A Single young process thread among billions within a single process that's among billions of billions of billions of processes. Think of the children, man!
What constitutes fraud is the reason for the spoofing. You're doing the spoof to make sure that people know who you are and can find you easily by maintaining a level of contact consistency. This is the exact opposite of fraud in that you are spoofing your number to maintain consistency in your identity to others. Fraud is using these techniques to misrepresent and obfuscate yourself to others in the attempt to perform some form of malice.
My '96 caprice has a very quiet engine for what it is (4.3L V8). As an experiment, I had my wife drive down the hill and around the bend near where we lived doing 35 mph while I stood in the driveway blindfolded and raised my hand at the first inkling that she was coming through (nice quiet neighborhood) and at that moment she'd mark the point where the car was with a balloon filled with paint. A few times she'd have the engine running as she coasted down the hill. A few other times she'd cut the engine at the crest and coasted down. The average difference between the two was a near consistent 50 feet. The distance between me and the car was generally about 10-15 feet when I'd notice the car going by with the engine off, and 60-80 feet with the engine running. So...engine noise can't be considered a safety feature for pedestrians? Screw you.
Also, there's a lot of jurisdictions where pedestrians get automatic right-of-way, which means if you hit one, it's automatically your fault (in GA this only applies in zebra-walks to the point that the motorist must stop before a crosswalk the moment a pedestrian enters a crosswalk, regardless of speed/momentum. CT, didn't matter where they stepped off the curb at, automatic ped RoW.)
It also doesn't help that I've had the living hell scared out of me multiple times by a Tesla going by as I was walking on the side of the road. I didn't "feel" that it was there until it was nearly right on top of me, and it's rather unsettling to see something as large as a car go by you within a few feet without any warning. Tire noise is not nearly as loud as you think it is, unless the tires are heavily ribbed, which most electrics are not going to have. Hybrids/Electrics are actually the least likely to have any substantial ribbing on the tire to keep rolling resistance at a minimum.
For these reasons, I have no issue with "safety pipes" or "simulated engine noise". The louder, the better. Keeps me safer when I'm walking, and I'm less likely to bowl over someone who doesn't take the time to look when I'm in the other position. You want quiet, get an isolation tank.
Not to be ethnist (I'm also a slav, though southern slav as opposed to Poland chiefly being northern slav), but am I the only one who's not surprised that this was a Polish design? This goes right in line with standard fare Polack jokes, for good or bad.
So...answer me this: Once I set the init script how I want a service configured, who's going in as root behind me and putting security vulnerabilities into it (hint: Only one person has the root password, and root is only accessible directly from the console. sudo is disabled.)? Now, if I do yum update systemd or apt-get upgrade systemd what is my guarantee that Pottering or any one of the other 30-40 Devs touching systemd didn't put something into the blob that is reporting somewhere outside of my control? How do I know that there's not some timebomb in the blob that's going to collect critical keys and upload them to RedHat on the next time I update the repos? Read the code? I have my own code to audit, thank you very much, and I'd rather not have to audit my init system every time Lennart decides to post an update to systemd. It's bad enough when I have to do that with the Kernel modules.
So you trust that the journald binary reads the "don't save data" boolean value and doesn't just ignore it, or worse, ignores it and executes this shell script:
Or, more plausibly, does all that in a binary blob? Sure. It's open source. Sure I can check the code and compile it myself to make sure it meets my need for security. But one of the things about using these "pre-built" distros is that I'm probably using it to save time and money, which means I don't want to be bothered with doing a code check and recompile on every single init package. That's the beauty of init scripts that everyone has apparently missed in this debate. One human readable script for each daemon running, so the configuration of a daemon can be gleaned over for any questionable bits and edited in less than 10 minutes. And being scripts, they're all plain text that's automatically executable. I don't need to read over source, find an issue, edit it out, and then recompile the entire init code into a binary for that daemon to make use of it. That goes for PID 1 as well. If it's not a script that can be quickly edited and then it's ready for the next boot cycle without wasting process cycles for recompilation I don't want it on my production server.
How do we seriously expect to keep that up at #1 for much longer if the rest of the GDP starts plummeting from the mindshare and infrastructure that maintains it collapsing under the weight of the rest of the world...like what happened to the USSR getting ousted from slot #2 and completely collapsing?
It's about High Definition Video. It's about Video Conferencing. It's about VOIP. It's about Telecommuting for your employers. It's about being competitive on the global market. It's about consuming more information faster to better perform in the global workplace. Cat videos are tertiary to this as EVERYONE needs downtime as well to maintain maximum productivity over the longest course of time. As broadband speeds go, America as a whole is falling into quicksand and the Broadband monopolies have shown that they have no intention of letting America do anything but sink. The whole Land Mass excuse hasn't been viable for a long time and now it's just becoming a complete embarassment.
Both China and Russia have more landmass than the US and while we're JUST edging them out in overall average speed (32.1mbps US, 24.2 CN, 27 RU) our cost per Megabit per second is through the roof by comparison ($3.51 US, $1.76 CN, $0.69 RU (all values reflected in USD) [These values were aquired from netindex.com]. Seriously. Stop being a fucking apologist for these assholes!
Globally we're still on fair ground but we could be doing so much better, and we need to be. We used to be the bastion of technology not even very long ago. For the longest while we could truly say "We're Number 1!" but now it's beginning to ring out more like "We're Numb!" and we need to wake up as a country. The President's statement was a start, now we need to follow through.
This was especially true once internet speeds got faster and getting a cracked full version of the software was just as easy to find and download as getting the locked down shareware.
"Official" Android is a bit different. Updates are rarely sideloaded (going to a download site for the update) like Symbian, Mae, Mee, and Sail. Android's update system is probably the worst method they could have gone with, Apple's being only mildly better. Google's Android official update channel goes like this: Google makes the software patch and submits it to the manufacturer for approval/alteration. The manufacturer will then decide if it's worth them applying the patch to their custom build where they make it run for their hardware and apply their brand of bloatware and launchers (HTC Sense, Go Launcher, Samsung's S-launcher, etc). This update is then submitted to each Wireless Carrier that offers service for the phone model. Each carrier then decides whether to push the patch to the end user or not, applying their own additional bloatware apps to the package in the case of the former.
If a high level user goes the route of loading in custom Android ROMs, then in that case Android updates can be sideloaded. In this case, the updates are not provided by Google, it's provided by the maintainer of the ROM. Also, if the user decides to go with the custom ROM, they do so with the knowledge that any warranties on the phone have become Null and Void... and many insurance plans provided by the carriers or retailers will not cover a phone unless it has an official (Google's) version of Android on it that either came with the phone or was legitimately pushed to the phone by the carrier itself. This lends itself to the inevitable problem of if the phone is dropped and the screen is cracked and no longer turns on, but the phone's hardware can still be read, if there's a custom ROM on it the insurance can still refuse payout... meaning that the customer now has the option of paying full price for a new phone (minimum $200 for a "dumb" phone, minimum $500 for a smartphone), paying out the early termination fee (anywhere from $150 - $300, depending on remaining time in contract), paying the monthly service until such time as they can use the upgrade for a reduced price on a new phone, or if they were smarter, take their last phone out of the mothballs and use it until the upgrade period comes by again.
Being that I'm currently with Sprint, I've confirmed this where if I root my phone then crack the screen and want to file a claim on insurance, I have to be able to flash the stock ROM back onto the phone before submitting it for Claim review...which during that time I'll be going to my backup phone. Thankfully, ODIN (Samsung's flash tool) will work so long as the phone is able to power up and enter recovery, even if I can't see it on the Android's screen.
I did some research into your OnePlus One and it's apples and oranges to the discussion here. The OnePlus One doesn't even use Google's Production Android; it uses CyanogenMod. CyanogenMod is not maintained by Google in any shape or form beyond the base source of AOSP. AOSP is open to whatever developer wants to take the source and morph it into something that fits their need. This is what Cyanogen does. They take the code from AOSP, customize it and patch it their way, then puts that out. If OnePlus went with the official Google releases of Android, then they would have the same power of deciding on which patches to push as any other manufacturer. Face it, the OnePlus fills a niche market that the majority couldn't care less about. The masses don't want a developer phone... they want one that works and they don't have to mess with constantly. That said, I probably wouldn't mind having one myself as yet another cheap computer thing to tinker with (along side my DigiLand Tab, Retired Galaxy S3, Retired ZTE Vital, Retired Samsung Infuse, 2 Retired LG Optimus Vs (Optimi?), multiple Arduino Boards, and 3 BeagleBone Blacks).
Ok, so the carrier may be different, and they may be more open to pushing out updates... but with 4.3 and below, it's still up to the phone manufacturer to make the updates available in the first place, which they haven't been exactly forthcoming either. Which is core to the point: Why would google want to waste man-hours developing a patch that has to be approved by each individual manufacturer before getting pushed to the carrier to be approved by them before it gets pushed to the wild? Especially when with 4.4 the middleman approval is completely sidestepped and unnecessary?
The problem you're discussing is a problem with the US way of carriers and subsidized phone plans. It doesn't have to be like that.
Until the majority of American Consumers (nerds that know better are not in this group) get their head out of their ass and start listening to those who tell them this... Yes. This is exact way it's going to be simply because this is the way the carriers like it and they're going to make sure that the general public keeps that wool over their eyes. When you've got Joe Schmoe coming in and they see in the big bold characters $99.99* for a brand spanking new Galaxy S5 *with 2-year agreement, some are smart enough to ask "How much for the phone outright?" to which they get pointed to the fine print: $799.00. So now they weigh signing their phone life away to be locked into a single carrier for 2 years against being able to save $700 for something else in the short term. It doesn't help one iota that we're constantly barraged with "we need the new shiny" everywhere we look, so for many of the ignorant just not getting the phone isn't even considered as an option. Also even when you compare the price of a phone on contract against the equivalent phone in a pre-paid option (if there is such an option for the phone you're looking at), you're weighing the $100 against $300 - $400, which isn't so bad when the plans are cheaper and you're not tied to them. Then you deal with the shit that is American pre-paid service. Crap coverage areas, crap customer service(if you even have it), and crappy connections are the norm... even if they're provided by the big name service.
So yeah, it doesn't have to be this way, except when the mass of ignorance is larger than the informed can push. Then yes. It has to be this way because there's too much working against intelligence. We nerds can boycott and bitch all we want, but there's more than enough ignorant out there to keep the momentum of payments flowing to the carriers that our voices of malcontent are drowned out.
You realize, of course, that with the stroke of a key, Google could change their deployment terms...
In 4.4, they did. With KitKat (4.4) instead of having to push core OS and Security updates through the manufacturer, they created Google Play Services which now holds the core Android OS functionality (unfortunately by breaking away a lot of the methodologies of AOSP and walling up a good portion of the garden). With this new package, they can push out the updates through the Play Store and don't even have to deal with the Manufacturers and, by extension, the Carriers for an update anymore, unless there needs to be an update to the hardware abstraction layer.
Because of this change in how Android operates from 4.3, it's not really in Google's best interest to screw with 4.3 because #1 It's no small undertaking to strip out the Android components and put them in a Google Play Services style of operation, #2 Even if google were to take on the undertaking, the Carriers/Manufacturers would sure as hell block it because it takes away all the control they have over Android... not to mention how much of a PITA it is to get any kind of google update from the Manufacturers/Carriers as it is already.
Ok..so who made the phone? Samsung? LG? HTC? Or were you lucky enough to get a Google Nexus device?
Who sold it to you? Verizon? T-Mobile? AT&T? Sprint?
Oh..did you go to a box retailer to get your phone like RadioShack, BestBuy, or Walmart? Guess what, you still bought your phone from Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T or Sprint (US centric). The box retailers only get authorization to sell the devices from the Carriers and beyond a "service plan" for replacing the phone when it's broken, have no obligation for OS support. If a box store sells a phone in a manner against the contract agreement the store has with the carrier, even if the end purchaser keeps the phone and maintains good standing on contract he signed in the store, the carrier will bill the store for the full price of the phone that was sold "improperly" and a negation of whatever subsidies the Carrier promised the store for said phone/activation in a procedure called "Charge-backs." I know that at least with Sprint, these Charge-Backs will occur if the end purchaser winds up canceling his contract within 6 months.
The Carriers get and give authorization from/for the device manufacturers to build phones for them (it's a contract negotiation back and forth). Google pushes out an update to the Manufacturers who have to make the drivers for the update to work with their hardware, then the Manufacturers submit the updated OS to the Carrier, and from there it's up to the Carriers to decide (historically: ignore) whether or not the update gets pushed to the end devices.
At least this is how it was until KitKat (4.4). With KitKat Google took back a significant amount of control over how OS updates get pushed out by putting most of the core OS functionality into the GooglePlayServices.apk. Now the only time Google needs to submit an update to a carrier is if there's a major patch issue that needs to be addressed between the operating system and the hardware. All other operating system and security upgrades are pushed through the Play Store from here on, bypassing the Manufacturer and Carrier update process altogether. They did this simply because Fragmentation was becoming such a big problem and Google wanted to get a handle on it. Knowing this...why would Google want to try to push an update out to an OS that they have so little control over compared to the current versions, especially considering that it's more than likely the update wouldn't even be pushed out to the end devices? Fortunately or Unfortunately, the other side of this is that KitKat has become the rut for Google that XP was for Microsoft, and it may be a couple OS versions still before people move from KitKat to the new shiny.
But at least there is the *possibility* of getting a patch if Google makes one. Without that, no chance!
BWAA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!! I needed that laugh! There's more likely a *possibility* that a large enough asteroid would strike mercury and push it into the Sun, causing a massive chain reaction that engulfs the Earth and ends its existence within the next 100 years, and Google knows it.
Seriously, we're talking about carriers take months to put out a minor revision as an update to the phones (Jelly Bean to KitKat), let alone even pay attention to a build revision. The affected devices are either new and powerful enough to run Kit Kat, and thus would more likely get that update as opposed to a minor build update; or they're old and weak enough that the carrier is going to try to push you into a new phone that can handle KitKat / Lollipop. There's no middle ground or incentive with them for pushing out a small build revision. So, why waste the manpower / devtime on a patch when the carriers' track record has already proven that they won't even consider rolling it?
Were you thinking of R.C. Pro Am instead of Rad Racer? The Rad Racer series was actually developed by Square before they came out with the better known game franchise that saved them from bankruptcy (and that they've milked to death and back ever since).
Slashdot posted 9/11. I was here for that. And while yes, I do concede that was an event that shook not just just the US but the entire World to its core and needed to be posted here, not every military/terrorist event since then that made its way to the pages of/. needed to. This was what I was afraid of, and even CmdrTaco had reservations about posting it: http://slashdot.org/story/01/0...">http://slashdot.org/story/01/09/11/1314258/world-trade-towers-and-pentagon-attacked. Most notably his line: "Normally I wouldn't consider posting this on Slashdot, but I'm making an exception this time because I can't get news through any of the conventional websites, and I assume I'm not alone." He had reason to make the post, even given his reservations. Unfortunately, the other editors of/. and even Mr. Taco himself began making more and more posts that weren't necessarily relevant to the geek culture.
Compared to the WTC event which was heard and felt around the world with the loss of 3,000 international lives in a single coordinated terrorist event, this is a minor event that has so far has taken 14 lives (not including the terrorists themselves). Even if these events were happening in the US, I'd still be groaning when this story hit the front page on/. This is already being covered by CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and others out there... I don't need to see it here too. There's plenty of "terrorist/counter-terrorist" activities that would qualify to make the front page here, as they involve the dark side of the tech we work with. There isn't anything here that can link back to this Tech...except for maybe the computers the Satirists used to publish their work...
One can hope that the trend would be gradual enough that the state could come up with an alternate source or revenue for education before a crisis (not holding my breath on that one). That said at the risk of getting flamed:
This is Georgia we're talking about. Home of Redneck Games, Honey Boo Boo (Christ I used to live not 5 minutes from the neighborhood she moved to), and the general mentality among the up-and-coming youth that Construction or other forms of manual labor is the best employer (still). Yeah, in larger metros like Atlanta, Athens, and less so in Savannah, you have some big growth in technical and commercial industry; but if you get out into more suburban areas (Albany, Brunswick, Macon, Waycross) this tech mentality drops off a cliff, though there's still a baseline that the office job allows for a certain level of convenience. If you go even further out into rural Georgia... tech? What's that? Well...except for the EMC situation we have which gave the "hicks" 2 benefits: Lots and lots of manual labor that they love, and fast broadband internet to enjoy in the downtime. You can go even farther out into the Georgia boonies and things will get survivalist surreal REAL quick. These are the areas where water is from wells, sewer is the outhouse, power is from waterwheels or windmills...and that's about it. Good luck even getting Phone service. There are some areas out in the boonies of Georgia that make "Deliverance" look like a light-hearted bedtime story.
Somewhat ironically, in the areas of rural (not boony) Georgia that the Cable/DSL companies have written off, the local regional Electric Membership Co-Ops have taken over the installation of Fiber to the Home and started feeding 10mbps + broadband to the homes bundled with Electric, Television, and Phone service. This is probably what scared the incumbent providers into upping the service level of their offerings in their territories the most: While EMC's aren't known for their great electrical service rates, the other services in the bundle were costing customers a fraction of what the cable providers were, for what amounted to twice as much bandwidth or more, and 600+ channels (all HD) for the price of what cable was providing for their 2nd lowest tier (abt 70 SDTV channels).
I also remember that under that model, I could pay the telephone company about $20 for basic service (the line connection), title II taxes included, and an additional $20 to my choice of about 14 ISPs who all had to compete to ensure they had the best uptime, largest modem banks, and most available services for the value. It wasn't fast by the standards of what we have today by any means, but damnit, I could run my servers from my house unhindered! I can do this with Cox now...but I'm also coughing up 4 times as much dough over it.. and I've got no one else to go to. Excuse me there's Windstream for 3/4 the price and 3/50ths the speed...and locked down where I can't run my servers without using non-standard ports and tunnels.
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A Single young process thread among billions within a single process that's among billions of billions of billions of processes. Think of the children, man!
But this process is too young for a reboot! It's only 36,288,000 second old!
Broadcast message from root@u-vers3 ...
(/dev/pts/2) at 13:47
The system is going down for reboot NOW!
Connection to 192.168.0.3 closed.
$
What constitutes fraud is the reason for the spoofing. You're doing the spoof to make sure that people know who you are and can find you easily by maintaining a level of contact consistency. This is the exact opposite of fraud in that you are spoofing your number to maintain consistency in your identity to others. Fraud is using these techniques to misrepresent and obfuscate yourself to others in the attempt to perform some form of malice.
My '96 caprice has a very quiet engine for what it is (4.3L V8). As an experiment, I had my wife drive down the hill and around the bend near where we lived doing 35 mph while I stood in the driveway blindfolded and raised my hand at the first inkling that she was coming through (nice quiet neighborhood) and at that moment she'd mark the point where the car was with a balloon filled with paint. A few times she'd have the engine running as she coasted down the hill. A few other times she'd cut the engine at the crest and coasted down. The average difference between the two was a near consistent 50 feet. The distance between me and the car was generally about 10-15 feet when I'd notice the car going by with the engine off, and 60-80 feet with the engine running. So...engine noise can't be considered a safety feature for pedestrians? Screw you.
Also, there's a lot of jurisdictions where pedestrians get automatic right-of-way, which means if you hit one, it's automatically your fault (in GA this only applies in zebra-walks to the point that the motorist must stop before a crosswalk the moment a pedestrian enters a crosswalk, regardless of speed/momentum. CT, didn't matter where they stepped off the curb at, automatic ped RoW.)
It also doesn't help that I've had the living hell scared out of me multiple times by a Tesla going by as I was walking on the side of the road. I didn't "feel" that it was there until it was nearly right on top of me, and it's rather unsettling to see something as large as a car go by you within a few feet without any warning. Tire noise is not nearly as loud as you think it is, unless the tires are heavily ribbed, which most electrics are not going to have. Hybrids/Electrics are actually the least likely to have any substantial ribbing on the tire to keep rolling resistance at a minimum.
For these reasons, I have no issue with "safety pipes" or "simulated engine noise". The louder, the better. Keeps me safer when I'm walking, and I'm less likely to bowl over someone who doesn't take the time to look when I'm in the other position. You want quiet, get an isolation tank.
Not to be ethnist (I'm also a slav, though southern slav as opposed to Poland chiefly being northern slav), but am I the only one who's not surprised that this was a Polish design? This goes right in line with standard fare Polack jokes, for good or bad.
So...answer me this: Once I set the init script how I want a service configured, who's going in as root behind me and putting security vulnerabilities into it (hint: Only one person has the root password, and root is only accessible directly from the console. sudo is disabled.)? Now, if I do yum update systemd or apt-get upgrade systemd what is my guarantee that Pottering or any one of the other 30-40 Devs touching systemd didn't put something into the blob that is reporting somewhere outside of my control? How do I know that there's not some timebomb in the blob that's going to collect critical keys and upload them to RedHat on the next time I update the repos? Read the code? I have my own code to audit, thank you very much, and I'd rather not have to audit my init system every time Lennart decides to post an update to systemd. It's bad enough when I have to do that with the Kernel modules.
So you trust that the journald binary reads the "don't save data" boolean value and doesn't just ignore it, or worse, ignores it and executes this shell script:
Or, more plausibly, does all that in a binary blob? Sure. It's open source. Sure I can check the code and compile it myself to make sure it meets my need for security. But one of the things about using these "pre-built" distros is that I'm probably using it to save time and money, which means I don't want to be bothered with doing a code check and recompile on every single init package. That's the beauty of init scripts that everyone has apparently missed in this debate. One human readable script for each daemon running, so the configuration of a daemon can be gleaned over for any questionable bits and edited in less than 10 minutes. And being scripts, they're all plain text that's automatically executable. I don't need to read over source, find an issue, edit it out, and then recompile the entire init code into a binary for that daemon to make use of it. That goes for PID 1 as well. If it's not a script that can be quickly edited and then it's ready for the next boot cycle without wasting process cycles for recompilation I don't want it on my production server.
So where can I buy 900 foot runs of cable that have the ends already on them that I can fish through conduit easily?
How do we seriously expect to keep that up at #1 for much longer if the rest of the GDP starts plummeting from the mindshare and infrastructure that maintains it collapsing under the weight of the rest of the world...like what happened to the USSR getting ousted from slot #2 and completely collapsing?
It's about High Definition Video. It's about Video Conferencing. It's about VOIP. It's about Telecommuting for your employers. It's about being competitive on the global market. It's about consuming more information faster to better perform in the global workplace. Cat videos are tertiary to this as EVERYONE needs downtime as well to maintain maximum productivity over the longest course of time. As broadband speeds go, America as a whole is falling into quicksand and the Broadband monopolies have shown that they have no intention of letting America do anything but sink. The whole Land Mass excuse hasn't been viable for a long time and now it's just becoming a complete embarassment.
Both China and Russia have more landmass than the US and while we're JUST edging them out in overall average speed (32.1mbps US, 24.2 CN, 27 RU) our cost per Megabit per second is through the roof by comparison ($3.51 US, $1.76 CN, $0.69 RU (all values reflected in USD) [These values were aquired from netindex.com]. Seriously. Stop being a fucking apologist for these assholes!
Globally we're still on fair ground but we could be doing so much better, and we need to be. We used to be the bastion of technology not even very long ago. For the longest while we could truly say "We're Number 1!" but now it's beginning to ring out more like "We're Numb!" and we need to wake up as a country. The President's statement was a start, now we need to follow through.
Have you ever been hit by a flying Android Phone? Those things hurt! So yes, by extension, ARMs are weapons!
Many people tried. Very few buyed.
This was especially true once internet speeds got faster and getting a cracked full version of the software was just as easy to find and download as getting the locked down shareware.
I do this already.
Hasn't worked yet. Psychopaths are still in charge
"Official" Android is a bit different. Updates are rarely sideloaded (going to a download site for the update) like Symbian, Mae, Mee, and Sail. Android's update system is probably the worst method they could have gone with, Apple's being only mildly better. Google's Android official update channel goes like this: Google makes the software patch and submits it to the manufacturer for approval/alteration. The manufacturer will then decide if it's worth them applying the patch to their custom build where they make it run for their hardware and apply their brand of bloatware and launchers (HTC Sense, Go Launcher, Samsung's S-launcher, etc). This update is then submitted to each Wireless Carrier that offers service for the phone model. Each carrier then decides whether to push the patch to the end user or not, applying their own additional bloatware apps to the package in the case of the former.
If a high level user goes the route of loading in custom Android ROMs, then in that case Android updates can be sideloaded. In this case, the updates are not provided by Google, it's provided by the maintainer of the ROM. Also, if the user decides to go with the custom ROM, they do so with the knowledge that any warranties on the phone have become Null and Void... and many insurance plans provided by the carriers or retailers will not cover a phone unless it has an official (Google's) version of Android on it that either came with the phone or was legitimately pushed to the phone by the carrier itself. This lends itself to the inevitable problem of if the phone is dropped and the screen is cracked and no longer turns on, but the phone's hardware can still be read, if there's a custom ROM on it the insurance can still refuse payout... meaning that the customer now has the option of paying full price for a new phone (minimum $200 for a "dumb" phone, minimum $500 for a smartphone), paying out the early termination fee (anywhere from $150 - $300, depending on remaining time in contract), paying the monthly service until such time as they can use the upgrade for a reduced price on a new phone, or if they were smarter, take their last phone out of the mothballs and use it until the upgrade period comes by again.
Being that I'm currently with Sprint, I've confirmed this where if I root my phone then crack the screen and want to file a claim on insurance, I have to be able to flash the stock ROM back onto the phone before submitting it for Claim review...which during that time I'll be going to my backup phone. Thankfully, ODIN (Samsung's flash tool) will work so long as the phone is able to power up and enter recovery, even if I can't see it on the Android's screen.
I did some research into your OnePlus One and it's apples and oranges to the discussion here. The OnePlus One doesn't even use Google's Production Android; it uses CyanogenMod. CyanogenMod is not maintained by Google in any shape or form beyond the base source of AOSP. AOSP is open to whatever developer wants to take the source and morph it into something that fits their need. This is what Cyanogen does. They take the code from AOSP, customize it and patch it their way, then puts that out. If OnePlus went with the official Google releases of Android, then they would have the same power of deciding on which patches to push as any other manufacturer. Face it, the OnePlus fills a niche market that the majority couldn't care less about. The masses don't want a developer phone... they want one that works and they don't have to mess with constantly. That said, I probably wouldn't mind having one myself as yet another cheap computer thing to tinker with (along side my DigiLand Tab, Retired Galaxy S3, Retired ZTE Vital, Retired Samsung Infuse, 2 Retired LG Optimus Vs (Optimi?), multiple Arduino Boards, and 3 BeagleBone Blacks).
Ok, so the carrier may be different, and they may be more open to pushing out updates... but with 4.3 and below, it's still up to the phone manufacturer to make the updates available in the first place, which they haven't been exactly forthcoming either. Which is core to the point: Why would google want to waste man-hours developing a patch that has to be approved by each individual manufacturer before getting pushed to the carrier to be approved by them before it gets pushed to the wild? Especially when with 4.4 the middleman approval is completely sidestepped and unnecessary?
The problem you're discussing is a problem with the US way of carriers and subsidized phone plans. It doesn't have to be like that.
Until the majority of American Consumers (nerds that know better are not in this group) get their head out of their ass and start listening to those who tell them this... Yes. This is exact way it's going to be simply because this is the way the carriers like it and they're going to make sure that the general public keeps that wool over their eyes. When you've got Joe Schmoe coming in and they see in the big bold characters $99.99* for a brand spanking new Galaxy S5 *with 2-year agreement, some are smart enough to ask "How much for the phone outright?" to which they get pointed to the fine print: $799.00. So now they weigh signing their phone life away to be locked into a single carrier for 2 years against being able to save $700 for something else in the short term. It doesn't help one iota that we're constantly barraged with "we need the new shiny" everywhere we look, so for many of the ignorant just not getting the phone isn't even considered as an option. Also even when you compare the price of a phone on contract against the equivalent phone in a pre-paid option (if there is such an option for the phone you're looking at), you're weighing the $100 against $300 - $400, which isn't so bad when the plans are cheaper and you're not tied to them. Then you deal with the shit that is American pre-paid service. Crap coverage areas, crap customer service(if you even have it), and crappy connections are the norm... even if they're provided by the big name service.
So yeah, it doesn't have to be this way, except when the mass of ignorance is larger than the informed can push. Then yes. It has to be this way because there's too much working against intelligence. We nerds can boycott and bitch all we want, but there's more than enough ignorant out there to keep the momentum of payments flowing to the carriers that our voices of malcontent are drowned out.
You realize, of course, that with the stroke of a key, Google could change their deployment terms...
In 4.4, they did. With KitKat (4.4) instead of having to push core OS and Security updates through the manufacturer, they created Google Play Services which now holds the core Android OS functionality (unfortunately by breaking away a lot of the methodologies of AOSP and walling up a good portion of the garden). With this new package, they can push out the updates through the Play Store and don't even have to deal with the Manufacturers and, by extension, the Carriers for an update anymore, unless there needs to be an update to the hardware abstraction layer.
Because of this change in how Android operates from 4.3, it's not really in Google's best interest to screw with 4.3 because #1 It's no small undertaking to strip out the Android components and put them in a Google Play Services style of operation, #2 Even if google were to take on the undertaking, the Carriers/Manufacturers would sure as hell block it because it takes away all the control they have over Android... not to mention how much of a PITA it is to get any kind of google update from the Manufacturers/Carriers as it is already.
Ok..so who made the phone? Samsung? LG? HTC? Or were you lucky enough to get a Google Nexus device?
Who sold it to you? Verizon? T-Mobile? AT&T? Sprint?
Oh..did you go to a box retailer to get your phone like RadioShack, BestBuy, or Walmart? Guess what, you still bought your phone from Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T or Sprint (US centric). The box retailers only get authorization to sell the devices from the Carriers and beyond a "service plan" for replacing the phone when it's broken, have no obligation for OS support. If a box store sells a phone in a manner against the contract agreement the store has with the carrier, even if the end purchaser keeps the phone and maintains good standing on contract he signed in the store, the carrier will bill the store for the full price of the phone that was sold "improperly" and a negation of whatever subsidies the Carrier promised the store for said phone/activation in a procedure called "Charge-backs." I know that at least with Sprint, these Charge-Backs will occur if the end purchaser winds up canceling his contract within 6 months.
The Carriers get and give authorization from/for the device manufacturers to build phones for them (it's a contract negotiation back and forth). Google pushes out an update to the Manufacturers who have to make the drivers for the update to work with their hardware, then the Manufacturers submit the updated OS to the Carrier, and from there it's up to the Carriers to decide (historically: ignore) whether or not the update gets pushed to the end devices.
At least this is how it was until KitKat (4.4). With KitKat Google took back a significant amount of control over how OS updates get pushed out by putting most of the core OS functionality into the GooglePlayServices.apk. Now the only time Google needs to submit an update to a carrier is if there's a major patch issue that needs to be addressed between the operating system and the hardware. All other operating system and security upgrades are pushed through the Play Store from here on, bypassing the Manufacturer and Carrier update process altogether. They did this simply because Fragmentation was becoming such a big problem and Google wanted to get a handle on it. Knowing this...why would Google want to try to push an update out to an OS that they have so little control over compared to the current versions, especially considering that it's more than likely the update wouldn't even be pushed out to the end devices? Fortunately or Unfortunately, the other side of this is that KitKat has become the rut for Google that XP was for Microsoft, and it may be a couple OS versions still before people move from KitKat to the new shiny.
But at least there is the *possibility* of getting a patch if Google makes one. Without that, no chance!
BWAA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!! I needed that laugh! There's more likely a *possibility* that a large enough asteroid would strike mercury and push it into the Sun, causing a massive chain reaction that engulfs the Earth and ends its existence within the next 100 years, and Google knows it.
Seriously, we're talking about carriers take months to put out a minor revision as an update to the phones (Jelly Bean to KitKat), let alone even pay attention to a build revision. The affected devices are either new and powerful enough to run Kit Kat, and thus would more likely get that update as opposed to a minor build update; or they're old and weak enough that the carrier is going to try to push you into a new phone that can handle KitKat / Lollipop. There's no middle ground or incentive with them for pushing out a small build revision. So, why waste the manpower / devtime on a patch when the carriers' track record has already proven that they won't even consider rolling it?
Were you thinking of R.C. Pro Am instead of Rad Racer? The Rad Racer series was actually developed by Square before they came out with the better known game franchise that saved them from bankruptcy (and that they've milked to death and back ever since).
That again!
Why did I need your permission, exactly?
Slashdot posted 9/11. I was here for that. And while yes, I do concede that was an event that shook not just just the US but the entire World to its core and needed to be posted here, not every military/terrorist event since then that made its way to the pages of /. needed to. This was what I was afraid of, and even CmdrTaco had reservations about posting it: http://slashdot.org/story/01/0...">http://slashdot.org/story/01/09/11/1314258/world-trade-towers-and-pentagon-attacked. Most notably his line: "Normally I wouldn't consider posting this on Slashdot, but I'm making an exception this time because I can't get news through any of the conventional websites, and I assume I'm not alone." He had reason to make the post, even given his reservations. Unfortunately, the other editors of /. and even Mr. Taco himself began making more and more posts that weren't necessarily relevant to the geek culture.
Compared to the WTC event which was heard and felt around the world with the loss of 3,000 international lives in a single coordinated terrorist event, this is a minor event that has so far has taken 14 lives (not including the terrorists themselves). Even if these events were happening in the US, I'd still be groaning when this story hit the front page on /. This is already being covered by CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and others out there... I don't need to see it here too. There's plenty of "terrorist/counter-terrorist" activities that would qualify to make the front page here, as they involve the dark side of the tech we work with. There isn't anything here that can link back to this Tech...except for maybe the computers the Satirists used to publish their work...
One can hope that the trend would be gradual enough that the state could come up with an alternate source or revenue for education before a crisis (not holding my breath on that one). That said at the risk of getting flamed:
This is Georgia we're talking about. Home of Redneck Games, Honey Boo Boo (Christ I used to live not 5 minutes from the neighborhood she moved to), and the general mentality among the up-and-coming youth that Construction or other forms of manual labor is the best employer (still). Yeah, in larger metros like Atlanta, Athens, and less so in Savannah, you have some big growth in technical and commercial industry; but if you get out into more suburban areas (Albany, Brunswick, Macon, Waycross) this tech mentality drops off a cliff, though there's still a baseline that the office job allows for a certain level of convenience. If you go even further out into rural Georgia... tech? What's that? Well...except for the EMC situation we have which gave the "hicks" 2 benefits: Lots and lots of manual labor that they love, and fast broadband internet to enjoy in the downtime. You can go even farther out into the Georgia boonies and things will get survivalist surreal REAL quick. These are the areas where water is from wells, sewer is the outhouse, power is from waterwheels or windmills...and that's about it. Good luck even getting Phone service. There are some areas out in the boonies of Georgia that make "Deliverance" look like a light-hearted bedtime story.
Somewhat ironically, in the areas of rural (not boony) Georgia that the Cable/DSL companies have written off, the local regional Electric Membership Co-Ops have taken over the installation of Fiber to the Home and started feeding 10mbps + broadband to the homes bundled with Electric, Television, and Phone service. This is probably what scared the incumbent providers into upping the service level of their offerings in their territories the most: While EMC's aren't known for their great electrical service rates, the other services in the bundle were costing customers a fraction of what the cable providers were, for what amounted to twice as much bandwidth or more, and 600+ channels (all HD) for the price of what cable was providing for their 2nd lowest tier (abt 70 SDTV channels).
I also remember that under that model, I could pay the telephone company about $20 for basic service (the line connection), title II taxes included, and an additional $20 to my choice of about 14 ISPs who all had to compete to ensure they had the best uptime, largest modem banks, and most available services for the value. It wasn't fast by the standards of what we have today by any means, but damnit, I could run my servers from my house unhindered! I can do this with Cox now...but I'm also coughing up 4 times as much dough over it.. and I've got no one else to go to. Excuse me there's Windstream for 3/4 the price and 3/50ths the speed...and locked down where I can't run my servers without using non-standard ports and tunnels.