The first one that saw the phone maybe? The strengths of WP7 are pretty cut and dried. If it's repeated verbatim a lot then there must be something to it. Especially since I wrote that totally off the top of my head.
I thought I made it clear that I have no idea what exactly goes on right now. I just said that it's not a far-fetched notion. In my day I saw plenty of spiffs targeted toward specific models.
1. The responsiveness. The phone is silky smooth and makes the experience on Windows Mobile and Android (Pre-ICS as I haven't used it) look like a slideshow. 2. The live tiles. I have some complaints about how the tiles handle group contact alerts but I really appreciate their economy. Put the phone down for an hour and one glance at the start screen can give you 6 new data insights. For me it's normally: new work email, new personal email, new missed calls, new responses to Twitter or Facebook posts, new status updates from my family, upcoming calendar appointments. Also, the ability to deep link live tiles is great as well. 3. The animation. Some people probably hate this but I think the start screen animations are very cool. It gives a life to the screen that is very unique. 4. The messaging integration. It's very cool that you can send text, facebook, and MSN messages using the native messaging app. If the rumors about Google+ and Skype messaging being integrated soon are true then that would make it that much more indispensable. 5. The contextual people data. The idea that you can view individuals and groups along with their aggregated activities is nice. To use the same mechanism to filter down the social networking activities of my closest friends (statuses, pictures, etc) as well as group message them is slick and intuitive.
I could go on but I think those are most of the highlights.
According to this article posted elsewhere on this thread, messaging and camera are by far the most important aspects.
As for quality and quantity, fart apps on Android and iPhone are like text editors once were on SourceForge. There is a lot of padding in those app totals. All of the apps that I've ever cared to use are on Windows Phone, but like I said I'm probably in the lame demographic when it comes to app demand. Things like a synchronized calendar with Exchange, Google Apps, and Facebook are what float my boat and that is built in.
I bought mine from a Sprint store as well and had no problems either. The saleswoman actually spoke highly of the OS - which had only been out maybe 6 months at the time - and was very well-trained on its features. They weren't selling iPhones yet though...
I used to sell phones and special phone commissions, known as spiffs when I was selling, can indeed vary from phone to phone and carrier to carrier. The thing is you used to get a percentage of the retail price of the phone and you also got a special spiff that was independent of the price. So you could sell a $9.99 phone with a $290 subsidy and make $15 on the phone (assuming a 5% commission) and then get a $20 spiff on top of it. Sell 10 phones a day and you did pretty good. Sometimes the spiffs were linked to all phones for a specific carrier and sometimes specific models (though probably still paid by the carrier).
I have no idea what the rates are like now, but it is absolutely plausible that iPhones and Android phones could be more attractive to sales people than Windows Phones if there are specific model spiffs in play.
For what it's worth, I had Windows Mobile 5, 6, and 6.5 phones. The non-touch Blackberry-style phones (e.g Moto Q) were decent but the touch phones were a buggy unstable mess in no small part due to the crapware that came pre-installed on many though I'm sure the OS design was the primary culprit.
After being convinced to go to Android and an EVO 4g, I had a chance to use a WP7 phone in the store and was pleasantly surprised. You can't really understand how interesting WP7 is until it's in your hands. I have owned the WP7 Phone (HTC Arrive) since last April and the thing has locked up on me exactly once, and it recovered about about 20 seconds (disclaimer: I don't install a ton of apps on my phone). It is a completely different experience. Probably not everyone's cup of tea, but it is light years ahead of Windows Mobile and, in several ways that matter to me, ahead of Android and iOS.
I had a Moto Q (Sprint 9c I believe) for a couple of years and it was one of the most solid phones I've ever owned. Hardware and software wise. I'm not a big app guy I just wanted a good phone / address book / calendar with a hardware keyboard and the Q was that.
After that I went to an HTC Touch Pro 2 which was okay for a couple of months but quickly degraded to an unusable state forcing a reinitialization.
Now I use an HTC Arrive WP7 device and I absolutely adore it.
Since when did employers expect college grads to be "ready to go?" The skills they say they want are taught in college, but are pure speculation until applied in a meaningful way. Maybe that is a cry for more/better internship programs.
Absolutely diminishing returns kicks in at some point, and if these people comparing Obama to Hoover actually did any research, I would say that Hoover far surpassed that point. I just don't see going back to the lowest tax rates of the dot com boom being this gigantic production disincentive creating an Atlas Shrugged type situation is all.
The Fannie Mae CEO in the ad that McCain linked to Obama was not associated with Obama's campaign. They had like one conversation before Obama even started running. He was black though. And since James Johnson the (white) head of Obama's VP Vetting committee had closer ties to Fannie Mae, it made no sense for them to try to pursue this tenuous connection when there was a much closer one there. Some people saw this is racism, but Obama never said as much.
McCain's campaign has Fannie Mae's former head lobbyist (Aquiles Suarez) and many others with much more direct connections, so his charges against Obama are pretty lame and he's lucky that he didn't get called out more so be careful what you wish for.
I think that's pretty much irrelevant. The crossing party lines thing works for McCain because - according to the American people - the Republicans have dead ass wrong on almost everything. Crossing party lines is an asset when your party is seen negatively.
With that said Obama did get the non-proliferation bill passed with Senator Lugar and worked to pass a significant ethics bill - which is never popular with incumbents. I don't think that he is some sort of super legislator, but I think you're being simplistic in confining bi-partisanship solely to whether he crossed party lines on votes.
Also, I don't really think the way that those "liberal" vs. conservative ratings are made is all that trustworthy. I guess if you think that there could never ever be a good tax or regulation therefore a vote against one is "liberal." I'm as much for the free market as anyone, but I need a little more nuance before I can accept those ratings.
Both candidates - and all of the primary candidates - can be accused of that. I think the fact is that there are some things can can be conceded.
Campaign finance, oil drilling, and NASA are all relatively small potatoes compared to things like overall energy policy, tax policy, and strategic foreign policy. These larger things have lots of moving parts with varying levels of importance and, in order to get the big things done, there are going to be plenty of concessions - or panders in your parlance - on those small moving parts to grease the wheels.
I don't agree on public financing. Obama said that he would talk about the public funding issue with the Republican candidate to see if a deal could be worked out that would include 527 groups as he didn't want to commit to public funding and get "swift boated" by better funded groups outside of the system. You can argue that this was an unattainable goal as McCain can't control everybody (though apparently the Democratic 527s appear to be willing to follow Obama on this), but that was Obama's position.
More importantly, Obama's bigger position (and, incidentally, the justification for using the public financing system) has always been the idea of getting big money and influence out of politics. The public financing system was one way to do that, Obama's individual donor network just happens to be another - more lucrative - way that also doesn't put the American taxpayer on the hook.
So you can say that Obama could have more vigorously negotiated with McCain - who had an even worse flip flop on campaign finance that could still very well get him into legal trouble - but you can't say that his stance on public financing of campaigns has changed or that he acted in a way counter to his stated principle, and that would have been the questionable deed.
Which is the REAL question we need to ask - would they change their stance on --insert issue-- if they weren't running for President?
If they weren't running for office, I don't think we would care.
The thing is that when Obama hit the national stage back in 2004 he talked about one America and yadda yadda. Well compromising on drilling to get some of his goals accomplished is just the type of thing that happens in a less partisan America.
They aren't so much position changes as acknowledgments that you just aren't gonna get everything you want without giving something in return. Ultimately politicians answer to the people so I have no problem with position changes that put the people's wishes up front when reasonable.
But I still fail to even grasp what Obama's plan is? All I've heard is that he wants alternative energy, but no nuclear, no drilling and to inflate my tires.
It always amazes me to hear stuff like that. The Obama plan is not hard to find:
Slashdot Mirror
The first one that saw the phone maybe? The strengths of WP7 are pretty cut and dried. If it's repeated verbatim a lot then there must be something to it. Especially since I wrote that totally off the top of my head.
I thought I made it clear that I have no idea what exactly goes on right now. I just said that it's not a far-fetched notion. In my day I saw plenty of spiffs targeted toward specific models.
1. The responsiveness. The phone is silky smooth and makes the experience on Windows Mobile and Android (Pre-ICS as I haven't used it) look like a slideshow.
2. The live tiles. I have some complaints about how the tiles handle group contact alerts but I really appreciate their economy. Put the phone down for an hour and one glance at the start screen can give you 6 new data insights. For me it's normally: new work email, new personal email, new missed calls, new responses to Twitter or Facebook posts, new status updates from my family, upcoming calendar appointments. Also, the ability to deep link live tiles is great as well.
3. The animation. Some people probably hate this but I think the start screen animations are very cool. It gives a life to the screen that is very unique.
4. The messaging integration. It's very cool that you can send text, facebook, and MSN messages using the native messaging app. If the rumors about Google+ and Skype messaging being integrated soon are true then that would make it that much more indispensable.
5. The contextual people data. The idea that you can view individuals and groups along with their aggregated activities is nice. To use the same mechanism to filter down the social networking activities of my closest friends (statuses, pictures, etc) as well as group message them is slick and intuitive.
I could go on but I think those are most of the highlights.
Ahh my bad.
According to this article posted elsewhere on this thread, messaging and camera are by far the most important aspects.
As for quality and quantity, fart apps on Android and iPhone are like text editors once were on SourceForge. There is a lot of padding in those app totals. All of the apps that I've ever cared to use are on Windows Phone, but like I said I'm probably in the lame demographic when it comes to app demand. Things like a synchronized calendar with Exchange, Google Apps, and Facebook are what float my boat and that is built in.
This metric is a little faulty since there is much less need for a Facebook app on Windows Phone due to the OS integration.
I bought mine from a Sprint store as well and had no problems either. The saleswoman actually spoke highly of the OS - which had only been out maybe 6 months at the time - and was very well-trained on its features. They weren't selling iPhones yet though...
I used to sell phones and special phone commissions, known as spiffs when I was selling, can indeed vary from phone to phone and carrier to carrier. The thing is you used to get a percentage of the retail price of the phone and you also got a special spiff that was independent of the price. So you could sell a $9.99 phone with a $290 subsidy and make $15 on the phone (assuming a 5% commission) and then get a $20 spiff on top of it. Sell 10 phones a day and you did pretty good. Sometimes the spiffs were linked to all phones for a specific carrier and sometimes specific models (though probably still paid by the carrier).
I have no idea what the rates are like now, but it is absolutely plausible that iPhones and Android phones could be more attractive to sales people than Windows Phones if there are specific model spiffs in play.
For what it's worth, I had Windows Mobile 5, 6, and 6.5 phones. The non-touch Blackberry-style phones (e.g Moto Q) were decent but the touch phones were a buggy unstable mess in no small part due to the crapware that came pre-installed on many though I'm sure the OS design was the primary culprit.
After being convinced to go to Android and an EVO 4g, I had a chance to use a WP7 phone in the store and was pleasantly surprised. You can't really understand how interesting WP7 is until it's in your hands. I have owned the WP7 Phone (HTC Arrive) since last April and the thing has locked up on me exactly once, and it recovered about about 20 seconds (disclaimer: I don't install a ton of apps on my phone). It is a completely different experience. Probably not everyone's cup of tea, but it is light years ahead of Windows Mobile and, in several ways that matter to me, ahead of Android and iOS.
I had a Moto Q (Sprint 9c I believe) for a couple of years and it was one of the most solid phones I've ever owned. Hardware and software wise. I'm not a big app guy I just wanted a good phone / address book / calendar with a hardware keyboard and the Q was that.
After that I went to an HTC Touch Pro 2 which was okay for a couple of months but quickly degraded to an unusable state forcing a reinitialization.
Now I use an HTC Arrive WP7 device and I absolutely adore it.
Since when did employers expect college grads to be "ready to go?" The skills they say they want are taught in college, but are pure speculation until applied in a meaningful way. Maybe that is a cry for more/better internship programs.
The "newly-elected" Congress hasn't been seated yet.
You must have bet some real suckers as Obama made his FISA position clear well before he was elected. There was even a big thing on his website about it.
Kudos on your score!
Absolutely diminishing returns kicks in at some point, and if these people comparing Obama to Hoover actually did any research, I would say that Hoover far surpassed that point. I just don't see going back to the lowest tax rates of the dot com boom being this gigantic production disincentive creating an Atlas Shrugged type situation is all.
Okay, so:
I don't want to make 100 thousand more dollars because I'll only keep 61 thousand of it instead of 64 thousand of it.
or
I don't want to make 1000 more dollars because I'll only keep 610 dollars of it instead of 640 dollars of it.
Is that better? Help me out here.
Seriously, do you really think professionals or entrepreneurs make decisions to increase their income like that?
I don't want to make 100 thousand more dollars because I'll only keep 65 thousand of it.
Really?
Too bad Raines has nothing to do with Obama's campaign.
The Fannie Mae CEO in the ad that McCain linked to Obama was not associated with Obama's campaign. They had like one conversation before Obama even started running. He was black though. And since James Johnson the (white) head of Obama's VP Vetting committee had closer ties to Fannie Mae, it made no sense for them to try to pursue this tenuous connection when there was a much closer one there. Some people saw this is racism, but Obama never said as much.
McCain's campaign has Fannie Mae's former head lobbyist (Aquiles Suarez) and many others with much more direct connections, so his charges against Obama are pretty lame and he's lucky that he didn't get called out more so be careful what you wish for.
Perhaps the fact that the same person voiced both characters?
I think that's pretty much irrelevant. The crossing party lines thing works for McCain because - according to the American people - the Republicans have dead ass wrong on almost everything. Crossing party lines is an asset when your party is seen negatively.
With that said Obama did get the non-proliferation bill passed with Senator Lugar and worked to pass a significant ethics bill - which is never popular with incumbents. I don't think that he is some sort of super legislator, but I think you're being simplistic in confining bi-partisanship solely to whether he crossed party lines on votes.
Also, I don't really think the way that those "liberal" vs. conservative ratings are made is all that trustworthy. I guess if you think that there could never ever be a good tax or regulation therefore a vote against one is "liberal." I'm as much for the free market as anyone, but I need a little more nuance before I can accept those ratings.
Both candidates - and all of the primary candidates - can be accused of that. I think the fact is that there are some things can can be conceded.
Campaign finance, oil drilling, and NASA are all relatively small potatoes compared to things like overall energy policy, tax policy, and strategic foreign policy. These larger things have lots of moving parts with varying levels of importance and, in order to get the big things done, there are going to be plenty of concessions - or panders in your parlance - on those small moving parts to grease the wheels.
That's just how it works.
I don't agree on public financing. Obama said that he would talk about the public funding issue with the Republican candidate to see if a deal could be worked out that would include 527 groups as he didn't want to commit to public funding and get "swift boated" by better funded groups outside of the system. You can argue that this was an unattainable goal as McCain can't control everybody (though apparently the Democratic 527s appear to be willing to follow Obama on this), but that was Obama's position.
More importantly, Obama's bigger position (and, incidentally, the justification for using the public financing system) has always been the idea of getting big money and influence out of politics. The public financing system was one way to do that, Obama's individual donor network just happens to be another - more lucrative - way that also doesn't put the American taxpayer on the hook.
So you can say that Obama could have more vigorously negotiated with McCain - who had an even worse flip flop on campaign finance that could still very well get him into legal trouble - but you can't say that his stance on public financing of campaigns has changed or that he acted in a way counter to his stated principle, and that would have been the questionable deed.
If they weren't running for office, I don't think we would care.
The thing is that when Obama hit the national stage back in 2004 he talked about one America and yadda yadda. Well compromising on drilling to get some of his goals accomplished is just the type of thing that happens in a less partisan America.
They aren't so much position changes as acknowledgments that you just aren't gonna get everything you want without giving something in return. Ultimately politicians answer to the people so I have no problem with position changes that put the people's wishes up front when reasonable.
Yet you still managed to finish.
It always amazes me to hear stuff like that. The Obama plan is not hard to find:
http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/factsheet_energy_speech_080308.pdf