stand on this - would like to say that information wants to be free so bully for them, yet that isn't where our legal system sits nor has it ever sit there. If they were pushing the envelope for a civil rights case I would be apologetic (again, not sure where I sit on it), but one for profit? They made a bad risk/reward calculation as a for profit business and lost. As such the judgment was not not only with respect to actual damages but also with respect to punishment. Whilst they will most likely get it reduced in an appeal since their main source of income was not legal they are facing bankruptcy - might as well accept the judgment and liquidate.
"with game-changing technologies like the iPod, iTunes, iPhone, and iPad"
I'm glad to know Apple spent many hours inventing all these things and then gave away their ideas years - and sometimes - decades before they released their own version. Why, I bet the even told Xerox how to make a GUI!
Indeed, the few things Apple truly invented on their own flopped - though in their defense most truly new ideas *do* flop. Apples innovation is in marketing and their reality distortion machine, not their products (see antenna detuning, macbooks sharp front edge for a number of years, insistence on a one button mouse for years, etc).
"Anyone who is going hunting and camping (as the Asker said his dad would be doing) and doesn't know the basics of direction finding and survival in the wild has no business there, at least without a knowledgeable human guide."
Maybe, maybe not - we do not know where he is hunting.
I hunt on a 60 acre tract of land - I can see the highway from several of my stands and even in the places I couldn't I would have to walk in around a 10 acre circle to "get lost". It can be easy to get turned around and come out at a neighbors properties in a few places and that sucks, but reality is that I do not need dirction finding in wilderness to do this. Same thing with camping - I often do it in similar circumstances.
GPS units are still quite useful to me. I go into my stand/blinds around an hour before sunrise and even with a good quality flashlight I can't see far. I used to use orange ribbon or reflective tape but that just made it easy for thieves to find them (I've always found the occasional movie that talks about how stupid hunters are for using them - so stupid they can't even find their stands - I can point you to someone who isn't looking for a stand/blind that is designed to be low visibility during the brightest part of the day well before dawn). Hand held GPS units means I put the stand up, mark the location, and follow that. I find the stand faster than I used too (those bright orange ribbons aren't too bright at night and you have to have the beam of your flashlight hit the reflective tape), enough so that I can get an extra bit of sleep.
I do agree that if going into *real* wilderness that basic skills are vital. One needs to understand how the sun rises/sets, how to walk a straight line (actually hard to do) if in flat country or how to follow ridges/water if in the mountains, and how to read a map and compass and carry both. That GPS makes all that easy but is also a delicate piece of electronics no matter how hardened it is. A compass is MUCH more rugged and the sun and your eyes much more so. Indeed, if we loose the sun or you loose your eyes there isn't much out there is going to save you - best if you just sit and hope someone finds you (which often is the best advice anyway - proper planning and telling others your plan does WAY more than anything else).
A phone works just OK in the best of conditions, heck even the GPS antenna isn't very good and I often find I can't get a signal or location lock when a quality hand held is just fine. If you are in a rural area then it will probably work good enough, mine does. However if you are in a wilderness situation they are worthless. I love my droid - I have access to a decent bass guitar tuner, decent GPS, a decent calculator, a decent web browser, my e-mail, and all sorts of other apps/uses - but in *none* of those cases is it the best device for those jobs. In a few cases it does a good enough job I do not use the special purpose devices much, but they still have their place. For real work or things my life depends on I want to depend on special purpose high quality devices - not something that mostly does the job. I want to do more than probably live and probably keep my job. Hand held GPS have been field tested many years to actually get people home, phones haven't. Unless your dad is mostly hunting in places like I do and having MP3's and the web in my blind can pass the time when there is nothing but the wind blowing is more important than knowing which way is out of the woods then get him a real GPS and even ven then I like my garmin. If you life may depend on it then would you really want it to be on your phone?
Maybe maybe not - there are a great deal of conclusions being drawn from a VERY small part of the whole picture.
What is their consumption per capita? If it was low because of the cost of creating energy was so high (and theirs was high, I do not know their consumption though but price/consumption have a fairly large correlative - and IMO - causative link) once they adjust to this level of available energy it may become a real money sink. Their long term investment is paying off in the short term but it's not unusual for that to happen and a venture still die off. It takes time for adjustments to be made.
What are the environmental impacts going to be too - we know they have a reduced carbon footprint but contrary to what is popular in the media today carbon isn't the only pollutant and not even the worse of the bunch (heck it isn't even the worse greenhouse gas let alone pollutant). These technologies still are only a small part of our energy production and a number of them didn't scale too well (see tidal generators effect on long shore currents when implemented past an experimental level or large windmill farms effects on avians).
Assuming that they have growth how will this scale? Yes, they have excess now but in another 10 years will they be able to use this for their population? If you are at 90% of your capacity today chances are you are going to be screwed in a decade or more down the line. I do not know what their capacity is either, but it is a question that wasn't addressed in the press release.
The answer may very well be really really good to all those - I simply do not know and it isn't something easy to find (and may not even be done). One can find articles such as this, but I'll believe that as much as I do that BP cares about the environmental impact of the Gulf Oil leak. Well, not exactly true - I believe a negative with respect to BP's caring (that is they do not at all and it is a lie) and I'm simply neutral on those questions above - no reason why they can't come out quite positive (that is they have great justification but it wasn't in the scope of the article or other publications).
My main point is don't count your chickens before the eggs hatch. For a great deal of these things someone somewhere has to give it a go and see what happens. It is usually the medium sized countries with a severe lack of some resource that are a great large scale test and they are certainly doing that. Just, again, it is a bit premature to declare success and make fun of people who haven't gone to it.
In the long run that has been a good deal of what has killed many so called "special interest" groups that could have gotten a good 80% of what they wanted. They want it all, they want it now, and nothing less will suffice - turns out when you want "all or nothing" you are more likely to get "nothing". I think we could have had 70-80% of these "green" (I use quotes because more often than not all I see is how they reduce carbon emissions - while important so what if it raises sulfur emissions or sends 10 species of birds to extinction?) technologies if they were not tied to extremists that say things that anyone other than a True Believer can poke holes in, let alone someone that takes a bit of thought at it. It makes it easy to totally dismiss (another is we have to act now as it has to be better - tell that to people in the south about erosion and introducing kudzu to stop it).
I do not know, maybe the OP has some sort of special keyboard - maybe it has spikes for keys, he has to take steroids just to get enough muscle strength to push the keys, his computer is powered by a treadmill that he runs on to play, or some other thing to make him a "tough guy".
Though I guess that would make him stupid instead of a tough guy.
Wrong.
I have a Motorola droid. I plug a USB adapter into the phone and my computer, swipe the status bar down, and tell it to mount the SD card. I then get a removable drive on my PC. I opened my music directory, selected all my songs, right-clicked and selected copy. I then opened my SD card, created a directory called "music", and copied my MP3's there. Never once did I have any need to root my phone for that one so I can certainly load my own music and I do not need iTunes or some other application to get anything through, it is just a standard USB drive. Ring tones required an app from the Android market, I picked one called "Ringdroid" IIRC. I then can open any MP3 I have and one of the menu choices is "set as ringtone", if I press that choice it .... sets it as my ring tone. I still haven't rooted my phone at all. I can also check or uncheck a security feature that allows me to install unsigned applications, that still doesn't require root. So as far as I can see everything the person you are responding to says they can do one can regardless of what you may have heard.
Some manufacturers do have some applications you can't remove - Android is Open Source and people are allowed to extend it in ways they see fit and that includes that. However Android itself doesn't. Some manufacturers have also chosen to require rooting for other common functions too - again it is Open Source so they can modify to their hearts content. There are people who want a phone with no "dangerous" options and are fairly locked down (as many iPhone users say they want to be) and Android can accomodate that - indeed Motorola's answer to signing ROM's on the Droid-X is "If you want an extensible phone, purchase a different model" for that very reason. Android itself is open and it isn't hard to find currently sold models that are near as "free" (as in speech) as the nexus one is.
Maybe last you heard was from another Apple user that wishes Androids were not selling like they were? Or at the least you believed someone that was *very* misinformed and you should take what they say from now on with a large grain of skepticism as they were easily fooled.
"I didn't claim it's impossible but don't underestimate the strong mental association between getting apps and the App Store."
And I'm claiming never underestimate the stupidity of individuals to click on e-mail links and follow what the web page says. Indeed, I would have to look it up but there are a few studies where a large number of people will click even if it plainly and clearly tells you it is a virus/worm. Especially true when it is coming from a "friend" (who either was the first one going outside of the app store or was also following some e-mail sent to them too).
I rather suspect the vast majority (not just most) do not know or care about all of this. They want a sleek sexy looking phone they can surf the internet on. I bet the vast majority only have a strong sense to use the app store because it is *all* they can use and if the think someone has a neat app that requires clicking a few buttons on a web page they will click.
Further I bet the vast majority aren't geeks and have taken the Apple fanboi message of it being secure and "just works" to the point of assuming if it looks official and only takes a few clicks - then well it must be OK.
The whole point of this is that it *bypasses* all those things that Apple puts in to stop it, otherwise it wouldn't be so easy to do.
I also rather suspect Apple patches this fairly quickly for that reason too. They only drink some of their ow kool-aid.
"Your characterization of Apple users, taken is a whole, is just plain wrong; a stereotype used in "holy wars." "
No, it isn't, nor did I mean it as a "taken in whole" as many also see it as a tool, nothing else. Yet many also have some sense of contentment because "Apple is protecting them" (which they can't). Lots of Apple fanbois, Linux zealots, and other people who are otherwise quite intelligent and think thing through just don't with respect to that. It isn't all, so yea I guess taken as a whole that isn't correct, yet taken a "many" is quite true.
Ultimately you are making the same point too, they expect to be protected by the app store and anti-malware actions of the phone. Unfortunately this bypasses that and remotely roots the phone and shows said protection to be "magic" (that is only an illusion). If it becomes a worm before it gets patched then Apple is going to have problems, if they patch it quickly then few will even know about it.
"Apple using the number of OSX viruses in the wild is no different than Linux users gloating over the number of Windows vulnerabilities compared to Linux all these years: it's juvenile but makes for good PR."
Yup, preaching to the choir there.
"Or perhaps you gamble and show the world that the situation is under control by releasing your "plans" of withdrawal showing that those now in charge are very capable hands."
Eh? How does that show they are in very capable hands at all? If we are truly at the point of "time to do this" then it is a good thing, if we aren't then it shows the leadership is incompetent.
If we *aren't* ready then it isn't just "mission accomplished 2", it is going to leave us with a choice of looking like a bunch of HUGE idiots as we say "my bad" (and either give a new date or figure out that was stupid and pretend it didn't happen) or walking away from a moderately stable area and leaving it to be torn to shreds. In either case we look like idiots because of this
If we are ready then it shows we can finish this type of conflict in a modern era. Tentative troop withdrawals were scheduled from 12-18 months after the election so we are mostly on schedule - I suspect it is more of this one (and the people I know returning from this tour talk about Iraq VERY differently too).
Of course there is always the third option (and frankly this is kinda what we are doing) is declare us "out of Iraq" whilst leaving a sizable force there. In this case you expect your party base to figure out how to spin it and report it so that the meme sticks (we are leaving 50,000 or so there - a sizable force). The cynic in me notes the time frame for this "success" too (right before the elections) and says someone up there is expecting this to be something of the case. It isn't really much different than the "mission accomplished" gaffe Bush made - both the invasion and the tour of duty for that ship were over and that mission was accomplished, they were still dong the same operational things but it was called something different. In this case "combat operations" will be ceased, just the 50k troops left over there will be doing exactly the same thing except it will be called something different.
In either case it doesn't show we are in capable hands now anyway. Iraq was won (or lost) before Obama came into office and was his to mismanage (which he hasn't). Bush owns up to there for good or bad. Afghanistan is, right now, Obama's chance to show the competency of those in charge with respect to this type of war. Bush let it sit in a type of stasis whilst he focused on Iraq - not that I agree with that strategy but it is what happened. Iraq is won and all the current occupant (and the next one) can do is let it finish its course or screw it up. They now have Afghanistan to figure out what to do with (which right now appears to be whatever Petraeus wants to do as Obama has been VERY hands off with both McChrystal and now Petraeus - though IMO that's a feature, not a bug).
Yea, because people would *never* fall for something like this in their e-mail box: "Hey, I just found this *really* cool app for my iPhone. Apple will not allow it on their app store, they are afraid it would make them look bad for not putting on the phone in the firs place!!!! Just click on and install it!" (then it e-mails everyone in the person's contact list once installed). Nope, never in the history of computing have people fallen for things like that in their e-mail. Won't happen because Apple has an *app store*. Nor has any worm propagated around the internet that way either. No, nothing to worry about having a simple to use web-based root-kit that anyone can embed - the App Store will apply its magic shield to protect us.
The difference here is the number of people who consider this a *good thing* that is occurring. I've said many a time that as we begin to realize these are general purpose computers more and more of this will happen and *no* device is immune from it, if you think that you are going to get away from it with either an iPhone, Android, or SuperPhoneOS. For whatever reason many Apple users think they are safe from it because Apple will protect them from it in some mystical magical way (which that belief will make it easier to click on said links, after all *everyone* knows Apple doesn't have these things). Google doesn't talk about how they are immune to this type of thing and do not make a great deal of their sales from it either.
In Apples defense they do not totally buy the spin either, they just take advantage of it.
You have a remote rootkit running from simply visiting a website?
Wasn't it just yesterday or the day before we called rooting your android (which has to be tethered), erasing your old operating system, and installing a new "custom" one with a rootkit installed on it which allows remote activiation of root an attack vector (note that even a rooted Android device can't get outside the Dalvik VM)?
I'm certain, absolutely certain that there will be no abuses of this. There will not be any nefarious person have a "must have" app that is so good that the app store refused and all you have to do are these easy steps right here on this web page! No, never happen - users would *never* be stupid enough to run things from a website - this is a great feature!
Yea because if you jailbreak and iPhone we all know you can't install malicious software. If you could then we would all be making 500+ posts over it. Here not only do you have to root the phone but you have to erase your old OS and install theirs - obviously MUCH easier than on the iPhone (and there is a fix for this - it is called and eFuse on the Droid-X but that is Evil(TM) and shouldn't be allowed).
It is not a *new* attack vector nor a particularly interesting one any more than a rootkit on a jailbroken iPhone is. Nor do I believe knowing that there can be one like that on the iPhone would cause hundreds of "I hate Apple" posts - well anymore than this one created "I hate Android" ones (that is people who didn't bother to see how the "exploit" occurred assumed it was something it wasn't).
As long as the phones are tied to a two year contract - certainly. As long as they are conspiring with the hardware manufacturers certainly. I do not mind buying some new all the time, indeed I wouldn't mind upgrading my Droid to either an Incredible or a Droid-2 when it comes out, but unless I pay some extortionate price for the thing I can't. Yes, I said extortionate deliberately - their price for the device is inflated so as to only purchase in two year increments. There is no way that my Droid costs more than a lesser equipped iPad does.
When phones were, well, phones then I thought that it was a racket too but it wasn't that onerous. It was irritating, but the cost difference wouldn't have been that different. As "phones" move towards being general purpose computers that also have cell antenna's in them then things change.
The cell carriers in the US have such a strong lock on the vertical part of the market that they can dictate prices for "unlocked phones" (if you can even find them). IMO if they want to keep that lock on the market (otherwise known as a monopoly - we normally mostly worry and talk over horizontal ones but a vertical one is just as bad or worse) they either need (like other legal monopolies) consumer protection regulations or that market being broke up. Many - and I'm not necessarily including you - seek to increase competition horizontally and that isn't going to work, the collusion isn't amongst that carriers it is amongst the carriers and hardware manufacturers. You need competition in *both* markets.
The problem here is that so many aren't making their money from the consumer (well, sorta - read the rest) they are making it through manufacturer deals that artificially inflate the prices. Given that a cell phone is pretty near an inelastic market it means they can do pretty much what they want and people will do it. Similar markets are regulated for a reason, cell carriers need to be similarly regulated too. Either that or forced to break up the monopolistic practices (and again, it is a *vertical* monopoly so pointing out market share of the different carriers is irrelevant - plenty of horizontal competition).
In this particular case there is nothing to patch - the iPhone is *just* as vulnerable to this as Android too.
In order to run this particular "exploit" you have to first root the phone, wipe your old OS off the phone, and install the new one they provide. One can also jailbreak and iPhone and install a different OS or rootkit on their phone too. If you want to "patch" this do what Motorola did with the Droid-X - disallow a custom rom to be installed and not allow you outside the dalvik VM (and in that case your "secure" iPhone is *more* susceptible to this type of thing as the underlying OS is MUCH more accessible when rooted).
I do not know why anyone here is shocked, shocked I say to find that when someone roots their phone they can install apps that do malicious things and then want someone to "patch" it (but leave the ability to root). Poor reporting by the submitter and by the editors, though that has plagued here for a *long* time (which is why one should read the comments of a sensational story).
Though your question about updates is not a bad one you are, again, not saved by Apple. A great deal of them out there can not run iOS 4 and are end of lifed. In any computer that you are running an OS that is not updated, and Apple is no different here, then security fixes do not get put int. Lets face it, if you are running a 2.4 kernel and find a security issue that chances of it getting fixed are quite slim too. Our phones are computers that happen to have some form of a cell connection in them, not a phone that has some general purpose computing hardware added to it. The sooner we all realize this the better, though I guess I will have to say that many Apple fanbois also think their desktop or laptop is "different" and doesn't have any issues that a general purpose computer does.
You certainly can if you consider total cost of ownership. Speed isn't everything, indeed even reliability isn't. There is also basically what I would call "insurance". Lets, for instance, take a stock exchange. How many trillions of dollars flow through a very small number of computers and disks in that day. In that case you aren't paying for hardware and, frankly, you are only partially paying for redundancy. What you are paying for is the ability to *guarantee* that if something breaks you get it fixed now.
The host machine of a backup solution we build hardware/software has a plain old SCSI terminator cost 1500 US dollars. That sounds really excessive, but they operate in those environments above. They have regional stockpiles of equipment that is guaranteed to be in stock and, if needed, they will even do things like fly parts in on private jets and helicopters. Now, they have reliability too, their hardware has a global up time approaching nine nines, there is one stock exchange that has had the same file open, being written too, and continually backed up for over 20 years as it would costs millions in down time for the few seconds to switch over to something new and the system still can carry the capacity. But then you can build a large server farm with similar stats for less up front money but you could never build the worldwide distribution system they have for your company alone.
There aren't many places that need that but if your data center literally looses millions per *second* of downtime that cost is irrelevant compared to the possibility of running down to Best Buy and their shipment being late. 30 dollars per gigabyte is *cheap* for systems such as Citibanks credit card processing facilities, it is ludicrously expensive for most places. This market is shrinking rapidly too as many *were* paying for the reliability and didn't care so much about the distribution and for them clusters/clouds are a much cheaper solution, but there are certainly a number of data centers that would *love* to be able to go with 30 dollars be gigabyte and will for many many many years (the physical cost of the hardware and staff being the smallest part of the expenditure).
The problem here, and it is a logner term on Apple and many of supporters run into, is that the iPhone isn't remotely secure from this in any shape form or fashion.
So, you go tell someone who had this or this or this and see how far your credibility goes.
These phones are now general purpose computers that happen to have devices that make them capable of making phone calls. If you think that your general purpose computing device is immune to these types of things then you will most likely one day get a nice big shock. Apple is relly good about thier reality distortion field making people think they are somehow can't have this type of thing happen, mostly people who should really know better, but reality is that it doesn't.
Apple gets more apps submitted than their entire staff could filter to that level of security, indeed they would need to be one of the largest employers in the world to do so. Apple can't protect you, all they can do is make you feel good about having lousy security. It is not their fault it is lousy either, they simply can't provide non-lousy security for millions of devices and many many thousands of applications one may download. Personally the Android market place's significant difference in freedom more than outweighs the slight benefit in security and what little difference there is can be more than mitigated if you just read what the app accesses.
Were I too guess I would say the following. Obviously I am not the one modding you as troll nor would I - you just wouldn't have gotten any mod points for these reasons and I will conclude each section with my thoughts. Take them as you wish, I'm certainly one that hasn't avoided those same mods over the years either. I'm bored and a bit inebriated so you get my ramblings :)
Linking the article you did - not only has it bean beaten to death but the majority of those outside of the reality distortion field understand there were to issues: detuning and blocking the signal. The article mixes the two and is a favorite of the Apple fanbois. I would have figured you just didn't care enough to know the difference and are reporting a real signal loss (and not knowing enough to separate the reasons) and some crappy design I happen to disagree with for many cell phone manufacturers. Low user numbers do not mean much - I have one in your range but can no longer access the account (forgot the password and the associated e-mail address no longer exists), do not ask me about "intuitive user interfaces" at all as if I design one it will only make sense to other developers (and for those people I make quite decent ones). However for some a low ID means something and may get a troll whereas a high one may not.
Next is that you have an issue with two distortion fields combining - Linux and Apple. I guess I disagree with Android being like Linux (I find it has about the same feature set that Windows does - but YMMV) and the anti-Apple crowd find the whole "I like it because they tell me what to do" idea to be trollish to begin with. Can't say I disagree with them, but again I find that personal choice and not really being a troll too. I've found a great deal of nostalgia for a phone that works quite well as a phone. You couldn't pry my Droid from my cold dead hands but I do miss the simplicity of just a phone - the good more than outweighs the bad, it is just that I can't see why they can't get the phone part as good as before.
The rest - well that is personal opinion and is probably liked more than not here - few are going to fuss that you wished to stay with Apple.
In the end with a link to a poor article and the jab at Linux I suspect you didn't get the benefit of doubt. What you wrote could be classic "troll" - that is someone who writes something like a well informed question of "C or C++" expecting to get something of a fight. We have lost that definition and instead have "troll" to be something worse. With slashdot's moderation system it doesn't take much to fall under a threshold and not get the modding you deserve. I happened to look over this because one of your ancestor posts was something I was interested in and followed children. I do not have mod points (and since I had previously commented on this I couldn't use them anyway) so nothing I can do about it.
Lastly I generally expect that you had an anti-Apple person find your post first, it happens to the more pro-Android posts too. Slashdot's moderation system overall works decent but there are certainly posts that it breaks down at. No system is perfect and you seem to be caught in the bad part of it. Frankly, with your low user ID I would have expected you to know that by now - it doesn't mean much in how well you know some particular pieve of tech but you should have been here long enough to have some idea of the possibility of your modding. People even in the 750k+ id's know this, 5 digit ID's should have seen this possibility coming a mile away. At the lest known enough to not seriously asked this question (if you were also drunk and bored well then that is another story - what else is Slashdot for?).
There are a number of Android phones that can have custom (or vanilla) roms flashed onto them. It's not really any harder now than reinstalling a stock version of an OS on your pc (instead of the rescue disks crap they give you now). The vast majority of the process is quite automated now.
See http://www.mydroidworld.com/ and their forums for the current state of what phones can bee rooted and what phones can be reflashed and with what. Heck many of the phones can even be overclocked if you so desire :)
"When a person buys an iPhone, they get software that, in its stock form, is EXACTLY as Apple intended it."
That is both one of the features and faults of pretty much all of Apples products. If you think like Apple wants you to then they are the best interface and device on the planet, if you do not then you want to fling them through a wall.
I have always been in the latter group, the interface is one of the least useful ones I have ever used, nothing is where I expect it to be and I can't make it fit my notion of what I want to do. I know of a great deal of iPhone users that only mostly like the interface, as of right now it isn't like Android is much better (as you say many manufacturers force their interface on you too which has the same issues). However there is at least a wider selection and one can usually find an Android phone that fits fairly close to what you like. I do agree about the stock interface - I've yet to see anything that tops a slightly customized Droid or Nexus One (and those apps were free from the market place - I have a Droid).
Android will probably never have that one iPhone killer - it is just not positioned to do so. What it will eventually do is what the PC did to Apple - have so many out there that in total they will dominate. Give it another couple of years and when you really start getting Android based phones that cater to different users and you still have the one option for iPhone and it will "win" (what it does to RIM will depend on how much they can tailor one to the business world and RIM is hard to beat there - they nailed that market as much as Apple nailed the MP3 player market).