Even if Motorola wont bring out the phone in unlocked form, there are others currently coming on board with similar specced Android phones. You just have to wait 1-3 months for the alternatives. Currently in the line, HTC Dragon, the Sony and Acer as well as the LG mobile. Just because Motorola was first does not mean there wont be others, we are not talking about the iPhone here.
2) JVM's can be cumbersome to use. (I've taken so called "Senior Java Developers" and had them stumbling around to try to compile, debug and run java programs from a command line).
Actually that is not really true, but many java developers dont use the command line at all nowadays. I personally revert to maven normally but the normal circumstances are that the devs use Eclipse and thats it.
It is way less that they are cumbersome to use, compared to gcc and make/automake they are a breeze to use and mavens auto dependency resolution adds apt on top of that, but the main issue simply is that most java devs are not even slightly confrontanted with the command line and how to use javac which build systems to apply etc...
Easy, make it compile java bytecode and you probably have the biggest library around on the planet. Why a language nowadays should provide its own libraries is beyond me. That is so 90s...
It is not that much slower and the things it does well are pretty important like having a decent JEE Plugin, heavens even after 4 years and 4 releases Eclipses WTP still refuses sometimes to deploy and does not even tell you what is wrong. For heavens sake how hard is it really just to jar something and deploy it? Anyway I have given up on both platforms and am fully on Intellij, it combines the flexibility of Eclipse with the ease of use in Netbeans and adds its own set of excellent tools on top of both platforms.
I assume so too, the demographic for a news paper ebook reader will happily pay for subscriptions. Most of the kindle demographic does not get it how screwed they are by Amazon (still after the 1984) desaster hence they still buy the kindle instead of going to semi open (Sony) or totaly open alternatives. As for the Apple tablet, it depends on where they are going to head to, do they want to make an ebook reader then they will lock you in, Apple is also very controlling in their end users products (less in their computers), or do they want to go towards the computer crowd. My personal guess is that uncle Steve prefers to lock his users in on the tablet thing, since he sees it as an end user product. If he wants to go after the ebook crowd then the lockin will even be worse than on the iPhone.
If I was the boss of google I would cut out the indexing to Murdoch media instantly and then watch him cry... No one would really notice if no search results ot Murdoch media would be displayed but Murdochs page hits and ad revenue would make a nosedive (usually about 60% of the average page traffic comes directly from Google the rest is other search engines (about 5%) and recurring users) Id say beat him where it hits him hardest, in his "holy" wallet, this guy does not understand any other language.
Well given the sad state of Murdoch media, he creates a lot of things, and you can count the rest on one hand... Every newspaper he gets his hands on does a nosedive quality wise, I assume even the WSJ trumpets his political fascist propaganda.
The political issue is that Murdoch is scared, his empire for the first time had red numbers, he is an old man and scared old man you know... I assume someone has explained it to him, but he thinks that google depends on him not vice versa, which probably will be the biggest mistake he ever did. He probably hopes that google pays him for crawling his sites, which google I assume will never do. The sooner he shoots himself out into oblivion the better, but I rather doubt this will happen, his media empire is too mixed that cannot happen. The funny thing is that there is a cartel thing going on, Springer in germany is blowing the same horn... (also a media empire no one would really be bothered with if it would crumble)
That is one of the things I dislike about bioware games, the engine, walls are mostly invisible barriers, the path is highly linear and there is no environmental interaction except crates. I currently play Riven which has all the interaction I want. My personal guess is too many games have forgotten the groundwork Ultima 7 has laid, and only a few of them have managed to pull another Ultima 7 off.
Bollocks. Largo, Florida runs about 300 users on thin clients over X, with all the latest Linux UI stuff, like GTK and Compiz. Yes, the fancy 3D desktop cube works just fine over networked X11.
I assume they have added FreeNX or commercial NX to the mix to get the network performance. If you do that with Raw X11 then you can watch your network coming to a crawl, been there done that. NX mostly alters the protocol on the fly and caches font information so that the overhead is reduced significantly (speaking of one packet per character sent instead of hundreds defining every pixel and its shadow)
I like them as well, but there is one downside with them, it is hard to add child protection covers on those, either you have shutters in the outlet or you are literally screwed. The european plugs allow for turn-open child protection covers simply are not possible on them, either you integrate shutters directly into the outlets or you are basically screwed.
I've never need to do this. I don't think I've ever seen a European plug inverted either. Can't be that useful.
Honestly, the european plug is fine. So's the UK style. The article was stupid, but it's equally stupid getting upset over it.
The upside down thing is quite ok, although it is not that important, but it is nice to be able to plug in the cable the way they currently fit best. This is a pretty awesome feature for extension fuse boxes which can hold 4-16 additional sockets, often you simply have the problem of having the cable or power brick on the plug being enforced into a certain direction, being able to plug it in upside down or normally can help a lot to get all the cables in.
I agree here, the european Socket is not as bad as the article points it out, I think even the 2.5 A (at least I think, I have not heard about it before) limit is wrong here. The only things true in the article is that the socket itself does not enforce fuses (you can get them, but usually the fuses and grounding safety measures of the house installations are enough so no extra fuse on the socket is needed), and childrens protections are not enforced, but you can get them and you can get external ones you can plug into the socket (it is flexible enough that you simply have to put a protectional cover on top of it thanks to the way it is built.
I personally think the author of the article was pretty ignorant, a lot of european countries including mine use those sockets and we are pretty happy with it. It is definitely way better than the flimsy US ones, and I also would prefer it over the bulky UK ones.
I am not sure if it is better than the 1980s ISO connector swizerland or italy uses. The advantage of this connector simply is it is smaller, the disadvantage adding childrens protection is way harder than with the european connector due to the smaller slots it has, you either have to build it into the outlet or you have a hard time designing one for the small slots. The standard turn-open child protectors which are common for the european connectors cannot be done on those.
Anyway the most miserable ones I have encountered on my journeys so far really are the US ones, that is pretty much the only thing I agree with, in the article.
The issue is that the network transparency is utterly useless on modern UIs everything beyound Athena Widgets, or a plain xtern simply clogs your network in no time if you use it from more than one client server connection. The protocol simply is too low level to scale. Sure there are solutions which fix this, but this needs to be fixed in the core protocol. And yet this layer of indirection makes it harder for everyone, the driver authors have a harder time, the users have to fight with a more complex configuration and shoddy drivers.
Guess what the same applications ran probably better on a C64 using GEOS... the reason why X11 performed 20 years ago was that the applications if they did graphics at all used the athena widget set, so basically all they did was to draw a few circles. The issue with X starts as soon as you do more it severely shows that it does not scale up too well especially on the networking side. Most other UIs simply went for higher level drawing primitives and added networking later with better results.
Yeah sure because every layer of indirection is faster than direct ram access... sorry But I still after 10 years am not convinced about the design. X11 follows the design philosophy of enforcing a methotology (remoting on drawing level) which is needed by about 5% of its users and thus burdening a layer of complexity on top of the rest of 95% users who then have to deal with shoddy drivers. Heck even the remoting does not scale well enough that it is usable without tricks for modern UIs out of the box. Unless you use athena widgets or third party hacks you wont even get remotely the performance RDP or even plain VNC has.
Who cares about fucking Japan, sorry for the words, but the US point of view is too japan centric, comparing Japan with the rest of asia, is like comparing Luxemburg with the rest of entire europe. I am not sure why the US constantly sees Japan as Asia, but its population is more along the lines of a typical western european country (so way smaller than the entire EU) and the same goes for the market, while there are countries in Asia which have more than one billion people! Besides that Japan is not Asia not even mentalitywise it is entirely Asia.
You always could get an unlocked G1 from HTC or the google dev phone. People tend to forget that most phones can be obtained in unlocked state if you want to pay more (most phones are in the 200-400 dollar range, the iphone is around 700) In the end I am not sure if it pays off if you bind yourself to one carrier, you pay more for the data plans and you are locked into a 2 years contract. I for one dont buy the subsidised phones anymore with my last purchase I went for a more expensive non subsidized phone in the end it is the same costwise but without the carrier lockins.
I agree the reason why it is so good, makes the few weaknesses unfortunately even harder to swallow:-( I for one would have loved a tad more consistency in UI especially if you have to dig deeper and also who on hell designed the settings screens, this is VT220 all over again. The rest of the weaknesses are not android but the mobile phone producer (USB tethering without drivers for OSX, Wifi or Bluetooth tethering turned off while the stock kernel can do it)
Well the last 2 years Nokia has done everything to shoot itself into the foot. Nokia was big in germany (80-90% of all phones sold, and given that even every kid has a phone we speak of dozends of millions of Nokia Phones), but one we cash in on governments funds and then move the factory from Bochum to cheaper Romania did it to loose a big deal of the german phone market (which they used to dominate) within months. This still has not been forgotten now after almost two years. Even as an Austrian I stay away from Nokia phones like the plaque now. Well done Nokia, you damaged your reputation in the entire German speaking part of the world for the next 10 years just to save a few bucks after you ran through the government funding. The other thing is, that they do not do any promotion they still think they are king of the worlds why even in Europe their once good reputation goes down the drain. Hello Nokia wake up!
This is indeed googles biggest weakness, while it is way better than winmo, I see the same problem plaguing android as usually Microsoft does, for heavens sake Google get a designer, some of the screens look so bland that you feel yourself brought back to the VT220 era. The other thing is that some things while it is getting better are inconsistent as hell. (Not as bad as winmo though) but if you want to run against the iPhone you have to do one hell of a job regarding user interfaces. While everything is ok on the desktop and apps side, things become nasty if you have to diver deeper!
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But I discovered a cheaper way to achieve similar if not better results, there is a thing called sex.
My heir currently fills his diapers.
Even if Motorola wont bring out the phone in unlocked form, there are others currently coming on board with similar specced Android phones. You just have to wait 1-3 months for the alternatives.
Currently in the line, HTC Dragon, the Sony and Acer as well as the LG mobile.
Just because Motorola was first does not mean there wont be others, we are not talking about the iPhone here.
2) JVM's can be cumbersome to use. (I've taken so called "Senior Java Developers" and had them stumbling around to try to compile, debug and run java programs from a command line).
Actually that is not really true, but many java developers dont use the command line at all nowadays. I personally revert to maven normally but the normal circumstances are that the devs use Eclipse and thats it.
It is way less that they are cumbersome to use, compared to gcc and make/automake they are a breeze to use and mavens auto dependency resolution adds apt on top of that, but the main issue simply is that most java devs are not even slightly confrontanted with the command line and how to use javac which build systems to apply etc...
Easy, make it compile java bytecode and you probably have the biggest library around on the planet. Why a language nowadays should provide its own libraries is beyond me. That is so 90s...
It is not that much slower and the things it does well are pretty important like having a decent JEE Plugin, heavens even after 4 years and 4 releases Eclipses WTP still refuses sometimes to deploy and does not even tell you what is wrong. For heavens sake how hard is it really just to jar something and deploy it?
Anyway I have given up on both platforms and am fully on Intellij, it combines the flexibility of Eclipse with the ease of use in Netbeans and adds its own set of excellent tools on top of both platforms.
They just should cancel the indexing with the words, upon informal public request by newscorp we no longer index their sites...
I assume so too, the demographic for a news paper ebook reader will happily pay for subscriptions. Most of the kindle demographic does not get it how screwed they are by Amazon (still after the 1984) desaster hence they still buy the kindle instead of going to semi open (Sony) or totaly open alternatives.
As for the Apple tablet, it depends on where they are going to head to, do they want to make an ebook reader then they will lock you in, Apple is also very controlling in their end users products (less in their computers), or do they want to go towards the computer crowd. My personal guess is that uncle Steve prefers to lock his users in on the tablet thing, since he sees it as an end user product. If he wants to go after the ebook crowd then the lockin will even be worse than on the iPhone.
The demographic would not pay 49.95 for Nazi propaganda (labeled as serious news)
If I was the boss of google I would cut out the indexing to Murdoch media instantly and then watch him cry...
No one would really notice if no search results ot Murdoch media would be displayed but Murdochs page hits and ad revenue would
make a nosedive (usually about 60% of the average page traffic comes directly from Google the rest is other search engines (about 5%) and recurring users)
Id say beat him where it hits him hardest, in his "holy" wallet, this guy does not understand any other language.
Well given the sad state of Murdoch media, he creates a lot of things, and you can count the rest on one hand ...
Every newspaper he gets his hands on does a nosedive quality wise, I assume even the WSJ trumpets his political fascist propaganda.
The political issue is that Murdoch is scared, his empire for the first time had red numbers, he is an old man and scared old man you know...
I assume someone has explained it to him, but he thinks that google depends on him not vice versa, which probably will be the biggest mistake he ever did.
He probably hopes that google pays him for crawling his sites, which google I assume will never do.
The sooner he shoots himself out into oblivion the better, but I rather doubt this will happen, his media empire is too mixed that cannot happen.
The funny thing is that there is a cartel thing going on, Springer in germany is blowing the same horn... (also a media empire no one would really be bothered with if it would crumble)
That is one of the things I dislike about bioware games, the engine, walls are mostly invisible barriers, the path is highly linear and there is no environmental interaction except crates. I currently play Riven which has all the interaction I want.
My personal guess is too many games have forgotten the groundwork Ultima 7 has laid, and only a few of them have managed to pull another Ultima 7 off.
I have been suffering on anxiety disorder now for the last 15 years, does that mean I will get an anal search every time I cross the border now?
Bollocks. Largo, Florida runs about 300 users on thin clients over X, with all the latest Linux UI stuff, like GTK and Compiz. Yes, the fancy 3D desktop cube works just fine over networked X11.
I assume they have added FreeNX or commercial NX to the mix to get the network performance. If you do that with Raw X11 then you can watch your network coming to a crawl, been there done that.
NX mostly alters the protocol on the fly and caches font information so that the overhead is reduced significantly (speaking of one packet per character sent instead of hundreds defining every pixel and its shadow)
I like them as well, but there is one downside with them, it is hard to add child protection covers on those, either you have shutters in the
outlet or you are literally screwed. The european plugs allow for turn-open child protection covers simply are not possible on them, either you integrate shutters directly into the outlets or you are basically screwed.
I've never need to do this. I don't think I've ever seen a European plug inverted either. Can't be that useful.
Honestly, the european plug is fine. So's the UK style. The article was stupid, but it's equally stupid getting upset over it.
The upside down thing is quite ok, although it is not that important, but it is nice to be able to plug in the cable the way they currently fit best.
This is a pretty awesome feature for extension fuse boxes which can hold 4-16 additional sockets, often you simply have the problem of having the
cable or power brick on the plug being enforced into a certain direction, being able to plug it in upside down or normally can help a lot to get all the cables in.
I agree here, the european Socket is not as bad as the article points it out, I think even the 2.5 A (at least I think, I have not heard about it before) limit is wrong here. The only things true in the article is that the socket itself does not enforce fuses (you can get them, but usually the fuses and grounding safety measures of the house installations are enough so no extra fuse on the socket is needed), and childrens protections are not enforced, but you can get them and you can get external ones you can plug into the socket (it is flexible enough that you simply have to put a protectional cover on top of it thanks to the way it is built.
I personally think the author of the article was pretty ignorant, a lot of european countries including mine use those sockets and we are pretty happy with it.
It is definitely way better than the flimsy US ones, and I also would prefer it over the bulky UK ones.
I am not sure if it is better than the 1980s ISO connector swizerland or italy uses. The advantage of this connector simply is it is smaller, the disadvantage adding childrens protection is way harder than with the european connector due to the smaller slots it has, you either have to build it into the outlet or you have a hard time designing one for the small slots. The standard turn-open child protectors which are common for the european connectors cannot be done on those.
Anyway the most miserable ones I have encountered on my journeys so far really are the US ones, that is pretty much the only thing I agree with, in the article.
The issue is that the network transparency is utterly useless on modern UIs everything beyound Athena Widgets, or a plain xtern simply clogs your network in no time if you use it from more than one client server connection.
The protocol simply is too low level to scale. Sure there are solutions which fix this, but this needs to be fixed in the core protocol. And yet this layer of indirection makes it harder for everyone, the driver authors have a harder time, the users have to fight with a more complex configuration and shoddy drivers.
Guess what the same applications ran probably better on a C64 using GEOS... the reason why X11 performed 20 years ago was that the applications if they did graphics at all used the athena widget set, so basically all they did was to draw a few circles. The issue with X starts as soon as you do more it severely shows that it does not scale up too well especially on the networking side.
Most other UIs simply went for higher level drawing primitives and added networking later with better results.
Yeah sure because every layer of indirection is faster than direct ram access... sorry
But I still after 10 years am not convinced about the design. X11 follows the design philosophy of enforcing
a methotology (remoting on drawing level) which is needed by about 5% of its users and thus burdening a layer
of complexity on top of the rest of 95% users who then have to deal with shoddy drivers.
Heck even the remoting does not scale well enough that it is usable without tricks for modern UIs out of the box.
Unless you use athena widgets or third party hacks you wont even get remotely the performance RDP or even plain VNC has.
Who cares about fucking Japan, sorry for the words, but the US point of view is too japan centric, comparing Japan with the rest of asia, is like comparing Luxemburg with the rest of entire europe.
I am not sure why the US constantly sees Japan as Asia, but its population is more along the lines of a typical western european country (so way smaller than the entire EU) and the same goes for the market, while there are countries in Asia which have more than one billion people!
Besides that Japan is not Asia not even mentalitywise it is entirely Asia.
You always could get an unlocked G1 from HTC or the google dev phone. People tend to forget that most phones can be obtained in unlocked state if you want to pay more (most phones are in the 200-400 dollar range, the iphone is around 700)
In the end I am not sure if it pays off if you bind yourself to one carrier, you pay more for the data plans and you are locked into a 2 years contract.
I for one dont buy the subsidised phones anymore with my last purchase I went for a more expensive non subsidized phone in the end it is the same costwise but without the carrier lockins.
I agree the reason why it is so good, makes the few weaknesses unfortunately even harder to swallow :-(
I for one would have loved a tad more consistency in UI especially if you have to dig deeper and also
who on hell designed the settings screens, this is VT220 all over again.
The rest of the weaknesses are not android but the mobile phone producer (USB tethering without
drivers for OSX, Wifi or Bluetooth tethering turned off while the stock kernel can do it)
Well the last 2 years Nokia has done everything to shoot itself into the foot. Nokia was big in germany (80-90% of all phones sold, and given that even every kid has a phone we speak of dozends of millions of Nokia Phones), but one we cash in on governments funds and then move the factory from Bochum to cheaper Romania did it to loose a big deal of the german phone market (which they used to dominate)
within months. This still has not been forgotten now after almost two years. Even as an Austrian I stay away from Nokia phones like the plaque now.
Well done Nokia, you damaged your reputation in the entire German speaking part of the world for the next 10 years just to save a few bucks after you ran through the government funding.
The other thing is, that they do not do any promotion they still think they are king of the worlds why even in Europe their once good reputation goes down the drain. Hello Nokia wake up!
This is indeed googles biggest weakness, while it is way better than winmo, I see the same problem plaguing android as usually Microsoft does, for heavens sake Google get a designer, some of the screens look so bland that you feel yourself brought back to the VT220 era.
The other thing is that some things while it is getting better are inconsistent as hell.
(Not as bad as winmo though) but if you want to run against the iPhone you have to do one hell of a job regarding user interfaces.
While everything is ok on the desktop and apps side, things become nasty if you have to diver deeper!