Most of the value of a Google branded Android phone comes from it being connected to the Internet, just like any PC, only smaller. The actual phone part they don't even make (and it runs in a separate, isolated CPU). Most of what Android is is an application stack that is not very different from desktop applications. I really don't see how some old phone related patents can apply to that. Now the GSM, CDMA, 3G, 4G, etc. implementations do have patents associated with them, but those would rightly be paid by the phone manufacturers. These manufacturers get the application stack side for free to enhance the value of their phones. They also modify it as they see fit, generally making it worse. So Google would like the user experience to be better, so they impose certain restrictions regarding app store access if the OS is drastically modified. What is wrong with that?
Android is based on Linux and other open-source software. Google also open-sourced most of their own contributions under an Apache license. I don't see that as evil. Now the patent trolls are going after them with overly broad patents (yet another indication of the broken patent system), primarily due to the success of Android. The patent infringement allegations have not been proven. Android is just simply better but the established players can't deal with that.
Google's biggest mistake was using the Java language. That has always been a legal time bomb, since it was never made an open standard.
You are quite right. Taken further, the simplest tools are paper and pencil. Also blocks, builders of some sort (like Legos), and "manipulatives". But nothing beats basic human interaction, one on one. For young children this all that is needed.
I believe too much technology exposure at a young age is actually detrimental to learning. I'm not the only one. See:
Because, unlike land-line phones, a cellular phone is a complex device that is an integral part of the system. A buggy or hacked radio software can potentially disrupt service to many other paying customers. It needs to be tightly controlled to assure network availability for everyone. Therefore every phone needs to undergo an expensive battery of tests and certification.
Therefore these phones are actully quite expensive. In order to get the price down to a level to attract the most customers they have to be subsidized. Therefore, you have to sign a contract promising to stick with them for some amount of time to cover that cost.
But you can also pay full price for a phone and get a monthly service plan from most carriers. Many people overlook this.
You can also, in fact, buy a GSM or CDMA modem (only) and attach it to a PC (or TI-89) by serial or USB, add some custom software, and make a smart phone out of it. It won't be very compact, however. Getting all that into one hand-held device is not so easy either.
Modern smart phones, like the G1, actually have two CPUs in them, one for the apps and interface and one for the radio interface. The radio CPU and memory are isolated by hardware.
However, there is growing concern in the industry about security related to hypervisors, and how that can undermine the security (file access permissions,etc.) of the guest OS. Therefore there is a trend to use "bare metal" hypervisors to better secure the whole system. Now, running Windows is the opposite of that. Indeed, it doesn't make any sense, especially considering MSs security track record.
In addition, their driver is about 22,000 lines of code! The existing paravirtualization code (that works with VMware also) is only about 6000 lines as far as I can tell. What exactly is IN that MS driver?
Actually, modern journalism is about profit. A headline and a few sound-bites are all that is required to bring people to look at the advertisements on the page around the arcticle, or see the commercial. Some of us, at least, expect more. But we don't get it, and they don't care as long as they get the advertisement revenue. It's all about filling pages with "stuff" to attract some eyeballs.
Yes, and also gets the "A" in school. It doesn't take any creativity to get good grades. If you question the logic and expose the flaws of exams, for example, you lose.
That's not true. You can buy wall chargers with mini USB ports and car chargers with mini usb ports. They can be used to charge any phone with a mini usb port. You can mix and match any vendor's product. That's the beauty of standard interfaces.
I don't agree. Moderates do take positions on things. They tend to look at the facts, and decide based on those alone. No one, and no party, is 100% right or wrong 100% of the time. Some ideas from one side may make more sense, and sometimes from the other. A moderate can decern the useful truths from both sides.
The problems come from extremists. Both major political parties in America today suffer from extremism, or dogmatism. They can never admit when the other party has a better idea.
But the real culprit is the "average voter", as usual.
Witness the recent presidential and vice-presidential debates. Most voters can only handle the simple extremes of two parties, even though there are in fact six presidential candidates this election. So, only two parties are selected, and placed in virtual opposite corners. The common voter expects a fight. He expect both parties to have different views on every topic and argue about them. What if they ever agreed on something? The voter would be disappointed. There is no fight! They want to see a fight, damnit! The voter want's his WWF presidential debate. And he elects whome he sees as the "winner". Why are these debates viewed as a conflict with a winner and a loser? Presumably, they are really just discussions so people can know what each thinks in detail. But Joe the Voter wants to see a fight and select a "winner". After the "debate", all manner of of "important" details are discussed, such as who smiled more, who engaged the camera better, who had the better haircut, what lapel pin was worn, ad nauseam.
Only extremists would ever want to enter that kind of arena.
Some of the founding fathers of America were worried about "mob rule". We should still worry.
Oh, one other detail. I noticed the demo vehicle also had to have an already prepared slab of concrete to land on. I suspect the crane idea is there to avoid the problem of not blasting a hole in the possibly soft dirt or ice that the rover would have to land on.
Probably because 1) the vehicle is not starting from hover, but starting at over 10 km/s when it reaches the atmosphere, and 2) the vehicle will have a mass over 1000 times greater than that demo vehicle.
That demo vehicle video is very cool, but I noticed it only carried its own fuel. There was no useful payload.
Exactly. The sad thing is, Osama and friends are laughing their butt off because they succeeded beyond thier wildest dreams in instilling terror in America. They have won, and this W administration has let them win. A real victory over terrorism would be to continue with our lives as normal, except for a counter-strike to the actual perpetrators.
Re:Building your own kernel these days ain't easy
on
Linux 2.6.27 Out
·
· Score: 1
Yet other reasons are features (for different roles, such as server or desktop), and stability. As a general rule, the more parts you have the lower the reliability. So stripping out kernel features and drivers you don't need can also increase reliability.
As long as you have well defined, open and published interfaces that increase modularity you can scale to larger systems and still be stable. One of my biggest complaints about MS is that they don't do this.
The open source community will ultimately prevail because they do good engineering (doing it the Right Way), whereas commercial software is often rushed out the door a big steaming pile with a nice coat of paint in order get market share from people that don't know any better.
Slashdot Mirror
But in spite of the cost, it won't actually float.
Most of the value of a Google branded Android phone comes from it being connected to the Internet, just like any PC, only smaller. The actual phone part they don't even make (and it runs in a separate, isolated CPU). Most of what Android is is an application stack that is not very different from desktop applications. I really don't see how some old phone related patents can apply to that. Now the GSM, CDMA, 3G, 4G, etc. implementations do have patents associated with them, but those would rightly be paid by the phone manufacturers. These manufacturers get the application stack side for free to enhance the value of their phones. They also modify it as they see fit, generally making it worse. So Google would like the user experience to be better, so they impose certain restrictions regarding app store access if the OS is drastically modified. What is wrong with that?
http://code.google.com/opensource/projects.html
In case you missed it.
Android is based on Linux and other open-source software. Google also open-sourced most of their own contributions under an Apache license. I don't see that as evil. Now the patent trolls are going after them with overly broad patents (yet another indication of the broken patent system), primarily due to the success of Android. The patent infringement allegations have not been proven. Android is just simply better but the established players can't deal with that.
Google's biggest mistake was using the Java language. That has always been a legal time bomb, since it was never made an open standard.
You are quite right. Taken further, the simplest tools are paper and pencil. Also blocks, builders of some sort (like Legos), and "manipulatives". But nothing beats basic human interaction, one on one. For young children this all that is needed.
I believe too much technology exposure at a young age is actually detrimental to learning. I'm not the only one. See:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13507_3-9757396-18.html
In my experience, the best teacher IS experience. Kids just need to get outside more and play.
Also consider that your public school teacher might also be one of those. "You never know what you're gonna get."
The devil is in the details. ;-)
Perhaps that's what the white-space bidding was about? ;-)
Because, unlike land-line phones, a cellular phone is a complex device that is an integral part of the system. A buggy or hacked radio software can potentially disrupt service to many other paying customers. It needs to be tightly controlled to assure network availability for everyone. Therefore every phone needs to undergo an expensive battery of tests and certification.
Therefore these phones are actully quite expensive. In order to get the price down to a level to attract the most customers they have to be subsidized. Therefore, you have to sign a contract promising to stick with them for some amount of time to cover that cost.
But you can also pay full price for a phone and get a monthly service plan from most carriers. Many people overlook this.
You can also, in fact, buy a GSM or CDMA modem (only) and attach it to a PC (or TI-89) by serial or USB, add some custom software, and make a smart phone out of it. It won't be very compact, however. Getting all that into one hand-held device is not so easy either.
Modern smart phones, like the G1, actually have two CPUs in them, one for the apps and interface and one for the radio interface. The radio CPU and memory are isolated by hardware.
Google does get it. But Google does not want to play by the existing rules. They want to change the rules.
However, there is growing concern in the industry about security related to hypervisors, and how that can undermine the security (file access permissions,etc.) of the guest OS. Therefore there is a trend to use "bare metal" hypervisors to better secure the whole system. Now, running Windows is the opposite of that. Indeed, it doesn't make any sense, especially considering MSs security track record.
In addition, their driver is about 22,000 lines of code! The existing paravirtualization code (that works with VMware also) is only about 6000 lines as far as I can tell. What exactly is IN that MS driver?
Shoot, many TV and print news sources are now even quoting people's blogs.
Actually, modern journalism is about profit. A headline and a few sound-bites are all that is required to bring people to look at the advertisements on the page around the arcticle, or see the commercial. Some of us, at least, expect more. But we don't get it, and they don't care as long as they get the advertisement revenue. It's all about filling pages with "stuff" to attract some eyeballs.
Yes, and also gets the "A" in school. It doesn't take any creativity to get good grades. If you question the logic and expose the flaws of exams, for example, you lose.
# vim:ts=4:sw=4:softtabstop=0:smarttab :-)
The joke is when you take it back to the store and they tell you "it's not dead!". ;-)
That's not true. You can buy wall chargers with mini USB ports and car chargers with mini usb ports. They can be used to charge any phone with a mini usb port. You can mix and match any vendor's product. That's the beauty of standard interfaces.
I don't agree. Moderates do take positions on things. They tend to look at the facts, and decide based on those alone. No one, and no party, is 100% right or wrong 100% of the time. Some ideas from one side may make more sense, and sometimes from the other. A moderate can decern the useful truths from both sides.
The problems come from extremists. Both major political parties in America today suffer from extremism, or dogmatism. They can never admit when the other party has a better idea.
But the real culprit is the "average voter", as usual.
Witness the recent presidential and vice-presidential debates. Most voters can only handle the simple extremes of two parties, even though there are in fact six presidential candidates this election. So, only two parties are selected, and placed in virtual opposite corners. The common voter expects a fight. He expect both parties to have different views on every topic and argue about them. What if they ever agreed on something? The voter would be disappointed. There is no fight! They want to see a fight, damnit! The voter want's his WWF presidential debate. And he elects whome he sees as the "winner". Why are these debates viewed as a conflict with a winner and a loser? Presumably, they are really just discussions so people can know what each thinks in detail. But Joe the Voter wants to see a fight and select a "winner". After the "debate", all manner of of "important" details are discussed, such as who smiled more, who engaged the camera better, who had the better haircut, what lapel pin was worn, ad nauseam.
Only extremists would ever want to enter that kind of arena.
Some of the founding fathers of America were worried about "mob rule". We should still worry.
Oh, one other detail. I noticed the demo vehicle also had to have an already prepared slab of concrete to land on. I suspect the crane idea is there to avoid the problem of not blasting a hole in the possibly soft dirt or ice that the rover would have to land on.
Probably because 1) the vehicle is not starting from hover, but starting at over 10 km/s when it reaches the atmosphere, and 2) the vehicle will have a mass over 1000 times greater than that demo vehicle.
That demo vehicle video is very cool, but I noticed it only carried its own fuel. There was no useful payload.
Exactly. The sad thing is, Osama and friends are laughing their butt off because they succeeded beyond thier wildest dreams in instilling terror in America. They have won, and this W administration has let them win. A real victory over terrorism would be to continue with our lives as normal, except for a counter-strike to the actual perpetrators.
Yet other reasons are features (for different roles, such as server or desktop), and stability. As a general rule, the more parts you have the lower the reliability. So stripping out kernel features and drivers you don't need can also increase reliability.
So, using a touch screen produces GAS?
Can you contribute those framework extensions back to the GWT project?
As long as you have well defined, open and published interfaces that increase modularity you can scale to larger systems and still be stable. One of my biggest complaints about MS is that they don't do this.
The open source community will ultimately prevail because they do good engineering (doing it the Right Way), whereas commercial software is often rushed out the door a big steaming pile with a nice coat of paint in order get market share from people that don't know any better.