Hmm, I still think that Apple just does good old business: Pay money, get product. Google is more like give your land and blood, get shiny digital glass beads, no money needed. I know what I can deal better with. In this case I can deal with it by just not buying an iPhone or giving it back if I already had one.
Once you have all your data in the Google cloud though, it's very hard to get it back should you suddenly realize that Google isn't that cool and you don't like to have your digital life tracked and interconnected and saved in the Brave New World databases.
It's not that there is RF energy going somewhere else, it's the antenna getting detuned if you bridge the gap between the 3G antenna and the WiFi antenna by pressing a nicely wetted and salty hand over it.
I certainly think that this antenna design has its flaws. It also has it good points (very good reception when you don't bridge that gap, nicely integrated frame, sleek profile) though.
First of all, 20% have the ability to access private data on Android. Now, 20% is less than 100%, which is what you effectively get on other smartphone platforms. On the iPhone, effectively 100% of apps have access to your private data.
I think you'd surprised to find that to most private data NO apps have ANY access on the iPhone... They're mostly limited to their own data and to the net and there are only very few APIs to access anything else. Android may be cautios and transparent, but iOS is paranoid.
In the long run I very much doubt that the "flagging and informing" of Android helps here. It's good for shifting the responsibility over to the user ("You clicked OK after all, you dumb fuck!"), nothing more. The difference between Google and Apple is that Google thinks this is enough and Apple doesn't. I have not made up my mind yet about who's right. But I know one thing: Half of the population is beyond average intelligence.
I think more than Apple, most are scared about what it means that so many people DO like the iPod and so many people DO like the iPhone and iPad despite what they see as their obvious and numerous flaws. People get morally indignant! It's almost like there's a degree of cognitive dissonance going on...
On the other hand, maybe there is also some dissolving of cognitive dissonance going on... Many people love to toy around with computers and a long while this was considered cool and fresh and new. But more and more this is becoming very stale and boring. Everyone and his dog does it and, frankly, there is nothing cool about it anymore. In the best case it's work. There are people who find that just scaling back their involvement with computers and instead just using them frees much time to do other things. Maybe things that are more interesting and fresh and new. And once you start to do that you may find that many flaws of the iPhone and the iPad are not flaws at all because you just don't need to do these things at all anymore.
It's very much like a computer game: Sooner or later you've just played it through and while you may have fond memories and play it again now and then, it's just plain over. The good old PC with all its freedoms and requirements and time-eating habits is also something you can be done with. This does not mean you won't use it anymore but the fun may be out of it. Computers are *everywhere* today anyway, so why waste your precious time on them if you don't have to? Geekyness is not limited to computers in any case.
...this new OS would need to be much more than the current iOS. You'd need to be able to *develop* iOS apps on it, for starters.
Anyway, everybody who thinks that the future will just an extrapolation of the past should think again. Computers *will* change drastically. The traditional PC will sooner or later just be some office machine or developer machine, with most actual users on things that are more like appliances. There is no way around that and the time is ripe for that. Smartphones and tablets will be the "personal computers" very soon.
Stop clinging to the past. Since when have geeks been so conservative? Apple has dragged a whole industry into the future screaming and kicking and even Google is just breathlessly running after it. There is no need to follow Apple but it's pretty much clear that just sitting on your ass and pretending that things are good as they are is of no use.
For tablets: I don't want a locked-down tablet like the iPad. There are some sucky Android tablets out now, yes, but inevitably there will be some very good ones. And even if they aren't as pretty and slick as the iPad, they will be _better_ than the iPad because, whichever one I choose, it will be my device to do whatever I want with.
Yes, but the price for that is that now Google does what it wants with all your data you happily give to them with Android. At least Apple wants just my money and offers good products for it. Google offers you shiny glass beads if you give your digital soul away. What a deal.
I don't know if the iPad and Apple is a problem but Android and Google is not the solution to it.
Forrester projected that the $150 price point would jump start e-reader sales.
And I predict a $49.99 will make them take off like a rocket!
Now if only there was a price war with content.
I think subtracting the printing and distribution costs of a printed version from a dead tree version of a book would be a fair price for econtent - the publisher makes their money, the author gets the same royalty, and the consumer doesn't feel like their over-paying for content.
Example: $50 paper book - $20 for royalties, advertising, general administrative costs, publisher profit = $30 for printing, paper, trucking of the dead trees. Sell the book for $20 + retailer markup = $28.
I can live with that for the same content. Now if they'd allow for that content to be transferred easily..... yeah, dream on. I guess if someone want's to borrow a book on the eReader, you would have to lend them the entire reader. That sucks!
The manufacturing and distribution costs of a paperback book are not much more than half a dollar today. Printed paper is nearly cheap as dirt meanwhile and trucking goods around is also not exactly expensive (you couldn't afford even bottled water if it were otherwise). And digital distribution is not free.
I agree that Ebooks are much less worth to the buyer but they're not that much cheaper to make. If written text in digital form would be worth much all bloggers would be rich.
I have an 8GB iPod Touch that's under a year old and I get maybe two hours of continuous use browsing the web indoors (where the backlight doesn't have to be full blast to be somewhat readable) and I get a couple hours of usage tops.
You should run the battery completely down (wait until the thing shuts down, start it up again, rinse, repeat) at least once a month. If you don't do this the power management has no idea about the charge the battery can actually hold and will shut down much too early.
Either that or your battery is junk. I have an 8GB iPod touch (first generation) that is nearly three years old now and still runs about 4 hours or more. I use it every day and I've read about 300 books on it now.
Until they drop Ebook prices, they can pound sand...... For those prices, Kindle/Nook should be free
While I totally share the view that Ebooks are much less worth to the buyer (me) than "real" books, they're hardly cheaper to produce than paper books. Mass-production and distribution of paper books is *really* cheap these days and digital production and distribution isn't free either. This is an ugly and somehow absurd situation. But it's totally equivalent to the situation for authors: Most would make more money by flipping burgers instead of writing their books. Books are not an easy business.
Most books are a net loss for both authors and publishers and the very few which make money make lots of money and have to pay for many others which earn them nothing at all.
If you expect Ebooks to drop to a fraction of the price of paper books don't hold your breath. To make this possible you would have to cut out all the work that actually makes some text into a book; with most manuscripts (even good ones) this would mean you'd put out just crap that nobody wants to read. And that nobody knows about. Yes, there are exceptions but exceptions do not make markets. A book is a product and the author is only one part in the process.
Go and read self-published books if you don't believe me. You can only rarely make a good book by just writing it. Most of the work going into a book is exactly the same regardless of the format.
This does not mean that you couldn't make this more efficient. But books done the same way won't be cheaper just because you deliver bytes instead of printed paper.
Because Apple isn't responsible for the salaries of Foxconn employees?
Apple IS responsible, because they know the workers' conditions, and still accept to make business with their direct employers. Those workers work FOR Apple, it doesn't matter how long the control chain between Apple and them is.
Interestingly, among all the companies using that factory (Dell, HP, Nokia,...) Apple is the only one that has insisted in reviews and reports about the conditions even before this suicide row.
And please don't stop there. 99% of the other chinese crap (not limited to electronics) you buy has been manufactured under conditions that are probably much, much worse than those at Foxconn.
Apple has become a scapegoat of certain people and I totally hate that. Not because I love Apple so much, but because it lets others get away who are often much worse.
You're right, but this still leads us to the same conclusion - since this is how it works for every ARM processor (none of them are "off-the-shelf"), there's still nothing special about the A4, and we don't get news stories about every other ARM processor manufacturer.
Like... because all people are different they're actually all the same and there is no need to get stories about what certain people have done?
"News for nerds"? I certainly am interested in details about the A4. Apple is good in certain things (or rather prioritizes certain things) and I would surely like to learn more about the power-management in that chip. Or about DRM-support in hardware.
Yeah, but with more and more "personal" computing happening in "the cloud" people will hardly know that their data is *not* (only) on their device.
Once again, you are personally responsible for what personal info you put out there. I don't use "the cloud".
This is very clever of you. But suppose millions of people do? Should everyone know where every bit of data on every device goes before he uses it?
Anyway. So you're saying people should not use Android? Or Bing or assisted GPS? Because, whenever you use AGPS (very convenient that) you "put your location out there". You're saying people should know that and shouldn't use AGPS then? Good luck with that.
The thing is that you don't "put info out there". That info is taken from you and you're seduced by some "free" and convenient services to let that happen and to not think about it. You're selling your digital blood and soul for shiny glass beads. Well, maybe you don't. Sorry.
All of this is too new and right now nearly totally unregulated. Companies like Google can almost collect what they want and within their datacenters do what they want with that data. Because they pretend it's not yours anymore at that point. It's theirs.
Yeah, but with more and more "personal" computing happening in "the cloud" people will hardly know that their data is *not* (only) on their device. I mean, putting something up at facebook is one thing but using all the fine and free Google apps on your Android phone is different, isn't it?
No, it isn't. A whole fucking lot of your personal data ends up on Google's servers, mail, calendar, chats, navigation data, voice profile, ad-tracking, search terms, whatever. It's not only things you put up for others, just using your funky new cellphone as intended does that for you.
Google isn't the only one but it surely is the one with the most extensive data collections in several dimensions of more and more people. It knows where you have been, where you navigated to, whom you mailed, what you said. This *is* different from someone putting up some stupid things on Facebook.
WP has long been the way to go if you just want to have a site with a few pages and something like a news page. It's very much like a blog turned on its head then but, hey. Much easier and quicker to handle and to maintain than hand-crafted HTML or a full-blown CMS. It's also easy to extend and to modify.
WP has a bad reputation but for many things it sits just in the right place between being a hack and an organized system.
If they're just a grocer, will they let me buy my groceries from someone else?
Oh, not, they won't let me do that.
A grocer wouldn't let you do that too, if he could. You can tell him "f*ck you" and go to someone else. In the case of Apple you can either go through the web (no need to say anything) or jailbreak and use Cydia. There's an entire market for free and commercial stuff out there, totally uncontrolled by Apple.
Since when freedom means to be allowed to do something by someone you point at? Being able to do it usually is enough. I'm really sick of all these whiners insisting in having their freedom served to them luke-warm and pre-cut on a silver plate.
They need to pay particular attention to privacy concerns if the phone were to have any gathered physiological data or even self described symptoms - I wouldn’t want that information hacked or even disseminated under the best of intentions....
“Look – he’s having a heart attack or early onset diabetes – let’s cancel his healthcare [insurers] or blackmail him [hackers]”
I think if Google would look at all health-related search terms they'd have a good base for that even now... and maybe they already do.
This is why I bought an android. Every time I see a story like this it just makes me feel better about my choice
Nice that you feel better now that Google knows about all your searches (Google Search), tracks the ads you view (via AdMob), has all your email and contacts (Google Mail), knows which RSS-feeds you read (Google Reader), knows which maps you look at and where you drive (Google Maps), has your voice profile (Google Voice), your chat content (Google Chat), your documents (Google Docs) and your calendar (Google Calender). Why don't you configure your device to use Google DNS, too?
OK, maybe you opted out of all this and use just the naked OS with third-party apps, but the fact remains that Apple is just after your money. Google is after your personal data and they give you Android and all those Google apps for free only to get at this data. They don't mind what you do and read and where you go as long as they can stare at you while you're doing it.
Really, if you care about freedom and privay, going from Apple to Google is like jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire. I'm always totally surprised when I see people bashing Apple (which they deserve now and then) and praise Google/Android.
Every restriction Apple puts on their devices becomes another benefit that non-Apple devices have. Sure, it's hard to switch away from the polish of Apple but the benefits of doing so seem to be growing daily.
Maybe, but going to Google instead is like hitch-hiking with a vampire to avoid paying for a cab.
Some already calls them private data leeching vampires.
Generally just people who have an entirely different grudge with google, usually something along the lines of sour grapes that google doesn't let them unfairly twist the search/ad results in their favor.
Come on! With Android, Google has become a giant spider sucking at your digital life. Have you ever thought of the fact that most people using Android give Google their email, their contacts, their RSS-feeds, their calendars, their location, their chat content, the places they navigate to and now even their voice profiles? And of course their search terms and ad tracking data. All of this in the hands of *one* company. This is outright creepy.
This is not funny anymore. If Apple or MS or anyone else would dare to pull all that data of millions and millions of users to themselves, there would be an outcry. Google has somehow managed to slowly expand their grip with popular services and Android has still the bonus of being viewed as "free" (although all Google apps aren't free and without them and the Google "cloud" Android is a joke) and at least not being Apple. But it is a cold, hard fact that Android with Google apps and services is the worst privacy nightmare ever. Google inhales all your personal data day and night.
Hate Apple if you want to, but don't hail Google. Google is a friendly looking vampire making soothing noises while sucking your digital blood.
Apple just wants my money and to sell me things. I can deal with that.
Uh, no. Google is crying "Foul!" because Apple is banning developers from using Google's ad platform in their apps. Conveniently, right at the same time as they introduce their own: iAd. Yes, ads suck and it's weird defending an advertising platform, but this is Google: the company that made ads useful and unoffensive (and just that slight bit creepy).
Apple are truly becoming the kings of rent-seeking and platform lock-in. It's far worse than anything Microsoft ever did.
But Google is even worse. It's not a hard lock-in, but with Android most people readily give nearly all their digital data traces to Google, from their email up to their voice profiles.
Apple just wants a bit of your old-fashioned money. Google wants your digital soul, and all of it. History is repeating itself but it looks different on every new level. The new Microsoft is not Apple, it's Google.
You can't reasonably run ads without analytics. The entire ad industry depends upon analytics.
And this is mostly Google now. AdMob was the largest of them all and now that Google bought them...
The main reason I don't like Android is Google: With it Google gets your email, your contacts, your searches, your calendar, your location, the maps you look at, the places you navigate to, the RSS-feeds you read, your voice profile and of course they track you via ads. Probably even more things I forgot right now. This is creepy. This is much too much data to give to *one* company that can easily connect all the dots and knows more about you than yourself then. Evil or not evil, this is too much.
I'm totally surprised that people are being that ignorant of the fact that Google is inserting its tentacles in every orifice of your digital existence while whispering "It won't hurt... no, it will feel good and it's totally free" and people are crying for more. Right, you just have to give them your digital soul and your digital blood, nothing more.
Apple is with no doubt just protecting its assets with this, but it's their right and Apple users should be happy about it anyway. This new war between Apple and Google is a most effective firewall between them: Apple won't share your data with Google and Google won't share theirs with Apple.
The "cloud" means you have to give more and more of your personal data to some company; giving different data dimensions to different companies being at war with each other is the least you can do.
In case you haven't followed that drama you should do that now. Keeping that bird in control, managing it to do some science and finally getting it back was seriously heroic by JAXA. This was easily the most problem-ridden probe ever making it back (well, almost now). I hope the last leg of that epic journey will go well.
I certainly totally hate it when some useful app vanishes or new rules pop up out of nothing, but on the other hand I can somehow understand that Apple has to make the rules as it goes along. I mean, if they'd put up clear rules and would stick to these, developers would instantly start to find loopholes and to work around them, naturally. And for Apple the iPhone/iPad platform is what they bet their future on. And this platform is still at a very early stage. They do not want to be the dog with which the tail waggles.
Apple (and the Mac and OS X) has more than once suffered from others having too much control over things. Like Adobe with taking ages to port their apps to Intel Macs because they did not use XCode in the first place. Imagine Apple allowing Flash and any kind of programming language and compilers and middleware and then, 4 or 6 years on, they try to go to a totally different hardware platform (which *will* happen sooner or later, be assured). Suddenly they'd have a large amount of apps they couldn't offer any migration tools for then and be at the whim of some third party (or worse, hundreds of them). Look at Microsoft -- Windows and all its apps are married to Intel and the flood of ARM platforms for tablets is totally out of bounds for MS here. There is absolutely no way to port Windows and all applications to another platform. Trapped.
For Google, Android itself and its apps is still a minor thing. Google does not sell systems. As long as they get your data and your eyes, they can allow Android apps to go whereever they go. They don't actually care.
Really, I'm somewhat happy that there's more than one way. All of this is a large experiment and attacking the problems from more than one angle is good. Freedom is not when everyone does the same.
If you compare the Falcon 9 to other rockets you can't fail to see that this thing is quire cleverly designed in a very straight way.
It has only two stages and uses Kerosine/LOX in both stages. Kerosine is much denser than LH and makes for smaller tanks and easier handling. Both stages are essentially identical, with the second stage much shorter but using the same diametre tanks and domes and the same tools for fabrication. Both stages use the very same engines, too. 9 on the first stage, one in the second stage. This allows them to be build assembly-line style, much cheaper than to build several differently sized engines in small numbers.
The Falcon 9 Heavy will add to this two boosters consisting of just two first stages strapped to the center one. This thing will still use the same tools and the same tanks and domes and engines (28 of them) for all stages and for the boosters. Compare this to other similar launchers which often use two (or even three) different engines and tanks for their stages plus solid boosters, all expensively build in small numbers.
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Hmm, I still think that Apple just does good old business: Pay money, get product. Google is more like give your land and blood, get shiny digital glass beads, no money needed. I know what I can deal better with. In this case I can deal with it by just not buying an iPhone or giving it back if I already had one.
Once you have all your data in the Google cloud though, it's very hard to get it back should you suddenly realize that Google isn't that cool and you don't like to have your digital life tracked and interconnected and saved in the Brave New World databases.
It's not that there is RF energy going somewhere else, it's the antenna getting detuned if you bridge the gap between the 3G antenna and the WiFi antenna by pressing a nicely wetted and salty hand over it.
I certainly think that this antenna design has its flaws. It also has it good points (very good reception when you don't bridge that gap, nicely integrated frame, sleek profile) though.
I think you'd surprised to find that to most private data NO apps have ANY access on the iPhone... They're mostly limited to their own data and to the net and there are only very few APIs to access anything else. Android may be cautios and transparent, but iOS is paranoid.
In the long run I very much doubt that the "flagging and informing" of Android helps here. It's good for shifting the responsibility over to the user ("You clicked OK after all, you dumb fuck!"), nothing more. The difference between Google and Apple is that Google thinks this is enough and Apple doesn't. I have not made up my mind yet about who's right. But I know one thing: Half of the population is beyond average intelligence.
On the other hand, maybe there is also some dissolving of cognitive dissonance going on... Many people love to toy around with computers and a long while this was considered cool and fresh and new. But more and more this is becoming very stale and boring. Everyone and his dog does it and, frankly, there is nothing cool about it anymore. In the best case it's work. There are people who find that just scaling back their involvement with computers and instead just using them frees much time to do other things. Maybe things that are more interesting and fresh and new. And once you start to do that you may find that many flaws of the iPhone and the iPad are not flaws at all because you just don't need to do these things at all anymore.
It's very much like a computer game: Sooner or later you've just played it through and while you may have fond memories and play it again now and then, it's just plain over. The good old PC with all its freedoms and requirements and time-eating habits is also something you can be done with. This does not mean you won't use it anymore but the fun may be out of it. Computers are *everywhere* today anyway, so why waste your precious time on them if you don't have to? Geekyness is not limited to computers in any case.
...this new OS would need to be much more than the current iOS. You'd need to be able to *develop* iOS apps on it, for starters.
Anyway, everybody who thinks that the future will just an extrapolation of the past should think again. Computers *will* change drastically. The traditional PC will sooner or later just be some office machine or developer machine, with most actual users on things that are more like appliances. There is no way around that and the time is ripe for that. Smartphones and tablets will be the "personal computers" very soon.
Stop clinging to the past. Since when have geeks been so conservative? Apple has dragged a whole industry into the future screaming and kicking and even Google is just breathlessly running after it. There is no need to follow Apple but it's pretty much clear that just sitting on your ass and pretending that things are good as they are is of no use.
Yes, but the price for that is that now Google does what it wants with all your data you happily give to them with Android. At least Apple wants just my money and offers good products for it. Google offers you shiny glass beads if you give your digital soul away. What a deal.
I don't know if the iPad and Apple is a problem but Android and Google is not the solution to it.
Forrester projected that the $150 price point would jump start e-reader sales.
And I predict a $49.99 will make them take off like a rocket!
Now if only there was a price war with content.
I think subtracting the printing and distribution costs of a printed version from a dead tree version of a book would be a fair price for econtent - the publisher makes their money, the author gets the same royalty, and the consumer doesn't feel like their over-paying for content.
Example: $50 paper book - $20 for royalties, advertising, general administrative costs, publisher profit = $30 for printing, paper, trucking of the dead trees. Sell the book for $20 + retailer markup = $28.
I can live with that for the same content. Now if they'd allow for that content to be transferred easily ..... yeah, dream on. I guess if someone want's to borrow a book on the eReader, you would have to lend them the entire reader. That sucks!
The manufacturing and distribution costs of a paperback book are not much more than half a dollar today. Printed paper is nearly cheap as dirt meanwhile and trucking goods around is also not exactly expensive (you couldn't afford even bottled water if it were otherwise). And digital distribution is not free.
I agree that Ebooks are much less worth to the buyer but they're not that much cheaper to make. If written text in digital form would be worth much all bloggers would be rich.
I have an 8GB iPod Touch that's under a year old and I get maybe two hours of continuous use browsing the web indoors (where the backlight doesn't have to be full blast to be somewhat readable) and I get a couple hours of usage tops.
You should run the battery completely down (wait until the thing shuts down, start it up again, rinse, repeat) at least once a month. If you don't do this the power management has no idea about the charge the battery can actually hold and will shut down much too early.
Either that or your battery is junk. I have an 8GB iPod touch (first generation) that is nearly three years old now and still runs about 4 hours or more. I use it every day and I've read about 300 books on it now.
Until they drop Ebook prices, they can pound sand...... For those prices, Kindle/Nook should be free
While I totally share the view that Ebooks are much less worth to the buyer (me) than "real" books, they're hardly cheaper to produce than paper books. Mass-production and distribution of paper books is *really* cheap these days and digital production and distribution isn't free either. This is an ugly and somehow absurd situation. But it's totally equivalent to the situation for authors: Most would make more money by flipping burgers instead of writing their books. Books are not an easy business.
Most books are a net loss for both authors and publishers and the very few which make money make lots of money and have to pay for many others which earn them nothing at all.
If you expect Ebooks to drop to a fraction of the price of paper books don't hold your breath. To make this possible you would have to cut out all the work that actually makes some text into a book; with most manuscripts (even good ones) this would mean you'd put out just crap that nobody wants to read. And that nobody knows about. Yes, there are exceptions but exceptions do not make markets. A book is a product and the author is only one part in the process.
Go and read self-published books if you don't believe me. You can only rarely make a good book by just writing it. Most of the work going into a book is exactly the same regardless of the format.
This does not mean that you couldn't make this more efficient. But books done the same way won't be cheaper just because you deliver bytes instead of printed paper.
Because Apple isn't responsible for the salaries of Foxconn employees?
Apple IS responsible, because they know the workers' conditions, and still accept to make business with their direct employers. Those workers work FOR Apple, it doesn't matter how long the control chain between Apple and them is.
Interestingly, among all the companies using that factory (Dell, HP, Nokia, ...) Apple is the only one that has insisted in reviews and reports about the conditions even before this suicide row.
And please don't stop there. 99% of the other chinese crap (not limited to electronics) you buy has been manufactured under conditions that are probably much, much worse than those at Foxconn.
Apple has become a scapegoat of certain people and I totally hate that. Not because I love Apple so much, but because it lets others get away who are often much worse.
You're right, but this still leads us to the same conclusion - since this is how it works for every ARM processor (none of them are "off-the-shelf"), there's still nothing special about the A4, and we don't get news stories about every other ARM processor manufacturer.
Like... because all people are different they're actually all the same and there is no need to get stories about what certain people have done?
"News for nerds"? I certainly am interested in details about the A4. Apple is good in certain things (or rather prioritizes certain things) and I would surely like to learn more about the power-management in that chip. Or about DRM-support in hardware.
Yeah, but with more and more "personal" computing happening in "the cloud" people will hardly know that their data is *not* (only) on their device.
Once again, you are personally responsible for what personal info you put out there. I don't use "the cloud".
This is very clever of you. But suppose millions of people do? Should everyone know where every bit of data on every device goes before he uses it?
Anyway. So you're saying people should not use Android? Or Bing or assisted GPS? Because, whenever you use AGPS (very convenient that) you "put your location out there". You're saying people should know that and shouldn't use AGPS then? Good luck with that.
The thing is that you don't "put info out there". That info is taken from you and you're seduced by some "free" and convenient services to let that happen and to not think about it. You're selling your digital blood and soul for shiny glass beads. Well, maybe you don't. Sorry.
All of this is too new and right now nearly totally unregulated. Companies like Google can almost collect what they want and within their datacenters do what they want with that data. Because they pretend it's not yours anymore at that point. It's theirs.
Yeah, but with more and more "personal" computing happening in "the cloud" people will hardly know that their data is *not* (only) on their device. I mean, putting something up at facebook is one thing but using all the fine and free Google apps on your Android phone is different, isn't it?
No, it isn't. A whole fucking lot of your personal data ends up on Google's servers, mail, calendar, chats, navigation data, voice profile, ad-tracking, search terms, whatever. It's not only things you put up for others, just using your funky new cellphone as intended does that for you.
Google isn't the only one but it surely is the one with the most extensive data collections in several dimensions of more and more people. It knows where you have been, where you navigated to, whom you mailed, what you said. This *is* different from someone putting up some stupid things on Facebook.
WP has long been the way to go if you just want to have a site with a few pages and something like a news page. It's very much like a blog turned on its head then but, hey. Much easier and quicker to handle and to maintain than hand-crafted HTML or a full-blown CMS. It's also easy to extend and to modify.
WP has a bad reputation but for many things it sits just in the right place between being a hack and an organized system.
A grocer wouldn't let you do that too, if he could. You can tell him "f*ck you" and go to someone else. In the case of Apple you can either go through the web (no need to say anything) or jailbreak and use Cydia. There's an entire market for free and commercial stuff out there, totally uncontrolled by Apple.
Since when freedom means to be allowed to do something by someone you point at? Being able to do it usually is enough. I'm really sick of all these whiners insisting in having their freedom served to them luke-warm and pre-cut on a silver plate.
They need to pay particular attention to privacy concerns if the phone were to have any gathered physiological data or even self described symptoms - I wouldn’t want that information hacked or even disseminated under the best of intentions....
“Look – he’s having a heart attack or early onset diabetes – let’s cancel his healthcare [insurers] or blackmail him [hackers]”
I think if Google would look at all health-related search terms they'd have a good base for that even now... and maybe they already do.
Nice that you feel better now that Google knows about all your searches (Google Search), tracks the ads you view (via AdMob), has all your email and contacts (Google Mail), knows which RSS-feeds you read (Google Reader), knows which maps you look at and where you drive (Google Maps), has your voice profile (Google Voice), your chat content (Google Chat), your documents (Google Docs) and your calendar (Google Calender). Why don't you configure your device to use Google DNS, too?
OK, maybe you opted out of all this and use just the naked OS with third-party apps, but the fact remains that Apple is just after your money. Google is after your personal data and they give you Android and all those Google apps for free only to get at this data. They don't mind what you do and read and where you go as long as they can stare at you while you're doing it.
Really, if you care about freedom and privay, going from Apple to Google is like jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire. I'm always totally surprised when I see people bashing Apple (which they deserve now and then) and praise Google/Android.
Every restriction Apple puts on their devices becomes another benefit that non-Apple devices have. Sure, it's hard to switch away from the polish of Apple but the benefits of doing so seem to be growing daily.
Maybe, but going to Google instead is like hitch-hiking with a vampire to avoid paying for a cab.
Some already calls them private data leeching vampires.
Generally just people who have an entirely different grudge with google, usually something along the lines of sour grapes that google doesn't let them unfairly twist the search/ad results in their favor.
Come on! With Android, Google has become a giant spider sucking at your digital life. Have you ever thought of the fact that most people using Android give Google their email, their contacts, their RSS-feeds, their calendars, their location, their chat content, the places they navigate to and now even their voice profiles? And of course their search terms and ad tracking data. All of this in the hands of *one* company. This is outright creepy.
This is not funny anymore. If Apple or MS or anyone else would dare to pull all that data of millions and millions of users to themselves, there would be an outcry. Google has somehow managed to slowly expand their grip with popular services and Android has still the bonus of being viewed as "free" (although all Google apps aren't free and without them and the Google "cloud" Android is a joke) and at least not being Apple. But it is a cold, hard fact that Android with Google apps and services is the worst privacy nightmare ever. Google inhales all your personal data day and night.
Hate Apple if you want to, but don't hail Google. Google is a friendly looking vampire making soothing noises while sucking your digital blood.
Apple just wants my money and to sell me things. I can deal with that.
Uh, no. Google is crying "Foul!" because Apple is banning developers from using Google's ad platform in their apps. Conveniently, right at the same time as they introduce their own: iAd. Yes, ads suck and it's weird defending an advertising platform, but this is Google: the company that made ads useful and unoffensive (and just that slight bit creepy).
Apple are truly becoming the kings of rent-seeking and platform lock-in. It's far worse than anything Microsoft ever did.
But Google is even worse. It's not a hard lock-in, but with Android most people readily give nearly all their digital data traces to Google, from their email up to their voice profiles.
Apple just wants a bit of your old-fashioned money. Google wants your digital soul, and all of it. History is repeating itself but it looks different on every new level. The new Microsoft is not Apple, it's Google.
You can't reasonably run ads without analytics. The entire ad industry depends upon analytics.
And this is mostly Google now. AdMob was the largest of them all and now that Google bought them...
The main reason I don't like Android is Google: With it Google gets your email, your contacts, your searches, your calendar, your location, the maps you look at, the places you navigate to, the RSS-feeds you read, your voice profile and of course they track you via ads. Probably even more things I forgot right now. This is creepy. This is much too much data to give to *one* company that can easily connect all the dots and knows more about you than yourself then. Evil or not evil, this is too much.
I'm totally surprised that people are being that ignorant of the fact that Google is inserting its tentacles in every orifice of your digital existence while whispering "It won't hurt... no, it will feel good and it's totally free" and people are crying for more. Right, you just have to give them your digital soul and your digital blood, nothing more.
Apple is with no doubt just protecting its assets with this, but it's their right and Apple users should be happy about it anyway. This new war between Apple and Google is a most effective firewall between them: Apple won't share your data with Google and Google won't share theirs with Apple.
The "cloud" means you have to give more and more of your personal data to some company; giving different data dimensions to different companies being at war with each other is the least you can do.
In case you haven't followed that drama you should do that now. Keeping that bird in control, managing it to do some science and finally getting it back was seriously heroic by JAXA. This was easily the most problem-ridden probe ever making it back (well, almost now). I hope the last leg of that epic journey will go well.
What would be interesting is Adblock Plus for the iPhone.
Heh! Odds of that being approved for the App Store are approximately 3,720 to 1.
It's actually exactly 1.
I certainly totally hate it when some useful app vanishes or new rules pop up out of nothing, but on the other hand I can somehow understand that Apple has to make the rules as it goes along. I mean, if they'd put up clear rules and would stick to these, developers would instantly start to find loopholes and to work around them, naturally. And for Apple the iPhone/iPad platform is what they bet their future on. And this platform is still at a very early stage. They do not want to be the dog with which the tail waggles.
Apple (and the Mac and OS X) has more than once suffered from others having too much control over things. Like Adobe with taking ages to port their apps to Intel Macs because they did not use XCode in the first place. Imagine Apple allowing Flash and any kind of programming language and compilers and middleware and then, 4 or 6 years on, they try to go to a totally different hardware platform (which *will* happen sooner or later, be assured). Suddenly they'd have a large amount of apps they couldn't offer any migration tools for then and be at the whim of some third party (or worse, hundreds of them). Look at Microsoft -- Windows and all its apps are married to Intel and the flood of ARM platforms for tablets is totally out of bounds for MS here. There is absolutely no way to port Windows and all applications to another platform. Trapped.
For Google, Android itself and its apps is still a minor thing. Google does not sell systems. As long as they get your data and your eyes, they can allow Android apps to go whereever they go. They don't actually care.
Really, I'm somewhat happy that there's more than one way. All of this is a large experiment and attacking the problems from more than one angle is good. Freedom is not when everyone does the same.
If you compare the Falcon 9 to other rockets you can't fail to see that this thing is quire cleverly designed in a very straight way.
It has only two stages and uses Kerosine/LOX in both stages. Kerosine is much denser than LH and makes for smaller tanks and easier handling. Both stages are essentially identical, with the second stage much shorter but using the same diametre tanks and domes and the same tools for fabrication. Both stages use the very same engines, too. 9 on the first stage, one in the second stage. This allows them to be build assembly-line style, much cheaper than to build several differently sized engines in small numbers.
The Falcon 9 Heavy will add to this two boosters consisting of just two first stages strapped to the center one. This thing will still use the same tools and the same tanks and domes and engines (28 of them) for all stages and for the boosters. Compare this to other similar launchers which often use two (or even three) different engines and tanks for their stages plus solid boosters, all expensively build in small numbers.