I think that is actually debatable. It would probably depend on how close it adhered to the original. If you just ran the novel through a thesaurus algorithm that would probably be found to be a derivative work. If you meticulously rewrote EVERYTHING to the point where you had entirely different subplots and themes and only by having reviewed the history of your work be able to tell where it originated you might get by as a new creative work.
It is the creative effort that makes something copyrightable. So, I would think that a court would tend to look at the the work in terms of where the creative work originated. If the creativity came from HP, and you just mangled words, then you'd probably be in violation. If your work were a clever counterpoint to the original like Pullman vs Milton, then it might be found to stand on its own (it may share some themes, but it is an entirely new creative work).
I agree with the other poster that the same logic may not apply well to software. I'd think that if you stripped out the original code you'd have a hard time saying that the original authors had a copyright claim to what remains. That would be like saying that an author held copyright to the introduction to their book written by somebody else, without an explicit assignment.
Agreed. There is no known mechanism for supporting a mass of finite density that is so high from collapsing into a singularity, but that doesn't mean that such a mechanism doesn't exist. Clearly the central areas of a black hole fall into masses and volumes that are not adequately explained by our current theories - we probably need quantum gravity for this. For all we know space/mass/etc are quantized and a black hole just turns into some kind of crystal with as much packed into the smallest volume physically possible, just as electrons in an atom settle into well-described wavefunctions/etc.
All we know about black holes is that our laws of physics break down beyond the event horizon, and that we are unable to make observations beyond this region as well. Chances are that any explanation of what happens inside will come from studying other things as a result. The whole holographic distribution of information business suggests that even watching a black hole fully decay over time won't really reveal any information about what happened inside - the interior of a black hole might as well be another universe entirely. Indeed, if you define the universe as the set of all things that can be observed, then the event horizon marks of the border of a new universe by definition.
Yes, and every one of those 2E11 galaxies has 1E6 too little mass even allowing for a big black hole in each one.
Based on other posts here the black hole in a galaxy is about 0.5% of its mass. The discrepancy with dark matter is something like 200% or some crazy figure like that.
Maybe if there are thousands of supermassive black holes floating around in the halos of every galaxy that haven't been discovered yet this would explain the paradox, but there is no evidence for this, and I'd think that something like a supermassive black hole floating around in clear space near our galaxy would be detectable due to lensing. The only reason they remained obscure for so long is that the nearest one is in a difficult area to observe, and the rest are so far away you can't easily resolve individual stars in their vicinity. A huge black hole in the halo would not be obscured, and it wouldn't be all that far away either (relatively speaking). But, perhaps they do exist. The bottom line, however, is that the central black holes discovered so far don't resolve the dark matter problem.
Also - there could be a common cause for both galaxy and black hole - one need not cause the other.
Perhaps for some reason dark matter is not evenly distributed in space, and that causes normal matter to coalesce in some regions. At the very center of the coalescence this is sufficient to form a black hole, and everywhere else a galaxy forms. So, then both the black hole and the galaxy are just the effects of a prior cause.
Some of the string theory scenarios suggest that gravity could traverse between universes, and then dark matter is just the presence of normal matter in some other universe near to this region of our universe. So, galaxies might form in our universe near to where galaxies formed in other universes - of course that does raise its own chicken/egg question.
I was thinking that the bullet cluster example of non-interacting dark matter could be the result of there being four galaxies involved in the collision. Two in our universe, each of which is paired with one galaxy in two different universes. The galaxies in our universe would interact strongly, but the two in different universes would not, since they are not in the same universe as each other. That still raises lots of questions, like why would a galaxy in universe A cause formation of a galaxy in universe B, but not one in universe C, when universe B interacts with both A and C, or why didn't the formation in B cause a later formation in C? Issues like this probably cause problems with the multi-universe models.
Genetic testing isn't quite to the point where it is disruptive yet. However, it will get there most likely.
Once it does, laws like this will be absolutely useless. There are only two stable insurance scenarios in a world where genetic testing accurately predicts insurance risk:
1. Universal coverage - everybody gets the same insurance for around the same rate and payment is mandatory (taxes, mandatory premiums, whatever - with penalties/enforcement sufficient to make almost everybody pay for it). This could be socialized with progressive rates/etc - but it has to be universal.
2. Risk-based coverage/payment - everybody is eligible for insurance or pays a rate for insurance relative to their risk. Somebody at risk for cancer in their 50s might have cheap insurance until they are 40, and then can't afford it. Some children might have astronomical premiums before they are even born.
No other scenario is stable once information is available to either the insurer or the insured. If insurers can discriminate based on risk, then you end up on #2. If the insurer cannot discriminate, but the insured can elect not to buy coverage, then the coverage pool shrinks tremendously as healthy people elect no coverage, and rates skyrocket, and then you basically end up with #2 anyway, but with no insurance at all for those who are genetically healthy. If you mandate low prices or no discrimination based on pre-existing conditions to counteract this, then you've essentially come up with an inefficient version of #1.
They clearly can't go after people redistributing GPL versions, and they need to make the source available to anybody who THEY distributed a GPL version to upon request.
However, they don't need to: 1. Continue distributing GPL versions. Publishing a GPL program doesn't obligate one to keep it online forever. 2. Distribute source to somebody they never gave the program to in the first place. If I give Fred a GPL binary, Fred can ask me for the source. If Fred gives Sally a GPL binary, Sally can ask Fred for the source. If Fred can't provide the source, then Fred is violating the GPL, not me. Now, of course if Fred asks me for the source and I refuse then I'm violating it too.
So, you can walk away from GPL software, and in general that means your obligations will tend to dwindle over time. Now, you can't keep other people from keeping the project alive. You also can't leverage the GPL software in proprietary projects, unless you own all the copyrights or otherwise relicense the bits you are reusing.
Any of the original MTR authors then of course have standing to sue over GPL violations. I'm sure that if one of them contacted the company they would take appropriate action.
This of course assumes that they didn't strip the copyrighted code they don't own the rights to out of the product. If they did then they wouldn't have standing most likely.
I agree - the solution to pirates isn't lasers/etc, but to make merchant ships something other than sitting ducks.
There are also other options. Most piracy occurs in certain regions - just charge a tariff for safe passage through those regions, and patrol them with naval vessels. Or, just organize convoys. We're not dealing with serious adversaries here - one coast guard cutter or destroyer will be more than adequate to escort 50 merchant ships/etc. You just need to price the protective services so that they're self-funding, plus/minus whatever incentives/penalties you want to impose on the route. Plus, it is probably good practice for the escorts anyway - it isn't like they just sit in dock all year when there isn't a war going on.
I dunno. Even if investors REALLY did invest for the long term, the way that CEOs are compensated would have to change quite a bit. What is in the shareholders' financial interest is rarely exactly the same as what is in the CEO's interest.
If you want an unlocked phone and a physical keyboard, then your only option is the ADP, but of course Google doesn't sell those any longer. Your next best option (right now) is probably to jailbreak a G2.
The ADP is of course barely capable of running 2.2, let alone whatever the future holds, so I wouldn't generally recommend it otherwise.
So, my point is that vendors are dropping the ball. The fact that android is open source doesn't negate the fact that vendors are dropping the ball. It might if the vendors didn't go out of their way to keep you from jailbreaking your phone.
You do realize that there is no guarantee that in 2011 a phone won't come out that never gets jailbroken, or not in any reasonable period of time, right?
My point is that most Android phones do not get good long-term OS support - certainly not compared to Apple. I don't think that this is appropriate considering their price.
Yup, and I doubt any have been fired in anger at another plane. I agree the F4 was premature. The rules of engagement also factored into that (if you can't fight BVR then you're much more likely to be in a gun fight). Plus the F4 didn't have long-range missiles like the AAMRAM.
I think the fact that the pentagon was wrong on this before is leading towards the error of thinking that missiles will never be enough - perhaps one day they will be. An extra missile or a better radar might be more useful than a gun these days.
One advantage of the F15 is its ability to carry heavier loads - which means more big missiles on a CAP mission.
Maneuverability only matters in a close-in fight. If you spot your target 50 miles out, then missile performance and launch altitude/speed probably matter a lot more than aircraft maneuverability. The F15's radar is better I think also, but that probably doesn't matter when you have AWACS as the F16 radar is fine unless you're really just searching. Once missiles are fired unless the defending aircraft runs from the edge of range they are very likely to be hit.
Stealth is obviously a REALLY big thing as well, since it means you can engage before you are detected (which helps the F22 - not so much the F15). If your target's first warning that something is wrong is an AAMRAM going active they're going to be in a very painful position - especially if the launcher lobbed a few of them off the rails since it can carry so many of them. Then again, I don't know if the F22 can stealthy command guidance on an AAMRAM, or if it needs to do conventional illumination of the target, which of course gives it a chance to run (probably not much chance to fire back in time).
For the most part modern fighters are just missile launch platforms. I suspect that a 747 loaded with 1000 missiles might very well be the best fighter you can have for many missions.
True. Exactly one Android vendor has not. So, people are free to obtain the benefits of the open-source android platform as long as you disregard about 98% of the android devices out there...
For a modest CPU hit you can just encrypt your page file with a random key generated at each bootup. That just-about makes page completely unrecoverable, unless the computer is confiscated while powered on, or the contents of RAM are otherwise accessed.
They've already released stuff that is too slow for the majority of phones out there. When Android v2 came out, most phones could not support it. Even today almost a quarter of phones don't run v2 yet, and probably never will (though their market share will of course fade away).
Android has been more than happy to live with the assumption that people throw out $550 smartphones every year or two...
That is my observation as well. I have a memory-challenged system running Gentoo, and I can build just about anything I like without much issue (chromium does challenge it, but not horribly). However, if I try to build android it just utterly kills the system. The culprit? Java. The android build system uses quite a bit of it, and it gobs down VM by the gigabyte.
I also have ulimits set to limit process VM. That NEVER causes me problems, except when I run java apps. If I run anything in Java I have to release the ulimit or it dies after about two seconds.
Sure, "RAM is cheap" and all that, but all things considered it is still a waste of money that could be spent on something else, and that RAM is very useful for disk cache when it isn't loaded up with whatever the VM does with it.
Or at least the ADP, which Google sold directly. It was left in the dust at the same time as the G1, and does not officially support even Eclair, let alone Froyo.
You could probably have bought an ADP the week before they started selling the N1, too.
Google so far has shown no reluctance to completely abandon their flagship products.
Well, first, this is nothing new for Android. You could have bought an ADP from Google a week before the N1 was released, and I don't believe it ever received android v2. Ditto for any of the other 1st-gen android phones.
The only difference now is that a lot more people bought Droids, N1s, and Galaxies, and now they're feeling the pain that all the first-gen owners felt when their platforms came along.
I wouldn't throw stones at Apple though. While I prefer Android to iOS, the fact remains that Apple has supported old hardware for upwards of three years - FAR longer than anybody has supported Android-based phones. The G1 was finally discontinued in July of 2010 (per wikipedia), and it never got a release beyond v1.6, which dates back to October 2009! So, the first flagship Android phone was supported for negative one years after discontinuance...
Open source does you no good if your hardware is locked down so that you can't actually install anything. Also, just because a user community CAN exist doesn't release vendors from the responsibility to support their products. Imagine if Dell sold you a computer and two months later the next windows update didn't run on it? Do you think that they would say, "well, just keep running your unpatched version of windows - after all you bought it for what it did at the time, flaws and all."
Now, vendors have generally botched their hardware lockdowns so that jailbreaks exist for almost everything. However, it was NEVER the intent of those vendors to allow modded firmware - the INTENT of the vendors is that your device runs the version of the OS they release. So, the ability of customers to circumvent the vendor incompetence doesn't excuse it.
Agreed. Android has really dropped the ball on this one. Not supporting devices with new releases is just par for the course for android. Most phones are completely abandoned within a year of initial sale, and only months after they are no longer sold.
Half of the latest generation phones from last summer aren't even running 2.2 yet. Cyanogen was able to get that working on my G1 - there is no excuse that next-gen phones with several times the RAM/storage aren't running it. The vendors don't even have to reverse-engineer the drivers - they have the full source to the whole thing.
Everybody keeps saying "buy the phone for what it does now" - but I'm not sure that this is nearly as compelling as the advocates of this approach think. Sure, if the phone were $75 like a feature phone I might not expect updates. However, we're talking about $550 devices (or cheaper up-front if you make various contractual commitments that essentially cost you as much). That is a lot of money to pay for a device that isn't intended to be future-expandable. Existing apps may even lose support when devs target newer APIs, and with data in the cloud there is no guaratee that last year's facebook app version will work next year/etc.
You can keep the CGA adapter of course. However, I'll raise you the screen on the IBM Portable Personal Computer. Imagine those two CGA palettes displayed on a monochrome amber screen - maybe around 7" diagonal.
Yes, in honor of my wife's friend, at least 20 of them. The actual viewing space for webpages on that 14" VGA monitor shouldn't be more than about 3"x6". But hey, the emoticons on hotmail sure will be nicely animated (well, at the 0.3 fps screen update rate the system can handle with all that garbage running).
Simple - the kinds of people who were up to their eyeballs in hedging the price of oil futures, were also up to their eyeballs in hedging the prices of real-estate, mortgage-backed securities, and credit-default swaps. They lost their shirts, and for a little while they couldn't afford to keep buying oil futures. Suddenly the price of oil plummeted tremendously, and now ordinary people who buy oil for the purpose of actually burning it and not trading it can afford to do so.
Derivatives can serve a legitimate purpose in stabilizing markets. However, they are out of control today and if anything tend to destabilize markets as a result.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that is actually debatable. It would probably depend on how close it adhered to the original. If you just ran the novel through a thesaurus algorithm that would probably be found to be a derivative work. If you meticulously rewrote EVERYTHING to the point where you had entirely different subplots and themes and only by having reviewed the history of your work be able to tell where it originated you might get by as a new creative work.
It is the creative effort that makes something copyrightable. So, I would think that a court would tend to look at the the work in terms of where the creative work originated. If the creativity came from HP, and you just mangled words, then you'd probably be in violation. If your work were a clever counterpoint to the original like Pullman vs Milton, then it might be found to stand on its own (it may share some themes, but it is an entirely new creative work).
I agree with the other poster that the same logic may not apply well to software. I'd think that if you stripped out the original code you'd have a hard time saying that the original authors had a copyright claim to what remains. That would be like saying that an author held copyright to the introduction to their book written by somebody else, without an explicit assignment.
Agreed. There is no known mechanism for supporting a mass of finite density that is so high from collapsing into a singularity, but that doesn't mean that such a mechanism doesn't exist. Clearly the central areas of a black hole fall into masses and volumes that are not adequately explained by our current theories - we probably need quantum gravity for this. For all we know space/mass/etc are quantized and a black hole just turns into some kind of crystal with as much packed into the smallest volume physically possible, just as electrons in an atom settle into well-described wavefunctions/etc.
All we know about black holes is that our laws of physics break down beyond the event horizon, and that we are unable to make observations beyond this region as well. Chances are that any explanation of what happens inside will come from studying other things as a result. The whole holographic distribution of information business suggests that even watching a black hole fully decay over time won't really reveal any information about what happened inside - the interior of a black hole might as well be another universe entirely. Indeed, if you define the universe as the set of all things that can be observed, then the event horizon marks of the border of a new universe by definition.
Yes, and every one of those 2E11 galaxies has 1E6 too little mass even allowing for a big black hole in each one.
Based on other posts here the black hole in a galaxy is about 0.5% of its mass. The discrepancy with dark matter is something like 200% or some crazy figure like that.
Maybe if there are thousands of supermassive black holes floating around in the halos of every galaxy that haven't been discovered yet this would explain the paradox, but there is no evidence for this, and I'd think that something like a supermassive black hole floating around in clear space near our galaxy would be detectable due to lensing. The only reason they remained obscure for so long is that the nearest one is in a difficult area to observe, and the rest are so far away you can't easily resolve individual stars in their vicinity. A huge black hole in the halo would not be obscured, and it wouldn't be all that far away either (relatively speaking). But, perhaps they do exist. The bottom line, however, is that the central black holes discovered so far don't resolve the dark matter problem.
Also - there could be a common cause for both galaxy and black hole - one need not cause the other.
Perhaps for some reason dark matter is not evenly distributed in space, and that causes normal matter to coalesce in some regions. At the very center of the coalescence this is sufficient to form a black hole, and everywhere else a galaxy forms. So, then both the black hole and the galaxy are just the effects of a prior cause.
Some of the string theory scenarios suggest that gravity could traverse between universes, and then dark matter is just the presence of normal matter in some other universe near to this region of our universe. So, galaxies might form in our universe near to where galaxies formed in other universes - of course that does raise its own chicken/egg question.
I was thinking that the bullet cluster example of non-interacting dark matter could be the result of there being four galaxies involved in the collision. Two in our universe, each of which is paired with one galaxy in two different universes. The galaxies in our universe would interact strongly, but the two in different universes would not, since they are not in the same universe as each other. That still raises lots of questions, like why would a galaxy in universe A cause formation of a galaxy in universe B, but not one in universe C, when universe B interacts with both A and C, or why didn't the formation in B cause a later formation in C? Issues like this probably cause problems with the multi-universe models.
Genetic testing isn't quite to the point where it is disruptive yet. However, it will get there most likely.
Once it does, laws like this will be absolutely useless. There are only two stable insurance scenarios in a world where genetic testing accurately predicts insurance risk:
1. Universal coverage - everybody gets the same insurance for around the same rate and payment is mandatory (taxes, mandatory premiums, whatever - with penalties/enforcement sufficient to make almost everybody pay for it). This could be socialized with progressive rates/etc - but it has to be universal.
2. Risk-based coverage/payment - everybody is eligible for insurance or pays a rate for insurance relative to their risk. Somebody at risk for cancer in their 50s might have cheap insurance until they are 40, and then can't afford it. Some children might have astronomical premiums before they are even born.
No other scenario is stable once information is available to either the insurer or the insured. If insurers can discriminate based on risk, then you end up on #2. If the insurer cannot discriminate, but the insured can elect not to buy coverage, then the coverage pool shrinks tremendously as healthy people elect no coverage, and rates skyrocket, and then you basically end up with #2 anyway, but with no insurance at all for those who are genetically healthy. If you mandate low prices or no discrimination based on pre-existing conditions to counteract this, then you've essentially come up with an inefficient version of #1.
They clearly can't go after people redistributing GPL versions, and they need to make the source available to anybody who THEY distributed a GPL version to upon request.
However, they don't need to:
1. Continue distributing GPL versions. Publishing a GPL program doesn't obligate one to keep it online forever.
2. Distribute source to somebody they never gave the program to in the first place. If I give Fred a GPL binary, Fred can ask me for the source. If Fred gives Sally a GPL binary, Sally can ask Fred for the source. If Fred can't provide the source, then Fred is violating the GPL, not me. Now, of course if Fred asks me for the source and I refuse then I'm violating it too.
So, you can walk away from GPL software, and in general that means your obligations will tend to dwindle over time. Now, you can't keep other people from keeping the project alive. You also can't leverage the GPL software in proprietary projects, unless you own all the copyrights or otherwise relicense the bits you are reusing.
Any of the original MTR authors then of course have standing to sue over GPL violations. I'm sure that if one of them contacted the company they would take appropriate action.
This of course assumes that they didn't strip the copyrighted code they don't own the rights to out of the product. If they did then they wouldn't have standing most likely.
I agree - the solution to pirates isn't lasers/etc, but to make merchant ships something other than sitting ducks.
There are also other options. Most piracy occurs in certain regions - just charge a tariff for safe passage through those regions, and patrol them with naval vessels. Or, just organize convoys. We're not dealing with serious adversaries here - one coast guard cutter or destroyer will be more than adequate to escort 50 merchant ships/etc. You just need to price the protective services so that they're self-funding, plus/minus whatever incentives/penalties you want to impose on the route. Plus, it is probably good practice for the escorts anyway - it isn't like they just sit in dock all year when there isn't a war going on.
I dunno. Even if investors REALLY did invest for the long term, the way that CEOs are compensated would have to change quite a bit. What is in the shareholders' financial interest is rarely exactly the same as what is in the CEO's interest.
If you want an unlocked phone and a physical keyboard, then your only option is the ADP, but of course Google doesn't sell those any longer. Your next best option (right now) is probably to jailbreak a G2.
The ADP is of course barely capable of running 2.2, let alone whatever the future holds, so I wouldn't generally recommend it otherwise.
So, my point is that vendors are dropping the ball. The fact that android is open source doesn't negate the fact that vendors are dropping the ball. It might if the vendors didn't go out of their way to keep you from jailbreaking your phone.
You do realize that there is no guarantee that in 2011 a phone won't come out that never gets jailbroken, or not in any reasonable period of time, right?
My point is that most Android phones do not get good long-term OS support - certainly not compared to Apple. I don't think that this is appropriate considering their price.
Yup, and I doubt any have been fired in anger at another plane. I agree the F4 was premature. The rules of engagement also factored into that (if you can't fight BVR then you're much more likely to be in a gun fight). Plus the F4 didn't have long-range missiles like the AAMRAM.
I think the fact that the pentagon was wrong on this before is leading towards the error of thinking that missiles will never be enough - perhaps one day they will be. An extra missile or a better radar might be more useful than a gun these days.
The problem with btrfs is that it is unstable and feature incomplete, and doesn't even have an fsck yet.
I've even gotten it to panic with loopback devices, ext3 conversions, and mirroring.
BTW, I define unstable as lots of patches in every kernel release. It just is very new for any real production work.
It is probably good enough for casual use on straight partitions without use of its more exotic features. I would keep good backups though.
One advantage of the F15 is its ability to carry heavier loads - which means more big missiles on a CAP mission.
Maneuverability only matters in a close-in fight. If you spot your target 50 miles out, then missile performance and launch altitude/speed probably matter a lot more than aircraft maneuverability. The F15's radar is better I think also, but that probably doesn't matter when you have AWACS as the F16 radar is fine unless you're really just searching. Once missiles are fired unless the defending aircraft runs from the edge of range they are very likely to be hit.
Stealth is obviously a REALLY big thing as well, since it means you can engage before you are detected (which helps the F22 - not so much the F15). If your target's first warning that something is wrong is an AAMRAM going active they're going to be in a very painful position - especially if the launcher lobbed a few of them off the rails since it can carry so many of them. Then again, I don't know if the F22 can stealthy command guidance on an AAMRAM, or if it needs to do conventional illumination of the target, which of course gives it a chance to run (probably not much chance to fire back in time).
For the most part modern fighters are just missile launch platforms. I suspect that a 747 loaded with 1000 missiles might very well be the best fighter you can have for many missions.
True. Exactly one Android vendor has not. So, people are free to obtain the benefits of the open-source android platform as long as you disregard about 98% of the android devices out there...
For a modest CPU hit you can just encrypt your page file with a random key generated at each bootup. That just-about makes page completely unrecoverable, unless the computer is confiscated while powered on, or the contents of RAM are otherwise accessed.
They've already released stuff that is too slow for the majority of phones out there. When Android v2 came out, most phones could not support it. Even today almost a quarter of phones don't run v2 yet, and probably never will (though their market share will of course fade away).
Android has been more than happy to live with the assumption that people throw out $550 smartphones every year or two...
That is my observation as well. I have a memory-challenged system running Gentoo, and I can build just about anything I like without much issue (chromium does challenge it, but not horribly). However, if I try to build android it just utterly kills the system. The culprit? Java. The android build system uses quite a bit of it, and it gobs down VM by the gigabyte.
I also have ulimits set to limit process VM. That NEVER causes me problems, except when I run java apps. If I run anything in Java I have to release the ulimit or it dies after about two seconds.
Sure, "RAM is cheap" and all that, but all things considered it is still a waste of money that could be spent on something else, and that RAM is very useful for disk cache when it isn't loaded up with whatever the VM does with it.
Or at least the ADP, which Google sold directly. It was left in the dust at the same time as the G1, and does not officially support even Eclair, let alone Froyo.
You could probably have bought an ADP the week before they started selling the N1, too.
Google so far has shown no reluctance to completely abandon their flagship products.
Well, first, this is nothing new for Android. You could have bought an ADP from Google a week before the N1 was released, and I don't believe it ever received android v2. Ditto for any of the other 1st-gen android phones.
The only difference now is that a lot more people bought Droids, N1s, and Galaxies, and now they're feeling the pain that all the first-gen owners felt when their platforms came along.
I wouldn't throw stones at Apple though. While I prefer Android to iOS, the fact remains that Apple has supported old hardware for upwards of three years - FAR longer than anybody has supported Android-based phones. The G1 was finally discontinued in July of 2010 (per wikipedia), and it never got a release beyond v1.6, which dates back to October 2009! So, the first flagship Android phone was supported for negative one years after discontinuance...
Open source does you no good if your hardware is locked down so that you can't actually install anything. Also, just because a user community CAN exist doesn't release vendors from the responsibility to support their products. Imagine if Dell sold you a computer and two months later the next windows update didn't run on it? Do you think that they would say, "well, just keep running your unpatched version of windows - after all you bought it for what it did at the time, flaws and all."
Now, vendors have generally botched their hardware lockdowns so that jailbreaks exist for almost everything. However, it was NEVER the intent of those vendors to allow modded firmware - the INTENT of the vendors is that your device runs the version of the OS they release. So, the ability of customers to circumvent the vendor incompetence doesn't excuse it.
Agreed. Android has really dropped the ball on this one. Not supporting devices with new releases is just par for the course for android. Most phones are completely abandoned within a year of initial sale, and only months after they are no longer sold.
Half of the latest generation phones from last summer aren't even running 2.2 yet. Cyanogen was able to get that working on my G1 - there is no excuse that next-gen phones with several times the RAM/storage aren't running it. The vendors don't even have to reverse-engineer the drivers - they have the full source to the whole thing.
Everybody keeps saying "buy the phone for what it does now" - but I'm not sure that this is nearly as compelling as the advocates of this approach think. Sure, if the phone were $75 like a feature phone I might not expect updates. However, we're talking about $550 devices (or cheaper up-front if you make various contractual commitments that essentially cost you as much). That is a lot of money to pay for a device that isn't intended to be future-expandable. Existing apps may even lose support when devs target newer APIs, and with data in the cloud there is no guaratee that last year's facebook app version will work next year/etc.
You can keep the CGA adapter of course. However, I'll raise you the screen on the IBM Portable Personal Computer. Imagine those two CGA palettes displayed on a monochrome amber screen - maybe around 7" diagonal.
- IE 5.5 with various toolbars
Yes, in honor of my wife's friend, at least 20 of them. The actual viewing space for webpages on that 14" VGA monitor shouldn't be more than about 3"x6". But hey, the emoticons on hotmail sure will be nicely animated (well, at the 0.3 fps screen update rate the system can handle with all that garbage running).
Oh, and be sure to install Gator on it as well.
Simple - the kinds of people who were up to their eyeballs in hedging the price of oil futures, were also up to their eyeballs in hedging the prices of real-estate, mortgage-backed securities, and credit-default swaps. They lost their shirts, and for a little while they couldn't afford to keep buying oil futures. Suddenly the price of oil plummeted tremendously, and now ordinary people who buy oil for the purpose of actually burning it and not trading it can afford to do so.
Derivatives can serve a legitimate purpose in stabilizing markets. However, they are out of control today and if anything tend to destabilize markets as a result.