That statement is a bit idealistic. Gang members are not welcome in police forces; at the same time police officers spent a lot of time working gang-related cases. Looking at the community at large is not productive, just as if you are looking at both sides in a war.
If your community is nothing but gang members, then I'm sure you'll find the law enforcement to be a very different organization. Corruption aside, gangs tend to be a subset of a community. Law enforcement represents that larger community. And those forces come in to existence in various forms due to the general desire of humanity for law and order.
On the other hand, if we were NOT driven by this behavior, law and law enforcement would never exist either. The truth is in between: most of the society wants peace, but a small (and dangerous!) part of the society wants war. In most modern social groups criminals, if left unchecked, overrun the peaceful citizens. In ancient times villagers were known to brutally kill thieves, that kept the balance. Nowadays it's not legal any more, so criminals have an advantage.
This isn't some sort of chicken-or-egg situation. If humanity was so bad off, there would never be an attempt to form civilizations. We would simply continue in the perpetual cycle of conflict. But we don't.
There aren't that many criminals in an average society, actually. But their influence is far exceeding the actual harm they do.
I completely agree. We have a relatively small number of bad actors and people start to state, as a given fact, that "human beings are dumb, irrational, and self-centered creatures."
Law enforcement does not spring from the ground like mushrooms. It is not a divine force delivered on to the face of the world from the Heavens. It comes from the very men that write the laws. And in many cases, the same community that is governed by those laws also write the same laws as well as provide the men that make up the law enforcement force.
The notion that humanity is fundamentally inclined to self destructive anarchy is in direct conflict with the existence of law enforcement and organized, civilized societies. If we were driven by this behavior, law and law enforcement would never exist.
Granted - there are those who display the aforementioned behavior. They exist in almost any sufficiently large enough group. And given the right set of circumstances, they are likely to do bad things. But these individuals speak to human condition. They are examples of the worse of us. They make up part of what humanity is but they do not define it.
The individual human can be compassionate, intelligent, and moral -- but human beings are dumb, irrational, and self-centered creatures and you and I both know it.
And despite all this dumb, irrational, self-centered nature we have thousands of years of civilized society. Go figure.
Yes - people can behave badly. And given a large enough sample, you're more likely to find at least one bad actor in the midst. But it is not a given that people in general will degenerate to chaotic lawlessness.
As to heroes; We manufacture the occasional hero because we need them, not because what they did was heroic (though incidentally, it often is). We lie all the time about heroics -- but we do it with the bestest of intentions. We need hope, and that need outweighs our desire for objectivity. Sometimes, a person with uncommon qualities becomes self-aware of this fact and acts selflessly for the good of the whole, even to his/her own detriment. It is not a coincidence that these people almost exclusively come from small towns or communities -- but I'll leave it as an excercise for the reader to answer why that is.
We don't always manufacture heroes. There are those who act heroic. And sometimes we recognize them. Granted - that may be as much for ourselves as the hero. But that does not negate the fact that people act heroicly. And it isn't simply because they become self-aware. It is because that is the way the person acts. In fact, it's not uncommon for heroic behavior to explained as simply "doing the right thing" or "doing my job."
Education is almost always the solution to these things. But then, that's also how you ultimately solve many forms of crime. It doesn't mean you stop pursuing and prosecuting criminals.
That's exactly what we have here where a corporation can advertise or a hundred other things but as soon as the money goes to anything remotely political looking it becomes unacceptable. That's a classic content based decision. And that should be worrisome.
It's only worrisome if you believe that corporations are people. And if you're willing to do that, then radios have rights too. And so does any other inanimate object.
Moreover, what this really does is level the playing field between corporations. As it is now, Fox or MSNBC or any major newspaper can effectively push for a candidate or policy they want simply by the bias in their coverage. But a corporation that isn't involved in "news" or the like has its hands tied.
Yes - by all means. We should have corporations like Fox or MSNBC able to sell their influence to a much wider audience of high-paying customers. That's really leveled the playing field.
But perhaps I'm not being fair. We should not be afraid to associate free speech beyond a human entity. Corporations count. So do radios. Volume controls are censorship.
Of course, both those sites pull or reference (via foot notes) from the NYT's free content service. If they close it off, Google will be advertising NYT instead of showing results, and Wikipedia will be just gossip and have less fact checking.
Yes and no. If the NYT wasn't the source of information, I'd still find plenty of indications that Mr. Wayner has written quite a few books (book sellers such as Amazon, mentions of specific works in blogs, mentions in articles, among other interesting references). Likewise, I'd know he's written pieces for the NYT from similar references. And apparently, he's written for other works. And there's his own blog. Google would provide plenty of information without the NYT.
Likewise, if we struck the current entry for Mr. Wayner from Wikipedia, I'm sure someone who was sufficiently motivated to ensure he has an entry could gleen enough information from the very same Google search I performed. The current entry isn't very complex. In fact, my Google search provides more insight to who Mr. Wayner might be than his Wikipedia entry. The Wikipedia entry simply confirmed that he was what Google was implying he might be.
Now - even if we ignore all that, let's say the sole source of information for the who of Mr. Wayner was the NYT. I'd hit the first paywall and abandon my effort.
Thanks for responding, Mr. Wayner. It's interesting to hear from someone on the inside of this issue. I find that I disagree with a lot of the points you listed in the linked piece. But I find a lot of value in the insight you offer.
Having said that - I had no idea who the heck you were. I had to consult Google to get some indication. I hit Wikipedia to get a bit more insight. With that in mind, I thought giving your piece a look was worthwhile. If any of that was locked behind paywalls, I would have zipped along on my merry way, dismissing you out of hand as yet another curiosity that I don't have the motivation to pursue over the boundaries set before me.
How supporting you as an author while not putting up too great a boundary works... well... now, that is the question, isn't it? It'll be interesting to watch (in so far as train wrecks invoke a certain facination). But I don't believe the NY Times has the answer.
I should note that my interest is a little more than average freeloading consumer of information. My father is a noted author in his small field. But he has always had to struggle with the economics of that activity. It has always been difficult to make money doing what he does - at least on his niche subject matter. He has a current project that ran in to a dead end with the traditional publishing route and we are currently looking at a more open tactic (open publishing of the bulk of the project linked with paid references, teaching aids, and speaking engagements). I hope my fascination with my father's project isn't the aforementioned train-wreck variety; only time will tell. But I do know that traditional strategies / pay walls have only served my father so far.
On the, he is long since dead side, it hasn't been days, week or even months, but years since the last validated appearance...
How appropriate that you mention Hollywood. There are numerous celebrities who got a lot of attention in their day who have since gone for years without mainstream attention. Granted, if the FBI wished to track them down, they probably aren't hard to find. But a lack of face time is not proof of death. Rant all you want about boogey men and military industrial complex conspiracies. It doesn't change the fact that there is no proof of life or death (at least, none that is publicly available).
Past patterns of behaviour would indicate the leaders amongst the various terrorist factions have quite the ego and once they have developed a taste for being on camera, they do not stop.
It strikes me as being an issue of trade craft. It is possible that each new recording provides more information than is intended. Add a bit of additional paranoia and you have a pretty strong motivation to resist the lure of being in front of the camera (or even microphone).
What we have is no strong evidence one way or another. Note that all those quotes use the world "probably." It's all guess work. There might be some really good indications one way or another that may lead one to more strongly favor one conclusion or the other. But without that solid proof, it's still an educated guess at best. And none of that is the damning proof that some like to portray it as.
"Is (Bin Laden) alive or is he dead?" Mr Watson said. "I am not really sure of the answer... I personally think he is probably not with us anymore but I have no evidence to support that."
The Israeli sources said Israel and the United States assess that Bin Laden probably died in the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan in December. They said the emergence of new messages by Bin Laden are probably fabrications, Middle East Newsline reported.
If a foreign government had attacked non-digital assets of any US corporation, you would expect some kind of formal reprisal.
...
What I have not doped out yet to my own satisfaction is whether the tepid response from Washington is the fault of the current administration, confusion regarding the digital nature of the breach and assets, or a little of both.
Part of the confusion may be due to trying to force the wrong conceptual framework. This is not an attack akin to attacking a "non-digtal asset" - that is, a physical assault. This is espionage. And the US has been dealing with those kinds of threats quietly for decades. The only difference is that in the past, the landscape involved primarily government agents and targets. Now we have a greatly increased civilian presence and increased insight to the activities.
RMS is a skilled manipulator. I guess you've read the same gnu.org page that I have read, but failed to see through the nuanced BS and recognize it for what it is: a defense "intellectual property" laws!
I see where you're going with this, but sorry... I can't follow you. You're too keen to jump to your own conclusions and misrepresent what others have said.
This isn't really about GPL vs BSD (I actually prefer public domain), this is about government force.
No, this is about one man and a project he started. BSD fanatics have tacked on their agenda. And now you're tacking on your agenda.
If you want to debate this further then please go to a more libertarian / Anarcho-Capitalist forum instead, where dissenting views are likely to be treated more substantively, and not stifled as they are here.
Sorry - I have no interest in following you down that rabbit hole. While we may agree on some general principles, I find that you take far too many leaps for me to ultimately agree with anything I've seen you write to date. You'll have to be the martyr on your own time.
I was thinking the exact same thing, and if the results had been reversed and the Droid had been on top, we'd have had a flurry of posts talking about how the iPhone is an overpriced and inferior option.
And we'd have a flurry of posts talking about how insanely great the iPhone's user experience is or some other dismissive language.
What's wrong with saying "the droid's touch sensitivity is less effective than I'd like"? It seems like droid users are just as zealous about their phones as they accuse iPhone users of being.
Because I can't agree with it. Apparently the Droid's touch sensitivity isn't as good as other devices. But until seeing this test, I didn't realize it. It's not like there was this glaring issue and this test is the "aha" moment that explains it all (unlike, say, the Droid's camera and the focus bug). Would I like the sensitivity to improve? I guess. But I'm not sure I'd realize it.
In order to unlock the screen, you can use a gesture to unlock it. About 75% of the time, it works fine but the remainder of the time the gesture is not recorded correctly. There's a few games (word search) that often have issues marking an entire word.
Only owning an iPod Touch, it's hard for me to do a side-by-side comparison since I don't do the same things with the droid as I do the touch. All that aside, I love the Droid.
I'm also a Droid user. I rarely have issues with the lock screen. The impression I've had is those times that I do, it's because I was trying to do some one-handed thumb swipe or slashing at the screen. I'll have to pay closer attention but I would have a hard time at this point thinking that this test has much practical application to my experience. Of course, I also do not use an iPhone or other Android phone so I have nothing to compare to.
I do, however, miss the curved unlock widget. I prefer it over the newer, current linear one.
Verizon spokesman Ken Muche said the company has no plans to make its own app store for Android -- another platform that already has one, called Market. Good idea.
The Droid's App Store does have a Verizon tab, which contains a Visual Voicemail app.
But all of those little Verizon injections added up to potential revenue in the past.
A lack of Bluetooth transfers on some phones meant you might have to pay a fee to move contacts between devices. Controlling apps meant Verizon could potentially profit from selling software as an intermediary. Keeping GPS software off phones meant a monthly fee could be charged for navigation service.
So much for that.
"If you want total customization, you can go this route," Muche said. Of course, if you'd rather have big red buttons, there's a phone for that.
Granted, Verizon had been loosening up recently with its lineup of dull (but no red menus) smart phones. With this phone, Verizon seems to be sincerely facing facts and stepping back from the software game. And there's another Verizon Droid phone on the way? Has Verizon been taken over by robots?
Wait a minute. Is Google taking over the world?
Muche and Nicholson laughed uncomfortably at the question. After a brief awkward silence, Nicholson chimed in, "You either join or you don't."
It is the Copyleft movement's position that freedom (to fork open source code and do with it whatever you see fit) is "tyranny". This implies that me closed-sourcing my own work (and only my own work, since the upstream code I've copied from remains open-sourced) is somehow an act of aggression, which clearly it isn't. I am not your slave, and GPL is not a legitimate contract that can dictate what I can or cannot do with my own computer and my own ability to write software!
You have the copyright of your own work. You are free to do with it what you want. You are not, however, free to do whatever you want with other people's work. Slave morality indeed.
Copyleft is utterly impossible without government force, without which all Copyleft code would be simply liberated into the public domain - this is why you see people like RMS so fiercely opposed to (semi)libertarian movements like the Pirate Party. And, returning to the topic at hand, here we see the violence inherent in Copyleft philosophy surface once again, attempting to get in the way of what millions of Sun and Oracle shareholders want to do with their own property!
Actually, RMS has stated that he generally supports movements like the Pirate Party. However, he cautions that such movements should level the ground for both Free Software and Proprietary Software, seeing the current activities of the Pirate Party tearing down the few restrictions of Free Software while leaving many additional restrictions of the Proprietary world intact. While I'm not a big fan of RMS himself, what you're portraying is misleading. You may not like the Free Software ideology but at least you can be accurate in your criticisms.
Along those lines, I fail to see how you've managed to return to the topic at hand. There is no Copyleft philosophy getting in the way of Sun and Oracle. The GPL has little to do with Monty's fear mongering. But that doesn't stop BSD fanatics such as yourself from using his noise as a platform.
I'm rather amused by my slip of names. As I was typing, I was wondering if I was invoking names too obscure for most to follow. But then I figured if I had heard of these devices, it's very likely a good amount of/. readers had. Sure enough - there's more than a few folks who knew enough to catch my mistake. I also should have done hyperlinks as the search would have saved me from my mistake.
Slashdot Mirror
That statement is a bit idealistic. Gang members are not welcome in police forces; at the same time police officers spent a lot of time working gang-related cases. Looking at the community at large is not productive, just as if you are looking at both sides in a war.
If your community is nothing but gang members, then I'm sure you'll find the law enforcement to be a very different organization. Corruption aside, gangs tend to be a subset of a community. Law enforcement represents that larger community. And those forces come in to existence in various forms due to the general desire of humanity for law and order.
On the other hand, if we were NOT driven by this behavior, law and law enforcement would never exist either. The truth is in between: most of the society wants peace, but a small (and dangerous!) part of the society wants war. In most modern social groups criminals, if left unchecked, overrun the peaceful citizens. In ancient times villagers were known to brutally kill thieves, that kept the balance. Nowadays it's not legal any more, so criminals have an advantage.
This isn't some sort of chicken-or-egg situation. If humanity was so bad off, there would never be an attempt to form civilizations. We would simply continue in the perpetual cycle of conflict. But we don't.
There aren't that many criminals in an average society, actually. But their influence is far exceeding the actual harm they do.
I completely agree. We have a relatively small number of bad actors and people start to state, as a given fact, that "human beings are dumb, irrational, and self-centered creatures."
Law enforcement does not spring from the ground like mushrooms. It is not a divine force delivered on to the face of the world from the Heavens. It comes from the very men that write the laws. And in many cases, the same community that is governed by those laws also write the same laws as well as provide the men that make up the law enforcement force.
The notion that humanity is fundamentally inclined to self destructive anarchy is in direct conflict with the existence of law enforcement and organized, civilized societies. If we were driven by this behavior, law and law enforcement would never exist.
Granted - there are those who display the aforementioned behavior. They exist in almost any sufficiently large enough group. And given the right set of circumstances, they are likely to do bad things. But these individuals speak to human condition. They are examples of the worse of us. They make up part of what humanity is but they do not define it.
The individual human can be compassionate, intelligent, and moral -- but human beings are dumb, irrational, and self-centered creatures and you and I both know it.
And despite all this dumb, irrational, self-centered nature we have thousands of years of civilized society. Go figure.
Yes - people can behave badly. And given a large enough sample, you're more likely to find at least one bad actor in the midst. But it is not a given that people in general will degenerate to chaotic lawlessness.
As to heroes; We manufacture the occasional hero because we need them, not because what they did was heroic (though incidentally, it often is). We lie all the time about heroics -- but we do it with the bestest of intentions. We need hope, and that need outweighs our desire for objectivity. Sometimes, a person with uncommon qualities becomes self-aware of this fact and acts selflessly for the good of the whole, even to his/her own detriment. It is not a coincidence that these people almost exclusively come from small towns or communities -- but I'll leave it as an excercise for the reader to answer why that is.
We don't always manufacture heroes. There are those who act heroic. And sometimes we recognize them. Granted - that may be as much for ourselves as the hero. But that does not negate the fact that people act heroicly. And it isn't simply because they become self-aware. It is because that is the way the person acts. In fact, it's not uncommon for heroic behavior to explained as simply "doing the right thing" or "doing my job."
How many submarine patents has nVidia sprung on the industry?
Education is almost always the solution to these things. But then, that's also how you ultimately solve many forms of crime. It doesn't mean you stop pursuing and prosecuting criminals.
That's exactly what we have here where a corporation can advertise or a hundred other things but as soon as the money goes to anything remotely political looking it becomes unacceptable. That's a classic content based decision. And that should be worrisome.
It's only worrisome if you believe that corporations are people. And if you're willing to do that, then radios have rights too. And so does any other inanimate object.
Moreover, what this really does is level the playing field between corporations. As it is now, Fox or MSNBC or any major newspaper can effectively push for a candidate or policy they want simply by the bias in their coverage. But a corporation that isn't involved in "news" or the like has its hands tied.
Yes - by all means. We should have corporations like Fox or MSNBC able to sell their influence to a much wider audience of high-paying customers. That's really leveled the playing field.
But perhaps I'm not being fair. We should not be afraid to associate free speech beyond a human entity. Corporations count. So do radios. Volume controls are censorship.
That's where the Post-It note comes in. Hackers can't write a Post-It note remotely. Is there no aspect of security that a Post-It note can't handle?
I'm actually writing up a few things about him. You'll need to pay me to read it though. I can't keep writing this stuff without compensation.
Awww crap. You just killed my Bonzai Buddy. Thanks a lot.
Of course, both those sites pull or reference (via foot notes) from the NYT's free content service. If they close it off, Google will be advertising NYT instead of showing results, and Wikipedia will be just gossip and have less fact checking.
Yes and no. If the NYT wasn't the source of information, I'd still find plenty of indications that Mr. Wayner has written quite a few books (book sellers such as Amazon, mentions of specific works in blogs, mentions in articles, among other interesting references). Likewise, I'd know he's written pieces for the NYT from similar references. And apparently, he's written for other works. And there's his own blog. Google would provide plenty of information without the NYT.
Likewise, if we struck the current entry for Mr. Wayner from Wikipedia, I'm sure someone who was sufficiently motivated to ensure he has an entry could gleen enough information from the very same Google search I performed. The current entry isn't very complex. In fact, my Google search provides more insight to who Mr. Wayner might be than his Wikipedia entry. The Wikipedia entry simply confirmed that he was what Google was implying he might be.
Now - even if we ignore all that, let's say the sole source of information for the who of Mr. Wayner was the NYT. I'd hit the first paywall and abandon my effort.
Thanks for responding, Mr. Wayner. It's interesting to hear from someone on the inside of this issue. I find that I disagree with a lot of the points you listed in the linked piece. But I find a lot of value in the insight you offer.
Having said that - I had no idea who the heck you were. I had to consult Google to get some indication. I hit Wikipedia to get a bit more insight. With that in mind, I thought giving your piece a look was worthwhile. If any of that was locked behind paywalls, I would have zipped along on my merry way, dismissing you out of hand as yet another curiosity that I don't have the motivation to pursue over the boundaries set before me.
How supporting you as an author while not putting up too great a boundary works... well... now, that is the question, isn't it? It'll be interesting to watch (in so far as train wrecks invoke a certain facination). But I don't believe the NY Times has the answer.
I should note that my interest is a little more than average freeloading consumer of information. My father is a noted author in his small field. But he has always had to struggle with the economics of that activity. It has always been difficult to make money doing what he does - at least on his niche subject matter. He has a current project that ran in to a dead end with the traditional publishing route and we are currently looking at a more open tactic (open publishing of the bulk of the project linked with paid references, teaching aids, and speaking engagements). I hope my fascination with my father's project isn't the aforementioned train-wreck variety; only time will tell. But I do know that traditional strategies / pay walls have only served my father so far.
Blogs are roaming the earth yet best seller lists continue on. Go figure.
On the, he is long since dead side, it hasn't been days, week or even months, but years since the last validated appearance...
How appropriate that you mention Hollywood. There are numerous celebrities who got a lot of attention in their day who have since gone for years without mainstream attention. Granted, if the FBI wished to track them down, they probably aren't hard to find. But a lack of face time is not proof of death. Rant all you want about boogey men and military industrial complex conspiracies. It doesn't change the fact that there is no proof of life or death (at least, none that is publicly available).
Past patterns of behaviour would indicate the leaders amongst the various terrorist factions have quite the ego and once they have developed a taste for being on camera, they do not stop.
It strikes me as being an issue of trade craft. It is possible that each new recording provides more information than is intended. Add a bit of additional paranoia and you have a pretty strong motivation to resist the lure of being in front of the camera (or even microphone).
What we have is no strong evidence one way or another. Note that all those quotes use the world "probably." It's all guess work. There might be some really good indications one way or another that may lead one to more strongly favor one conclusion or the other. But without that solid proof, it's still an educated guess at best. And none of that is the damning proof that some like to portray it as.
After all, the FBI's counter-terrorism chief, Dale Watson, also http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2135473.stmadmitted to believing that bin laden was dead eight (8) years ago.
"Is (Bin Laden) alive or is he dead?" Mr Watson said. "I am not really sure of the answer... I personally think he is probably not with us anymore but I have no evidence to support that."
Wait... and didn't Afghanistan's current president, Hamid Karzai, http://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/central/10/06/karzai.binladen/admit to believing the same thing 8 years ago?
"I would come to believe that [bin Laden] probably is dead," Karzai said on CNN's "Late Edition" on Sunday.
"But still, you never know. He might be alive. Five months ago, six months ago, I was thinking that he was alive.
Wait... and didn't Israeli Intelligence also http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2002/me_terrorism_10_16.htmladmit the same thing 8 years ago?
The Israeli sources said Israel and the United States assess that Bin Laden probably died in the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan in December. They said the emergence of new messages by Bin Laden are probably fabrications, Middle East Newsline reported.
Oh, yes. The damning evidence is just piling up.
I-dont-know-if-its-a-pandemic is on third.
If a foreign government had attacked non-digital assets of any US corporation, you would expect some kind of formal reprisal.
...
What I have not doped out yet to my own satisfaction is whether the tepid response from Washington is the fault of the current administration, confusion regarding the digital nature of the breach and assets, or a little of both.
Part of the confusion may be due to trying to force the wrong conceptual framework. This is not an attack akin to attacking a "non-digtal asset" - that is, a physical assault. This is espionage. And the US has been dealing with those kinds of threats quietly for decades. The only difference is that in the past, the landscape involved primarily government agents and targets. Now we have a greatly increased civilian presence and increased insight to the activities.
RMS is a skilled manipulator. I guess you've read the same gnu.org page that I have read, but failed to see through the nuanced BS and recognize it for what it is: a defense "intellectual property" laws!
I see where you're going with this, but sorry... I can't follow you. You're too keen to jump to your own conclusions and misrepresent what others have said.
This isn't really about GPL vs BSD (I actually prefer public domain), this is about government force.
No, this is about one man and a project he started. BSD fanatics have tacked on their agenda. And now you're tacking on your agenda.
If you want to debate this further then please go to a more libertarian / Anarcho-Capitalist forum instead, where dissenting views are likely to be treated more substantively, and not stifled as they are here.
Sorry - I have no interest in following you down that rabbit hole. While we may agree on some general principles, I find that you take far too many leaps for me to ultimately agree with anything I've seen you write to date. You'll have to be the martyr on your own time.
A couple questions:
Can you buy an unlocked phone from AT&T?
Can you buy a Nexus One that works on Verizon's network?
I was thinking the exact same thing, and if the results had been reversed and the Droid had been on top, we'd have had a flurry of posts talking about how the iPhone is an overpriced and inferior option.
And we'd have a flurry of posts talking about how insanely great the iPhone's user experience is or some other dismissive language.
What's wrong with saying "the droid's touch sensitivity is less effective than I'd like"? It seems like droid users are just as zealous about their phones as they accuse iPhone users of being.
Because I can't agree with it. Apparently the Droid's touch sensitivity isn't as good as other devices. But until seeing this test, I didn't realize it. It's not like there was this glaring issue and this test is the "aha" moment that explains it all (unlike, say, the Droid's camera and the focus bug). Would I like the sensitivity to improve? I guess. But I'm not sure I'd realize it.
As a Droid user, I think I can answer this.
In order to unlock the screen, you can use a gesture to unlock it. About 75% of the time, it works fine but the remainder of the time the gesture is not recorded correctly. There's a few games (word search) that often have issues marking an entire word.
Only owning an iPod Touch, it's hard for me to do a side-by-side comparison since I don't do the same things with the droid as I do the touch. All that aside, I love the Droid.
I'm also a Droid user. I rarely have issues with the lock screen. The impression I've had is those times that I do, it's because I was trying to do some one-handed thumb swipe or slashing at the screen. I'll have to pay closer attention but I would have a hard time at this point thinking that this test has much practical application to my experience. Of course, I also do not use an iPhone or other Android phone so I have nothing to compare to.
I do, however, miss the curved unlock widget. I prefer it over the newer, current linear one.
Google seems to be taking a "we'll do what we want and carriers can't stop us" attitude. Good luck with that.
That's what fascinates me about the Droid. Google has gotten Verizon to let the cork off that genie:
Verizon spokesman Ken Muche said the company has no plans to make its own app store for Android -- another platform that already has one, called Market. Good idea.
The Droid's App Store does have a Verizon tab, which contains a Visual Voicemail app.
But all of those little Verizon injections added up to potential revenue in the past.
A lack of Bluetooth transfers on some phones meant you might have to pay a fee to move contacts between devices. Controlling apps meant Verizon could potentially profit from selling software as an intermediary. Keeping GPS software off phones meant a monthly fee could be charged for navigation service.
So much for that.
"If you want total customization, you can go this route," Muche said. Of course, if you'd rather have big red buttons, there's a phone for that.
Granted, Verizon had been loosening up recently with its lineup of dull (but no red menus) smart phones. With this phone, Verizon seems to be sincerely facing facts and stepping back from the software game. And there's another Verizon Droid phone on the way? Has Verizon been taken over by robots?
Wait a minute. Is Google taking over the world?
Muche and Nicholson laughed uncomfortably at the question. After a brief awkward silence, Nicholson chimed in, "You either join or you don't."
It is the Copyleft movement's position that freedom (to fork open source code and do with it whatever you see fit) is "tyranny". This implies that me closed-sourcing my own work (and only my own work, since the upstream code I've copied from remains open-sourced) is somehow an act of aggression, which clearly it isn't. I am not your slave, and GPL is not a legitimate contract that can dictate what I can or cannot do with my own computer and my own ability to write software!
You have the copyright of your own work. You are free to do with it what you want. You are not, however, free to do whatever you want with other people's work. Slave morality indeed.
Copyleft is utterly impossible without government force, without which all Copyleft code would be simply liberated into the public domain - this is why you see people like RMS so fiercely opposed to (semi)libertarian movements like the Pirate Party. And, returning to the topic at hand, here we see the violence inherent in Copyleft philosophy surface once again, attempting to get in the way of what millions of Sun and Oracle shareholders want to do with their own property!
Actually, RMS has stated that he generally supports movements like the Pirate Party. However, he cautions that such movements should level the ground for both Free Software and Proprietary Software, seeing the current activities of the Pirate Party tearing down the few restrictions of Free Software while leaving many additional restrictions of the Proprietary world intact. While I'm not a big fan of RMS himself, what you're portraying is misleading. You may not like the Free Software ideology but at least you can be accurate in your criticisms.
Along those lines, I fail to see how you've managed to return to the topic at hand. There is no Copyleft philosophy getting in the way of Sun and Oracle. The GPL has little to do with Monty's fear mongering. But that doesn't stop BSD fanatics such as yourself from using his noise as a platform.
I'm rather amused by my slip of names. As I was typing, I was wondering if I was invoking names too obscure for most to follow. But then I figured if I had heard of these devices, it's very likely a good amount of /. readers had. Sure enough - there's more than a few folks who knew enough to catch my mistake. I also should have done hyperlinks as the search would have saved me from my mistake.