Does anyone here remember what teenagers did before mobile phones? Did you all have unmissable, action-packed adolescences or something?
Not sure about unmissable or action packed... I had a bike, a skateboard, a paper route for most of it, the odd video arcade. I remember lots of walking, and occasionally scaring up a porn stash or getting our hands on some pot or beer.
It was a special kind of purgatory. It was like going to mass, followed by attending a funeral, and afterwards a lecture in the tanneries of ancient Assyria, all mixed in with waiting in a long queue to fill in forms that made no sense.
Wow, memories of teen angst, Catholic guilt, and whatever else your apparently British up-bringing saddled you with. Sounds like good times.;-) "Rub, buggery, and the lash" as it were.
Imagine if you will Silent Bob without the Jay, standing on a corner _not_ having amazing adventures or experiences. Ah, the heady days of youth!
Yeah, but we had lower expectations then, and hanging around doing nothing was what we thought was cool at the time. OK, maybe not.
Autism?! Autism!!! You think texting on their phones is a form of autism?!
Only that it seems to further exaggerate the anti-social behaviors already exhibited by teens. It's also why you they all essentially test as psychopaths. Childhood and adolescence is what made me decide not to be a parent.:-P
Well, for one thing, those others were generally done while at home, and not while walking around or driving or other public activities.
Only because we didn't have the ability to do them on the hoof. You were tethered to a computer plugged into a wall and a network connection, this is just the logical conclusion. Now, you can be hooked into this kind of stuff 24/7, no matter where you're at.
There was a case here in California just recently of another shithead teen wiping out her car because of texting, and another where someone walked right in front of a car because they were so buried in their texting they just wandered into a street.
Oh, god, don't remind me. Where I live, we passed a law that made it illegal to use a hand-held device while operating a motor vehicle. By the looks of it, it hasn't deterred anybody since I routinely see people still doing it.
I have literally looked in my rear view and seen someone texting on their Blackberry -- while driving the car behind me; both thumbs clearly on the keypad, which leaves no room for driving. Just the other day, I saw a guy with a cell phone in his right hand, and holding his cigarette out the window with his left... I'm not clear on how he was actually driving.
I'm of the opinion there needs to be fairly steep fines for trying to operate a cell phone while driving -- though, lots of people still insist they can do it effectively.
and seriously, I'd have been better off skipping high school and staying at home coding.
I highly doubt it... at that age, the last thing you need to be is encouraged to withdraw from further human contact, hide in your basement, and code.
As annoying as it is, some of the socialization you learn in high school and beyond actually do prepare you to interact with people in the real world. Even coders occasionally need to be in meetings with normal humans -- and I've seen a couple of guys who were completely incapable of that kind of interaction and experienced problems with it later on in life.
Hell, I've seen guys in their 30's/40's lose their job because the client more or less looked at them and said to never send them back because they were lousy face to face.
You will almost never be able to survive without learning how to interact; as the old saying goes... try to be more outgoing, try to stare at the other person's shoes. Maybe even look up from time to time.;-)
Don't undervalue how useful it will be to be able to interact with new people in a business setting... it will come up more than you think.
Well, the daughter was so buried into her phone texting her friends that she hardly even spoke to my cousin (who knew perfect English) and not even to her other friend. I met her once. I have the feeling that when she is with her friends she texts in real life, she'd bury her head into her phone and start texting someone else.
I have witnessed this... two teenagers who have gone someplace together and are now sitting and texting. I often can't decide if they're texting each other, or third parties.
But, it's usually kind of funny/sad/lame to watch several teenagers, all with their phones out, all with headphones attached to their phones, and all heads down and texting and more or less ignoring one another. It's like self-imposed autism or something, and actually kind of sad to watch.
I think, by allowing us to seek out the ideal people with our exact interests at the moment, the internet allows us to get into the mindset to discount the people around us as less worthwhile to interact with.
And, really, except for the fact that now all of the 'cool' kids are doing it too... how does this differ from IRC, ICQ, AOL/MSN, Everquest, Second Life and all of the other things which have filled this niche before?
Teenagers have always been withdrawn, moody and sulky... but now texting seems to basically fill up their day, which makes them look even more withdrawn, moody, and sulky. Some days I'm actually glad I don't have the ability to text on my phone... it's too reminiscent of MSN or something to me.
We have spent the last 20 years moving to ever larger and multiple screens because we need the real estate. Now we are supposed to work as if we were using a cell phone? What a joke.
Care to articulate this a little more? I'm curious since I'm going to be upgrading some VMs, and I'm curious what to expect.
Have people just gone with overly simplified GUI interfaces that don't let you actually use the screen well? That sounds kinda dumb, but I'm having a hard time visualizing what you're referring to.
I know over the last bunch of years, the direction of most WMs in general seems to occasionally evoke a "what the hell is this?" response from me.
It's no more wrong than patenting heart muscle and suing everyone who's alive except lawyers, who are all heartless. With the current patent system, it could happen!
I can see that if you develop a mechanism to create heart muscles from scratch (and using mechanisms other than what the body does), that should be patentable. That's a process, and an invention.
But, if you patent the heart muscle that I already have in me, then the patent system has gone horribly wrong and the whole notion of patents has become absurd.
Medical facts should not be patentable. A process or a device to address a medical condition or defect, sure -- provided you're not patenting the basic biology. But the physical makeup of the parts of my body? No bloody way.
I would like to think your scenario explicitly can't be something which would happen.
Boy, it would be awfully nice to have screen shots to show us what the ()*&*(&%^&^ GUI looks like.
My problem with KDE (and, this was like a decade ago, so it's likely meaningless) was the ridiculous obsession with "K"s (bolor with a K? Silly bunt) and at the time, a lot of the apps were really, er, incomplete.
At the time, it also felt like KDE was trying for a much more uniform (and annoyingly Windows 3 interface), and on the system I had at the time, many of the K* apps were more like placeholders that didn't do much.
Some of these seem to me like a bunch of people telling me that I should be using the One True Window Environment, and that if I've not drunk the Kool Aid and using the entire suite of KDE, I'm somehow missing out. It just never felt that way to me.
I've used Gnome for over a decade, and while I'm willing to concede that a lot has changed in the intervening years... but I distinctly thinking that KDE felt like it was the simplest possible interface meant to be OK for everyone. To me it came across as somewhat lacking and pretty lame looking.
This is why any form of patent on naturally occurring genes is complete and utter bullshit.
Is AIA also suing the Swedish family in which they found this mutation? Because, they're clearly infringing on the patent.
There is no way that it makes sense to be able to patent parts of someone else's DNA. This doesn't do anything to "further innovation" or any of the things people say patents are for... it lets some idiot patent something he found (not created), sell it to a 3rd party, and then that 3rd party prevents other people from using it for research. DNA is a "fact" not an "invention".
In this case, I'd like to know which takes precedence.. the NIH requirement to share the mice, or this absurd "patent".
So, basically, vendor lock-in is good for the vendor, and it allows the vendors to make a new version of the tool which is no longer compatible so that people need to upgrade on a pretty regular basis.
And, yes, I can certainly see how if the software is going to cost you more than a decade's worth of income or more, you're going to pirate it.
It didn't come out to quite 50 a month for me (or my girlfriend). I got the 2GB data plan through AT&T with the least minuets and the cost increase was something like 20 bucks over my previous Verizon plan (of course if you have a cheep provider you will have different results) but honestly I havent been using that much 3G data.
Yeah, I'm up in Canada, so our wireless situation seems to be a little more expensive and annoying than you guys.
I have a voice-only cell phone, and that already costs me about $40-45/month... going to a data plan seems like it would cost about $50/month more per line.
Since I'm already paying my cable company for two land lines, two cell phones, internet and cable TV,... if my wife and I got smart-phones, we'd likely be looking at almost $400/mo for everything. At least her work pays for one of the land lines since she works from home.
I keep hoping that data will go down in price, but that doesn't seem to be something which is likely to happen. I actually know someone who says he pays about $200/month for his Android smart phone and his data plan, but for him it's worth every penny.
Comments like that really call into question whether anyone should ever believe anything you post. Redhat's latest financials reported $107 million in earnings for fiscal 2011.
That's profits I believe. In terms of earnings, I think it is close to a billion.
Depending on what context, it is valid to say that Red Hat "makes a billion a year". In terms of revenue, it's getting there.
What exactly makes the complaint over the top? The purpose of the free software foundation is to promote free software.
I agree that the FSF is doing exactly what they've always said they'd do, and for those stated reasons.
It's just that sometimes the FSF come across as being zealots. They're like old communists and the like talking about the ideological purity of software. The rest of us are just trying not to make contact with the crazy person.
Commercial entities aren't generally interested in the notion that all software should be libre.
It's like hippies (or whomever) advocating we should stop all modern technology, and start living in a peaceful, agrarian society and sing songs around the campfire... everybody but them is sorta like "sure sport, you go right ahead, we'll meet you there".
In the long run I think less expensive WiFi only tablets will be the way to go and they will be sold at best buy rather than at AT&T.
Couldn't agree more... I have the wifi-only version of the iPad... pretty much most places that I go have free wifi. I can't imagine paying for a cellular data plan for something that 90% of the time I'm connected to a wireless network.
About the only scenario I need to cover is that some hotels only have wired internet. But, that can be solved by bringing a wireless router with me that my iPad is already able to connect to.
I'd like a smart phone, but I just can't justify what it would cost to have one... my wife and I figure if we changed our current cell phones for smart phones, we'd be paying at least $100/month more. And we're already paying for a crapload of stuff from our provider.
would anyone reasonably conclude they shouldn't buy a Vaeron because a Eurostar fighter is faster down a straight track
Of course, that's why I canceled my Veyron purchase -- I mean, if I can't outrun fighter jets, what's the point?
Well, that and the fact that I'm the first to admit I'd likely kill myself in a car that fast. Oh, and the likelihood of me being able to afford a car that costs around $2.6M dollars is laughable, of course.
*sigh* I'm pretty sure it would be a chick magnet, too.
Hopefully they can get manufactures pushing updates sooner, stop the stupid look and feel customization, etc.
Then, carriers will stop carrying that device.
From what I've seen, cell carriers have a very strong interest in branding the phones and tweaking them. In fact, I've even seen some native abilities disabled/crippled, so that you'd have to go through the carrier for everything... in one case, a friend determined that they'd removed the ability of his Motorolla to directly visit a URL. Instead, you had to go through a customization by the carrier... which, oddly enough, seems to have been designed to use twice as much bandwidth. Pretty handy when you're selling metered usage.
I think if Google tried to force too much on the carriers and manufacturers, they'd just go someplace else.
Most iOS apps I have seen are identical between their tablet and phone versions.
It's when they don't have a version for the iPad that you really see the difference.
You can zoom it so it fills the screen, but it ends up being an app that only works in portrait mode, has clunky, poorly rendered buttons, and generally feels different to use. You can usually see the big jaggies around the edges of things and sometimes a button ends up being ginormous as it was sized for a small, hand-held.
If someone doesn't include the higher-res graphics, it's quite obviously an app meant for a phone.
Can't speak to Android, but I can say that an app meant for a phone doesn't always work as well as you'd like on a tablet.
Because to put it in simple terms for you, "with great power comes great responsibility".
So, Google is Spiderman now?
I find it a sad commentary that this thread is full of comments with childish, uninformed, ill-conceived rants, such as your posts, and that moderators upvote them is a double indictment of slashdot readers.
Wow, are you an arrogant fucking asshole.
Just because you disagree with me and other posters, doesn't make them "childish, uninformed, ill-conceived rants". So, fuck off, and until someone actually rules that Google is a monopoly, how about we don't all act like an assertion by Microsoft is actually factual.
Google isn't 'forcing' anybody to not sell to someone else.. they're saying that you can't take their data and sell/re-use it... and they're also saying if you want to participate in the Google adwords and analytics, that the search on your web site is expected to be Google. Because taking ad revenue from Google, and sending searches to Bing is having your cake and eating it too.
You're perfectly free to stop using Google, and sign up with Bing. And then you'll likely see your ad revenue drop through the floor since nobody gives a shit about it. That doesn't mean that Google should be propping up your business model.
To date, nobody has proven that Google is a monopoly, or that if they are, the best solution is for them to hand over anything Microsoft wants. So far, only Microsoft has claimed this.
It's not an insane statement, it's the law. It's been applied to Microsoft in the past and it continues to apply to Microsoft. Why do you think it shouldn't apply to Google?
Is Google search and ads a monopoly? Just because nobody uses Bing, doesn't make Google a monopoly.
In theory, there's Yahoo, and Bing, and probably other search engines with ads they can sell. But, if everybody wants to use Google, too bad for them. What next, a court requiring I use Bing to prop it up a little?
Until a court rules on this, this is mostly Microsoft jockeying to get position. If the court/tribunal/whatever rules that since Microsoft has their own search engine, and that they're free to sell advertising on it... then this isn't the law as you assert.
We're at opening legal arguments and claims here. I'm more inclined to be of the opinion that having a crappy product that nobody is interested in means you tried to "compete" and failed utterly.
If YouTube is deliberately structured so that search engines without inside knowledge (i.e. everyone but Google) can't effectively index it then that is anti-competitive
Why? YouTube is owned by Google and they can do what they want, the same as the New York Times is free to put a paywall.
Microsoft is free to create (or buy) its own wildly popular video sharing web-site. What about YouTube makes it something that Microsoft and other search engines should have a "right" to the content of it? They could lock down YouTube, charge to be able to login and be within their rights. They'd probably piss people off, but that's irrelevant.
Just because Microsoft has indulged in foul play in the past, Google doesn't get a free pass.
That's not what this is about. This is about making the insane statement that Google needs to provide the tools to companies like Microsoft so they can "compete" with Google.
Is Microsoft required to help companies compete with its products?
Just figured that I'd give you the reverse scenario. Google can say 'Don't be evil' all they want--their current advertising practices seem designed to keep anyone else out of the space.
No, they're designed to make sure that you don't use the stuff that Google has worked to create to compete against them.
Go ahead, start a competing business. But, you will need to collect your own data, build out your ad-business and search engine, and build it from scratch.
Forcing Google to hand over everything you need to compete with them is bullshit. Competition doesn't mean that Google needs to hand you the keys to their stuff because they have a head start on you. Competition means you can try to beat them, but you don't get a guarantee.
And, really, after all these years... listening to Microsoft complain that someone is doing mean things to make it tough for Microsoft to compete? I find it awfully hard to muster any sympathy.
The way that I read the complaint, it sounds more like Google is blocking users from taking their data and moving away from Google.
Sort of... they're not blocking users (as in you and me), they're blocking advertisers from taking the data they collected from Google, and walking away with it to use it elsewhere. You know, the stuff that Google runs its business with.
So, I sell you a service, and you feel you should be free to take what I'm providing to you, and re-use it however you like and give it to someone else without compensating me?
If I was a Google analytics user, you better believe that would make me angry. It's my data, and I should be able to use it however I want.
Well, think about it this way... Google just agreed to privacy audits for the next 20 years. The information they're providing to the Google Analytics people is comprised of the self-same information about you and me and everyone else who uses Google. They're responsible for what's collected and how it's used. They also did the work to collect it, and really, that's what they sell is this data... why should they be forced to give that away? Do you require your mechanic to loan you his tools because it's not fair that you can't work on your own car?
So, are you advocating that it should be OK to use private data that you rented from someone with a clause that says you can't share it, and then share it? So, every data-mining company in the world should be free to give everyone else the data they have, and people with privacy policies should just throw them away?
Or do you like proprietary data formats, designed to lock competitors out?
Well, given Microsoft's propensity for proprietary formats designed to lock out competitors, it's kind of amusing for the crux of the argument to be about that.
In this case the "proprietary data" is the product... should I be allowed to force Microsoft to show me their proprietary stuff and then be allowed to sell it? Because, essentially, what you're advocating is that I should be able to usurp the product that someone sells me, and go on to compete with them using the same thing.
This kind of argument on behalf of Microsoft is laughable since they're the first people to claim something is proprietary and you can't use it. But, suddenly it's someone else who has something proprietary, and Microsoft should be allowed to the trough?
It seems to be mostly about Youtube -- they claim Google is restricting access to Youtube data in an effort to ensure only Google can have the best video search results.
Does Microsoft make sure that all of the stuff on MSDN is available to their competitors or people who just want to use it? Do they try to make sure that I can use all of their Silverlight crap from a Firefox browser?
Boo hoo, YouTube is popular, and therefore Microsoft figures that content site should be bending over to make sure that other people can use it. It's not like the stuff on YouTube is some public commons that everybody should be able to make use of... just because it's hugely popular doesn't make it a shared resource.
For all that Microsoft likes to be a proprietary shop, they're selectively saying that Google should open up the stuff it owns so that Microsoft can play with it too.
Slashdot Mirror
Rum, even. ;-)
Not sure about unmissable or action packed ... I had a bike, a skateboard, a paper route for most of it, the odd video arcade. I remember lots of walking, and occasionally scaring up a porn stash or getting our hands on some pot or beer.
Wow, memories of teen angst, Catholic guilt, and whatever else your apparently British up-bringing saddled you with. Sounds like good times. ;-) "Rub, buggery, and the lash" as it were.
Yeah, but we had lower expectations then, and hanging around doing nothing was what we thought was cool at the time. OK, maybe not.
Only that it seems to further exaggerate the anti-social behaviors already exhibited by teens. It's also why you they all essentially test as psychopaths. Childhood and adolescence is what made me decide not to be a parent. :-P
Only because we didn't have the ability to do them on the hoof. You were tethered to a computer plugged into a wall and a network connection, this is just the logical conclusion. Now, you can be hooked into this kind of stuff 24/7, no matter where you're at.
Oh, god, don't remind me. Where I live, we passed a law that made it illegal to use a hand-held device while operating a motor vehicle. By the looks of it, it hasn't deterred anybody since I routinely see people still doing it.
I have literally looked in my rear view and seen someone texting on their Blackberry -- while driving the car behind me; both thumbs clearly on the keypad, which leaves no room for driving. Just the other day, I saw a guy with a cell phone in his right hand, and holding his cigarette out the window with his left ... I'm not clear on how he was actually driving.
I'm of the opinion there needs to be fairly steep fines for trying to operate a cell phone while driving -- though, lots of people still insist they can do it effectively.
I highly doubt it ... at that age, the last thing you need to be is encouraged to withdraw from further human contact, hide in your basement, and code.
As annoying as it is, some of the socialization you learn in high school and beyond actually do prepare you to interact with people in the real world. Even coders occasionally need to be in meetings with normal humans -- and I've seen a couple of guys who were completely incapable of that kind of interaction and experienced problems with it later on in life.
Hell, I've seen guys in their 30's/40's lose their job because the client more or less looked at them and said to never send them back because they were lousy face to face.
You will almost never be able to survive without learning how to interact; as the old saying goes ... try to be more outgoing, try to stare at the other person's shoes. Maybe even look up from time to time. ;-)
Don't undervalue how useful it will be to be able to interact with new people in a business setting ... it will come up more than you think.
I have witnessed this ... two teenagers who have gone someplace together and are now sitting and texting. I often can't decide if they're texting each other, or third parties.
But, it's usually kind of funny/sad/lame to watch several teenagers, all with their phones out, all with headphones attached to their phones, and all heads down and texting and more or less ignoring one another. It's like self-imposed autism or something, and actually kind of sad to watch.
And, really, except for the fact that now all of the 'cool' kids are doing it too ... how does this differ from IRC, ICQ, AOL/MSN, Everquest, Second Life and all of the other things which have filled this niche before?
Teenagers have always been withdrawn, moody and sulky ... but now texting seems to basically fill up their day, which makes them look even more withdrawn, moody, and sulky. Some days I'm actually glad I don't have the ability to text on my phone ... it's too reminiscent of MSN or something to me.
Care to articulate this a little more? I'm curious since I'm going to be upgrading some VMs, and I'm curious what to expect.
Have people just gone with overly simplified GUI interfaces that don't let you actually use the screen well? That sounds kinda dumb, but I'm having a hard time visualizing what you're referring to.
I know over the last bunch of years, the direction of most WMs in general seems to occasionally evoke a "what the hell is this?" response from me.
I can see that if you develop a mechanism to create heart muscles from scratch (and using mechanisms other than what the body does), that should be patentable. That's a process, and an invention.
But, if you patent the heart muscle that I already have in me, then the patent system has gone horribly wrong and the whole notion of patents has become absurd.
Medical facts should not be patentable. A process or a device to address a medical condition or defect, sure -- provided you're not patenting the basic biology. But the physical makeup of the parts of my body? No bloody way.
I would like to think your scenario explicitly can't be something which would happen.
Boy, it would be awfully nice to have screen shots to show us what the ()*&*(&%^&^ GUI looks like.
My problem with KDE (and, this was like a decade ago, so it's likely meaningless) was the ridiculous obsession with "K"s (bolor with a K? Silly bunt) and at the time, a lot of the apps were really, er, incomplete.
At the time, it also felt like KDE was trying for a much more uniform (and annoyingly Windows 3 interface), and on the system I had at the time, many of the K* apps were more like placeholders that didn't do much.
Some of these seem to me like a bunch of people telling me that I should be using the One True Window Environment, and that if I've not drunk the Kool Aid and using the entire suite of KDE, I'm somehow missing out. It just never felt that way to me.
I've used Gnome for over a decade, and while I'm willing to concede that a lot has changed in the intervening years ... but I distinctly thinking that KDE felt like it was the simplest possible interface meant to be OK for everyone. To me it came across as somewhat lacking and pretty lame looking.
This is why any form of patent on naturally occurring genes is complete and utter bullshit.
Is AIA also suing the Swedish family in which they found this mutation? Because, they're clearly infringing on the patent.
There is no way that it makes sense to be able to patent parts of someone else's DNA. This doesn't do anything to "further innovation" or any of the things people say patents are for ... it lets some idiot patent something he found (not created), sell it to a 3rd party, and then that 3rd party prevents other people from using it for research. DNA is a "fact" not an "invention".
In this case, I'd like to know which takes precedence .. the NIH requirement to share the mice, or this absurd "patent".
This is just so wrong.
So, basically, vendor lock-in is good for the vendor, and it allows the vendors to make a new version of the tool which is no longer compatible so that people need to upgrade on a pretty regular basis.
And, yes, I can certainly see how if the software is going to cost you more than a decade's worth of income or more, you're going to pirate it.
Well, you could always try making eye contact occasionally. ;-)
Yeah, I'm up in Canada, so our wireless situation seems to be a little more expensive and annoying than you guys.
I have a voice-only cell phone, and that already costs me about $40-45/month ... going to a data plan seems like it would cost about $50/month more per line.
Since I'm already paying my cable company for two land lines, two cell phones, internet and cable TV, ... if my wife and I got smart-phones, we'd likely be looking at almost $400/mo for everything. At least her work pays for one of the land lines since she works from home.
I keep hoping that data will go down in price, but that doesn't seem to be something which is likely to happen. I actually know someone who says he pays about $200/month for his Android smart phone and his data plan, but for him it's worth every penny.
That's profits I believe. In terms of earnings, I think it is close to a billion.
Depending on what context, it is valid to say that Red Hat "makes a billion a year". In terms of revenue, it's getting there.
I agree that the FSF is doing exactly what they've always said they'd do, and for those stated reasons.
It's just that sometimes the FSF come across as being zealots. They're like old communists and the like talking about the ideological purity of software. The rest of us are just trying not to make contact with the crazy person.
Commercial entities aren't generally interested in the notion that all software should be libre.
It's like hippies (or whomever) advocating we should stop all modern technology, and start living in a peaceful, agrarian society and sing songs around the campfire ... everybody but them is sorta like "sure sport, you go right ahead, we'll meet you there".
Couldn't agree more ... I have the wifi-only version of the iPad ... pretty much most places that I go have free wifi. I can't imagine paying for a cellular data plan for something that 90% of the time I'm connected to a wireless network.
About the only scenario I need to cover is that some hotels only have wired internet. But, that can be solved by bringing a wireless router with me that my iPad is already able to connect to.
I'd like a smart phone, but I just can't justify what it would cost to have one ... my wife and I figure if we changed our current cell phones for smart phones, we'd be paying at least $100/month more. And we're already paying for a crapload of stuff from our provider.
Of course, that's why I canceled my Veyron purchase -- I mean, if I can't outrun fighter jets, what's the point?
Well, that and the fact that I'm the first to admit I'd likely kill myself in a car that fast. Oh, and the likelihood of me being able to afford a car that costs around $2.6M dollars is laughable, of course.
*sigh* I'm pretty sure it would be a chick magnet, too.
Then, carriers will stop carrying that device.
From what I've seen, cell carriers have a very strong interest in branding the phones and tweaking them. In fact, I've even seen some native abilities disabled/crippled, so that you'd have to go through the carrier for everything ... in one case, a friend determined that they'd removed the ability of his Motorolla to directly visit a URL. Instead, you had to go through a customization by the carrier ... which, oddly enough, seems to have been designed to use twice as much bandwidth. Pretty handy when you're selling metered usage.
I think if Google tried to force too much on the carriers and manufacturers, they'd just go someplace else.
It's when they don't have a version for the iPad that you really see the difference.
You can zoom it so it fills the screen, but it ends up being an app that only works in portrait mode, has clunky, poorly rendered buttons, and generally feels different to use. You can usually see the big jaggies around the edges of things and sometimes a button ends up being ginormous as it was sized for a small, hand-held.
If someone doesn't include the higher-res graphics, it's quite obviously an app meant for a phone.
Can't speak to Android, but I can say that an app meant for a phone doesn't always work as well as you'd like on a tablet.
Or Apple.
Seems like both cause people to immediately go into camps and decide that all other points of view are wrong.
So, Google is Spiderman now?
Wow, are you an arrogant fucking asshole.
Just because you disagree with me and other posters, doesn't make them "childish, uninformed, ill-conceived rants". So, fuck off, and until someone actually rules that Google is a monopoly, how about we don't all act like an assertion by Microsoft is actually factual.
Google isn't 'forcing' anybody to not sell to someone else .. they're saying that you can't take their data and sell/re-use it ... and they're also saying if you want to participate in the Google adwords and analytics, that the search on your web site is expected to be Google. Because taking ad revenue from Google, and sending searches to Bing is having your cake and eating it too.
You're perfectly free to stop using Google, and sign up with Bing. And then you'll likely see your ad revenue drop through the floor since nobody gives a shit about it. That doesn't mean that Google should be propping up your business model.
To date, nobody has proven that Google is a monopoly, or that if they are, the best solution is for them to hand over anything Microsoft wants. So far, only Microsoft has claimed this.
Is Google search and ads a monopoly? Just because nobody uses Bing, doesn't make Google a monopoly.
In theory, there's Yahoo, and Bing, and probably other search engines with ads they can sell. But, if everybody wants to use Google, too bad for them. What next, a court requiring I use Bing to prop it up a little?
Until a court rules on this, this is mostly Microsoft jockeying to get position. If the court/tribunal/whatever rules that since Microsoft has their own search engine, and that they're free to sell advertising on it ... then this isn't the law as you assert.
We're at opening legal arguments and claims here. I'm more inclined to be of the opinion that having a crappy product that nobody is interested in means you tried to "compete" and failed utterly.
Why? YouTube is owned by Google and they can do what they want, the same as the New York Times is free to put a paywall.
Microsoft is free to create (or buy) its own wildly popular video sharing web-site. What about YouTube makes it something that Microsoft and other search engines should have a "right" to the content of it? They could lock down YouTube, charge to be able to login and be within their rights. They'd probably piss people off, but that's irrelevant.
That's not what this is about. This is about making the insane statement that Google needs to provide the tools to companies like Microsoft so they can "compete" with Google.
Is Microsoft required to help companies compete with its products?
No, they're designed to make sure that you don't use the stuff that Google has worked to create to compete against them.
Go ahead, start a competing business. But, you will need to collect your own data, build out your ad-business and search engine, and build it from scratch.
Forcing Google to hand over everything you need to compete with them is bullshit. Competition doesn't mean that Google needs to hand you the keys to their stuff because they have a head start on you. Competition means you can try to beat them, but you don't get a guarantee.
And, really, after all these years ... listening to Microsoft complain that someone is doing mean things to make it tough for Microsoft to compete? I find it awfully hard to muster any sympathy.
Sort of ... they're not blocking users (as in you and me), they're blocking advertisers from taking the data they collected from Google, and walking away with it to use it elsewhere. You know, the stuff that Google runs its business with.
So, I sell you a service, and you feel you should be free to take what I'm providing to you, and re-use it however you like and give it to someone else without compensating me?
Well, think about it this way ... Google just agreed to privacy audits for the next 20 years. The information they're providing to the Google Analytics people is comprised of the self-same information about you and me and everyone else who uses Google. They're responsible for what's collected and how it's used. They also did the work to collect it, and really, that's what they sell is this data ... why should they be forced to give that away? Do you require your mechanic to loan you his tools because it's not fair that you can't work on your own car?
So, are you advocating that it should be OK to use private data that you rented from someone with a clause that says you can't share it, and then share it? So, every data-mining company in the world should be free to give everyone else the data they have, and people with privacy policies should just throw them away?
Well, given Microsoft's propensity for proprietary formats designed to lock out competitors, it's kind of amusing for the crux of the argument to be about that.
In this case the "proprietary data" is the product ... should I be allowed to force Microsoft to show me their proprietary stuff and then be allowed to sell it? Because, essentially, what you're advocating is that I should be able to usurp the product that someone sells me, and go on to compete with them using the same thing.
This kind of argument on behalf of Microsoft is laughable since they're the first people to claim something is proprietary and you can't use it. But, suddenly it's someone else who has something proprietary, and Microsoft should be allowed to the trough?
Seriously, WTF are you people smoking?
Does Microsoft make sure that all of the stuff on MSDN is available to their competitors or people who just want to use it? Do they try to make sure that I can use all of their Silverlight crap from a Firefox browser?
Boo hoo, YouTube is popular, and therefore Microsoft figures that content site should be bending over to make sure that other people can use it. It's not like the stuff on YouTube is some public commons that everybody should be able to make use of ... just because it's hugely popular doesn't make it a shared resource.
For all that Microsoft likes to be a proprietary shop, they're selectively saying that Google should open up the stuff it owns so that Microsoft can play with it too.