Actually, you were marked funny because what you advocate is shifting 100% to an oligarchy run by powerful corporations that can lord over a powerless government. At least at this point we have some standards, you advocate we drop them entirely and essentially let the companies run the government, like they do to a great degree in China.
The development level of Saudi Arabia is basically an illusion, and reserved only for the very small rich upper class and the royal family. Everyone else is basically stuck with the rest of the middle east and Africa.
I assume you were roaming and still using your home carrier's SIM.
Goodness no, not at the rates they were charging ($2/min, $20/mbyte.) I was using a sim from a company called b-Mobile, who sell data only and data+voice SIMs that give you unlimited service for a specified time period (albeit with rate caps.) You can pick them up at stores and order them online. You are right that they won't sell directly to foreigners (that is, those who aren't in Japan permanently,) I had to go through a proxy service to buy them and have a friend who had a Japanese cell phone activate them (call automated system, enter in card #.)
It's not perfect (and I'd love to just grab one and go) but it's definitely better than it used to be. And it was extremely useful having 3.5G data everywhere I went:D
Japan is the holdout; you have to have a local phone. AFAIK, there is no common phone that will in both US and Japan just by swapping a SIM card.
Not on 3G, but if your phone supports the European 3G bands it'll work fine in Japan. My N900 served me quite well while I was over there in August on NTT DoCoMo's FOMA 3.5G network, even all the way out in Tochigi prefecture.
Of course, I only get 2.5G in the US on AT&T, but them's the breaks when you buy what you want rather than what you're offered.
But other Slashdot users appear to be of the opinion that T-Mobile has the worst coverage among the big four.
They do. For as many places as they're in, their coverage tends to be rather iffy if you get out of the major metro areas.
For another, before I buy an N900 phone from Nokia, I want to know whether I will like it so that I'm not out $80 for return shipping and restocking fees for a phone that I turn out not to like.
Totally depends on what you're after. It's a so-so phone, but a pocket computer like none-other. Phone capabilities were tertiary (but still essential) for me, behind data and hackability. It's got some things that make no sense, and some that are just dumb, but I won't go to Android from here, never mind WP7 or the iPhone. And if you use Linux regularly, all the capability is there if you want it.
Because "Asia" is a diverse region, not a singular country. What you say absolutely does not apply in Japan or Korea, for instance, where virtually every phone is sold on contract and locked to the carrier. It's possible to buy service without any phone, but they look down on it or, as in Korea's case, it's virtually impossible due to laws.
By hold a button I mean "power the device off, hold this button, turn the power on, agree to the terms displayed that explicitly say you're reducing security and voiding your warranty unless you reflash to stock" not something in the runtime user interface.
Sorta like how the Nexus One does it. Or maybe like how my N900 does it, where you have to enable a repository and explicitly install a package. That alone would throw warning flags off for most people.
I wonder if it is true no device can be irreversibly locked down
Technically it is. The catch is that to unlock, say, a Motorola device you'd need to desolder the SoC stack and install a new OMAP3 chip in its place. This is a nontrivial, highly risky operation even when done with specialized equipment.
So while it is technically defeatable, effectively it is not.
I don't defend the ability for corporations to leverage their power over people in unfair ways.
It is a fundamental right for people
People. The biggest failure of the Supreme Court was for them to declare corporations as legal persons, despite being complete legal fictions.
HTC can make a locked down phone, but it is a right for consumers to break it
Except when HTC utilizes their control over the design to ensure that you can't. Sort of like how no one has broken Motorola's lock down of the boot loader or kernel.
The only sustainable way to have freedom is to allow businesses to do what they will and let consumers do what they will. It is only through that, that a sustainable and free equilibrium can be reached.
Nonsense. Corporations have too much power and control information too well for there to be a truly informed consumer base. That and corporations deliberately leverage the ignorance of the masses for their own benefit. Corporations and people are not equal. As it stands they have way more in terms of rights, power, money, and political influence than you and will always use it to disenfranchise you and benefit themselves.
But go ahead, believe in the "Free Market." Like I said on Ars the other day, like God, I don't believe it exists.
you're not going to be upset when you figure out that there's no sin() button -- even though the processor in the calculator may be capable of doing that.
Probably not, but then there's a wide gulf between a basic calculator and more powerful devices like these. Witness the consternation over the TI calculators and cracking their signing key. Capability draws attention, and a desire to exploit it.
Analogously, when you buy a phone, people get rather upset that they can't run arbitrary code on it.
People used to not care, of course. But they didn't care because the devices were very much single-purpose, they handled phone calls. Now they can run arbitrary code, manage your contacts and calendar, send e-mail and browse the web. There's capability there that hasn't been there before. These are not simply phones.
Sure, the company is controlling what you run -- but you bought it that way.
And what happens when they're ALL selling them that way and no other way? We're pretty damn close to that now. The only reason they control it, and provide no means of undoing it without a battle, is because they have a vested interest in ensuring your phone channels you to whatever means of making money from you they've set up, or to ensure your phone atrophies feature wise and you decide to buy a new one.
Motorola is doing this constantly, go look at Engadget to see people relieved that Motorola finally found it in themselves to bless Cliq users with Android 2.1. Were the bootloader and kernel not locked down, people could have put 2.1 on their devices MONTHS ago.
legislative interference with the end user's right to enter into a contract
Oh boy, more nonsense. Is it really a fair contract when it's between you and a multi-billion dollar corporation presenting you a one-sided contract?
Indeed, it would be PUTTING POWER IN YOUR HANDS. They wouldn't be able to strip you of control over your own property (which it does eventually become.) And yet you whine?
Someone just has to publish an app with mal-intent.
Err, if a button has to be pressed when you power the device on to trigger a security unlock, it'll be a heck of a lot harder to do it with an "app" all on its lonesome.
Leave security to the users and it will always be defeated by stupidity.
I have no problem with security by default. But let me turn it off if I want to.
Userland services shouldnt be at the mercy of a carrier though.
Kernel space is nothing special on these devices. And everything you described can be done in userland.
Because these are not phones. These are miniature computers that handle phone calls as a subset of their capabilities.
The software that controls my engine/drive-by-wire has a singular purpose, and is basically a bunch of tables with a bit of microcontroller code to flip through them. Smartphones are much, much more and tend to play a greater role in people's day to day activities.
And if you ask Apple and Microsoft, mobile is where the market is going to be moving heavily. Not necessarily to the exclusion of the desktop market, but still heavily. And, frankly, I don't see the mobile space being controlled so heavily by vendors with vested interests in controlling what you do and how as a good thing.
It should be the manufacturer's right to lock down whatever in the product they send out
Why, when it only disenfranchises the end user?
On the other hand, it should be perfectly within anyone's rights to modify and use their legitimately purchased items in whatever way they want (assuming it doesn't cause harm to others).
This conflicts with the manufacturer being allowed to ship things locked down. I can understand secured with option to disable, but stuff like what Motorola does (and HTC, if they start signing the bootloader) precludes your right to work with your property, and solely for the benefit of the manufacturer.
Security is in order, sure, but should the end user wish to assume direct control then it should be a trivial process that requires the user be in physical contact with the device (such as holding down a button.) Not requiring the user to find a local exploit to grant them shell or terminal access like a 3rd party attacking the system.
But between the carrier and the vendor, you are a 3rd party attacker. This is why I have no respect for most vendors nor for any of the carriers.
Wow, I'm not a huge Apple fan but the misinformation here is thick.
I don't want a MBA with a slower SSD when I can buy a brand new generation Intel SSD on a PC which blows it away
I'd wait for benchmarks on this before auto-bashing it in favor of the Intel SSDs, which are are meeting up with decent competition these days.
I want to be able to upgrade my SSD's capacity at some point
Well, the interface isn't proprietary so there's no reason 3rd parties can't release higher capacity SSDs in the future.
I want to not have to buy a new computer in 3 years because Apple just bricked my data because it ran out of read/writes because OSX has no support for TRIM (seriously?)
TRIM has nothing to do with the lifespan of an SSD and everything to do with speed over time. And I'd like to see where people get the idea that Apple hasn't added TRIM support to OS X?
I would argue most of what Apple does it pretty boneheaded.
The OS shouldn't care, but Windows is extremely finicky and does all sorts of stupid shit that make installs very, very system specific.
Linux installs can be moved between machines without issue, Windows absolutely cannot without a LOT of preparation work that basically puts it into a pre-install state.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, you were marked funny because what you advocate is shifting 100% to an oligarchy run by powerful corporations that can lord over a powerless government. At least at this point we have some standards, you advocate we drop them entirely and essentially let the companies run the government, like they do to a great degree in China.
The development level of Saudi Arabia is basically an illusion, and reserved only for the very small rich upper class and the royal family. Everyone else is basically stuck with the rest of the middle east and Africa.
Goodness no, not at the rates they were charging ($2/min, $20/mbyte.) I was using a sim from a company called b-Mobile, who sell data only and data+voice SIMs that give you unlimited service for a specified time period (albeit with rate caps.) You can pick them up at stores and order them online. You are right that they won't sell directly to foreigners (that is, those who aren't in Japan permanently,) I had to go through a proxy service to buy them and have a friend who had a Japanese cell phone activate them (call automated system, enter in card #.)
It's not perfect (and I'd love to just grab one and go) but it's definitely better than it used to be. And it was extremely useful having 3.5G data everywhere I went :D
Not on 3G, but if your phone supports the European 3G bands it'll work fine in Japan. My N900 served me quite well while I was over there in August on NTT DoCoMo's FOMA 3.5G network, even all the way out in Tochigi prefecture.
Of course, I only get 2.5G in the US on AT&T, but them's the breaks when you buy what you want rather than what you're offered.
They do. For as many places as they're in, their coverage tends to be rather iffy if you get out of the major metro areas.
Totally depends on what you're after. It's a so-so phone, but a pocket computer like none-other. Phone capabilities were tertiary (but still essential) for me, behind data and hackability. It's got some things that make no sense, and some that are just dumb, but I won't go to Android from here, never mind WP7 or the iPhone. And if you use Linux regularly, all the capability is there if you want it.
Because "Asia" is a diverse region, not a singular country. What you say absolutely does not apply in Japan or Korea, for instance, where virtually every phone is sold on contract and locked to the carrier. It's possible to buy service without any phone, but they look down on it or, as in Korea's case, it's virtually impossible due to laws.
Assuming you're using a Pentium-class x86 platform. ARM requires something entirely different.
Only because MS snips and picks features. To get a system equivalent in functionality, Windows costs way more.
Ultimate: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116718&cm_re=windows_7_ultimate_64-_-32-116-718-_-Product
VS2010 Pro: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116864&cm_re=visual_studio_2010-_-32-116-864-_-Product
Easily a thousand or more if you want an "official" platform that isn't crippled and begins to approach what is available in every Linux distro.
By hold a button I mean "power the device off, hold this button, turn the power on, agree to the terms displayed that explicitly say you're reducing security and voiding your warranty unless you reflash to stock" not something in the runtime user interface.
Sorta like how the Nexus One does it. Or maybe like how my N900 does it, where you have to enable a repository and explicitly install a package. That alone would throw warning flags off for most people.
Technically it is. The catch is that to unlock, say, a Motorola device you'd need to desolder the SoC stack and install a new OMAP3 chip in its place. This is a nontrivial, highly risky operation even when done with specialized equipment.
So while it is technically defeatable, effectively it is not.
#%@#$
Forgot a closing blockquote in there, right before "People" :(
I don't defend the ability for corporations to leverage their power over people in unfair ways.
From a corporation, whom otherwise has way, way more power than you. I don't consider that a problem.
Probably not, but then there's a wide gulf between a basic calculator and more powerful devices like these. Witness the consternation over the TI calculators and cracking their signing key. Capability draws attention, and a desire to exploit it.
People used to not care, of course. But they didn't care because the devices were very much single-purpose, they handled phone calls. Now they can run arbitrary code, manage your contacts and calendar, send e-mail and browse the web. There's capability there that hasn't been there before. These are not simply phones.
And what happens when they're ALL selling them that way and no other way? We're pretty damn close to that now. The only reason they control it, and provide no means of undoing it without a battle, is because they have a vested interest in ensuring your phone channels you to whatever means of making money from you they've set up, or to ensure your phone atrophies feature wise and you decide to buy a new one.
Motorola is doing this constantly, go look at Engadget to see people relieved that Motorola finally found it in themselves to bless Cliq users with Android 2.1. Were the bootloader and kernel not locked down, people could have put 2.1 on their devices MONTHS ago.
Then someone is doing it very, very wrong.
Oh boy, more nonsense. Is it really a fair contract when it's between you and a multi-billion dollar corporation presenting you a one-sided contract?
Indeed, it would be PUTTING POWER IN YOUR HANDS. They wouldn't be able to strip you of control over your own property (which it does eventually become.) And yet you whine?
Err, if a button has to be pressed when you power the device on to trigger a security unlock, it'll be a heck of a lot harder to do it with an "app" all on its lonesome.
I have no problem with security by default. But let me turn it off if I want to.
Kernel space is nothing special on these devices. And everything you described can be done in userland.
Because these are not phones. These are miniature computers that handle phone calls as a subset of their capabilities.
The software that controls my engine/drive-by-wire has a singular purpose, and is basically a bunch of tables with a bit of microcontroller code to flip through them. Smartphones are much, much more and tend to play a greater role in people's day to day activities.
And if you ask Apple and Microsoft, mobile is where the market is going to be moving heavily. Not necessarily to the exclusion of the desktop market, but still heavily. And, frankly, I don't see the mobile space being controlled so heavily by vendors with vested interests in controlling what you do and how as a good thing.
Why not?
Why, when it only disenfranchises the end user?
This conflicts with the manufacturer being allowed to ship things locked down. I can understand secured with option to disable, but stuff like what Motorola does (and HTC, if they start signing the bootloader) precludes your right to work with your property, and solely for the benefit of the manufacturer.
Security is in order, sure, but should the end user wish to assume direct control then it should be a trivial process that requires the user be in physical contact with the device (such as holding down a button.) Not requiring the user to find a local exploit to grant them shell or terminal access like a 3rd party attacking the system.
But between the carrier and the vendor, you are a 3rd party attacker. This is why I have no respect for most vendors nor for any of the carriers.
I'd say I was impressed that they're going on a hunger strike, except that in doing so they place their health on the line for their employer.
Perhaps it's the western perspective that work isn't something worth our health?
Wow, I'm not a huge Apple fan but the misinformation here is thick.
I'd wait for benchmarks on this before auto-bashing it in favor of the Intel SSDs, which are are meeting up with decent competition these days.
Well, the interface isn't proprietary so there's no reason 3rd parties can't release higher capacity SSDs in the future.
TRIM has nothing to do with the lifespan of an SSD and everything to do with speed over time. And I'd like to see where people get the idea that Apple hasn't added TRIM support to OS X?
Your arguments are pale, at best.
It's a standard called mSATA, and the driver for the interface is Toshiba. The linked PDF is from 2009, so this is not new.
The only thing new here is that Toshiba and Apple decided to do away with the 2.5" form factor.
The OS shouldn't care, but Windows is extremely finicky and does all sorts of stupid shit that make installs very, very system specific.
Linux installs can be moved between machines without issue, Windows absolutely cannot without a LOT of preparation work that basically puts it into a pre-install state.
I'd mod you up but, as you can see, I commented.