It's possible but unlikely. The Android phone business model guarantees that updates will be a mess [zdnet.com]
No, no it doesn't. If you want an apples to apples (no pun intended) comparison, you need to compare the iPhone (sold by the makers of iOS) to the Nexus S (sold by the makers of Android). The Nexus S is the first phone to betting the ICS upgrade. Nexus S is an Android phone. That demonstrates that the problem of messy upgrades isn't a problem with Android per se. It's a problem with hardware providers adding their own stuff on top of Android. Which is why I bought the Nexus S instead of the Galaxy - I didn't want to be beholden to Samsung for all their junk.
In the end, it's all about choice. If you want straight-up Android, you buy Google's vanilla Android devices. If you'd rather get another manufacturer's take on Android, knowing that you'll be at their mercy for upgrades, by a Samsung or a HTC. If you want vanilla Android on third-party hardware, buy it and put Cynogen on it, knowing that it's unsupported.
Note that that's two more choices than Apple gives you. I'm on Android because I like choices. The flipside is, you have to live with your choices, and not bitch because you didn't do enough research/thinking before making them.
You know that's not the reason we have a 12-month calendar, right? We used to have fewer months, but the Roman emperors kept adding new ones to puff up their egos a little more. We just ran out of emperors before we hit 13.
Lunar calendars (28-day cycle, based on the moon rather than the sun like Gregorian calendars) have been used pretty frequently throughout human history. It's just Solar calendars line up better with the definition of a year. Personally, I like the lunar myself.
There's an extremely pro-market, pro-capitalist slant that is often off the top and I wouldn't put it past corporations or government to infiltrate discussions and mod anything that is pro-america up and critical of american capitalism down
Because if someone disagrees with you, they're obviously a shill, whereas people who agree with you are champions of truth.
By any price they wish you surely meant to add temporarily, because when they then charge any price they wish, they get competition again.
No, you don't. Starting up manufacturing capacity from scratch is a long, expensive process. When you also have to overcome an existing competitor's economies of scale, that time and expense is amplified. When, as soon as your plant is online, your monopoly competitor drops their prices to a loss to undercut you, and you lose all the millions you've invested in your infrastructure, nobody's going to try it again any time soon.
The only ways to beat such a monopoly are:
Legal. Get the government to intervene by breaking up the monopoly, imposing tariffs, subsidising your efforts, etc.
Social. Organise a large-scale, world-wide boycott of the monpoly.
Technological. A break-through that the monopoly can't adapt to quickly enough to maintain their monopoly in the new space - nano assembly for manufacture, say
There are thousands of factors that result in a low crime rate. Australia, the UK and the US? They correlate across hundreds of them, as does every other Western nation. You just picked out one that suits your political ideology, and are claiming that it is solely responsible for prosperity.
The name of a country reduces crime, don't accept this easy just look at the crime rate difference between countries with the letter a in their name and those without, in fact look no further than North America ie. Canada, United States, Mexico.
I wouldn't say that. The most popular Chrome version has now overtaken the most popular IE version. That's a decent milestone. Of course, it's not in the same ballpark as "total Chrome install base overtakes total IE install base", but it's not too shabby neither.
Version numbering's all artificial anyway. The difference in render between Chrome 5 and Chrome 15 is far far less than that between IE7 and IE8. Each IE iteration is like an entirely different browser. Internet Explorer is the only browser that I need to code/test for each individual version.
That, if forced to vote, you'd see Bullwinkle and Kodos and Senator Palpatine winning thousands of votes.
As an Australian who has worked at polling booths counting votes, I can say that the number of informal ballots (that is, ballots that don't indicate a valid choice, such as your examples above, or people who just shove the form in the box without voting at all) is a small minority. Even then, it is useful - the most recent federal election had a record number of informal votes, indicative of a populace who was deeply apathetic about both primary party candidates. The apathy was borne out by other evidence as well - we ended up with a minority government for the first time in my lifetime, due to the extreme swing away from both primary parties.
As to your statement about Gore and Bush, if Bush had stated his intentions of invading Iraq when he was elected, he probably wouldn't have been. That's the primary problem with our elected politicians - once elected, none of their voters have any guarantee of what they will do, and they aren't held to any promises they said they would. We're essentially voting them into a position of supreme authority blind.
A self-destruct device doesn't need to be too powerful to wipe out any electronic or software technology it may have used. Granted, that'd still give them access to stuff like the stealth paint that the thing supposedly had, but it'd get rid of most of the important tech.
but even the over-long protection doesn't cause things to work completely the way you suggest, because the profitable period on a 486 chip completely runs its course in under 20 years. Protecting it that long is silly, but the ownership of that property at year 19, when you can't even sell it anymore, isn't exactly "accumulated wealth".
Depends. If you can artificially stifle competitors from making any enhancements on your basic design due to your patent protection, you can extend the profitable period of your invention artificially, while at the same time, retarding the progress of the art for a couple of decades.
Of course, most companies find it more profitable to just licence their technologies, and so skim a bit of cream off the top of every technological development for the next 20 years, due to an obvious "invention" that they managed to get to the patent office before anyone else. If that invention has since become a de facto standard, so much the better.
Patents protect things for two decades. I guess if you consider your 486 chip "new", then your statement is correct. That's assuming you just don't apply for the same patent again but "on the web" or "on mobiles", and get it rubber-stamped by a PTO that's concerned more with throughput than validity.
And no, I'm not confusing patents and copyrights. Hollywood was setup where it was because in those days it wasn't feasible for Edison to enforce his patents on video technology across the continent.
Those who create new things have no fear of copying, because they have confidence in their ability to do better than people who can do nothing but copy. Those who continue to profit from innnovation long-since departed fear copying, because they know that's all they've got.
Perhaps you missed the reference, but Hollywood became the mecca of film precisely because they were ignoring the draconian restrictions imposed on them by Edison's patent enforcement group. In fact, the very reason film-makers congregated in Hollywood was because it was out of the reach of those patents.
Google, on the other hand, supplied nearly all of the software on the phone and is clearly responsible for the ad-hoc unfinished way lots of stuff works. For example, why are there two email applications (Gmail and Exchange) and they are so completely different? One asks for confirmation for a delete, the other one does not. Probably somewhere this is a setting, but why would the shipping default settings be different? And why would the Gmail email client look so much better than the one for other transport types?
Translation: Arrgghh, choice! Save me!
iPhone had to make all their default apps absolutely perfect, because they refuse to allow any apps that replace default functionality to be installed on their devices. Android's keyboard may suck (I certainly don't think so; I used Swype for a while, but found I could type faster on stock), but if you so desire you can replace it with any number of other keyboard apps. Ditto for mail.
By the same token, I've never met anyone (including hackers/tweakers) who didn't like their Android.
Really, both platforms are perfectly usable. It's just that with a choice between "perfectly usable" and "perfectly usable and locked down by its manufacturer", I'll go with the former. iPhones got in first, so they got a larger share of the market, and with their users being accustomed to being locked into the app store, Android didn't have a particularly large draw.
Also, patent violations were an American concept back in the day (see Hollywood). Countries (and companies) on the way up view patents as a hindrance, shackling their energy and creativity. Countries on the way down view them as a benefit, holding on to their accumulated wealth and power even once they're no longer earning it.
and I'm with God - I hate them too, I would like to see them burn in hell
Even so, there's no threat in there. Not unless it becomes "I hate them too, and if God doesn't do the burning, I'll take it into my own hands.
Religious beliefs should never be a free ticket to cause harm, suffering or misery.
Luckily, they're not. If the sign read "I hate gays", with no mention of religion, you'd be home free too. Religion's a red herring - if you threaten someone's life, whether there's religious overtones or not, then that's a crime. If you express your dislike, religious overtones or not, then it ain't.
Slashdot Mirror
It's possible but unlikely. The Android phone business model guarantees that updates will be a mess [zdnet.com]
No, no it doesn't. If you want an apples to apples (no pun intended) comparison, you need to compare the iPhone (sold by the makers of iOS) to the Nexus S (sold by the makers of Android). The Nexus S is the first phone to betting the ICS upgrade. Nexus S is an Android phone. That demonstrates that the problem of messy upgrades isn't a problem with Android per se. It's a problem with hardware providers adding their own stuff on top of Android. Which is why I bought the Nexus S instead of the Galaxy - I didn't want to be beholden to Samsung for all their junk.
In the end, it's all about choice. If you want straight-up Android, you buy Google's vanilla Android devices. If you'd rather get another manufacturer's take on Android, knowing that you'll be at their mercy for upgrades, by a Samsung or a HTC. If you want vanilla Android on third-party hardware, buy it and put Cynogen on it, knowing that it's unsupported.
Note that that's two more choices than Apple gives you. I'm on Android because I like choices. The flipside is, you have to live with your choices, and not bitch because you didn't do enough research/thinking before making them.
You know that's not the reason we have a 12-month calendar, right? We used to have fewer months, but the Roman emperors kept adding new ones to puff up their egos a little more. We just ran out of emperors before we hit 13.
Lunar calendars (28-day cycle, based on the moon rather than the sun like Gregorian calendars) have been used pretty frequently throughout human history. It's just Solar calendars line up better with the definition of a year. Personally, I like the lunar myself.
From zero to anti-religious rant in a single post - that's pretty impressive, even by slashdot standards.
There's an extremely pro-market, pro-capitalist slant that is often off the top and I wouldn't put it past corporations or government to infiltrate discussions and mod anything that is pro-america up and critical of american capitalism down
Because if someone disagrees with you, they're obviously a shill, whereas people who agree with you are champions of truth.
By any price they wish you surely meant to add temporarily, because when they then charge any price they wish, they get competition again.
No, you don't. Starting up manufacturing capacity from scratch is a long, expensive process. When you also have to overcome an existing competitor's economies of scale, that time and expense is amplified. When, as soon as your plant is online, your monopoly competitor drops their prices to a loss to undercut you, and you lose all the millions you've invested in your infrastructure, nobody's going to try it again any time soon.
The only ways to beat such a monopoly are:
None are easy, or guaranteed to work.
You still don't have a bloody clue, do you?
There are thousands of factors that result in a low crime rate. Australia, the UK and the US? They correlate across hundreds of them, as does every other Western nation. You just picked out one that suits your political ideology, and are claiming that it is solely responsible for prosperity.
Sorry, you're an idiot.
CIA agent? This article is talking about their sys admins, not an American James Bond.
The name of a country reduces crime, don't accept this easy just look at the crime rate difference between countries with the letter a in their name and those without, in fact look no further than North America ie. Canada, United States, Mexico.
Correlation. Causation. Learn the difference.
And as such, its a pretty meaningless statement.
I wouldn't say that. The most popular Chrome version has now overtaken the most popular IE version. That's a decent milestone.
Of course, it's not in the same ballpark as "total Chrome install base overtakes total IE install base", but it's not too shabby neither.
Version numbering's all artificial anyway. The difference in render between Chrome 5 and Chrome 15 is far far less than that between IE7 and IE8. Each IE iteration is like an entirely different browser. Internet Explorer is the only browser that I need to code/test for each individual version.
That, if forced to vote, you'd see Bullwinkle and Kodos and Senator Palpatine winning thousands of votes.
As an Australian who has worked at polling booths counting votes, I can say that the number of informal ballots (that is, ballots that don't indicate a valid choice, such as your examples above, or people who just shove the form in the box without voting at all) is a small minority. Even then, it is useful - the most recent federal election had a record number of informal votes, indicative of a populace who was deeply apathetic about both primary party candidates. The apathy was borne out by other evidence as well - we ended up with a minority government for the first time in my lifetime, due to the extreme swing away from both primary parties.
As to your statement about Gore and Bush, if Bush had stated his intentions of invading Iraq when he was elected, he probably wouldn't have been. That's the primary problem with our elected politicians - once elected, none of their voters have any guarantee of what they will do, and they aren't held to any promises they said they would. We're essentially voting them into a position of supreme authority blind.
They do, they just use a lightsabre.
A self-destruct device doesn't need to be too powerful to wipe out any electronic or software technology it may have used. Granted, that'd still give them access to stuff like the stealth paint that the thing supposedly had, but it'd get rid of most of the important tech.
but even the over-long protection doesn't cause things to work completely the way you suggest, because the profitable period on a 486 chip completely runs its course in under 20 years. Protecting it that long is silly, but the ownership of that property at year 19, when you can't even sell it anymore, isn't exactly "accumulated wealth".
Depends. If you can artificially stifle competitors from making any enhancements on your basic design due to your patent protection, you can extend the profitable period of your invention artificially, while at the same time, retarding the progress of the art for a couple of decades.
Of course, most companies find it more profitable to just licence their technologies, and so skim a bit of cream off the top of every technological development for the next 20 years, due to an obvious "invention" that they managed to get to the patent office before anyone else. If that invention has since become a de facto standard, so much the better.
Patents protect things for two decades. I guess if you consider your 486 chip "new", then your statement is correct. That's assuming you just don't apply for the same patent again but "on the web" or "on mobiles", and get it rubber-stamped by a PTO that's concerned more with throughput than validity.
And no, I'm not confusing patents and copyrights. Hollywood was setup where it was because in those days it wasn't feasible for Edison to enforce his patents on video technology across the continent.
Only responding because 1) conflating Hollywood (copyright) with patents
Ignorance is no excuse in a world with Wikipedia. Google before posting.
Those who create new things have no fear of copying, because they have confidence in their ability to do better than people who can do nothing but copy.
Those who continue to profit from innnovation long-since departed fear copying, because they know that's all they've got.
Perhaps you missed the reference, but Hollywood became the mecca of film precisely because they were ignoring the draconian restrictions imposed on them by Edison's patent enforcement group. In fact, the very reason film-makers congregated in Hollywood was because it was out of the reach of those patents.
Google, on the other hand, supplied nearly all of the software on the phone and is clearly responsible for the ad-hoc unfinished way lots of stuff works. For example, why are there two email applications (Gmail and Exchange) and they are so completely different? One asks for confirmation for a delete, the other one does not. Probably somewhere this is a setting, but why would the shipping default settings be different? And why would the Gmail email client look so much better than the one for other transport types?
Translation: Arrgghh, choice! Save me!
iPhone had to make all their default apps absolutely perfect, because they refuse to allow any apps that replace default functionality to be installed on their devices. Android's keyboard may suck (I certainly don't think so; I used Swype for a while, but found I could type faster on stock), but if you so desire you can replace it with any number of other keyboard apps. Ditto for mail.
Yep. Absolutely none. That's why I bought a device with stock android (Nexus S), instead of letting vendors install their crap all over it.
Blaming Google/Android for CarrierIQ is like blaming Microsoft for all the crapware your cheap Dell was pre-loaded with.
By the same token, I've never met anyone (including hackers/tweakers) who didn't like their Android.
Really, both platforms are perfectly usable. It's just that with a choice between "perfectly usable" and "perfectly usable and locked down by its manufacturer", I'll go with the former. iPhones got in first, so they got a larger share of the market, and with their users being accustomed to being locked into the app store, Android didn't have a particularly large draw.
It was sort of the only direction left
Um, that's pretty much what the GP said;
Also, patent violations were an American concept back in the day (see Hollywood). Countries (and companies) on the way up view patents as a hindrance, shackling their energy and creativity. Countries on the way down view them as a benefit, holding on to their accumulated wealth and power even once they're no longer earning it.
and I'm with God - I hate them too, I would like to see them burn in hell
Even so, there's no threat in there. Not unless it becomes "I hate them too, and if God doesn't do the burning, I'll take it into my own hands.
Religious beliefs should never be a free ticket to cause harm, suffering or misery.
Luckily, they're not. If the sign read "I hate gays", with no mention of religion, you'd be home free too. Religion's a red herring - if you threaten someone's life, whether there's religious overtones or not, then that's a crime. If you express your dislike, religious overtones or not, then it ain't.
Let's see how well that goes over with the ACLU
Any American who values the Constitution
That's what he said.