So, IgnoramusMaximus pointed out that the N900 doesn't work at 3G in the US, and thus has a serious shortcoming for much of the/. audience.
Your rebuttal, in which you says he's wrong, states that your N900 only works at 2.5G in the US on AT&T's network.
Except that you're wrong, in that it does work on 3G in the US and Canada. They don't have huge amounts of coverage, but they're the only ones in the US that actually share frequencies with European carriers (and Japanese, and Chinese, and Indian...)
Everyone FUCKING says this. Each and every time. And every time yet another vendor does this, that's one less device I can opt not to buy. Eventually I will have no devices to buy. So you're saying that I can progressively pull out of the market until I am forced to opt out of technology in general because I don't agree to being abused by OEMs?
Wow, your nick comes into full display. Do you happen to own an N900 and are simply ignorant of its capabilities or are you just spewing BS?
Nokia decided that the 3G functionality only needs support for two European bands
Last I checked it supported 3G on 3 bands and GSM (2.5G) on 4. And coverage as a result is way better than say a CDMA2000 phone, which won't work at all in most countries.
Only the baseline GSM (which means EDGE data rates if you are lucky) works outside of Europe.
Now that's hilarious, because I spent 2 weeks in Japan and had 3.5G pretty much everywhere on DoCoMo's FOMA network.
Everyone else, which means most people in North America (only one GSM network with questionable coverage in the USA and one covering literally just the downtown areas of three major cities in Canada are capable of supporting it there) is out of luck.
That's because the US is an outlier compared to the rest of the world. I use my N900 on AT&T's 2.5G network because I'd rather tolerate a slower data speed (which still works for 100% of everything I do) than buy a device that does less than I'd desire and be stuck to a contract.
But that's stupid. Why should anyone accept and further abusive practices like this? Why should you have to spend time and effort hacking a device to gain functionality that should never have been taken away? You should be able to spend your time and effort hacking it to do something above and beyond that, instead you're reclaiming lost ground.
Don't worry. All this tech that exists in the smartphone realm is going to slowly be pushed upwards into the rest of the market over time (which both Samsung and Apple are hinting at with their tablet docks) and they'll probably drag all this bullshit up with them.
An article like that, with no links or other sources, is extremely questionable.
If true, though, it makes me like my N900 more and more. And for everyone who bitched at me when discussing the AppleTV and having to jailbreak it... well here's another vendor fighting you for ownership and control over your own device.
Or if they lock it down TiVo style, it running Linux is 100% irrelevant. I'm really bored with all this shit being hyped as running Linux, but in the end you're not allowed to actually do anything with it (can't replace it, can't load modules) or you're stuck with a platform that bears no resemblance to the APIs on your desktop, so you're stuck learning Yet Another API To Do The Same Damn Thing (YAATDTSDT).
This is why I like MeeGo. The APIs come from the community. You can use them on your desktop, you can use them on your mobile device. It's also why I bought my device from Nokia, I can freaking load Android on it if I wanted to. Sadly, this seems to be a rarer and rarer thing these days.
Can you imagine if what is going on now in the mobile space had been happening as personal computing took off during the 80s? We'd have gotten just short of nowhere, what with all the patent suits crippling things and walled garden lock down forcing people to find exploits so they can regain basic levels of control.
I can't help that this piss poor, anti-user behavior in the mobile market is going to ripple up into the general computing space in the next few years and generally make life hell for anyone who shows an interest in computers beyond Facebook, e-mail and the latest console game.
Considering how locked down consoles can be, I'd rather not be pushed into having my options in mobile technology be so limited as to have no real open options. Considering how everything seems to be pushing that way (there's only a handful of devices, all effectively out of date, that allow you to gain control without using a local exploit,) I'm sure hard times are around the corner for those who like to own our devices.
I'm sure I'll be flamed a million ways to Sunday by people who like hacking through a bunch of BS protections to get back to basic levels of functionality, and a pile of people who will tell me to simply not buy it. Have fun encouraging lock down or being stuck years behind the times, or locked out due to insufficient anti-user DRM. Oh and the inevitable idiot who will use the MPAA/RIAA/BSA lines to argue against an anti-DRM position.
If Bush had been president, this headline would have read: "Doesn't it seem wrong for the Bush Whitehouse to be pushing private companies to censor the internet without due process?" But the Slashdot editors voted for Obama, so they can't make him look bad, even if they disagree with him
This poster shows a large degree of "oppressed conservative persecution delusion disorder" where he thinks that the media is somehow protecting Obama by not explicitly calling him out (personally!) for everything done in his Administration.
Never mind that only one group occupies the White House at any time, and that's what's in the HEADLINE of the fucking post. But go ahead, keep believing that you're being persecuted by EVIL LIBRULS.
Because Microsoft puts effort only into the Windows version. Of course, you can look at the Linux version being several revisions behind (IE perpetually, which is where MS wants it) as an example.
Seriously, if you want an open device, buy something that's advertised as being open or build it yourself. They're out there.
Sure, but that doesn't mean I can't be critical of what I see as a growing trend.
I see that you've carpet-bombed this discussion with comments complaining that this device isn't open.
I posted one comment, and this thread has exploded. Outside of it I've posted maybe two.
Well, it isn't intended to be open, any more than a DVD player or cable TV box is, because it has a few narrowly defined functions that it does very very well, and that's all it's supposed to do.
Except that Apple's pushing this exact same behavior with all of their other iOS devices while pushing ones like the iPad as a general purpose computing device. And at the same time, so many other manufacturers and OS vendors are happily following along behind them. And yeah, I can opt to not buy it. But that doesn't mean I should be forced to sit quiet while the market is flooded by locked down devices that displace and shrink the market for open hardware.
Because people are unbelievably stupid. But note that in the vast majority of cases the result is a disclaimer, not the product being barred from sale or ridiculously crippled.
The initial methodology was obfuscation of the media directory, which was easily bypassed by even the most novice of experimental users.
You'll notice that the old media directory was set up not to hinder people's usage of the device, but to constrain file path lengths. This had a direct impact on the size of the database loaded on the iPod and thus the amount of RAM required to store it. Arguably, the HFS+ dependence was a greater impediment to use of the device.
The RIM Blackberries and virtually all smart phones have been locked down by the carrier, if not the manufacturer, at least five years.
Yes, over the last 5 years vendors and carriers have gotten more punitive regarding device features as their capabilities have grown. This, however, is not and has not been the default in computing until lately (and lately doesn't mean "the last 6 months" or even "the last 2 years")
But go ahead, make your point. I suppose that justifies the lock down of devices and makes it a good thing?
Because if you hadn't noticed, pretty much every other vendor seems to be following Apple's lead. Both in hardware design and in the belief that lock down is good. That diminishes my ability to avoid lock down.
I wouldn't give a damn if vendors offered the ability to easily unlock their devices in a fashion similar to the Nexus One (or better yet, the N900) but not a single one does. They either force you to find a hole and exploit it or make it nigh upon impossible (Motorola loves this path.)
Apple can't let apps run wild that way because of ATT
Actually they could. If AT&T had that kind of control you wouldn't be able to use any non-approved phone on AT&T's service yet they have no approval requirements.
jailbreaking iOS device to run wifi only Apps in 3g is exactly the kind of added functionality a manufacturer couldn't provide "out of box".
Sure they could, they've just agreed not to. Just like how Samsung compromised on the voice call functionality of the Galaxy Tab, but only for the US models.
20 years ago, lockdown was the norm. Finding a fucking *compiler* that didn't cost hundreds or thousands of dollars was completely impossible.
20 years ago, GCC did exist. That's just being closed source, not locked down (IE your system didn't employ DRM of various sorts to keep you contained.)
And if it turns out that that the locked down platforms become too onerous, then the open ones will win. End of story.
I certainly hope so. But the ignorance in the public combined with their inertia might make that nigh upon impossible if the vendors have their way. Certainly encouraging it by buying into it is foolhardy.
Back in May, I went to three cell phone stores in my home town in the midwestern United States and none had an N900 for me to try.
Which, in the context of this argument, is beside the point.
No longer available for sale.
My point was that some time in the past, Apple sold hardware that wasn't locked down from the get go.
Those are still in stock, but the $299 model appears to have only 0.25 GB of flash compared to 8 GB of flash for the $229 iPod touch. And are there enough like-minded WM6 PDA owners to make developing software for WM6 PDAs viable?
Again, my point was to contradict the person I was replying to who suggested that all such devices were locked down. I countered with the point that this lock down trend is a completely new thing.
maintaining a platform layer that spans from the hardware to application software user interface is not something that works well when certain aspects of the platform are not locked down.
Bullshit. Or are you saying that we should have our PCs locked down hard. You know, for our own sake. To save us from ourselves?
the real issue is whether you believe "possibly confusing a logical user" is something that should be allowed as a result of the platform.
How does having the option to not be forced through whatever monetized channels the vendor has set up qualify as "possibly confusing a logical user," unless you're arguing that all users are fucking retarded and need to be told what to do on a daily basis.
In which case you, I, and all of Slashdot are fucked as we're obviously not competent enough to live.
lockdown serves one important purpose: It drastically decreases the likelihood of malware infecting the platform.
Barely, as we have seen with Apple's pathetic attempts at controlling what goes into the App Store. At best it defends against PEBCAK errors by stripping of them power, but that's just a side effect.
Then don't buy Apple's hardware. That's the joy of choice, there's always a competitor, and if Apple's heavy hand becomes too much, people will move to another platform (like, say, Android).
And yet Android vendors all force the end user to root the device, or worse they go Motorola's route and make installation of 3rd party ROMs impossible. Microsoft is moving in the same direction as Apple. There seems to be this nasty, nasty trend of pushing mobile computing towards a state of lock-down-by-default with no means to unlock and I'm pretty sure that in a few years these devices (tablets, phones and all) will have computing power sufficient for the majority of people.
Seriously, you seem to live with this delusion that people are, apparently, under some form of mind control that prevents them from making choices that meet their needs.
Mind control, no. Completely ignorant and being taken advantage of, yes. They'll make choices that meet their needs, sure, but were systems this locked down ~20 years ago when I got into computers, I'd probably have gotten nowhere at all.
So quit being so god damned paranoid and fatalistic.
I have yet to see how I am being paranoid when the majority of vendors are locking devices down.
On the other hand, I don't buy toaster ovens with the thought that I should be able to convert them into blow torches.
No, but there's no EULA or locks on the device that prevent you from doing so. It's impractical, yes, but nothing is stopping you. Well, except maybe your better judgement.
In Apple's defense, I can also see that they would consider it a ghastly error to find themselves seated in a courtroom one day, being asked "You knew that by doing x, y, and z, one could make ${device} damage my client, and you did nothing about it?"
That's ridiculous, since such an argument could be made against any bit of technology created in the last thousand years.
So when devices are jailbroken, and I believe it is uniformly through exploitation of bugs which could be security problems, Apple has to do discourage it and fix that flaw at their next chance.
They don't do it to protect themselves from lawsuits or other such nonsense, I assure you.
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Except that you're wrong, in that it does work on 3G in the US and Canada. They don't have huge amounts of coverage, but they're the only ones in the US that actually share frequencies with European carriers (and Japanese, and Chinese, and Indian...)
So he's wrong. And you're wrong.
Everyone FUCKING says this. Each and every time. And every time yet another vendor does this, that's one less device I can opt not to buy. Eventually I will have no devices to buy. So you're saying that I can progressively pull out of the market until I am forced to opt out of technology in general because I don't agree to being abused by OEMs?
That's utterly and fundamentally fucked, sir.
Wow, your nick comes into full display. Do you happen to own an N900 and are simply ignorant of its capabilities or are you just spewing BS?
Last I checked it supported 3G on 3 bands and GSM (2.5G) on 4. And coverage as a result is way better than say a CDMA2000 phone, which won't work at all in most countries.
Now that's hilarious, because I spent 2 weeks in Japan and had 3.5G pretty much everywhere on DoCoMo's FOMA network.
That's because the US is an outlier compared to the rest of the world. I use my N900 on AT&T's 2.5G network because I'd rather tolerate a slower data speed (which still works for 100% of everything I do) than buy a device that does less than I'd desire and be stuck to a contract.
But that's stupid. Why should anyone accept and further abusive practices like this? Why should you have to spend time and effort hacking a device to gain functionality that should never have been taken away? You should be able to spend your time and effort hacking it to do something above and beyond that, instead you're reclaiming lost ground.
Don't worry. All this tech that exists in the smartphone realm is going to slowly be pushed upwards into the rest of the market over time (which both Samsung and Apple are hinting at with their tablet docks) and they'll probably drag all this bullshit up with them.
An article like that, with no links or other sources, is extremely questionable.
If true, though, it makes me like my N900 more and more. And for everyone who bitched at me when discussing the AppleTV and having to jailbreak it... well here's another vendor fighting you for ownership and control over your own device.
Or if they lock it down TiVo style, it running Linux is 100% irrelevant. I'm really bored with all this shit being hyped as running Linux, but in the end you're not allowed to actually do anything with it (can't replace it, can't load modules) or you're stuck with a platform that bears no resemblance to the APIs on your desktop, so you're stuck learning Yet Another API To Do The Same Damn Thing (YAATDTSDT).
This is why I like MeeGo. The APIs come from the community. You can use them on your desktop, you can use them on your mobile device. It's also why I bought my device from Nokia, I can freaking load Android on it if I wanted to. Sadly, this seems to be a rarer and rarer thing these days.
Can you imagine if what is going on now in the mobile space had been happening as personal computing took off during the 80s? We'd have gotten just short of nowhere, what with all the patent suits crippling things and walled garden lock down forcing people to find exploits so they can regain basic levels of control.
I can't help that this piss poor, anti-user behavior in the mobile market is going to ripple up into the general computing space in the next few years and generally make life hell for anyone who shows an interest in computers beyond Facebook, e-mail and the latest console game.
Considering how locked down consoles can be, I'd rather not be pushed into having my options in mobile technology be so limited as to have no real open options. Considering how everything seems to be pushing that way (there's only a handful of devices, all effectively out of date, that allow you to gain control without using a local exploit,) I'm sure hard times are around the corner for those who like to own our devices.
I'm sure I'll be flamed a million ways to Sunday by people who like hacking through a bunch of BS protections to get back to basic levels of functionality, and a pile of people who will tell me to simply not buy it. Have fun encouraging lock down or being stuck years behind the times, or locked out due to insufficient anti-user DRM. Oh and the inevitable idiot who will use the MPAA/RIAA/BSA lines to argue against an anti-DRM position.
This poster shows a large degree of "oppressed conservative persecution delusion disorder" where he thinks that the media is somehow protecting Obama by not explicitly calling him out (personally!) for everything done in his Administration.
Never mind that only one group occupies the White House at any time, and that's what's in the HEADLINE of the fucking post. But go ahead, keep believing that you're being persecuted by EVIL LIBRULS.
Because Microsoft puts effort only into the Windows version. Of course, you can look at the Linux version being several revisions behind (IE perpetually, which is where MS wants it) as an example.
I know, we should have elected McCain and gone to war with Iran, with Palin cheering us to our deaths. Our bad.
I like that my posts are causing some mods such consternation. Maybe they bought a DROID X or DROID 2 and were annoyed they couldn't load CyanogenMod.
Sure, but that doesn't mean I can't be critical of what I see as a growing trend.
I posted one comment, and this thread has exploded. Outside of it I've posted maybe two.
Except that Apple's pushing this exact same behavior with all of their other iOS devices while pushing ones like the iPad as a general purpose computing device. And at the same time, so many other manufacturers and OS vendors are happily following along behind them. And yeah, I can opt to not buy it. But that doesn't mean I should be forced to sit quiet while the market is flooded by locked down devices that displace and shrink the market for open hardware.
Well then the only obvious solution is to strip users of any and all freedom.
Or perhaps the problem is trying to jam a system full of dependencies on top of a system that doesn't have any support for dependency resolution.
Because people are unbelievably stupid. But note that in the vast majority of cases the result is a disclaimer, not the product being barred from sale or ridiculously crippled.
You'll notice that the old media directory was set up not to hinder people's usage of the device, but to constrain file path lengths. This had a direct impact on the size of the database loaded on the iPod and thus the amount of RAM required to store it. Arguably, the HFS+ dependence was a greater impediment to use of the device.
Yes, over the last 5 years vendors and carriers have gotten more punitive regarding device features as their capabilities have grown. This, however, is not and has not been the default in computing until lately (and lately doesn't mean "the last 6 months" or even "the last 2 years")
But go ahead, make your point. I suppose that justifies the lock down of devices and makes it a good thing?
Because if you hadn't noticed, pretty much every other vendor seems to be following Apple's lead. Both in hardware design and in the belief that lock down is good. That diminishes my ability to avoid lock down.
I wouldn't give a damn if vendors offered the ability to easily unlock their devices in a fashion similar to the Nexus One (or better yet, the N900) but not a single one does. They either force you to find a hole and exploit it or make it nigh upon impossible (Motorola loves this path.)
Actually they could. If AT&T had that kind of control you wouldn't be able to use any non-approved phone on AT&T's service yet they have no approval requirements.
Sure they could, they've just agreed not to. Just like how Samsung compromised on the voice call functionality of the Galaxy Tab, but only for the US models.
20 years ago, GCC did exist. That's just being closed source, not locked down (IE your system didn't employ DRM of various sorts to keep you contained.)
I certainly hope so. But the ignorance in the public combined with their inertia might make that nigh upon impossible if the vendors have their way. Certainly encouraging it by buying into it is foolhardy.
But we're going in circles now.
Which, in the context of this argument, is beside the point.
My point was that some time in the past, Apple sold hardware that wasn't locked down from the get go.
Again, my point was to contradict the person I was replying to who suggested that all such devices were locked down. I countered with the point that this lock down trend is a completely new thing.
Oh come the fuck on man.
Bullshit. Or are you saying that we should have our PCs locked down hard. You know, for our own sake. To save us from ourselves?
How does having the option to not be forced through whatever monetized channels the vendor has set up qualify as "possibly confusing a logical user," unless you're arguing that all users are fucking retarded and need to be told what to do on a daily basis.
In which case you, I, and all of Slashdot are fucked as we're obviously not competent enough to live.
Barely, as we have seen with Apple's pathetic attempts at controlling what goes into the App Store. At best it defends against PEBCAK errors by stripping of them power, but that's just a side effect.
And yet Android vendors all force the end user to root the device, or worse they go Motorola's route and make installation of 3rd party ROMs impossible. Microsoft is moving in the same direction as Apple. There seems to be this nasty, nasty trend of pushing mobile computing towards a state of lock-down-by-default with no means to unlock and I'm pretty sure that in a few years these devices (tablets, phones and all) will have computing power sufficient for the majority of people.
Mind control, no. Completely ignorant and being taken advantage of, yes. They'll make choices that meet their needs, sure, but were systems this locked down ~20 years ago when I got into computers, I'd probably have gotten nowhere at all.
I have yet to see how I am being paranoid when the majority of vendors are locking devices down.
No, but there's no EULA or locks on the device that prevent you from doing so. It's impractical, yes, but nothing is stopping you. Well, except maybe your better judgement.
That's ridiculous, since such an argument could be made against any bit of technology created in the last thousand years.
They don't do it to protect themselves from lawsuits or other such nonsense, I assure you.
If you've got some silly issue with the way I wrote a sentence, save it for some other time.
If you've got an issue with my point, please say it.