But will Modern Warfare 2 be around in 25 years? Tetris will probably still be around in 25 years from now and still making money. Same probably for BeJeweled as well. And how much did it cost to make MW2? And how much did it cost to make Tetris? The big games make a big pile of money and then fade. Casual games cost little to make and make money for a very long time. Really from a risk to profit point of view casual games are a much safer bet.
But it will not stop that. All you have to do is include a link to the source on your website and a GPL statment with the product. You don't even have to include a link to the source you could "require" that they send you a written letter and pay for shipping of the source. Which frankly is all just silly. The source for BusyBox is freely available already so an extra link will not really make it any more free. Those are the rules but except for including the GPL in the docs for the product I see little value in the link to the source except to cross the t's and dot the i's.
Dying is probably the wrong word. Fading is probably better. You can still get Falcon 4.0 and other hard core sims FSX is still around for now but it looks like Microsoft may kill it off. Once companies figure out they can make more money selling small cheap games then big expensive games I think you will see the very expensive games drop off in number. Think about how much money Tetris has made over the decades and how little it costs to make.
I think you hit it on the head. Hard core gaming is dying not console gaming. I have been playing video games since I got a new 2600 way back when. Just like war games and flight sims you have reached the level of just to hard to be fun. When I pick up a game for the XBox I can not just start to play it and be any good at all. There will always be hardcore users that want hard core games. But the number of casual users will always be many times greater.
Yea I would take it as well. No win? not at all if you play the game.
"The problem is that we have not budgeted enough for the needed programs." "The problem is that we do not the laws in place to solve the problems" "The problem is that organized crime, terrorists, and drug lords are using piracy to make/launder money" "This is a complex problem but with a enough study and the cooperation of industry and the goverment we can solve the problem." By the time I am out I will have a nice big consulting job for a multinational.
And about 90% of all CMS's Forums, and goodness knows what else use MySQL as their primary database. Those that do allow you to use other databases treat them as second class citizens.
I do agree. An App store would make such a device. The issue would be populating it. If you based it on Linux you could "fine tune" some exists FOSS apps and have a huge software base. The think is getting people to change the names of the apps to something that did Start with a K or a G.
I have an nVidia card and use the nVidia closed drivers and have no real issues. If you are getting a new PC and FOSS purity is important to you then get Intel graphics and you will be good to go. I have heard good things about ATI but I have no real experience with them myself..
You shouldn't discuss anything using private in email or IM. Email is sent totaly unecrypted as is most IM messages. Email files are for the most part stored as plan text on the server and can be read. Google and other free email services READ YOUR EMAIL to show you ads based on the subject. When I was talking to a friend of mine about her pregnancy I was seeing ads for feminine hygiene products. IM is the same so I hate to burst your bubble. Online banking is a little different Banks have a long tail of laws involving privacy and security that they have to live by. They are also required by law to share some of your financial information with the federal government for tax enforcement reasons.
You are right about trusting Social Networking sites as much as you do email and IM companies. The problem is you trust them both way too much. Not one of them should be considered "private". There is a very old saying. Don't write down anything you don't want the world to read.
Of course I live a really boring life so I don't worry too much about any of it.
The presentation can be biased but not the information it's self. The presentation can reflect the bias of the presenter. But that as I said none of that really matters. The message I was responding to suggested not telling the truth and that is a terrible plan. Not only could it get this guy fired but the person hiring him fired for trusting him.
Well it is good to see that they did the right thing too bad I missed it. Like I said that divergence of tree ring data make we really wonder about it and the other proxies value. It just really bugs me now knowing why. Until a mechimism for the divergence is found that data is what I would call suspect.
True except. 1. This information is correct so it isn't incorrect. 2. Information can not be biased. People can but information can be factual or none factual. At best it can be complete or incomplete. But the advice was to lie about it so the person is talking to somebody about it.
How about telling the truth? It probably happened a decade ago. Even if I did find it I am not so sure that I would put a lot of credence in an old BBS text file from that long ago. If I was interviewing and had found that I might ask about it. If I got the answer "Yes I had a little talk with my university about that and they let me off with a warning, boy did I learn from that!" I would probably mark it down as a positive. If I got a No not me never did that and you started to sweat I would keep looking. If it was in a position that required a security clearance then you better tell the truth. They will find it and they will go there and find out if it was you. If you lied you will NEVER get a clearance ever. You did it, it is documented. Odds are nobody will care if you tell the truth. They will care if you lie.
Actually this problem was caused by the want of Open Standards. 1. You can not forbid them from selling none standardized WiFi. The FCC granted unlicensed spectrum for this so each company can do what they want. If not you would really stifle innovation. 2. Customers wanted faster wifi and companies supplied it. Hey it said draft on the box. It is called a free market. The Standards committee needs to start working on the next several standards now. The problem is the speed and planning of the standards committee and not the vendors. If one company had managed to patent the only way to get this speed out of wifi and then sold licenses to everybody else then it would have gone much faster but that is a trade off I don't want to make.
But are they sure that the tree ring data is wrong and the other data. When I see stuff like this it does make me wonder because I remember all the talk from climatologists about global cooling in the 70s. So their is three options with that data. 1. Something strange is causing it to diverge that we don't understand. If so I am way not comfortable with that answer. 2. Tree ring data isn't good at all for this use. maybe it does diverge just as much pre 1960 but our data collection and recording methods pre 1960 where not good enough to show the problem. 3. The tree ring data is good and the other data is bad. I find that answer is way too sweeping but others will jump all over it. I feel the proper way to have dealt with it would have been to include the data and then data that contradicts it. I am sure that there must be multiple sources that contradict this data. I would say that I would still call into question using pre 1960 data from this method that doesn't have other data to support it since it seems to be untrustworthy.
But that points up the problem. They didn't include that data because it was messy. It was not handled well so it allows room for for mistrust. I am not a climatologist or a biologist but I have some basic grasp of the sciences, maybe just enough to be dangerous but more than a lot of people I think.
You might just like you might have to get an unlisted phone number or not talk to mutual friend anymore or at least them them to not tell your ex where you are. If you have an unlisted number then just knowing what city your in might not be a big deal. You don't put your street address so it is less dangerous than a listed phone number for sure. Also if you have a dangerous ex then think about it.... You put in the old town you lived in with the EX if you don't live there anymore. Or you put in the Town you went to High School in. Or you put in some other town. Frankly if you fear for you life putting your real city in facebook or even being on facebook is risky with the best security. Do you remember EVERY person you went to High School with? All your EX has to do is remember some old mutual friend that isn't on Facebook and pretend to be them! All it would take then is for you to make a mistake and friend them and they have all your data anyway. No I would say that your response is poorly thought out. Any data you put on a social networking site will be insecure at some level. If you need that level of security it is up to the user to plan it out step by step and take responsibility for it. And yes if I had a friend with an abusive EX I would suggest they not be on FaceBook. If they insisted I would tell them to set there current location to Devil's Lake ND. I would help them create a fake Google Voice number with that area code so they could check their voice mail just in case and help mislead the EX even more and allow that to be public. Why Devil's Lake? 1. It is far from anywhere. 2. It is far from where I am at. 3. It doesn't have good airline service. 4. I saw it on Google Maps last night. Plus it gets freaking cold there so I could hope the evil one would try to track him/her down in the middle of winter!
So yes expect anything you publish on a social networking site to be public and you should be just fine.
I know exactly what theory means. Frankly I don't think that Man made global warming is as proven as so many people think. I do think that there is enough data to act on at this time but I feel there is still a lot of data points that don't fit.
It was bad data? Why was it bad? Was it because it didn't fit predictions or because how it was gathered was flawed? And please give links to exactly what was wrong with the data collection methods if that is the answer.
As I said I am for reducing carbon but the amount of total crap science I see about Global Warming is mind numbing. Global Warming is blamed or "proven" by every bad weather day on the planet which is just crap. You can not point to any single storm or hurricane season and say that was caused by global warming but people do all the time. Every hot summer day or freak snow storm as well. Every time that happens it feeds the mistrust in science. I will also state that I don't hear that crap from actual climatologists just the legions of clueless Global Warming supporters that have picked the right side in the debate completely out of luck.
The problem is the users. Really folks this if FACEBOOK. You are putting the data on there yourself. Don't put any data up there you don't want everybody to see. Am I the really odd person out because I never thought that any data I posted to a free social networking site was private?
Yes but it works both ways. A long time ago I was trying to get some software working and it was failing. I called tech support and they said I needed to re download it because it might have gotten corrupted in the download. Okay it was zipped and I ran check on the zip and it was fine. The odds of it being damaged in the download was just too tiny to think about. Well I kept trying to fix it and nothing worked. I finally downloaded it again and installed it and it worked. I then checked and the zip files where not even the same size. I did a test and the the CIC where even different for the files! I called up the tech and told her I was sorry I hadn't downloaded when she asked me to then told her just how shocked I was. The odds of that file being borken like that and still pass the checks was like billions to one. She then admitted that they had uploaded a zip file that had bad files in it! The moral about science and tech is the same. Don't cook your data to look good or you will never be trusted.
I agree except way to much about Climate change is spouted by none scientist and a lot of it is just wrong. I have seen people state that we could cause the earth to burn up like Venus... No climatologist believes that. Or the those extremely active Hurricane seasons and Katrina was caused by Global warming.... No they where not. Guess what we have been in a down turn in Hurricanes so does that mean Global Warming stopped. No it means that was not true. Global warming has become a boogie man like vaccines and cellphones and is getting blamed for every bad weather day on the planet. Heck I have heard people blame blizzards on Global Warming! Heck I do think global warming is a valid theory and I am all for cutting carbon emissions but the FUD I see about it makes me crazy. And those that say you have to scare people to get them to act are not teaching science. They are playing politics with science and making science less trusted.
Okay I have to say that I both agree and disagree. Yes Science should be shown be accorded more stature and respect than politics. Real science is based of data while the vast majority of politics is based on opinion. The fact that light travels at a fixed rate in a vacuum is not an opinion.
The problem with climate change is that it has moved out of science and into the realm of religion. Even on Slashdot people will claim that Global warming caused by mans activities is proven fact. It is not. It is still a theory. A theory with a lot of data to back it up and one I happen to believe is valid but still a theory. IIt is always right to question a theory and it is always wrong to throw out data that is "messy" just because it could "confuse" people. I have a Religion and it isn't Science. I have Science and it isn't a Religion.
Every email program I have seen asks if you want to run the attachment. At this point you are trading usability for security. The email server at my office blocks.exe files. It is a real pain to email an update install.exe from my PC to our tester because of that. We just rename it.xex and it goes through. Could email be made even safer than it is now? Well yes but you would loose functionality. You could just exclude all attachments. Yea that would help so much. There gets to be a limit to just how far you can go to keep people safe from themselves. Hey every increase in real security is a plus and if you can keep people from shooting themselves in the foot that is also a plus but it isn't a responsibility of the software vendor. To not install malware is the responsibility of the user. Microsoft really should make it MUCH harder to modify system files and runs services. It should also make it a lot easier to uninstall crap completely. That I will give you. But unless you want to remove the ability to include attachments you can not stop people running malware.
Well of the Linux Smartphone systems they all have some failings when you compair them to the iPhone. Palm. I would say that the UI on the Palm is every bit as good as the the iPhone if not better. The Card interface really is easy to use and intuitive. The SDK sucks. It is extremely limited. I found several things that I just couldn't do with the offical SDK within just minutes. 1. Can not detect if it is plugged in and charging. 2. Can not control the camera flash. It also still lacks a few features. No Video recording and no voice dialing!
Android can multi task and the SDK really is good enough to write some great apps. The UI isn't as good as the iPhone or the Pre and it can be a little slow on some devices to launch the camera. Also battery life is a bit iffy.
Maemo? Well maybe? I have not gotten to see it up close but Nokia seems to be really drifiting in focus. It could be great but right now it is really drifting. It is Linux with QT so the SDK should be out of this world but I am not sure how well it interfaces ithe hardware bits. Maemo's biggest weakness right now seems to be a lack of focus. Mobin? What phone can I get it for?
Right now the iPhone is in the lead with it's UI and app store. I don't like the lack of multitasking but otherwise it is a solid product. The only reason I didn't get one is the Carrier is AT&T and they are too expensive and frankly make me crazy.
Right not I would say things in the phone world are still up for grabs. Android is doing well but will it improve it's UI to be as good or better than the iPhone. Will it improve it's media player and support more types of media? RIM Your browser sucks and you are loosing mindshare fast. Your the cheap smartphone that does Exchange Email well but others are starting to do that almost as well. Your in trouble. WinMo? If Seven is earth shattering you are doomed. Looking at the ZuneHD makes me think you might pull it off but it may be too late. Apple? Well you are in a great position making money hand over fist. It is yours to blow. Nokia? Wow your in deep trouble. Symbian was cool but you have fragmented it all to heck. You make great hardware but you are just about invisible in the US market. You can do well not selling in the US but where are you going? Do you even know? Palm. The Pre is a very good deviice and the Pixie is as well but... WebOS isn't finished. Heck you are not even using the 3D graphics chip in the Pre yet! You don't shoot Video! You Don't have Voice dialing! Also the whole use Javascript and HTML SDK idea... It sucks... Having that as an option is great. It being the only option is brain dead! Get a real SDK out NOW. It could be java or c++ or objective c if you wish but GET IT DONE NOW.
BTW I have an Android phone and an iPod Touch and my wife has a Pre. I would have loved to get the Pre but the SDK turned me right off.
Slashdot Mirror
But will Modern Warfare 2 be around in 25 years?
Tetris will probably still be around in 25 years from now and still making money. Same probably for BeJeweled as well.
And how much did it cost to make MW2? And how much did it cost to make Tetris?
The big games make a big pile of money and then fade. Casual games cost little to make and make money for a very long time.
Really from a risk to profit point of view casual games are a much safer bet.
But it will not stop that.
All you have to do is include a link to the source on your website and a GPL statment with the product.
You don't even have to include a link to the source you could "require" that they send you a written letter and pay for shipping of the source.
Which frankly is all just silly.
The source for BusyBox is freely available already so an extra link will not really make it any more free. Those are the rules but except for including the GPL in the docs for the product I see little value in the link to the source except to cross the t's and dot the i's.
Dying is probably the wrong word. Fading is probably better. You can still get Falcon 4.0 and other hard core sims FSX is still around for now but it looks like Microsoft may kill it off.
Once companies figure out they can make more money selling small cheap games then big expensive games I think you will see the very expensive games drop off in number.
Think about how much money Tetris has made over the decades and how little it costs to make.
Tetris
I think you hit it on the head. Hard core gaming is dying not console gaming.
I have been playing video games since I got a new 2600 way back when. Just like war games and flight sims you have reached the level of just to hard to be fun. When I pick up a game for the XBox I can not just start to play it and be any good at all.
There will always be hardcore users that want hard core games. But the number of casual users will always be many times greater.
Yea I would take it as well. No win? not at all if you play the game.
"The problem is that we have not budgeted enough for the needed programs."
"The problem is that we do not the laws in place to solve the problems"
"The problem is that organized crime, terrorists, and drug lords are using piracy to make/launder money"
"This is a complex problem but with a enough study and the cooperation of industry and the goverment we can solve the problem."
By the time I am out I will have a nice big consulting job for a multinational.
And about 90% of all CMS's Forums, and goodness knows what else use MySQL as their primary database. Those that do allow you to use other databases treat them as second class citizens.
I do agree. An App store would make such a device. The issue would be populating it. If you based it on Linux you could "fine tune" some exists FOSS apps and have a huge software base.
The think is getting people to change the names of the apps to something that did Start with a K or a G.
Next thing you know we weill hear about an Asian engineer that then died...
I have an nVidia card and use the nVidia closed drivers and have no real issues.
If you are getting a new PC and FOSS purity is important to you then get Intel graphics and you will be good to go.
I have heard good things about ATI but I have no real experience with them myself..
You shouldn't discuss anything using private in email or IM. Email is sent totaly unecrypted as is most IM messages. Email files are for the most part stored as plan text on the server and can be read.
Google and other free email services READ YOUR EMAIL to show you ads based on the subject. When I was talking to a friend of mine about her pregnancy I was seeing ads for feminine hygiene products. IM is the same so I hate to burst your bubble.
Online banking is a little different Banks have a long tail of laws involving privacy and security that they have to live by. They are also required by law to share some of your financial information with the federal government for tax enforcement reasons.
You are right about trusting Social Networking sites as much as you do email and IM companies. The problem is you trust them both way too much.
Not one of them should be considered "private".
There is a very old saying. Don't write down anything you don't want the world to read.
Of course I live a really boring life so I don't worry too much about any of it.
The presentation can be biased but not the information it's self. The presentation can reflect the bias of the presenter.
But that as I said none of that really matters. The message I was responding to suggested not telling the truth and that is a terrible plan.
Not only could it get this guy fired but the person hiring him fired for trusting him.
Well it is good to see that they did the right thing too bad I missed it. Like I said that divergence of tree ring data make we really wonder about it and the other proxies value. It just really bugs me now knowing why. Until a mechimism for the divergence is found that data is what I would call suspect.
True except.
1. This information is correct so it isn't incorrect.
2. Information can not be biased. People can but information can be factual or none factual. At best it can be complete or incomplete.
But the advice was to lie about it so the person is talking to somebody about it.
How about telling the truth?
It probably happened a decade ago. Even if I did find it I am not so sure that I would put a lot of credence in an old BBS text file from that long ago.
If I was interviewing and had found that I might ask about it.
If I got the answer "Yes I had a little talk with my university about that and they let me off with a warning, boy did I learn from that!" I would probably mark it down as a positive.
If I got a No not me never did that and you started to sweat I would keep looking.
If it was in a position that required a security clearance then you better tell the truth. They will find it and they will go there and find out if it was you. If you lied you will NEVER get a clearance ever.
You did it, it is documented. Odds are nobody will care if you tell the truth. They will care if you lie.
Actually this problem was caused by the want of Open Standards.
1. You can not forbid them from selling none standardized WiFi. The FCC granted unlicensed spectrum for this so each company can do what they want. If not you would really stifle innovation.
2. Customers wanted faster wifi and companies supplied it. Hey it said draft on the box. It is called a free market.
The Standards committee needs to start working on the next several standards now. The problem is the speed and planning of the standards committee and not the vendors.
If one company had managed to patent the only way to get this speed out of wifi and then sold licenses to everybody else then it would have gone much faster but that is a trade off I don't want to make.
But are they sure that the tree ring data is wrong and the other data. When I see stuff like this it does make me wonder because I remember all the talk from climatologists about global cooling in the 70s.
So their is three options with that data.
1. Something strange is causing it to diverge that we don't understand. If so I am way not comfortable with that answer.
2. Tree ring data isn't good at all for this use. maybe it does diverge just as much pre 1960 but our data collection and recording methods pre 1960 where not good enough to show the problem.
3. The tree ring data is good and the other data is bad. I find that answer is way too sweeping but others will jump all over it.
I feel the proper way to have dealt with it would have been to include the data and then data that contradicts it. I am sure that there must be multiple sources that contradict this data. I would say that I would still call into question using pre 1960 data from this method that doesn't have other data to support it since it seems to be untrustworthy.
But that points up the problem. They didn't include that data because it was messy. It was not handled well so it allows room for for mistrust.
I am not a climatologist or a biologist but I have some basic grasp of the sciences, maybe just enough to be dangerous but more than a lot of people I think.
You might just like you might have to get an unlisted phone number or not talk to mutual friend anymore or at least them them to not tell your ex where you are.
If you have an unlisted number then just knowing what city your in might not be a big deal. You don't put your street address so it is less dangerous than a listed phone number for sure.
Also if you have a dangerous ex then think about it.... You put in the old town you lived in with the EX if you don't live there anymore.
Or you put in the Town you went to High School in.
Or you put in some other town.
Frankly if you fear for you life putting your real city in facebook or even being on facebook is risky with the best security.
Do you remember EVERY person you went to High School with?
All your EX has to do is remember some old mutual friend that isn't on Facebook and pretend to be them! All it would take then is for you to make a mistake and friend them and they have all your data anyway.
No I would say that your response is poorly thought out. Any data you put on a social networking site will be insecure at some level. If you need that level of security it is up to the user to plan it out step by step and take responsibility for it.
And yes if I had a friend with an abusive EX I would suggest they not be on FaceBook. If they insisted I would tell them to set there current location to Devil's Lake ND. I would help them create a fake Google Voice number with that area code so they could check their voice mail just in case and help mislead the EX even more and allow that to be public.
Why Devil's Lake?
1. It is far from anywhere.
2. It is far from where I am at.
3. It doesn't have good airline service.
4. I saw it on Google Maps last night.
Plus it gets freaking cold there so I could hope the evil one would try to track him/her down in the middle of winter!
So yes expect anything you publish on a social networking site to be public and you should be just fine.
I know exactly what theory means. Frankly I don't think that Man made global warming is as proven as so many people think. I do think that there is enough data to act on at this time but I feel there is still a lot of data points that don't fit.
It was bad data? Why was it bad? Was it because it didn't fit predictions or because how it was gathered was flawed? And please give links to exactly what was wrong with the data collection methods if that is the answer.
As I said I am for reducing carbon but the amount of total crap science I see about Global Warming is mind numbing. Global Warming is blamed or "proven" by every bad weather day on the planet which is just crap. You can not point to any single storm or hurricane season and say that was caused by global warming but people do all the time. Every hot summer day or freak snow storm as well.
Every time that happens it feeds the mistrust in science. I will also state that I don't hear that crap from actual climatologists just the legions of clueless Global Warming supporters that have picked the right side in the debate completely out of luck.
The problem is the users.
Really folks this if FACEBOOK. You are putting the data on there yourself. Don't put any data up there you don't want everybody to see.
Am I the really odd person out because I never thought that any data I posted to a free social networking site was private?
Yes but it works both ways.
A long time ago I was trying to get some software working and it was failing. I called tech support and they said I needed to re download it because it might have gotten corrupted in the download.
Okay it was zipped and I ran check on the zip and it was fine. The odds of it being damaged in the download was just too tiny to think about. Well I kept trying to fix it and nothing worked.
I finally downloaded it again and installed it and it worked.
I then checked and the zip files where not even the same size. I did a test and the the CIC where even different for the files!
I called up the tech and told her I was sorry I hadn't downloaded when she asked me to then told her just how shocked I was. The odds of that file being borken like that and still pass the checks was like billions to one.
She then admitted that they had uploaded a zip file that had bad files in it!
The moral about science and tech is the same. Don't cook your data to look good or you will never be trusted.
I agree except way to much about Climate change is spouted by none scientist and a lot of it is just wrong.
I have seen people state that we could cause the earth to burn up like Venus... No climatologist believes that.
Or the those extremely active Hurricane seasons and Katrina was caused by Global warming.... No they where not.
Guess what we have been in a down turn in Hurricanes so does that mean Global Warming stopped. No it means that was not true.
Global warming has become a boogie man like vaccines and cellphones and is getting blamed for every bad weather day on the planet.
Heck I have heard people blame blizzards on Global Warming!
Heck I do think global warming is a valid theory and I am all for cutting carbon emissions but the FUD I see about it makes me crazy.
And those that say you have to scare people to get them to act are not teaching science. They are playing politics with science and making science less trusted.
Okay I have to say that I both agree and disagree.
Yes Science should be shown be accorded more stature and respect than politics. Real science is based of data while the vast majority of politics is based on opinion.
The fact that light travels at a fixed rate in a vacuum is not an opinion.
The problem with climate change is that it has moved out of science and into the realm of religion.
Even on Slashdot people will claim that Global warming caused by mans activities is proven fact. It is not. It is still a theory. A theory with a lot of data to back it up and one I happen to believe is valid but still a theory.
IIt is always right to question a theory and it is always wrong to throw out data that is "messy" just because it could "confuse" people.
I have a Religion and it isn't Science. I have Science and it isn't a Religion.
Every email program I have seen asks if you want to run the attachment. At this point you are trading usability for security. .exe files. It is a real pain to email an update install.exe from my PC to our tester because of that. We just rename it .xex and it goes through.
The email server at my office blocks
Could email be made even safer than it is now? Well yes but you would loose functionality.
You could just exclude all attachments. Yea that would help so much.
There gets to be a limit to just how far you can go to keep people safe from themselves.
Hey every increase in real security is a plus and if you can keep people from shooting themselves in the foot that is also a plus but it isn't a responsibility of the software vendor. To not install malware is the responsibility of the user.
Microsoft really should make it MUCH harder to modify system files and runs services. It should also make it a lot easier to uninstall crap completely. That I will give you. But unless you want to remove the ability to include attachments you can not stop people running malware.
Well of the Linux Smartphone systems they all have some failings when you compair them to the iPhone.
Palm. I would say that the UI on the Palm is every bit as good as the the iPhone if not better. The Card interface really is easy to use and intuitive.
The SDK sucks. It is extremely limited. I found several things that I just couldn't do with the offical SDK within just minutes.
1. Can not detect if it is plugged in and charging.
2. Can not control the camera flash.
It also still lacks a few features. No Video recording and no voice dialing!
Android can multi task and the SDK really is good enough to write some great apps. The UI isn't as good as the iPhone or the Pre and it can be a little slow on some devices to launch the camera. Also battery life is a bit iffy.
Maemo? Well maybe? I have not gotten to see it up close but Nokia seems to be really drifiting in focus. It could be great but right now it is really drifting. It is Linux with QT so the SDK should be out of this world but I am not sure how well it interfaces ithe hardware bits. Maemo's biggest weakness right now seems to be a lack of focus.
Mobin? What phone can I get it for?
Right now the iPhone is in the lead with it's UI and app store. I don't like the lack of multitasking but otherwise it is a solid product. The only reason I didn't get one is the Carrier is AT&T and they are too expensive and frankly make me crazy.
Right not I would say things in the phone world are still up for grabs. Android is doing well but will it improve it's UI to be as good or better than the iPhone. Will it improve it's media player and support more types of media?
RIM Your browser sucks and you are loosing mindshare fast. Your the cheap smartphone that does Exchange Email well but others are starting to do that almost as well. Your in trouble.
WinMo? If Seven is earth shattering you are doomed. Looking at the ZuneHD makes me think you might pull it off but it may be too late.
Apple? Well you are in a great position making money hand over fist. It is yours to blow.
Nokia? Wow your in deep trouble. Symbian was cool but you have fragmented it all to heck. You make great hardware but you are just about invisible in the US market. You can do well not selling in the US but where are you going? Do you even know?
Palm. The Pre is a very good deviice and the Pixie is as well but... WebOS isn't finished. Heck you are not even using the 3D graphics chip in the Pre yet! You don't shoot Video! You Don't have Voice dialing! Also the whole use Javascript and HTML SDK idea... It sucks...
Having that as an option is great. It being the only option is brain dead! Get a real SDK out NOW. It could be java or c++ or objective c if you wish but GET IT DONE NOW.
BTW I have an Android phone and an iPod Touch and my wife has a Pre. I would have loved to get the Pre but the SDK turned me right off.