"In my experience people who bemoan others for 'preconceived notions' are most often the ones truly guilty of it."
Better watch out - that one results in a feedback loop.
A statement I always liked is "Just because you are paranoid doesn't meant they aren't out to get you." I do believe there were a great many on that thread that let the "Reality Distortion Field" overcome them - common sense would have (and should have) told one that if the Androids only had 20% return customers then they were going the way of the Kin and probably faster, not have the explosive growth they have had. It doesn't take a marketing genius to figure out that much dislike of the phone would have been all over the place instead of the growth it has had.
It will remain to be seen for a while how the whoe iPhone/Android thing will end up, but saying iPhones have a 77% repurchase rate and Android had 20% was *clearly* stupid.
No more or less than before - it only means that you are no longer in violation of the DMCA (which isn't even saying it is "legal" either, it just means that one law can't be used to say it is illegal).
Since as far as I know Apple wasn't suing anyone over it anyway then there isn't a change at all.
Time well tell. For myself I do not believe the study, first off the group publishing it doesn't have a good reputation (as pointed out a few times here these are the same people who did a study that found admin had many more crashes and service interruptions with Linux in a server environment than Windows) and secondly the numbers are simply too far off to work with actual sales. The Android platform would be hemorrhaging users if only 20% liked their phones enough to purchase another, that bad a reception would kill any Android phone immediately.
Nor is this the first time this sort of thing has happened - this type of "study" and the reactions to it are a large part of why the term "reality distortion field" was coined. Apple and many of their users believed that into a 5% market share and never understood why (still do not). Apple is better off facing reality than trying to distort it, reality eventually wins out.
Are you in it? Dunno, I have no reason to disbelieve what you say but my experience is totally the opposite. But then that is the trouble with anecdotal evidence, it will vary greatly by individual and their environment. I do tend to like to watch what devices people are using in airports (not just phones, nothing better to do either) and I have to note that in the last 6-8 months we went from overwhelmingly blackberries and iPhones to blackberries having a minor lead and iPhone beating Androids by a statistically insignificant amount. Sales figures seem to indicate that also.
Maybe as this article suggest Android phones are at their peak and they will go back to nothing with iPhones stomping them (and if Androids will only get a roughly 20% repurchase rate then not only will iPhone beat them but that isn't enough to even stay on the market). However my guess is that anyone that truly believes that is in a reality distortion field. But then time will tell, if true then in another year or so Androids will be mostly gone as the early adopters move to something else and the word gets out. Our believes about how true any of this will not make one iota of difference in how it ends up, if they did Apple and/or Linux would have drove Microsoft into the ground years ago.
That it the same process most use to make non-alcoholic "beer" - they just use the frozen part. That isn't beer either any more than using the liquid part of it is beer.
If that is truly what they use to do that I wouldn't drink it. Not only is the latter part of the wiki article correct (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_freezing) but you get all sorts of other compounds that contribute majorly to hangovers left in the concentrated alcoholic part.
It's OK and can even be tasty in some cases (but I would argue that the true distilled versions are better - hence why even things like applejack tend to be distilled now), but once you go to much higher than 80 proof you really start having problems with methanol and fusels which are *not* good things to drink.
There are a great deal of edge cases out there. You can also concentrate alcohol by supporting a smaller pot of the mash in a the middle of a larger pot. You then cover the both pots with plastic wrap so that as the alcohol evaporates out of the smaller pot it collects on the plastic wrap and condenses down into the bigger one. You can do this is want to ingest a great deal of methanol and fusels, run the risk of going blind or death, and at the least have a foul tasting concoction that will leave you with a raging hangover. You can, kinda sorta cut it down to where it is drinkable (as you can with freezing), but I wouldn't suggest it. Then again people have done it for many many years (though obviously with different materials than plastic wrap) so have at it if you want. Millions also do things like smoke two packs a day of cigarettes and live into their 80's and 90's and I wouldn't suggest that either.
I rather assumed they would use safe *and* tasty methods to produce this and didn't list any that were not that. There are a myriad other ways to concentrate alcohol and outside of those four main methods I listed they are either dangerous, taste like crap, or both.
I also realized for those counting I said "four basic ways" and listed only three - the "raise the alcohol level to kill them" should include both letting them produce enough alcohol to sterilize their environment or add (fortify) alcohol to the brew to raise it's content. So the third one really has two methods.
However that doesn't include things like wheat beers which are obviously still beer, however they all are basically fermented barely, hops, and water - wheat, rice, fruits, vegetables, and other flavoring can be added (and make no mistake with them - a "fruit" beer can be VERY heavy, bitter, and alcoholic. There is no reason why one can not make a right tasty raspberry imperial stout and many homebrewers do).
What the person you are asking is referring to is that beer are *fermented*, little living organism called "yeast" eat the sugers from the grains, fruits, or any others they can and turn it into alcohol (in a sense we are drinking their excrement). Since they are alive and it is a bilogical, not chemical, process these organism have tolerances for the environment they live in. As a brewer there are four basic ways you "stop" fermentation.. Commercial brewers usually ensure death of the little critters by pasteurizing the beer, few homebrewers have the equipment to do it (not to mention many of us hate the taste it imparts and would refuse even if we could). The more typical way is to have the yeast eat up all thier food and die out from starvation - if I put 3lbs of malts in a mash it will have a lower alcohol content than if I put 10lbs in there for that reason. The last, and least common way for beer makers is with a high enough alcohol content it kills them.
For the latter most yeast strains die at about 10% per weight (do not know by volume), there are wine yeasts that will go into the ~15% and I have an especially hardy strain go nearly to 18% but that was only once (and the mead tasted terrible too, they produce more than alcohol and they ate so much of the sugars/body of the mead it was... bad, those "other" products generally do not taste good). For the most part anything above around 12% by weight is going to be hard to do and take either luck (or really unlucky for a brewer)or a great deal of skill with keeping them alive.
To go higher than that you need to distill the product or fortify it (which is adding distilled alcohols back into it to stop fermentation - port wines work that way). In which case it ceases to be beer and becomes something else. At 50% alcohol (most likely by volume) it is more akin to how you make many other spirits - you take a highly pure neutral alcohol and add some other liquid to get it to the proof you desire. Vodka would be cut with water, schnapps cut with a flavored sugar syrup, lemon-cello with a lemon zest extract and water, and then either sold as is (vodka) or aged in some process (wooden barrels for whiskey). In this case you would cut it with beer.
As such it is, most definitely, *not* beer anymore.
Very few phones do not work this way and as a number of Apple people say about the closed store geeks get worked up over - few real users are going to care (and in this case I think it is true, in the case of Apple regular people *are* aware of how closed the app store is and are starting to see apps for the Androids that they will never get because of it).
If you do not want them on your desktop simply press and hold the icon until it "locks" to your finger and drag it to the trash can. It will still be in your list of installed applications (and you will see it when you bring up your app screen) but other than a small amount of storage it doesn't take up anything. They could, of course, at some point force loading of it and have annoying op-up adds but then that *would* be noticed and cared about by pretty much everyone. Heck most do not care if they are eat up with them on the PC to the point their computer slows to a crawl. These applications do not start up in the background (though ones that are widgets will until you remove the widget) so it isn't like they affect anything other than seeing the icon in you full app listing.
Even in the link form the main article only a VERY small handful of people care more than a "I wish it were not so" (which would be my attitude) and currently all but one person realizes that they can't go someplace else to get away from it (the one posts solution - an iPhone - has applications one pretty much *must* use even if they do not want too, can we say iTunes for interfacing with my phone? Yea, there is where you go for an open extensible phone that doesn't force you into doing something in ways you do not want).
Of course this is what happens when an Open platform is picked up by business - freedom to do what you want with it means you can make choices others do not like. It isn't freedom if you tell me what I have to do with it. Android is Open and this is why you will see a range from mostly stock (Nexus One and Motorola Droid) to highly modified (Motorola Droid-X and much of the HTC offerings). Most of them can be rooted and your own custom ROM installed - but even most of those are "customized" with applications the ROM developer thought were good ideas. Not to mention the Droid-X has been rooted already, time will tell if they can get around the boot-loader issue or not.
If I could go back and tell our founding fathers just one thing I think it would be "the commerce clause sucks royally". It seems to me that the vast majority of the really bad Supreme Court decisions are based on it - it seems that one can rationalize it to allow the feds to regulate nearly *anything*.
Simply look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commerce_Clause, search for the "civil rights" header and read from there. They can regulate health clubs because the health bars they sell are manufactured in other states? Really? Does *anyone* in their right mind truly think this is what was intended? Or the one you quote - anyone out there really think that the framers of our constitution meant for federal govt to regulate what you can and can not make/grow at your house because if you do that then you will not purchase the item on the open market and that effects national supply and demand? That is simply *crazy* (I agree with the part of that decision that says the states can't legalize something the feds have the power to make illegal).
In the one you link I can somewhat understand Scalia's stance - that allowing states to have people grow restricted items undercuts the federal's ability to regulate something (which is true - it's why California did what it did). While I think that is borderline, allowing you to produce illicit drugs interferes with the feds ability to enforce is quite a bit different than saying growing it in your house lowers the price so the feds can regulate it - my main argument there is that falls under the sovereignty clause, not commerce.
But then I'm that wants the feds to only do what the constitution allows them to do, I prefer most power to be local anyway. There is too much difference both in terms of what people want and what people need from California to Tennessee that moving most regulatory power to a federal level just plain sucks. If you want to move into a hippie, free love, abortion on demand commune then have at it - if you want to move into a religious, gun toting, redneck village then have fun. I see no reason for either one to tell the other they are doing it wrong and try and force them into their lifestyle. But then I seem to be rare in that regards too - most want you to have the freedom to do exactly what they force you too. If we were simply arguing where to draw the line (and there is a great deal of argument there) then it would be one thing, but we are mainly arguing who gets to tell the rest of the people what to do.
We are Apple. Turn on your iPhone and surrender your freedom. We will add your financial and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service ours. Resistance is futile.
Those are two very different cases - I'm one that felt the "Free Kevin" idea was the mostly correct one but Childs was an idiot and deserved what he got.
The issue with Kevin Mitnick wasn't what he did - very few people would have argued that what he did wasn't illegal and deserved punishment, the argument was what I would consider civil rights violations. One was the amount of time from his arrest to his final trial (and his plea bargain) was *enormous*. The people in charge of his trial were either so incompetent as to warrant criminal charges against them or they were doing it intentionally (my guess is intentionally - part of the furor against him was personal feelings). Because of a severe lack of technical knowledge some people who would have fought and stopped his treatment let it happen (long term isolated confinement for one thing). The prosecution - successfully - argued that as a hacker he could get angry, hack into the military's computers, and start a nuclear war so he had to be isolated. Much of the case is like reading the insane BS that RIAA claims about damages. I do not think he would face the same situation today due to increased knowledge of that type of crimes - probably similar length terms but not solitary confinement and some of the other insane punishments.
I guess I didn't figure he should have been "freed" - the guy clearly was a as much a thief as someone who physically broke into your house - but the punishment was above beyond simply because he did it with a computer.
Childs, OTOH, was not given extraordinary punishment. There were technical people on the jury and today most people can fathom what happened well enough to make a decision. Again, it being a computer should have no difference and if you did something similar (refuse to give your ex-employer access to their property because you felt they would screw it up) you would have gotten a similar sentence. We can certainly argue if you should be able to withhold items from your ex-employer if you think they are too incompetent to use it (though my general bet is that outside of a number on here on Slashdot that isn't going to go far), but it wasn't controversial in the same way Mitnick was.
Mitnick truly highlighted people not being technically savvy enough, Childs (along with a few others such as Hans Reiser - even after his admission and taking the police to the body mroe than a small handful *still* thought he was innocent) mostly highlights how some people will rally around people they view as in their social circle more than anything. That is more a human nature issue - pretty much any highly specialized group you are in will most likely have a sizable contingent that tries to protect their own from things they would crucify another for.
"The really bizarre thing is I've had an iPhone 4 since day 1, I've seen the glitch and until I got a case it had been affecting my data connections, but I still really like this phone! Is Apple turning us all into battered wives?"
Not really. We all have numerous devices that have flaws, some even serious, that we continue to use and like. As long as that flaw isn't fatal it generally matters if the device does what we want in the way we want. Apple has a specific way of approaching interfaces with their devices. If you think in the way that their devices are intuitive then you like them a lot, if you do not think in that manner they are frustrating to use.
If you were turning into a battered wife then you would have convinced yourself that you actually like the glitches and they are the proper way to work. It's not hard to find people saying that, but what you wrote is noting the flaws and having a set of priorities that the flaws do not interfere enough with to make the device unusable.
I suppose this would be true if I were able to somehow pass my finger through the plastic/metal and somehow make an electrical contact with my phones antenna, but since I can't that particular theory is really stupid. You are going to loose signal strength the more the signal has to pass true - that is absolutely true - however other phones do not have antenna's detune by creating an electrical contact between them. So, yes all phones "suffer" from loss of strength due to holding the phone but the iPhone has a *second* (and much more severe) issue with shorting a gap between two of its antennas.
Jobs knows his market VERY well, give them enough somewhat technical sounding things and they will find a way to rationalize it away. It happens in many fields, I generally refer to it as a "Throw a dog a bone syndrome" - you can take a dog, beat it to near death, starve it most of the time, abuse it how you want but give it the occasional bone and it will bound about just as happy as all get out to see you. Jobs knows how to throw his market a bone and they respond accordingly.
It isn't a revolutionary change nor an evolutionary change - there is a reason other phone manufacturers do not do this and it isn't some conspiracy due to trying to hide signal drop. It is the simple fact it is horrible design as it causes a noticeable percentage of signal attenuation if held incorrectly. Apples own engineer told them, other engineers told them, heck people talked about it here on slashdot ever since it was announced it would work this way. Apple went ahead and it turns out that people who have been doing RF for decades may actually know what they were talking about. But then why should Apple change too? We can see all it took to make their customer base was a few minute long talk about how everyone else sucks and they are still the bestest most smartest people on the planet for having one.
Black & White was one of the more interesting games, though it failed in so may areas.
With respect to my pet, I never could get one that didn't eat the villagers from time to time. I could get a great deal of complex behavior learned - putting out fires, feeding and caring for them - but not eat them from time to time? No way. I would have a near pure pet and - zap eat a villager of mine. Not could I ever convince it to eat a rival god villager if it really had those cravings - it would only eat mine.
Further I found the games ideas of "good and bad" to be not what mine were - sometimes in the extreme. I often couldn't even defend myself if I wanted to stay good let alone smite those non-believers. It was quite frustrating to be held to what I felt was inconsistent ideals. My pet could eat all the villagers it wanted as long as I punished it but if I tried to safe the lives of thousands of them I became evil. The "good" gods on the other side had no issues whatsoever smiting me or doing things that were totally off limits to me, but if I ever did expect to be "evil" in moments. I finally took the game to heart and just was evil.
I guess I've always thought that was interesting in a number of ways - though personally I've always know that if I am going to get punished for doing something no matter what I will do it if I feel like it. I found it more amusing that the designers felt many things were "evil" yet couldn't figure out a way to not have then done on their end. I will say I have yet to find an AI construct I enjoyed as much as my pet in that game, I was often amazed at what I could teach it that was obviously *not* part of what the designers had intended. I really wish games had continued down that path.
I never played Fable - I read enough about how strong it relied on your political ideas to be "good or evil" and if you disagreed with the writers then you were screwed. Black and White suffered from the idea that they just didn't let you be, but gave an in game Moral idea to your actions, as I read Fable did even more. The really good open ended games just let you solve it as best as you can and didn't really give a "good/evil" rating, B&W and from what I read Fable was mostly about that rating. There are some things I will say are truly good or evil - I do think you run into true moral ideas - but they are few and far in between.
True, but they were never doing it out of any good will - they were doing it because it would save them money in the long term.
In the early 2000's IBM was adding a great deal of knowledge and code to numerous Open Source projects - I happened to be fairly heavily involved in a few of them (work, not play though). It was both obvious to us and, while not really something discussed, behind dealings with them that the same was believed there also. They were making a business decision that it was cheaper to help in the ways they were good at and let the Open Source communities do what they were good at.
Difference being that IBM wasn't looking to then close everything else up as much as Apple has done. Further it was an actual shift in corporate thought at IBM, it wasn't simply a case of taking advantage of something (though if they couldn't have taken advantage they wouldn't have done it), but a real move towards open standards in the HPC world.
Apple *never* changed on iota, they simply took advantage of their image in pure unadulterated corporate greed. They only contributed in places that they had to have work for them (and through the license was forced to release) and locked everything else down whilst saying how great they were.
Indeed your point 3 is arguable (many, including myself, think their desktop UI is worse) and four was only a marketing idea. One and two, while it could have been a first step towards openness was nothing more than taking advantage of the Open Source communities.
IBM gave up some *real* proprietary information that they didn't ahve too, especially in the Kernel arena. They paid people to do so and fully embraced the the OS/applications. Apple mainly fixed things and contributed as little new information as possible to have the core work for their OS.
I still wouldn't trust IBM very far - I wouldn't any entity that has its own bottom line as a higher priority than mine (and note that I hold my own priority higher than most others so I'm not saying that is bad - just do not be shocked when they do something to protect their bottom line and lets your fall) - yet they have been about as good as one can truly expect out of a company. Of course I haven't been involved in about 4 years now so things could very well have changed, but for at least a good 6 years they were consistent.
Apple didn't move away from it as they were not ever there. People wanted to believe they were good enough that they figured out how to rationalize it. People *still* want to believe it strongly enough that they can even rationalize what is currently happening as "good".
Become? No - they have *always* been this way. It is just that for the most part they were not in a position that most knew much about it or cared.
Most of their fan base has always been like the posts here defending Apple and calling them the Good Guys and that is what most of us have had contact with. It wasn't until the iPod that they truly had a market leader that people could interact with on a large scale. With it the restrictions weren't things you would want to do anyway - it played music and did so well and still does so, it isn't a general purpose computing platform. The iPhone has always had this attitude behind behind it, but again it was not really a general purpose computing platform for quite a while. It wasn't until we truly started looking at it as one that the flaws became so major. It wasn't until you had people outside of that core loyal customer base that you started seeing the Apple not shielded by them.
Nor have they been all that stellar in design too - lots of ergonomic and usage problems over the years. Know why we still make fun of the one button mouse? Because it sucked royally and Apple refused to change telling you to suck it up. Several of their macbooks over the years have had hard edges where many people rest their wrists and would quickly cause pain in use - they were told to just not let their wrists tough the edge and Apple happily continued the practice (it looked better than the rounded edges). They generally felt that the people who let their wrists rest on the edge of the laptop were in the minority so who cares? Same thing with both the antenna and prox sensor on the phones - they are a minority and they figure most will suck it up and still purchase/use the product. There are MANY more examples that have been done over the years. Nor are they the "inventors" of many of the things thier fan base says they are - they copied just as much as anyone else (see their failed attempt to sue Microsoft over the windows interface when they both ultimately stole from the same source - Xerox).
To be fair they are happy that way - if you do not see success as market dominance and are happy with 10% yet still make a decent profit who am I to tell you that you are doing it wrong? Long term Apple users are happy, Apple the company is happy, their investors are happy, and the people that are unhappy with that are not "loyal" customers anyway. If you d not really care what they think then it makes sense.
There is a reason the phrase "Jobs Reality Distortion Field" has been in use for so long, it is just that many people who thought it was a simple joke (or believed the Apple fanatics that it was jealousy of their clearly superior product) are learning why the term was coined to begin with.
I have not seen any Android fans of Verizon - who likes Verizon? It may be the least sucky one in the US for the most part - but be a fan of it? It seems that Verizon is replacing a number of times too, I'm not sure what I think their response should be too as it is an HTC issue, not Verizon. OTOH since a new phone purchase involves a two year contract that changes things (just as it does if you are one that is having issues with an iPhone 4 - if it was just a matter of returning it and getting a different one then things would be different).
Or do you mean Android fans? There are more carriers than Verizon with Android (unlike AT&T - which truly sucks as a carrier where I live), indeed all the carriers have one now. Even then this isn't an Android issue but an HTC Eris issue. Last I checked there are quite a few Android based that *aren't* Eris's and have not had this issue reported. In fact I would say that there are more *non-Eris* Android phones currently being sold (unlike if you want a new iPhone - better not be one of the ones that their natural way they hold the phone is "wrong").
I guess if you mean HTC Eris fans gloating then OK, I'll buy that you weren't that specific. However that's not remotely what you wrote.
So yea - payback to all five of you Eris owners that love Verizon - revenge is a dish best served sweet!
This is only an issue with a single phone. It may be software, then again it may not. It obviously isn't and Android issue as this model is the only one experiencing it. Of course, Android being Open Source HTC could have introduced their own bugs. It may make some iPhone owners feel better to think otherwise, but it is not an issue with Android (or at least one that hits other phones). But if you really want to gloat go ask people who purchased an iPhone that their natural way of holding the phone causes severe attenuation and/or the prox sensor to consistently think it is not held up to their face. Further find that Apples response is "hold it different". I do not think you will find a happy Apple customer there either - though I guess you can say "sure your wrist hurts, you fingers cramp, and you have to choose if you hear a call or randomly press buttons on the screen every time you use it - but dangit your phone is GREAT as you do not have to reboot every once in a while"
Not really seeing much difference here, other than I do not know what Apple was so wrapped up doing to not test sufficiently and for whatever reason Apple has a significant portion of their users that will excuse anything Apple does. In both cases a small segment of the market gets screwed and the corporate response is "suck it up". Both problems make the phone pretty much useless and both are caused by faults in the design of the phone (be it hardware or software). The only difference I see is that if I still want an Android phone there are other choices (not to say Motorola would treat me better either) and with Apple you are stuck.
Nor does a reboot indicate a "memory leak" - it just indicates an unrecoverable issue from the UI. It may be that a driver needs reloaded (overflows, hardware errors, etc), it could be that some variable wasn't bounds checked and reached an invalid state and some process needs killed/restarted, it could be any number of things - a memory leak is probably one of the *least* likely scenarios (especially given that it only affects a very specific portion of the phone). Since there isn't really any troubleshooting interface a reboot is typically what you try on phones. Same thing with any device - if you had the appropriate interface you may not need a reboot but lacking that there isn't much else you can do. Indeed, for most of my relatives that call me my first response is "reboot the machine" because 99% of the time it fixes it and I do not want to drive over to their house to figure out which process to start/stop. For the most part I get few calls anymore as the reboot fixes most things with no trouble shooting (I'll come over to their house for chronic issues or major ones).
"How many walk away because their product will not make a profit... based on how many in the past have failed, due to piracy? You have to have one before the other will happen. So, the question is: have any actually failed? If not, why would they walk away? "
No, the logic is "How many walk away because their product will not make a profit... based on market analysis, how much it costs to make, how many sales you need at what price to make a profit, and if that will occur?".
For instance, lets use something that is easier to explain. Lets say one works at a smallish company - 10-15 people. You have this great revolutionary idea, you are pretty sure whoever owns this market will make millions - what would you do?. If you produce it and try and sell it as soon as you start to go to market with it then you run a *really* high risk of a larger corporation simply throwing some resources at it and destroying you. You did all the R&D, spent the development time, spent the QA time, did all the costly grind to get it worked out and someone with larger pockets just made thier larger by taking what you did. Really, there isn't much of a way around that without some market protections.
I do no need to point to this happening to know it is a bad thing and *will* happen. Indeed, small inventors that couldn't get the manufacturing companies to purchase thier patents have seen them simply wait until it expires and then make their millions.
But then I suppose what is more being asked is the other way around - the large corporations getting screwed. That one is harder - one could easily point to the declining CD sales and increasing music piracy and say "see I told you so". But then maybe its the economy, maybe it is that music sucks, maybe it something that we do not know. I do not know how to *prove* that it was piracy that caused indeed - indeed even if I could prove that piracy was a factor there will still be many others. So again that is never going to happen.
These types of arguments make one look petty too - especially given that there is all sorts of *good* ways to talk about the problems. The aggressiveness of the RIAA/MPAA, the extraordinary fines on someone sharing 15 songs on a torrent client, how extreme long term stifles innovation just as much (and at the current term limits probably more) than having none hurts, all sorts of things. When someone starts setting bars so high that nothing can ever achieve it then people will generally (correctly) feel hoodwinked. The RIAA/MPAA's are doing that with their campaigns - obvious lies and burdens of proof that are meant to not be achievable. Frankly I think that has something to do with the declining sales too.
Finally it would also help if the community at large also offered solutions - for the first time we truly have an infinite supply of something and it *is* a real issue. Even in the world of OpenSource software it is tough for most companies to make it, often for that reason - if you are a music/movie provider you aren't even going to have the services to sell and the mostly volunteer staff to produce your content. Especially given that the few tangible things that one used to purchase disks for (cover art and a decent quality physical disk) are not much of an issue now. Home printers are more than fine for the cover art and quality storage is *cheap*. Without acknowledging that and working towards something that will address it we will mostly continue being nothing but full of sound and fury and nothing we want getting passed.
No, it has *nothing* to do with capitalism. There are socialist, communist, and any other economic system around that doesn't hold business owners responsible for what their employees do and there are capitalistic ones that do. Even in full command type economies there *has* to be some type of concentration of wealth or power - you at the least have the govt chairmanships that direct policy for the state run factories (and try and hold them responsible - I expect you will get BP execs held responsible, win the lottery, and discover an immortality potion before you get a govt agency to decide to hold itself responsible for its own actions). If you want economies of scale to kick in - and I assure you that you do - then the question isn't if something like BP will exist it is who has control of it. A little mom & pop isn't going to run an offshore deep water oil rig no matter what and industry of that scale exists in nearly every sector (a small local team isn't going to produce whatever the current generation of Intel chips is when someone reads this - or whatever company is currently on top of the world market).
What this is a failure of is a failure of our government. We have regulations in place that would have (maybe - can't truly see alternate time lines but this type of thing is *not* unknown and we can trace the chain of failures) prevented it from being a true disaster. They were ignored from every level you can point at and in many cases still are 70+ days later (not sure the current count) - nor can you pin it on any political group (more than just our two main ones involved too) or any specific president (Obama failed miserably on initial reaction and on his now long term response - Obama has made Bush with Katrina look highly competent).
The problem is that as we get to where in order to advance you have to have not just multi-billion but *multi-trillion* dollar budgets for some advances then there is just so much money/power floating around that it draws corruption to a point that I can't really come up with a good analogy. Given the corruption we have seen with our own regulators (with drugs and prostitutes) and the ineptitude of all levels of govt to respond to this what would a command market have done better? Indeed, the fact that this is hurting their stock and end user sales has done more to spur them than *anything* the govt has done or will ever do. They aren't going to bite the hand that feeds them and look to how whom they donate too, whom is in power, and whom gets elected correlates to see how buyable most politicians are.
While we can certainly point to fairly socialistic countries that do things Right - say the Dutch - it isn't because they are tending socialistic. Indeed, a stronger govt presence and control would have been *worse* in our case - as bad as BP has done our govt has done worse (and I say that is true for the last few decades too, and that is *all* branches of the govt). I can also point to China and the old Soviets for examples of more socialistic countries that are as bad or worse than us. It is more rot at our core and that rot stems more from our concentration of wealth. That concentration of wealth is not so much from being capitalistic as much as it from necessity. While the Dutch have chosen their niche to be world expert on even there they have a concentration of wealth that will most likely one day rot. For world super powers (while we do not list China as one today it is almost there) you are going to have several. The Dutch aren't going to have globally competitive space exploration, deep sea exploration, energy research, computing research, and pretty much globally competitive (say top five) in hundreds of fields. There are only a few countries with the wealth (and by that I mean raw resources) and they *all* suffer (or in the case of the old soviets used too) from the same thing.
In the end I personally think it is more that human nature is such that we will have trouble progressing past a certain point - or at least it is going to be a l
Apple is having issues with a design flaw that only hits a small portion of its user base, but that user base is large enough for that to be a large number of people and the issues are major. Chances are you will never have an issue with the phone and will indeed see an improvement. However, if you are one of the "unlucky" ones (most people are have no issues) then you get lots of dropped calls. If you have sweaty palms and your natural position you hold the phone in shorts the antenna's then you see a great deal of attenuation. With respect to the sensor most people hold the phone in a "normal way" and thus having a sensor on the edge of "normal" works just fine, but be one of the ones that has a head shaped out of the ordinary and it is a nightmare using the phone. Basically when you make a design that works for 99% of the people and your customer base is a million people you will have 10,000 unhappy customers who are probably quite vocal. In this case you probably have less than 99% success and more than a million customers.
Think of it this way - if I ask people to only drink from the blue can because the green is poison what is the problem? Well, for most of us nothing - for those individuals that are blue-green color blind it makes a BIG differenece. For large scale commercial products these things are usually known and tested against (or at least workaround are devised). Since (according to Wikipedia) about 8% of males have some form of color blindness and.5% of females it isn't that many people - if you depend on your QA team to find those errors (instead of knowing about them and proactively designing around them and testing against them) then chances are you will miss some. However if you have several million customers there will be a fairly large complaints section but most people will be OK.
Of course I do not have the percentage affected by any of these issues Apple is having. Indeed I would be surprised if Apple had those numbers too (and if they did then a class action would generally include large amounts of punitive damage too). I will, however, say that Apple has dug its own grave here with respect to talking about how they know all this stuff better than everyone else. Further these changes are not revolutionary and there tends to have been reasons why they have not been used in other phones - for a company that prides itself in usability it is a VERY big mistake. Had they been revolutionary and these things found then sure - those things happen, but they are not.
The cynical person says they made a choice that the majority will not have these issues and they can "spin" them away (after all everyone I now would have no issue with a blue light meaning edible and a green light meaning poison - if you are having an issue it sounds personal to me, learn to tell the difference between colors), the non-cynical says Apple goofed and doesn't want to admit it yet.
Your right - but in this case it gets even worse then the person you are responding too. Solar Power isn't ready to be a centralized scaled up power source yet, they are taking a loan that the govt is going to back and hope that someday sometime it will make a profit and they can pay it back. It works fine for individual houses that are getting a "dual use" from the space (that is panels on top of their house) and can pull power off the grid when needed. As for pollution it is still arguable, it just isn't carbon and the cost is done at manufacturing and disposal so many do not see it. The waste chemicals are really nasty too - it doesn't do much good to lower carbon emissions if you sterilize large swatches of the Earth with other chemicals.
Ultimately they are assuming a loss for a few decades and the billions are meant to cover it and the power companies get to tout their "environmentalism". Given that it is currently most likely going to take a technological breakthrough (not just a small evolution) the chances of this being anything other than an even greater money sink is slim. As such add another 50-100% cost to the project and *then* divide by the number of jobs. That is assuming that when the technological change comes they decide to cut our losses (since the taxpayers covered it) and start anew instead of petitioning for *another* massive amount of money to retrofit their aging plant to the newer equipment (then add another 100% at least). That the number spent per job goes down assumes they make money and they aren't - they are going to bleed massive amounts of it for advertising all funded by the US Govt (otherwise known as taxpayers).
If they wanted to produce long term jobs efficiently that money would have been better spent in many other areas - it is really comical to see this touted as a "jobs project" - with millions unemployed you get a whopping 90 long term jobs for the money. If he wanted to further green power that money would have either been better off in Nuclear power (for production systems) or sent to research facilities (a breakthrough *will* happen in solar at some point). If he wanted to do something flashy that does nothing but make some of his core believers that were starting to flag get warm fuzzies then he did quite well.
Were it me: spend it on research, get something that will work before you build it. Frankly it should be the greens that are angry over this because it is only a win for the power companies. They get to trumpet being environmentally friendly when pushed on their emissions and (assuming solar ends up the one winning the race) can point to a huge money loss as a reason not to go to it. But then for 90% of the "greens" that is more the case than not, ignorance coupled with the idea that they are Right and led by the very corporations they despise (for instance note that BP and the other evil corps are the ones pushing for cap and trade - it isn't going to hurt them, indeed it is going to massively increase their power and profits).
I suspect that Obama is fully aware of all of this but since it helps him with a group that he has been having trouble with (see the handling of the BP oil spill thing again - he couldn't be more in their pocket if they sewed him in there) and it isn't his money - have at it. So 2 billion as a *start* down the drain so he and one of the power companies can shore up their numbers a bit. But hey, there are Republicans to blame so lets not forget that - that's worth at least a few billion too!
No one is taxing gay people, they do not get a tax write off for being married, unmarried heterosexual couples or single people do not get it either. Now, we can argue (and I'll often agree) that tax breaks for marriage is stupid and wrong, but no one has a single person tax let alone a "gay" tax on the books. Indeed, due to the fact that they often share resources that I have to purchase for my self (and those resources not scale linearly with the amount of people using them) married people already enjoy the fact that by pooling their money each pays less to live than they would singly.
Further I do not think our govt ought to be in the business of marriage anyway. Make them do civil unions that have to deal distribution of your estate upon death, powers of attorney, and the other legal things. This is simply paperwork that is filed with the state. If someone wants married then let the non-govt entities deal with it, maybe a group of Atheist want to have a ceremony, a Catholic an elaborate service, or some nature religion go roll around in some leaves and fling dirt in the air - who cares?
But, of course, for most wanting to argue about it the question isn't really one of getting the same liberties as much as it is about control and any solution that doesn't address the need to stick it to the other side is vehemently opposed.
To some extent yes it is something that devs are going to care more about than the end user, but more or less they eventually find out by seeing something for another phone they want, ask why, and get the answer.
For instance, I coach Archery. For someone looking to be truly competitive they have to keep journals, while paper ones are good electronic ones are even better. They *could* (and often do) use a laptop to input the data from a worksheet they carry around with them on the range but that is cumbersome and really only the most dedicated enter it that many times. So, along came these wonderful devices called "palm pilots" and there were three or four great journal applications written for them - not only that but the touch screen (with a stylus then) was near perfect for entering a great deal of the information one collect. As time has gone on support for those devices has mostly gone away.
There has not really been a good contender to take the Pilots place either long term (I know there were successive palm devices with different names, but for the most part those are gone now too). The Blackberry and Windows Mobile platforms do not function well at this type of application so no one was wanting them or those systems, as such their closed/open nature was/is irrelevant. Now, an iPhone is back to being a near perfect device for this - but it isn't going to happen. The market is really small for it so the Apple app store has some serious issues. First is that people may spend a great deal of their time developing the app only to have it denied (and it would be a close thing too given how much they have to charge for the software and how few people would use it - it doesn't really fit their store guidelines), whiel that is a developer issue at its heart it is something quite visible to the end user in that the app is unavailable to them. Secondly is that cost for getting there is too high - many of them need the free distribution lines and the control they have by offering it for download on their site.
So, along comes the Android phone - near perfect again but this time they can write it and distribute it themselves. Two people had a beta program you could sign up for with them (free while under beta, discount when full version comes out). There were at least a good 20 or so requests for an iPhone version, after the store issues were explained all but a VERY small handful understood. I know of at least a handful of Android phones sold because of this too, while some just wanted a smartphone and the resultant apps some would have preferred to stay with Apple (a product you feel has a great interface and great hardware is useless if you can't do you needed tasks on it).
I know that story has been repeated for quite some time in a number of other message boards and blogs out there. I also know that, for instance, we sell a product for smartphones that an app store doesn't make sense for distribution - we are tied to a server the customer buys as part of the package and has to dedicate (depending on choices it runs from around 7500-10000 for the application/hardware). We sell to the first responder network in the US and mostly deal with Majors, Chiefs, and Sheriffs (not tech people) and the fast majority ask "Did you pick the Android phone because of Apples closed store?" (yes, Apple would not approve our model at all so you will *never* have it on your iPhone as we can't require a jailbroken phone and the support nightmares that would go along with that).
People just going out and looking for smartphones are going to be that clueless, some that use their phones for simple actions will too - but for a large portion of them they know what is going on. Even those that are mostly oblivious are quickly discovering small specialized applications they can't get on their iPhone and are being told why. In fact I rather suspect that given the hype of all the great things you are going to do with your iPhone and iPad people that were looking for a consumer device and then find all sorts of things t
My suggestion is that you rely on a land line phone then (were I that worried over it I would go with a vintage rotary phone too - no computer to futz with). All cell phones I know of can add or remove features without your permission. Some may choose not to do so, some may regularly do it, but they all do. Even worse an iPhone, Blackberry, or an Android are *not* phones, they are handheld computers that just so happen to have a cellular device attached to them. You LG flip phone that has no apps other than what is on the rom is fairly stable, your smart phone is a computer and has all the issues associated with a general purpose computer along with the access that the carriers have always wanted but could never demand before. Some are claiming an N900 can't have this happen but before I made that statement I would want some independent party to verify, not just the assumption it can't from what I have seen. The competition that the/. crowd is mostly looking at (the iPhone) is just as bad with respect to ability to do things but hasn't decided to do so (yet) - the Blackberrys fall into the same boat.
Pretty much every carrier out there has these abilities, they do so for a number of reasons (few of them are for your benefit though) and that isn't going to change. Indeed, even just the plain cell phone will generally have features they can remotely turn off and on. The iPhone (and IIRC the new 2.2 androids) can be remotely bricked (sold to us a security feature). I have not seen Google do anything that would particularly make them untrustworthy compared to everyone else - indeed I find them better than most (at least they are upfront about the things I do not like instead of lying to me or trying to convince me that raping me is a Good Thing). That is, of course, a kinda loaded statement as I have little trust for any one else - but since I have no choice but to play in that world they are as good as any of the better ones out there. I treat my phone access like any other non-secure communication - I assume anyone and everyone can see it. For secure access I assume most people can see it.
Plus as the GP says - if the SSL cert is broken then the ability to remote install apps on your phone is the least of our worries. Most phones can be bricked remotely not to mention all the secure sites that rely on x.509 certificates.
Yea, I agree - though in this particular case there *should* have been some clues to him. Mainly that he could often download a copy of the movie *before* it was in theaters and rarely had to wait till after one had been out a week. In fact he complains when they go a week and he can't get one - telling him that no one has gotten a screener and ripped it yet doesn't make sense to him either (again, he figures the movie companies are doing it).
As for his liability - I do not really know. I rather suspect he is going to be screwed. More often than not intent is only going to effect your punishment, not having much bearing on guilty or not in civil casses (but then IANAL) - it's just we have seen this in RIAA cases and that ended up the verdict. I'm not even sure he should think they *are* legit given that he watched Iron Man 2 a week before it was in theaters - there are things that happen that the law figures you should have *some* clue.
The bigger fear I would have is if/when the MPAA closes in (I think he is on one of the bigger ones) what is going to happen? Lets face it, these places really aren't fine upstanding companies to begin with.
If the place happens to be in a country where said thing is legal there they will most likely just hand over the information of who in the US is a member (they are, after all, following the law). He will then get a nice letter wanting him to settle out of court, if he refuses then he just hopes they don't pick him as one of the examples (good chance, but I would rather not take it). You are going to be better off in free places like TPB that are activists.
If it is, as is more likely, not legal but in a country where the govt doesn't care (China, Russia, etc) then I would figure some type of mass charging through the account would happen. They aren't - by the very definition of what is going on - an honest company. Once it is obvious the business model isn't going to work (being one of the larger ones he got to through reviews they can't cheat their users for an ongoing business) I suspect that "charge everything we can and disappear" will look awful nice. For most of those countries stealing large sums of money from the US is a feature, not a bug so expect it to end with dealing with the credit company (which may be easy, may not depending on how he payed).
Sadly it's too late too - in either case once he gave them concrete information on himself and his credit information the game is over. He might as well keep on going and hope for the best as he will at least get what he does over the next little bit. But then I'm not going to inform him either, all it will do is make him confused and then generally angry at me and it will not change the outcome of what is going to happen (good or bad).
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"In my experience people who bemoan others for 'preconceived notions' are most often the ones truly guilty of it."
Better watch out - that one results in a feedback loop.
A statement I always liked is "Just because you are paranoid doesn't meant they aren't out to get you." I do believe there were a great many on that thread that let the "Reality Distortion Field" overcome them - common sense would have (and should have) told one that if the Androids only had 20% return customers then they were going the way of the Kin and probably faster, not have the explosive growth they have had. It doesn't take a marketing genius to figure out that much dislike of the phone would have been all over the place instead of the growth it has had.
It will remain to be seen for a while how the whoe iPhone/Android thing will end up, but saying iPhones have a 77% repurchase rate and Android had 20% was *clearly* stupid.
No more or less than before - it only means that you are no longer in violation of the DMCA (which isn't even saying it is "legal" either, it just means that one law can't be used to say it is illegal).
Since as far as I know Apple wasn't suing anyone over it anyway then there isn't a change at all.
Time well tell. For myself I do not believe the study, first off the group publishing it doesn't have a good reputation (as pointed out a few times here these are the same people who did a study that found admin had many more crashes and service interruptions with Linux in a server environment than Windows) and secondly the numbers are simply too far off to work with actual sales. The Android platform would be hemorrhaging users if only 20% liked their phones enough to purchase another, that bad a reception would kill any Android phone immediately.
Nor is this the first time this sort of thing has happened - this type of "study" and the reactions to it are a large part of why the term "reality distortion field" was coined. Apple and many of their users believed that into a 5% market share and never understood why (still do not). Apple is better off facing reality than trying to distort it, reality eventually wins out.
Are you in it? Dunno, I have no reason to disbelieve what you say but my experience is totally the opposite. But then that is the trouble with anecdotal evidence, it will vary greatly by individual and their environment. I do tend to like to watch what devices people are using in airports (not just phones, nothing better to do either) and I have to note that in the last 6-8 months we went from overwhelmingly blackberries and iPhones to blackberries having a minor lead and iPhone beating Androids by a statistically insignificant amount. Sales figures seem to indicate that also.
Maybe as this article suggest Android phones are at their peak and they will go back to nothing with iPhones stomping them (and if Androids will only get a roughly 20% repurchase rate then not only will iPhone beat them but that isn't enough to even stay on the market). However my guess is that anyone that truly believes that is in a reality distortion field. But then time will tell, if true then in another year or so Androids will be mostly gone as the early adopters move to something else and the word gets out. Our believes about how true any of this will not make one iota of difference in how it ends up, if they did Apple and/or Linux would have drove Microsoft into the ground years ago.
That it the same process most use to make non-alcoholic "beer" - they just use the frozen part. That isn't beer either any more than using the liquid part of it is beer.
If that is truly what they use to do that I wouldn't drink it. Not only is the latter part of the wiki article correct (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_freezing) but you get all sorts of other compounds that contribute majorly to hangovers left in the concentrated alcoholic part.
It's OK and can even be tasty in some cases (but I would argue that the true distilled versions are better - hence why even things like applejack tend to be distilled now), but once you go to much higher than 80 proof you really start having problems with methanol and fusels which are *not* good things to drink.
There are a great deal of edge cases out there. You can also concentrate alcohol by supporting a smaller pot of the mash in a the middle of a larger pot. You then cover the both pots with plastic wrap so that as the alcohol evaporates out of the smaller pot it collects on the plastic wrap and condenses down into the bigger one. You can do this is want to ingest a great deal of methanol and fusels, run the risk of going blind or death, and at the least have a foul tasting concoction that will leave you with a raging hangover. You can, kinda sorta cut it down to where it is drinkable (as you can with freezing), but I wouldn't suggest it. Then again people have done it for many many years (though obviously with different materials than plastic wrap) so have at it if you want. Millions also do things like smoke two packs a day of cigarettes and live into their 80's and 90's and I wouldn't suggest that either.
I rather assumed they would use safe *and* tasty methods to produce this and didn't list any that were not that. There are a myriad other ways to concentrate alcohol and outside of those four main methods I listed they are either dangerous, taste like crap, or both.
I also realized for those counting I said "four basic ways" and listed only three - the "raise the alcohol level to kill them" should include both letting them produce enough alcohol to sterilize their environment or add (fortify) alcohol to the brew to raise it's content. So the third one really has two methods.
What is exactly beer will differe for regions - a few have "purity laws": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinheitsgebot
However that doesn't include things like wheat beers which are obviously still beer, however they all are basically fermented barely, hops, and water - wheat, rice, fruits, vegetables, and other flavoring can be added (and make no mistake with them - a "fruit" beer can be VERY heavy, bitter, and alcoholic. There is no reason why one can not make a right tasty raspberry imperial stout and many homebrewers do).
What the person you are asking is referring to is that beer are *fermented*, little living organism called "yeast" eat the sugers from the grains, fruits, or any others they can and turn it into alcohol (in a sense we are drinking their excrement). Since they are alive and it is a bilogical, not chemical, process these organism have tolerances for the environment they live in. As a brewer there are four basic ways you "stop" fermentation.. Commercial brewers usually ensure death of the little critters by pasteurizing the beer, few homebrewers have the equipment to do it (not to mention many of us hate the taste it imparts and would refuse even if we could). The more typical way is to have the yeast eat up all thier food and die out from starvation - if I put 3lbs of malts in a mash it will have a lower alcohol content than if I put 10lbs in there for that reason. The last, and least common way for beer makers is with a high enough alcohol content it kills them.
For the latter most yeast strains die at about 10% per weight (do not know by volume), there are wine yeasts that will go into the ~15% and I have an especially hardy strain go nearly to 18% but that was only once (and the mead tasted terrible too, they produce more than alcohol and they ate so much of the sugars/body of the mead it was ... bad, those "other" products generally do not taste good). For the most part anything above around 12% by weight is going to be hard to do and take either luck (or really unlucky for a brewer)or a great deal of skill with keeping them alive.
To go higher than that you need to distill the product or fortify it (which is adding distilled alcohols back into it to stop fermentation - port wines work that way). In which case it ceases to be beer and becomes something else. At 50% alcohol (most likely by volume) it is more akin to how you make many other spirits - you take a highly pure neutral alcohol and add some other liquid to get it to the proof you desire. Vodka would be cut with water, schnapps cut with a flavored sugar syrup, lemon-cello with a lemon zest extract and water, and then either sold as is (vodka) or aged in some process (wooden barrels for whiskey). In this case you would cut it with beer.
As such it is, most definitely, *not* beer anymore.
Very few phones do not work this way and as a number of Apple people say about the closed store geeks get worked up over - few real users are going to care (and in this case I think it is true, in the case of Apple regular people *are* aware of how closed the app store is and are starting to see apps for the Androids that they will never get because of it).
If you do not want them on your desktop simply press and hold the icon until it "locks" to your finger and drag it to the trash can. It will still be in your list of installed applications (and you will see it when you bring up your app screen) but other than a small amount of storage it doesn't take up anything. They could, of course, at some point force loading of it and have annoying op-up adds but then that *would* be noticed and cared about by pretty much everyone. Heck most do not care if they are eat up with them on the PC to the point their computer slows to a crawl. These applications do not start up in the background (though ones that are widgets will until you remove the widget) so it isn't like they affect anything other than seeing the icon in you full app listing.
Even in the link form the main article only a VERY small handful of people care more than a "I wish it were not so" (which would be my attitude) and currently all but one person realizes that they can't go someplace else to get away from it (the one posts solution - an iPhone - has applications one pretty much *must* use even if they do not want too, can we say iTunes for interfacing with my phone? Yea, there is where you go for an open extensible phone that doesn't force you into doing something in ways you do not want).
Of course this is what happens when an Open platform is picked up by business - freedom to do what you want with it means you can make choices others do not like. It isn't freedom if you tell me what I have to do with it. Android is Open and this is why you will see a range from mostly stock (Nexus One and Motorola Droid) to highly modified (Motorola Droid-X and much of the HTC offerings). Most of them can be rooted and your own custom ROM installed - but even most of those are "customized" with applications the ROM developer thought were good ideas. Not to mention the Droid-X has been rooted already, time will tell if they can get around the boot-loader issue or not.
If I could go back and tell our founding fathers just one thing I think it would be "the commerce clause sucks royally". It seems to me that the vast majority of the really bad Supreme Court decisions are based on it - it seems that one can rationalize it to allow the feds to regulate nearly *anything*.
Simply look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commerce_Clause, search for the "civil rights" header and read from there. They can regulate health clubs because the health bars they sell are manufactured in other states? Really? Does *anyone* in their right mind truly think this is what was intended? Or the one you quote - anyone out there really think that the framers of our constitution meant for federal govt to regulate what you can and can not make/grow at your house because if you do that then you will not purchase the item on the open market and that effects national supply and demand? That is simply *crazy* (I agree with the part of that decision that says the states can't legalize something the feds have the power to make illegal).
In the one you link I can somewhat understand Scalia's stance - that allowing states to have people grow restricted items undercuts the federal's ability to regulate something (which is true - it's why California did what it did). While I think that is borderline, allowing you to produce illicit drugs interferes with the feds ability to enforce is quite a bit different than saying growing it in your house lowers the price so the feds can regulate it - my main argument there is that falls under the sovereignty clause, not commerce.
But then I'm that wants the feds to only do what the constitution allows them to do, I prefer most power to be local anyway. There is too much difference both in terms of what people want and what people need from California to Tennessee that moving most regulatory power to a federal level just plain sucks. If you want to move into a hippie, free love, abortion on demand commune then have at it - if you want to move into a religious, gun toting, redneck village then have fun. I see no reason for either one to tell the other they are doing it wrong and try and force them into their lifestyle. But then I seem to be rare in that regards too - most want you to have the freedom to do exactly what they force you too. If we were simply arguing where to draw the line (and there is a great deal of argument there) then it would be one thing, but we are mainly arguing who gets to tell the rest of the people what to do.
"Whats next?"
We are Apple. Turn on your iPhone and surrender your freedom. We will add your financial and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service ours. Resistance is futile.
Those are two very different cases - I'm one that felt the "Free Kevin" idea was the mostly correct one but Childs was an idiot and deserved what he got.
The issue with Kevin Mitnick wasn't what he did - very few people would have argued that what he did wasn't illegal and deserved punishment, the argument was what I would consider civil rights violations. One was the amount of time from his arrest to his final trial (and his plea bargain) was *enormous*. The people in charge of his trial were either so incompetent as to warrant criminal charges against them or they were doing it intentionally (my guess is intentionally - part of the furor against him was personal feelings). Because of a severe lack of technical knowledge some people who would have fought and stopped his treatment let it happen (long term isolated confinement for one thing). The prosecution - successfully - argued that as a hacker he could get angry, hack into the military's computers, and start a nuclear war so he had to be isolated. Much of the case is like reading the insane BS that RIAA claims about damages. I do not think he would face the same situation today due to increased knowledge of that type of crimes - probably similar length terms but not solitary confinement and some of the other insane punishments.
I guess I didn't figure he should have been "freed" - the guy clearly was a as much a thief as someone who physically broke into your house - but the punishment was above beyond simply because he did it with a computer.
Childs, OTOH, was not given extraordinary punishment. There were technical people on the jury and today most people can fathom what happened well enough to make a decision. Again, it being a computer should have no difference and if you did something similar (refuse to give your ex-employer access to their property because you felt they would screw it up) you would have gotten a similar sentence. We can certainly argue if you should be able to withhold items from your ex-employer if you think they are too incompetent to use it (though my general bet is that outside of a number on here on Slashdot that isn't going to go far), but it wasn't controversial in the same way Mitnick was.
Mitnick truly highlighted people not being technically savvy enough, Childs (along with a few others such as Hans Reiser - even after his admission and taking the police to the body mroe than a small handful *still* thought he was innocent) mostly highlights how some people will rally around people they view as in their social circle more than anything. That is more a human nature issue - pretty much any highly specialized group you are in will most likely have a sizable contingent that tries to protect their own from things they would crucify another for.
"The really bizarre thing is I've had an iPhone 4 since day 1, I've seen the glitch and until I got a case it had been affecting my data connections, but I still really like this phone! Is Apple turning us all into battered wives?"
Not really. We all have numerous devices that have flaws, some even serious, that we continue to use and like. As long as that flaw isn't fatal it generally matters if the device does what we want in the way we want. Apple has a specific way of approaching interfaces with their devices. If you think in the way that their devices are intuitive then you like them a lot, if you do not think in that manner they are frustrating to use.
If you were turning into a battered wife then you would have convinced yourself that you actually like the glitches and they are the proper way to work. It's not hard to find people saying that, but what you wrote is noting the flaws and having a set of priorities that the flaws do not interfere enough with to make the device unusable.
I suppose this would be true if I were able to somehow pass my finger through the plastic/metal and somehow make an electrical contact with my phones antenna, but since I can't that particular theory is really stupid. You are going to loose signal strength the more the signal has to pass true - that is absolutely true - however other phones do not have antenna's detune by creating an electrical contact between them. So, yes all phones "suffer" from loss of strength due to holding the phone but the iPhone has a *second* (and much more severe) issue with shorting a gap between two of its antennas.
Jobs knows his market VERY well, give them enough somewhat technical sounding things and they will find a way to rationalize it away. It happens in many fields, I generally refer to it as a "Throw a dog a bone syndrome" - you can take a dog, beat it to near death, starve it most of the time, abuse it how you want but give it the occasional bone and it will bound about just as happy as all get out to see you. Jobs knows how to throw his market a bone and they respond accordingly.
It isn't a revolutionary change nor an evolutionary change - there is a reason other phone manufacturers do not do this and it isn't some conspiracy due to trying to hide signal drop. It is the simple fact it is horrible design as it causes a noticeable percentage of signal attenuation if held incorrectly. Apples own engineer told them, other engineers told them, heck people talked about it here on slashdot ever since it was announced it would work this way. Apple went ahead and it turns out that people who have been doing RF for decades may actually know what they were talking about. But then why should Apple change too? We can see all it took to make their customer base was a few minute long talk about how everyone else sucks and they are still the bestest most smartest people on the planet for having one.
Black & White was one of the more interesting games, though it failed in so may areas.
With respect to my pet, I never could get one that didn't eat the villagers from time to time. I could get a great deal of complex behavior learned - putting out fires, feeding and caring for them - but not eat them from time to time? No way. I would have a near pure pet and - zap eat a villager of mine. Not could I ever convince it to eat a rival god villager if it really had those cravings - it would only eat mine.
Further I found the games ideas of "good and bad" to be not what mine were - sometimes in the extreme. I often couldn't even defend myself if I wanted to stay good let alone smite those non-believers. It was quite frustrating to be held to what I felt was inconsistent ideals. My pet could eat all the villagers it wanted as long as I punished it but if I tried to safe the lives of thousands of them I became evil. The "good" gods on the other side had no issues whatsoever smiting me or doing things that were totally off limits to me, but if I ever did expect to be "evil" in moments. I finally took the game to heart and just was evil.
I guess I've always thought that was interesting in a number of ways - though personally I've always know that if I am going to get punished for doing something no matter what I will do it if I feel like it. I found it more amusing that the designers felt many things were "evil" yet couldn't figure out a way to not have then done on their end. I will say I have yet to find an AI construct I enjoyed as much as my pet in that game, I was often amazed at what I could teach it that was obviously *not* part of what the designers had intended. I really wish games had continued down that path.
I never played Fable - I read enough about how strong it relied on your political ideas to be "good or evil" and if you disagreed with the writers then you were screwed. Black and White suffered from the idea that they just didn't let you be, but gave an in game Moral idea to your actions, as I read Fable did even more. The really good open ended games just let you solve it as best as you can and didn't really give a "good/evil" rating, B&W and from what I read Fable was mostly about that rating. There are some things I will say are truly good or evil - I do think you run into true moral ideas - but they are few and far in between.
True, but they were never doing it out of any good will - they were doing it because it would save them money in the long term.
In the early 2000's IBM was adding a great deal of knowledge and code to numerous Open Source projects - I happened to be fairly heavily involved in a few of them (work, not play though). It was both obvious to us and, while not really something discussed, behind dealings with them that the same was believed there also. They were making a business decision that it was cheaper to help in the ways they were good at and let the Open Source communities do what they were good at.
Difference being that IBM wasn't looking to then close everything else up as much as Apple has done. Further it was an actual shift in corporate thought at IBM, it wasn't simply a case of taking advantage of something (though if they couldn't have taken advantage they wouldn't have done it), but a real move towards open standards in the HPC world.
Apple *never* changed on iota, they simply took advantage of their image in pure unadulterated corporate greed. They only contributed in places that they had to have work for them (and through the license was forced to release) and locked everything else down whilst saying how great they were.
Indeed your point 3 is arguable (many, including myself, think their desktop UI is worse) and four was only a marketing idea. One and two, while it could have been a first step towards openness was nothing more than taking advantage of the Open Source communities.
IBM gave up some *real* proprietary information that they didn't ahve too, especially in the Kernel arena. They paid people to do so and fully embraced the the OS/applications. Apple mainly fixed things and contributed as little new information as possible to have the core work for their OS.
I still wouldn't trust IBM very far - I wouldn't any entity that has its own bottom line as a higher priority than mine (and note that I hold my own priority higher than most others so I'm not saying that is bad - just do not be shocked when they do something to protect their bottom line and lets your fall) - yet they have been about as good as one can truly expect out of a company. Of course I haven't been involved in about 4 years now so things could very well have changed, but for at least a good 6 years they were consistent.
Apple didn't move away from it as they were not ever there. People wanted to believe they were good enough that they figured out how to rationalize it. People *still* want to believe it strongly enough that they can even rationalize what is currently happening as "good".
Become? No - they have *always* been this way. It is just that for the most part they were not in a position that most knew much about it or cared.
Most of their fan base has always been like the posts here defending Apple and calling them the Good Guys and that is what most of us have had contact with. It wasn't until the iPod that they truly had a market leader that people could interact with on a large scale. With it the restrictions weren't things you would want to do anyway - it played music and did so well and still does so, it isn't a general purpose computing platform. The iPhone has always had this attitude behind behind it, but again it was not really a general purpose computing platform for quite a while. It wasn't until we truly started looking at it as one that the flaws became so major. It wasn't until you had people outside of that core loyal customer base that you started seeing the Apple not shielded by them.
Nor have they been all that stellar in design too - lots of ergonomic and usage problems over the years. Know why we still make fun of the one button mouse? Because it sucked royally and Apple refused to change telling you to suck it up. Several of their macbooks over the years have had hard edges where many people rest their wrists and would quickly cause pain in use - they were told to just not let their wrists tough the edge and Apple happily continued the practice (it looked better than the rounded edges). They generally felt that the people who let their wrists rest on the edge of the laptop were in the minority so who cares? Same thing with both the antenna and prox sensor on the phones - they are a minority and they figure most will suck it up and still purchase/use the product. There are MANY more examples that have been done over the years. Nor are they the "inventors" of many of the things thier fan base says they are - they copied just as much as anyone else (see their failed attempt to sue Microsoft over the windows interface when they both ultimately stole from the same source - Xerox).
To be fair they are happy that way - if you do not see success as market dominance and are happy with 10% yet still make a decent profit who am I to tell you that you are doing it wrong? Long term Apple users are happy, Apple the company is happy, their investors are happy, and the people that are unhappy with that are not "loyal" customers anyway. If you d not really care what they think then it makes sense.
There is a reason the phrase "Jobs Reality Distortion Field" has been in use for so long, it is just that many people who thought it was a simple joke (or believed the Apple fanatics that it was jealousy of their clearly superior product) are learning why the term was coined to begin with.
I have not seen any Android fans of Verizon - who likes Verizon? It may be the least sucky one in the US for the most part - but be a fan of it? It seems that Verizon is replacing a number of times too, I'm not sure what I think their response should be too as it is an HTC issue, not Verizon. OTOH since a new phone purchase involves a two year contract that changes things (just as it does if you are one that is having issues with an iPhone 4 - if it was just a matter of returning it and getting a different one then things would be different).
Or do you mean Android fans? There are more carriers than Verizon with Android (unlike AT&T - which truly sucks as a carrier where I live), indeed all the carriers have one now. Even then this isn't an Android issue but an HTC Eris issue. Last I checked there are quite a few Android based that *aren't* Eris's and have not had this issue reported. In fact I would say that there are more *non-Eris* Android phones currently being sold (unlike if you want a new iPhone - better not be one of the ones that their natural way they hold the phone is "wrong").
I guess if you mean HTC Eris fans gloating then OK, I'll buy that you weren't that specific. However that's not remotely what you wrote.
So yea - payback to all five of you Eris owners that love Verizon - revenge is a dish best served sweet!
This is only an issue with a single phone. It may be software, then again it may not. It obviously isn't and Android issue as this model is the only one experiencing it. Of course, Android being Open Source HTC could have introduced their own bugs. It may make some iPhone owners feel better to think otherwise, but it is not an issue with Android (or at least one that hits other phones). But if you really want to gloat go ask people who purchased an iPhone that their natural way of holding the phone causes severe attenuation and/or the prox sensor to consistently think it is not held up to their face. Further find that Apples response is "hold it different". I do not think you will find a happy Apple customer there either - though I guess you can say "sure your wrist hurts, you fingers cramp, and you have to choose if you hear a call or randomly press buttons on the screen every time you use it - but dangit your phone is GREAT as you do not have to reboot every once in a while"
Not really seeing much difference here, other than I do not know what Apple was so wrapped up doing to not test sufficiently and for whatever reason Apple has a significant portion of their users that will excuse anything Apple does. In both cases a small segment of the market gets screwed and the corporate response is "suck it up". Both problems make the phone pretty much useless and both are caused by faults in the design of the phone (be it hardware or software). The only difference I see is that if I still want an Android phone there are other choices (not to say Motorola would treat me better either) and with Apple you are stuck.
Nor does a reboot indicate a "memory leak" - it just indicates an unrecoverable issue from the UI. It may be that a driver needs reloaded (overflows, hardware errors, etc), it could be that some variable wasn't bounds checked and reached an invalid state and some process needs killed/restarted, it could be any number of things - a memory leak is probably one of the *least* likely scenarios (especially given that it only affects a very specific portion of the phone). Since there isn't really any troubleshooting interface a reboot is typically what you try on phones. Same thing with any device - if you had the appropriate interface you may not need a reboot but lacking that there isn't much else you can do. Indeed, for most of my relatives that call me my first response is "reboot the machine" because 99% of the time it fixes it and I do not want to drive over to their house to figure out which process to start/stop. For the most part I get few calls anymore as the reboot fixes most things with no trouble shooting (I'll come over to their house for chronic issues or major ones).
"How many walk away because their product will not make a profit... based on how many in the past have failed, due to piracy? You have to have one before the other will happen. So, the question is: have any actually failed? If not, why would they walk away? "
No, the logic is "How many walk away because their product will not make a profit... based on market analysis, how much it costs to make, how many sales you need at what price to make a profit, and if that will occur?".
For instance, lets use something that is easier to explain. Lets say one works at a smallish company - 10-15 people. You have this great revolutionary idea, you are pretty sure whoever owns this market will make millions - what would you do?. If you produce it and try and sell it as soon as you start to go to market with it then you run a *really* high risk of a larger corporation simply throwing some resources at it and destroying you. You did all the R&D, spent the development time, spent the QA time, did all the costly grind to get it worked out and someone with larger pockets just made thier larger by taking what you did. Really, there isn't much of a way around that without some market protections.
I do no need to point to this happening to know it is a bad thing and *will* happen. Indeed, small inventors that couldn't get the manufacturing companies to purchase thier patents have seen them simply wait until it expires and then make their millions.
But then I suppose what is more being asked is the other way around - the large corporations getting screwed. That one is harder - one could easily point to the declining CD sales and increasing music piracy and say "see I told you so". But then maybe its the economy, maybe it is that music sucks, maybe it something that we do not know. I do not know how to *prove* that it was piracy that caused indeed - indeed even if I could prove that piracy was a factor there will still be many others. So again that is never going to happen.
These types of arguments make one look petty too - especially given that there is all sorts of *good* ways to talk about the problems. The aggressiveness of the RIAA/MPAA, the extraordinary fines on someone sharing 15 songs on a torrent client, how extreme long term stifles innovation just as much (and at the current term limits probably more) than having none hurts, all sorts of things. When someone starts setting bars so high that nothing can ever achieve it then people will generally (correctly) feel hoodwinked. The RIAA/MPAA's are doing that with their campaigns - obvious lies and burdens of proof that are meant to not be achievable. Frankly I think that has something to do with the declining sales too.
Finally it would also help if the community at large also offered solutions - for the first time we truly have an infinite supply of something and it *is* a real issue. Even in the world of OpenSource software it is tough for most companies to make it, often for that reason - if you are a music/movie provider you aren't even going to have the services to sell and the mostly volunteer staff to produce your content. Especially given that the few tangible things that one used to purchase disks for (cover art and a decent quality physical disk) are not much of an issue now. Home printers are more than fine for the cover art and quality storage is *cheap*. Without acknowledging that and working towards something that will address it we will mostly continue being nothing but full of sound and fury and nothing we want getting passed.
No, it has *nothing* to do with capitalism. There are socialist, communist, and any other economic system around that doesn't hold business owners responsible for what their employees do and there are capitalistic ones that do. Even in full command type economies there *has* to be some type of concentration of wealth or power - you at the least have the govt chairmanships that direct policy for the state run factories (and try and hold them responsible - I expect you will get BP execs held responsible, win the lottery, and discover an immortality potion before you get a govt agency to decide to hold itself responsible for its own actions). If you want economies of scale to kick in - and I assure you that you do - then the question isn't if something like BP will exist it is who has control of it. A little mom & pop isn't going to run an offshore deep water oil rig no matter what and industry of that scale exists in nearly every sector (a small local team isn't going to produce whatever the current generation of Intel chips is when someone reads this - or whatever company is currently on top of the world market).
What this is a failure of is a failure of our government. We have regulations in place that would have (maybe - can't truly see alternate time lines but this type of thing is *not* unknown and we can trace the chain of failures) prevented it from being a true disaster. They were ignored from every level you can point at and in many cases still are 70+ days later (not sure the current count) - nor can you pin it on any political group (more than just our two main ones involved too) or any specific president (Obama failed miserably on initial reaction and on his now long term response - Obama has made Bush with Katrina look highly competent).
The problem is that as we get to where in order to advance you have to have not just multi-billion but *multi-trillion* dollar budgets for some advances then there is just so much money/power floating around that it draws corruption to a point that I can't really come up with a good analogy. Given the corruption we have seen with our own regulators (with drugs and prostitutes) and the ineptitude of all levels of govt to respond to this what would a command market have done better? Indeed, the fact that this is hurting their stock and end user sales has done more to spur them than *anything* the govt has done or will ever do. They aren't going to bite the hand that feeds them and look to how whom they donate too, whom is in power, and whom gets elected correlates to see how buyable most politicians are.
While we can certainly point to fairly socialistic countries that do things Right - say the Dutch - it isn't because they are tending socialistic. Indeed, a stronger govt presence and control would have been *worse* in our case - as bad as BP has done our govt has done worse (and I say that is true for the last few decades too, and that is *all* branches of the govt). I can also point to China and the old Soviets for examples of more socialistic countries that are as bad or worse than us. It is more rot at our core and that rot stems more from our concentration of wealth. That concentration of wealth is not so much from being capitalistic as much as it from necessity. While the Dutch have chosen their niche to be world expert on even there they have a concentration of wealth that will most likely one day rot. For world super powers (while we do not list China as one today it is almost there) you are going to have several. The Dutch aren't going to have globally competitive space exploration, deep sea exploration, energy research, computing research, and pretty much globally competitive (say top five) in hundreds of fields. There are only a few countries with the wealth (and by that I mean raw resources) and they *all* suffer (or in the case of the old soviets used too) from the same thing.
In the end I personally think it is more that human nature is such that we will have trouble progressing past a certain point - or at least it is going to be a l
No to both questions.
Apple is having issues with a design flaw that only hits a small portion of its user base, but that user base is large enough for that to be a large number of people and the issues are major. Chances are you will never have an issue with the phone and will indeed see an improvement. However, if you are one of the "unlucky" ones (most people are have no issues) then you get lots of dropped calls. If you have sweaty palms and your natural position you hold the phone in shorts the antenna's then you see a great deal of attenuation. With respect to the sensor most people hold the phone in a "normal way" and thus having a sensor on the edge of "normal" works just fine, but be one of the ones that has a head shaped out of the ordinary and it is a nightmare using the phone. Basically when you make a design that works for 99% of the people and your customer base is a million people you will have 10,000 unhappy customers who are probably quite vocal. In this case you probably have less than 99% success and more than a million customers.
Think of it this way - if I ask people to only drink from the blue can because the green is poison what is the problem? Well, for most of us nothing - for those individuals that are blue-green color blind it makes a BIG differenece. For large scale commercial products these things are usually known and tested against (or at least workaround are devised). Since (according to Wikipedia) about 8% of males have some form of color blindness and .5% of females it isn't that many people - if you depend on your QA team to find those errors (instead of knowing about them and proactively designing around them and testing against them) then chances are you will miss some. However if you have several million customers there will be a fairly large complaints section but most people will be OK.
Of course I do not have the percentage affected by any of these issues Apple is having. Indeed I would be surprised if Apple had those numbers too (and if they did then a class action would generally include large amounts of punitive damage too). I will, however, say that Apple has dug its own grave here with respect to talking about how they know all this stuff better than everyone else. Further these changes are not revolutionary and there tends to have been reasons why they have not been used in other phones - for a company that prides itself in usability it is a VERY big mistake. Had they been revolutionary and these things found then sure - those things happen, but they are not.
The cynical person says they made a choice that the majority will not have these issues and they can "spin" them away (after all everyone I now would have no issue with a blue light meaning edible and a green light meaning poison - if you are having an issue it sounds personal to me, learn to tell the difference between colors), the non-cynical says Apple goofed and doesn't want to admit it yet.
Your right - but in this case it gets even worse then the person you are responding too. Solar Power isn't ready to be a centralized scaled up power source yet, they are taking a loan that the govt is going to back and hope that someday sometime it will make a profit and they can pay it back. It works fine for individual houses that are getting a "dual use" from the space (that is panels on top of their house) and can pull power off the grid when needed. As for pollution it is still arguable, it just isn't carbon and the cost is done at manufacturing and disposal so many do not see it. The waste chemicals are really nasty too - it doesn't do much good to lower carbon emissions if you sterilize large swatches of the Earth with other chemicals.
Ultimately they are assuming a loss for a few decades and the billions are meant to cover it and the power companies get to tout their "environmentalism". Given that it is currently most likely going to take a technological breakthrough (not just a small evolution) the chances of this being anything other than an even greater money sink is slim. As such add another 50-100% cost to the project and *then* divide by the number of jobs. That is assuming that when the technological change comes they decide to cut our losses (since the taxpayers covered it) and start anew instead of petitioning for *another* massive amount of money to retrofit their aging plant to the newer equipment (then add another 100% at least). That the number spent per job goes down assumes they make money and they aren't - they are going to bleed massive amounts of it for advertising all funded by the US Govt (otherwise known as taxpayers).
If they wanted to produce long term jobs efficiently that money would have been better spent in many other areas - it is really comical to see this touted as a "jobs project" - with millions unemployed you get a whopping 90 long term jobs for the money. If he wanted to further green power that money would have either been better off in Nuclear power (for production systems) or sent to research facilities (a breakthrough *will* happen in solar at some point). If he wanted to do something flashy that does nothing but make some of his core believers that were starting to flag get warm fuzzies then he did quite well.
Were it me: spend it on research, get something that will work before you build it. Frankly it should be the greens that are angry over this because it is only a win for the power companies. They get to trumpet being environmentally friendly when pushed on their emissions and (assuming solar ends up the one winning the race) can point to a huge money loss as a reason not to go to it. But then for 90% of the "greens" that is more the case than not, ignorance coupled with the idea that they are Right and led by the very corporations they despise (for instance note that BP and the other evil corps are the ones pushing for cap and trade - it isn't going to hurt them, indeed it is going to massively increase their power and profits).
I suspect that Obama is fully aware of all of this but since it helps him with a group that he has been having trouble with (see the handling of the BP oil spill thing again - he couldn't be more in their pocket if they sewed him in there) and it isn't his money - have at it. So 2 billion as a *start* down the drain so he and one of the power companies can shore up their numbers a bit. But hey, there are Republicans to blame so lets not forget that - that's worth at least a few billion too!
No one is taxing gay people, they do not get a tax write off for being married, unmarried heterosexual couples or single people do not get it either. Now, we can argue (and I'll often agree) that tax breaks for marriage is stupid and wrong, but no one has a single person tax let alone a "gay" tax on the books. Indeed, due to the fact that they often share resources that I have to purchase for my self (and those resources not scale linearly with the amount of people using them) married people already enjoy the fact that by pooling their money each pays less to live than they would singly.
Further I do not think our govt ought to be in the business of marriage anyway. Make them do civil unions that have to deal distribution of your estate upon death, powers of attorney, and the other legal things. This is simply paperwork that is filed with the state. If someone wants married then let the non-govt entities deal with it, maybe a group of Atheist want to have a ceremony, a Catholic an elaborate service, or some nature religion go roll around in some leaves and fling dirt in the air - who cares?
But, of course, for most wanting to argue about it the question isn't really one of getting the same liberties as much as it is about control and any solution that doesn't address the need to stick it to the other side is vehemently opposed.
To some extent yes it is something that devs are going to care more about than the end user, but more or less they eventually find out by seeing something for another phone they want, ask why, and get the answer.
For instance, I coach Archery. For someone looking to be truly competitive they have to keep journals, while paper ones are good electronic ones are even better. They *could* (and often do) use a laptop to input the data from a worksheet they carry around with them on the range but that is cumbersome and really only the most dedicated enter it that many times. So, along came these wonderful devices called "palm pilots" and there were three or four great journal applications written for them - not only that but the touch screen (with a stylus then) was near perfect for entering a great deal of the information one collect. As time has gone on support for those devices has mostly gone away.
There has not really been a good contender to take the Pilots place either long term (I know there were successive palm devices with different names, but for the most part those are gone now too). The Blackberry and Windows Mobile platforms do not function well at this type of application so no one was wanting them or those systems, as such their closed/open nature was/is irrelevant. Now, an iPhone is back to being a near perfect device for this - but it isn't going to happen. The market is really small for it so the Apple app store has some serious issues. First is that people may spend a great deal of their time developing the app only to have it denied (and it would be a close thing too given how much they have to charge for the software and how few people would use it - it doesn't really fit their store guidelines), whiel that is a developer issue at its heart it is something quite visible to the end user in that the app is unavailable to them. Secondly is that cost for getting there is too high - many of them need the free distribution lines and the control they have by offering it for download on their site.
So, along comes the Android phone - near perfect again but this time they can write it and distribute it themselves. Two people had a beta program you could sign up for with them (free while under beta, discount when full version comes out). There were at least a good 20 or so requests for an iPhone version, after the store issues were explained all but a VERY small handful understood. I know of at least a handful of Android phones sold because of this too, while some just wanted a smartphone and the resultant apps some would have preferred to stay with Apple (a product you feel has a great interface and great hardware is useless if you can't do you needed tasks on it).
I know that story has been repeated for quite some time in a number of other message boards and blogs out there. I also know that, for instance, we sell a product for smartphones that an app store doesn't make sense for distribution - we are tied to a server the customer buys as part of the package and has to dedicate (depending on choices it runs from around 7500-10000 for the application/hardware). We sell to the first responder network in the US and mostly deal with Majors, Chiefs, and Sheriffs (not tech people) and the fast majority ask "Did you pick the Android phone because of Apples closed store?" (yes, Apple would not approve our model at all so you will *never* have it on your iPhone as we can't require a jailbroken phone and the support nightmares that would go along with that).
People just going out and looking for smartphones are going to be that clueless, some that use their phones for simple actions will too - but for a large portion of them they know what is going on. Even those that are mostly oblivious are quickly discovering small specialized applications they can't get on their iPhone and are being told why. In fact I rather suspect that given the hype of all the great things you are going to do with your iPhone and iPad people that were looking for a consumer device and then find all sorts of things t
My suggestion is that you rely on a land line phone then (were I that worried over it I would go with a vintage rotary phone too - no computer to futz with). All cell phones I know of can add or remove features without your permission. Some may choose not to do so, some may regularly do it, but they all do. Even worse an iPhone, Blackberry, or an Android are *not* phones, they are handheld computers that just so happen to have a cellular device attached to them. You LG flip phone that has no apps other than what is on the rom is fairly stable, your smart phone is a computer and has all the issues associated with a general purpose computer along with the access that the carriers have always wanted but could never demand before. Some are claiming an N900 can't have this happen but before I made that statement I would want some independent party to verify, not just the assumption it can't from what I have seen. The competition that the /. crowd is mostly looking at (the iPhone) is just as bad with respect to ability to do things but hasn't decided to do so (yet) - the Blackberrys fall into the same boat.
Pretty much every carrier out there has these abilities, they do so for a number of reasons (few of them are for your benefit though) and that isn't going to change. Indeed, even just the plain cell phone will generally have features they can remotely turn off and on. The iPhone (and IIRC the new 2.2 androids) can be remotely bricked (sold to us a security feature). I have not seen Google do anything that would particularly make them untrustworthy compared to everyone else - indeed I find them better than most (at least they are upfront about the things I do not like instead of lying to me or trying to convince me that raping me is a Good Thing). That is, of course, a kinda loaded statement as I have little trust for any one else - but since I have no choice but to play in that world they are as good as any of the better ones out there. I treat my phone access like any other non-secure communication - I assume anyone and everyone can see it. For secure access I assume most people can see it.
Plus as the GP says - if the SSL cert is broken then the ability to remote install apps on your phone is the least of our worries. Most phones can be bricked remotely not to mention all the secure sites that rely on x.509 certificates.
Yea, I agree - though in this particular case there *should* have been some clues to him. Mainly that he could often download a copy of the movie *before* it was in theaters and rarely had to wait till after one had been out a week. In fact he complains when they go a week and he can't get one - telling him that no one has gotten a screener and ripped it yet doesn't make sense to him either (again, he figures the movie companies are doing it).
As for his liability - I do not really know. I rather suspect he is going to be screwed. More often than not intent is only going to effect your punishment, not having much bearing on guilty or not in civil casses (but then IANAL) - it's just we have seen this in RIAA cases and that ended up the verdict. I'm not even sure he should think they *are* legit given that he watched Iron Man 2 a week before it was in theaters - there are things that happen that the law figures you should have *some* clue.
The bigger fear I would have is if/when the MPAA closes in (I think he is on one of the bigger ones) what is going to happen? Lets face it, these places really aren't fine upstanding companies to begin with.
If the place happens to be in a country where said thing is legal there they will most likely just hand over the information of who in the US is a member (they are, after all, following the law). He will then get a nice letter wanting him to settle out of court, if he refuses then he just hopes they don't pick him as one of the examples (good chance, but I would rather not take it). You are going to be better off in free places like TPB that are activists.
If it is, as is more likely, not legal but in a country where the govt doesn't care (China, Russia, etc) then I would figure some type of mass charging through the account would happen. They aren't - by the very definition of what is going on - an honest company. Once it is obvious the business model isn't going to work (being one of the larger ones he got to through reviews they can't cheat their users for an ongoing business) I suspect that "charge everything we can and disappear" will look awful nice. For most of those countries stealing large sums of money from the US is a feature, not a bug so expect it to end with dealing with the credit company (which may be easy, may not depending on how he payed).
Sadly it's too late too - in either case once he gave them concrete information on himself and his credit information the game is over. He might as well keep on going and hope for the best as he will at least get what he does over the next little bit. But then I'm not going to inform him either, all it will do is make him confused and then generally angry at me and it will not change the outcome of what is going to happen (good or bad).