they did it for cred with perfect knowledge they were breaking a usage agreement. Why do I say this? because to make the skin they needed to download the high res PR images from apple.com/pr/products. To download these images you have to agree to a very short usage agreement.. (the usage agreement is 3 paragraphs long and fits in your screen.. we're not talking about some hard to read microsoft windows/office eula that goes for 50 pages and excuses your right to live, breathe and reproduce.)
Not entirely correct. In the threads it discusses how most of the folk got the images of google image search. Most had not seen or agreed to that usage document so it's completely irrelevant to the people at xda-developers. Apple's issue is with those who put it on their site and with Google for linking to it. Yes, Apple seem to be having a issue with links as posts with alternate download links are being censored.
They DON'T involve an elected government attempting to crush 20-30 separate factions, while attempting to protect the civilian populace.
I doubt we'll agree on this, but IMHO the fact that there is still a functioning government (in whatever state) does not exempt it from being civil war. You are seeing it from the point of view of the officials vs the insurgents as a whole and I'd likely agree that is not a civil war, that is an insurgency as the name suggests. This is especially true in response to the recent regime change. However, what's different here is that these groups are now mostly fighting one another and the officials are trying to keep the peace. It is the groups fighting each other that I'm referring to as a civil war, and which accounts for most of the violence over there. The number of groups isn't relevant, but even though there are multiple ones many claim intelligence to each other on grounds of religion etc. It's very much a ethnic/religious war at the moment.
I doubt they'll admit it, but it may have to do with the problems that have arisen with hiring stringers. For instance, the Photoshop job of the smoke from an Israeli strike in Lebanon that required the AP to issue a picture-kill on a bunch of war photography.
Yes, because the dishonest reporting should only swing to the pro-us camp, which is basically what embedding is!;-) Despite my joking, I agree with you there. Some journalists just don't have any ethics at all.
Like I said, I'm tired of the war too, but not for ethical or moral reasons. I'm just tired of waiting for Iraqi security forces to get trained to the point they can safeguard their own country.
I honestly don't think that's going to happen any time soon, not in the next three years at least. The hatred over there is just too much to expect a local security force to be impartial and fair. And ultimately that would lead to it's demise.
I find a lot of the anti-war arguments could be applied toward arguing for abandoning the fight against crime on the part of policeman. Both are groups you willingly sing up for to do dangerous work. So while I mourn for troops who are killed, I don't mourn them any more than I mourn cops or firefighters, and I don't want to stop fighting crime or fires when they die.
I mostly agree with you there, but a good friend of mine would back you 100%. She grew in an army town and whenever there is griping or complaints, her point is "well, you joined the fucking army". Death is no reason to stop, but you should use it as a motivation to ask "why" they died and perhaps if they should not have been placed in that situation given decent leadership.
I'm in an unusual camp here. I was against the invasion of Iraq long before it was considered the "trendy" thing to; long before it had been admitted to us that the war was pre-planned and inevitable in fact. However, I do not promote pulling out. My main point of protest over it is the destruction of a country and it's population. I fail to see how pulling out would help improve things for anyone. The place will fall apart should the US leave in the next year or so. One of three things is going to happen; 1) The US stays there for the next 10 years. 2) An international body, e.g. the U.N. takes over. 3) We all leave and the place becomes a new Afghanistan or twins with Iran.
Given that Cheney etc admitted as far back as 1998 that they see Iraq as a potential beachhead to a permanent US military force in the middle east, option one is the most likely IMHO.
That's when the insurgents started going ballistic. If you were a cop, had considered being a cop, or had, at some point, said "hello" to a cop, you were in their eyes a fair target. [snip] But the moment they blew up a crowd of children, they became terrorists.
Sorry, but that is almost textbook civil-war. A bloody one albeit, but still civil war. Children often get targeted, just look through your history books. Often entire villages/towns have been murdered. Just because "terrorism" is the current buzzword, it doesn't make it so. The aim of terrorism is to use fear to promote a point-of-view. This is just centuries-old hatred fired up by a bad situation for all. It's killing for killings sake, which is not terrorism. Perhaps "terrorism" may have escalated us to this situation, but that's not where we are now.
As for the civil war aspect of it, it's simply not the case, at least not in Mosul. The police force and ING are composed of both Shia and Sunni, and from different tribes as well. The people calling in with tips were from varied religious beliefs as well. While the terrorists doing the actual fighting were a fairly homogeneous bunch, that is not too surprising, however it takes two distinct factions to form a civil war, and in Mosul they just weren't present.
No, the lines are rarely clearly defined in civil wars. You may be blinkered by stories of the American Civil War which was perhaps more regimented, but generally civil war is neighbor killing neighbor. Part of the problem is that it's not easy to identify who is on what side and there are no clear battle lines. That's why the civilian death-toll is so high.
Iraq has been considered a civil war for well over a year by most historians and political theorists. It's just that our news is a little to scared to call it that as they'll lose access to the top levels of government. The ones most aligned with the government promote the "terrorist" idea.
Moreover, you also need the systematic elimination or displacement of one faction by the other, and this isn't present either.
While that is often a part of a civil war, it's not a requirement for the definition. And it has been happening in Iraq in several regions; several million people have already fled the country. It's more likely to happen in areas where there were already a majority of one sect in the population. Then, the minorities get killed/disposed. Large parts of secular Iraq do not meet this population-divide requirement, so the displacement of civilians isn't widespread.
The scenario is more akin to police and national guard fighting Al Capone, only with Capone trying to terrorize the general population into supporting him.
Perhaps, if you were to assume Capone was a Canadian citizen and the US police and national guard had invaded the north with the assistance of the mounties. Not a very good example really.
As for military censorship, these "whistleblowers" of yours remain conveniently unnamed.
Perhaps "whistleblowers" was a bit too strong worded? How about "didn't toe the party line". Check out Geraldo Rivera (FOX), Phil Smucker (CSM) and Peter Arnett (ABC) who were all "sent home". There are probably many more, I'm no expert on the subject but two minutes on google got me those names. No, I do not know how many are currently embedded but I'd imagine the number is low as the journalists weren't really a fan of it. I've seen some candid footage from a briefing that was not supposed to be filmed. The divide between the speaker and the journalists was huge and quite agressive. I cannot remember which documentary had this, it may have been one of Greg Palast's.
Every scuffle with insurgents, in spite of any troop loss, has ended in a U.S. victory.
The definition of "victory" in an insurgent is probably what were a quibbling over here. For the insurgents, a victory is an attack where they get away without being caught, a daily occurrence. IEDs, snipers, mortars, the usual insurgent stuff. For the US/UK troops, victory is holding a piece of ground or taking an objective. Both groups have had victories and losses.
Discussing this with you is fruitless and I have better things to do. Just forget about it and assume that all governments in all time across all of history are entirely benign and have your best interests at heart. I wish I could live in your world. Does it come via medication or through lack of reading of history?
You have no basis to believe other than speculation that either of the two scenarios you describe would happen at all. You also don't have any evidence other than speculation to say that either of the two scenarios wouldn't happen if these databases weren't combined.
No basis? How about millennia of prior behavior? Governments rarely relinquish power, in the same way taxes are rarely repealed. It's the age old cycle of civilization. More and more power is sought until the system cannot provide any more and collapses. I could cite many examples throught history. What makes Blair etc different? Are we more enlightened or something?
To assume that this would not be followed by further legislation is naive at best. It may not happen under this government or the next, but it will happen.
You also don't have any evidence other than speculation to say that either of the two scenarios wouldn't happen if these databases weren't combined.
That's a false argument. It's like saying I should be allowed to murder you as you might get murdered by someone else tomorrow anyway.
You'd understand the answer to this question the very moment one of these "resistance members" blew up your kids school, without a single foreign soldier around. Or the day they came around to your house and executed your wife for the crime of talking to the newly re-constructed UK police force.
That's not terrorism, as you later claim it to be. It's a civil war combined with ethnic cleansing. Terrorism doesn't enter into it one bit. It's not been done to terrorise a segment of society, it's being done to kill them and seize power. Civil war, go look it up.
We call them 'insurgents' because that is the correct term that describes all the fighters in Iraq.
Agreed. It's also far better than the alternative, "terrorists", which was clearly chosen for it's propagandistic factitious links to the events in New York City in order to manipulate peoples opinions. Every time I hear it mentioned, my hope for mankind diminishes slightly.
That's also why it's silly when people compare Iraq to Vietnam. First, there's no draft. Second, we actually haven't lost any engagement since the war started
Not true, the "coalition" has lost many battles. Why do you think they had to retake Faluja a year ago? This leads me onto the biggest difference between Vietnam and Iraq. The 60s war was a war of first in many regards. One of these was media coverage. In WW2, news from the front took ages and was highly filtered. In Vietnam, radio and TV allowed images to be sent home to the viewing public in a matter of hours.
This created a problem. War is hell and this uncensored media stop ultimately led to the end of the war. These images are iconic and I'm sure we all are familiar with most of them. This time around the government had to avoid that sort of thing. This is where embedded reporters come in. These guys travel with the troops and if they report anything untoward, they are immediately sent home with little or no oversight from those in charge of propaganda. They know this and numerous ones who haven't toed the line have come forward as whistle blowers.
This is why you think that the US has won all engagements in Iraq and it is also the biggest difference between the Vietnam conflict. It is only the independent media reporters that travel on their own at great risk to their lives that provide any useful reporting. These people are every bit as much heros as those who put their lives on the line for their fellow countrymen in order to report the truth.
They don't seem to realise that this information already exists, merely spread amongst a number of different governmental departments. This is merely an attempt to consolidate that data and make access more efficient.
You fail to realize that this is the "slippery slope" that so many people are concerned about. I don't mind the current set of affairs; numerous disconnected databases. It requires little bit of work to consolidate someones data for analysis and this represents a nice speed-bump in the process that reduces abuse. Take that away and there are two main fears; firstly the data could get to someone that it shouldn't due to it's accessibility. Not everyone in government employment is trustworthy and honest. Personal data is worth cold, hard cash and some government service roles have a high personnel turnover. Far too easy to abuse.
But more importantly is the next step, when they say that the database will be checked for everything. So, you apply to adopt a child but the fact you'd had two STDs in your teenage years goes against you. Or, when you apply for unemployment benefit after being laid off, your money is stopped because your credit card data shows that you spent some money on your wifes birthday instead of food. Or, how about when you go to the hospital for the free healthcare that the UK provides, only to find out that they won't touch you until you pay-off your parking tickets?
Bad analagy. How about if China invaded the UK. Then a bunch of Germans and Frenchies snuck across the chunnel and started bombing/killing UK civilians. That's a more appropriate situation.
Only if you believe the lies. In reality, less than 10% are foreign, with most estimates putting the figure at less than 5%. Here are two articles on this subject:
The myth that many are foreign is merely to continue the false belief that the War in Iraq is in some way connected to the War on Terrorism. It's not and it never has been. Planning for the Iraqi invasion was started in 1998 by Cheney and Rumsfeld, three years prior to 9/11. The attacks on New York merely gave them the political currency to promote the attack. The literally took a big dump on ground zero and wiped their arse with the US flag then handed it back to the 3,000+ victims families.
However in Iraq, the US and UK would like nothing better than to leave, but feel a responsibility to insure stability after the mess we caused (in one set of rhetoric), or to secure freedom for the people (in another set of rhetoric.)
It's got nothing to do with "responsibility", it's not driven by a love for the Iraqi people. It's driven by the fact that an uncivilized Iraq will become a breeding ground for anti-US sentiment, essentially worst than Afghanistan was (and has become again). It's completely self-serving, as was the initial invasion. It would also result in a huge loss of face for the US on the international scene should the US leave the place in a civil war.
Also, the Project For a New American Century who count most of the top current administration as members published their intentions in 1998 about invading Iraq as a beachhead to the middle east. US troops will be in Iraq for 20 years barring outside political interference.
Finally, one of the main beefs Bin Laden had with the US was their troop deployments in Saudi Arabia. The USA likes to keep troops handy just in case things kick off over there. These troops have now been moved to permanent deployments in Iraq. In essence, the terrorist won and got what he wanted.
Some phones developed that capability, but if anything (Microsoft phone for example), they've proven more that the capability definately does compromise the phone aspects.
Care to back that up with an example? I've never heard of a case where manually installed software has caused harm. Oh, and the Pocket PC platform also started out as a PDA without phone functionality, and phones that can have installable applications have existed for a very long time.
I think it must only be true of "smartphones" that are also PDAs and have their own platform like Symbian, PocketPC or whatever.
That's correct, apps can "crash" these platforms. They could chew up 100% CPU time, or go full-screen and not let you quit them. They can leak memory and bog things down. But the general public can deal with that using the reset button. Besides, anyone who would be freaked out by a crash probably isn't installing obscure, untested applications.
It's no different from any other software. If you want to use the hardware, there is a risk that you do it wrong. Where would we be if we couldn't install third-party web-browsers on Windows?
Signed apps can however. Mindterm is a "freeish" Java SSH client that can run as an applet like this. You need to accept their certificate to connect to any host.
However, I've yet to see a mobile web browser that ran applets, so this is likely a non-starter.
This is an old idea; the part you bolded in your quote says it all. Essentially, the apps need to be digitally signed. It sucks; I used to use a platform that was like that. Things were stagnant in the first year, no interesting software came out. Getting the dev kit and certification is extremely expensive and well out of the reach for any OSS and most shareware.
After a while (almost a year), other operators started to sell the same phone without the limitation. Orange UK, the telco, were forced to allow users to disable the certificate check. After that, the number of applications available exploded, even despite the fact that this override wasn't made very public and was an "in-the-know" thing for some time. Nowadays, anyone can download the dev kit and program in a variety of languages.
So, it's not for sure that it'll never allow you to use a dev-kit, but it's pretty unlikely unless you have got at least $10,000 to burn. But this may change in future.
As an aside, Orange continued and still continued to protect their network. You need a special certificate to write applications that access the phone stack, and this keeps the network free from malicious apps. This can be a pain in the ass, but overall it's a good idea. As the devices generally have a fully working TCP stack, you can just use that for your comms. Sucks if you want to write e.g. fax software though.
What he said. Outgoing SMTP is about the only setting that needs changed from site to site for 99% of users. It used to annoy the hell out me but...
an alternative to your ISPs SMTP is to use Googles SMTP server, which also has the added bonus of being wrapped up in SSL. You need to have a valid account and validate any "from:" address you intend to use on Googles page, but other than that it's been working flawlessly for me for ages now. Works from any location, I use it on my laptop & PDA. Your email client needs to support SMTP authentication and SSL connections for SMTP, but most recent ones do.
Sorry, but that's just plain wrong. The phone you've had for the past two years does not provide random access to voice-mail (from a visual list, no less.)
Woot, one minor improvement. Smartphones clearly have less features! I'll just have to put up with the SMS telling me I've got a voice mail, what time it was left and who's it from. I don't know how long I can go on under these conditions!
I could list a dozen features that the iPhone doesn't have. SSH client, VNC client, TomTom sat nav blah blah blah.
Wake me up when there is a free dev-kit for the iPhone and it's confirmed you can install your own applications at will. Then things might get interesting.
Absolutely nothing. But, they haven't yet (for Windows Mobile or Palm OS.)... Google seems to be giving much love for the underdog. (Symbian OS, Mozilla, and now Apple).
I suppose we should really just roll-our-own Google Local application, but I've found there is a distinct lack of OSS software for all of the mobile platforms. Sure, there are ports of really useful applications, but you rarely see something new and open sourced.
Windows Mobile, including 5.0. Certain apps, like Voice Command, Minimo, JVM, all need main memory to function properly. Others, that don't, are bad NOT to install to main memory because if you eject the card, the processes hang (SPB stuff, for instance.)
The cab installers can generally be hacked to get around this. However, it makes sense that always-running stuff should go on the device itself.
I'd avoid Minimo by the way; it's the wrong way to go about writing mobile software IMHO. Cutting down an existing app is difficult, they'd have been better building from scratch. Opera is very good, as is the PIEPlus plugin which gives you tabs etc in IE.
Oh, I agree, completely. 3G and hard drive versions are bound to come out, in thicker, less sexy versions. I was a little odded out by the fact that they only offer 4 and 6GB versions, but then I figured the OS overhead is probably eating up about 2GB. I was also actually pretty surprised there wasn't a 30 or 60GB version at release...
I'd be surprised if the OS were that big. The ROM on my current device consists of a Radio ROM and an OS ROM. These are about 5 meg and 30 meg respectively. There are a number of hackers working to squeeze in as much functionality on these ROMs with homebrew "ROM kitchens", it's amazing what you can get in with a bit of effort.
I'd imagine the 30/60 GB versions are limited by battery life. An iPod can be turned off, but a phone needs to be on all the time. If you added an HD, you'd still need flash for the main storage and pre-buffer data into memory so the HD can be powered down ASAP. Plus, it's moving parts and therefore a reliabilty risk, though Apple have plenty of experience in these devices now. Even if this device was the best thing ever, I'd still consider waiting for the 2nd generation model.
Besides, they still have 6 months before it comes out in which to make further revisions and rock your world even more when the device finally releases. But what's up with the Crapular Wireless exclusivity until 200..9? That's a pretty HUGE lockout period. Alas, as much as I want one, I **REFUSE** to go back to Crapular. Maybe I'll buy a contract-free phone and snag an unlock code on ebay (bound to happen) and switch to T-Mobile. Then again, maybe not. Meh. Verizon may be evil, but alas, they're still the best over all, IMHO.
It'll hopefully be the third-party apps that cause the most buzz in the next six months. I'm sure there are a lot of developers out there having some grand ideas.
All mobile carriers suck, deal with it!;-) I'd consider buying unlocked myself, but to be honest in any bleeding edge technology, having a warranty is a nice comfort. I'm UK based at the moment and my provider (Orange) offers next day replacement for any fault; they send a courier out to swap your phone with a new one. I'd put up with some pretty oppressive pricing regimes before giving up that safety net!
So.. given any thought as to what processor they might be using? That's a pretty responsive UI they demod. MUCH nicer than Windows Mobile 5 on my piddly 416MHz XScale xv6700. Given the deal with Intel, xScale just makes sense. Who knows...?
Agreed, I reckon it'll be Intel as well. I would not be surprised if some sort of merger between the two companies has been considered in the past. I hope they don't go too nuts on the UI however; one of the first things I do on an out-the-box Windows Mobile device is to disable the screen animations and so on. It's speed over slick for me.
Also: PocketPC even back to when it was WinCE was *not* fixed resolution. It supported at least 320x240, 320x480, 640x480, and 720x480. I've personally never used it at resolutions other than those four, but I have personal experience with those four resolutions (Which represent 3 different aspect ratios).
Before my time I'm afraid. I never owned one of these, but I have played around a little with them at the time. It was many years ago, so I'll concede to you there.
So your assertion is that the resolution needed to be reduced because of exceedingly poor software design that neglected the lessons of 30 years of graphical interfaces, and not because of the the licensing thing?
No, the resolution was likely picked based on cost and demand for the product. You assertion that it's licensing is crazy as they are the same platform. There hasn't been a product released as "Pocket PC" in years. It's like saying that Vista doesn't have WinFS because they couldn't license DOS. It doesn't make sense.
There are other licensing issues of course; for example OS upgrades are not generally available as they would need to be licensed. Sure, the devices have updates for new stuff, but not to new major revisions. There are ways of course to get new builds and as a result of this I've used most of the OSs available since WM2003.
What is your motivation for blind defense of the Windows Mobile platform anyway?
It's not blind, that's the point. The iPhone isn't out yet and everyone is fapping away. Is that not blind?
For several years I've been stating the usefulness of convergence devices (not just MS) and I've consistently been shot down with sentiments such as "a phone should only be a phone". Then when Apple release a device that does everything I've been mentioning all this time, it's suddenly the next best thing. It's this blind devotion to a manufacturer that reeks of hypocrisy and childishness. It's an IT product for fucks sake, you'd think geeks would be less concerned with brand names than the general consumeristic public.
I've been a happy user of the Windows mobile devices for about four years, with two different devices. Never had a problem with them except for karma-damage as soon as you say anything positive about a Microsoft product. Somehow this seems to offend people. I must try harder to coincide with the groupthink from now on.
Because if you want more than 240x240, you have to license PocketPC instead of Windows Mobile for the device you are selling. The restrictions may be less strict for devices without a touch screen.
I'm fairly sure it's not a licensing issue. The square format is new to WM5 and AFAIK the Pocket PC platform was a fixed resolution. Pocket PC is Windows Mobile, it's just the old name for it; wikipedia has a section on the iterations here There are no versions of Pocket PC that allow for a square aspect ratio. WM2003 brought in landscape mode then WM5 brought in many different resolutions. This has made the developers lives a bit of a pain and a lot of old software needed updating to cope with the new ratios.
Devices without the touchscreen are essentially a different OS (SmartPhone), although they are mostly binary-compatible. The future release of Crossbow will be the first that works across all devices.
#1 - A brilliant, seemless, easy to understand UI that just works.
I've got my fingers crossed on that one, but you'll need to wait until it's released to be sure. Most recent competitors phones are very usable however, so they've got their work cut out here. I have no issues with the UI on mine, but I'm always upgrading to the latest OS as they come out, IIRC the one I currently have hasn't gone public yet.
#2 - Google local integration is a big bonus. (Can be added after the fact, but the Windows Mobile version requires use of a JVM, and the interface flatly BITES when compared to the Symbian OS version I had on my old Nokia 6620.)
What's stopping Google writing a native app for any platform they please? This has nothing to do with the platform really. I find that all mobile JVM interfaces bite, I don't even bother with a mobile JVM these days. And this is coming from a J2EE developer...
#3 - PDA phones often require use of stylus, because of how sensitive certain icons/actions are to press. Less so on my Treo 700p, but every once in a while, it's a must. The iPhone is stylus free operation. Fingers only. (Meaning it'll also have grease streaks all over it, marring it's pretty look, but still -- a NICE improvement.)
Ditto, I tend to use fingers myself where possible and dig out the stylus only when required. Which is extremely rare given that my current PDA has a keyboard. One-handed operation was one of the scoped requirements for the recent builds of Windows Mobile, so they are already ahead of the curve there.
Large Data support. At 6GB and 8GB, it's not expandable, but then it's seemless and bigger than what I could get with others, too. Max on SD cards is about 4GB now (2GB on MiniSD), sure, but the memory is seperate from the main device memory, and certain apps MUST be installed to the main memory, meaning that the tiny built in memory gets used up fast, with no room for further expansion. Palm is MUCH better about this, however.
Which OS has the main-memory restriction? I'm not that familiar with that issue, but I haven't used e.g. Symbian much. On my phone I've added a RAM disk and I can install to main memory, the RAM disk or the SD Card. WRT RAM, mine has 128meg which is more than adequate for todays applications (hence me throwing away 16 meg of it for high-speed storage). The CPU is more of a bottleneck than memory however it's a payoff between CPU power and battery life. I prefer the idea of removable cards; SD-cards cost next to nothing these days. I generally install the media players to main memory and keep the actual media on removable cards. Games go on the card as well; some of them are huge. Sat Nav software such as TomTom is even bigger.
Besides, how long do you think it'll be before Apple bring out an hard-drive version? They already have lots of experience in this field. I reckon the 8gig will be surpassed pretty quickly, especially if Apple want to leverage their iPod market to see this device as an iPod upgrade which would be a smart thing to do if they want to steal the mobile market from their competitors.
Thank you for the intelligent reply. It seems most of the folk active in this thread have little to no experience with mobile devices and it's refreshing to see someone who actually has a clue as to what's already out there.
that's actually exactly the point.
this is not a phone
it's a new computing platform
So, how is it different to the Microsoft ones for example? They are not phones, in fact the early devices (and a few recent ones) did not have phone functionality. It was a new computing platform, the PocketPC. They later added the phone producing Pocket PC Phone Edition, to be later followed by Windows Mobile.
I'm sensing a lot of childish zealotry here.
this is the macintosh all over again, leaving behind all the non-GUI machines behind (and this time, with the benefit of hindsight, i don't think apple's going to make the same moves that led to Microsoft gaining dominance).
I really hope you are right on that. However, I suspect they will lock it down. Once they announce an open SDK and the ability to deploy your own applications, then I might start to get excited.
have you looked at/used nokia's series 60 phones? it's a pain selecting one icon after another trying to do something.
I've never been a fan of Nokia. They claim to be leading the industry but technology-wise they are about year behind several other companies. Apple are great at putting together a UI, but you must note that the Windows Mobile platform has had 4 - 5 years of tweaking the UI and on the recent models it has been getting pretty slick.
Slashdot Mirror
Not when it's put through the iFanboy Spin Machine. Counters all known forms of reality and editorial bias.
Not entirely correct. In the threads it discusses how most of the folk got the images of google image search. Most had not seen or agreed to that usage document so it's completely irrelevant to the people at xda-developers. Apple's issue is with those who put it on their site and with Google for linking to it. Yes, Apple seem to be having a issue with links as posts with alternate download links are being censored.
I doubt we'll agree on this, but IMHO the fact that there is still a functioning government (in whatever state) does not exempt it from being civil war. You are seeing it from the point of view of the officials vs the insurgents as a whole and I'd likely agree that is not a civil war, that is an insurgency as the name suggests. This is especially true in response to the recent regime change. However, what's different here is that these groups are now mostly fighting one another and the officials are trying to keep the peace. It is the groups fighting each other that I'm referring to as a civil war, and which accounts for most of the violence over there. The number of groups isn't relevant, but even though there are multiple ones many claim intelligence to each other on grounds of religion etc. It's very much a ethnic/religious war at the moment.
Yes, because the dishonest reporting should only swing to the pro-us camp, which is basically what embedding is! ;-) Despite my joking, I agree with you there. Some journalists just don't have any ethics at all.
I honestly don't think that's going to happen any time soon, not in the next three years at least. The hatred over there is just too much to expect a local security force to be impartial and fair. And ultimately that would lead to it's demise.
I mostly agree with you there, but a good friend of mine would back you 100%. She grew in an army town and whenever there is griping or complaints, her point is "well, you joined the fucking army". Death is no reason to stop, but you should use it as a motivation to ask "why" they died and perhaps if they should not have been placed in that situation given decent leadership.
I'm in an unusual camp here. I was against the invasion of Iraq long before it was considered the "trendy" thing to; long before it had been admitted to us that the war was pre-planned and inevitable in fact. However, I do not promote pulling out. My main point of protest over it is the destruction of a country and it's population. I fail to see how pulling out would help improve things for anyone. The place will fall apart should the US leave in the next year or so. One of three things is going to happen; 1) The US stays there for the next 10 years. 2) An international body, e.g. the U.N. takes over. 3) We all leave and the place becomes a new Afghanistan or twins with Iran.
Given that Cheney etc admitted as far back as 1998 that they see Iraq as a potential beachhead to a permanent US military force in the middle east, option one is the most likely IMHO.
Sorry, but that is almost textbook civil-war. A bloody one albeit, but still civil war. Children often get targeted, just look through your history books. Often entire villages/towns have been murdered. Just because "terrorism" is the current buzzword, it doesn't make it so. The aim of terrorism is to use fear to promote a point-of-view. This is just centuries-old hatred fired up by a bad situation for all. It's killing for killings sake, which is not terrorism. Perhaps "terrorism" may have escalated us to this situation, but that's not where we are now.
No, the lines are rarely clearly defined in civil wars. You may be blinkered by stories of the American Civil War which was perhaps more regimented, but generally civil war is neighbor killing neighbor. Part of the problem is that it's not easy to identify who is on what side and there are no clear battle lines. That's why the civilian death-toll is so high.
Iraq has been considered a civil war for well over a year by most historians and political theorists. It's just that our news is a little to scared to call it that as they'll lose access to the top levels of government. The ones most aligned with the government promote the "terrorist" idea.
While that is often a part of a civil war, it's not a requirement for the definition. And it has been happening in Iraq in several regions; several million people have already fled the country. It's more likely to happen in areas where there were already a majority of one sect in the population. Then, the minorities get killed/disposed. Large parts of secular Iraq do not meet this population-divide requirement, so the displacement of civilians isn't widespread.
Perhaps, if you were to assume Capone was a Canadian citizen and the US police and national guard had invaded the north with the assistance of the mounties. Not a very good example really.
Perhaps "whistleblowers" was a bit too strong worded? How about "didn't toe the party line". Check out Geraldo Rivera (FOX), Phil Smucker (CSM) and Peter Arnett (ABC) who were all "sent home". There are probably many more, I'm no expert on the subject but two minutes on google got me those names. No, I do not know how many are currently embedded but I'd imagine the number is low as the journalists weren't really a fan of it. I've seen some candid footage from a briefing that was not supposed to be filmed. The divide between the speaker and the journalists was huge and quite agressive. I cannot remember which documentary had this, it may have been one of Greg Palast's.
The definition of "victory" in an insurgent is probably what were a quibbling over here. For the insurgents, a victory is an attack where they get away without being caught, a daily occurrence. IEDs, snipers, mortars, the usual insurgent stuff. For the US/UK troops, victory is holding a piece of ground or taking an objective. Both groups have had victories and losses.
Discussing this with you is fruitless and I have better things to do. Just forget about it and assume that all governments in all time across all of history are entirely benign and have your best interests at heart. I wish I could live in your world. Does it come via medication or through lack of reading of history?
No basis? How about millennia of prior behavior? Governments rarely relinquish power, in the same way taxes are rarely repealed. It's the age old cycle of civilization. More and more power is sought until the system cannot provide any more and collapses. I could cite many examples throught history. What makes Blair etc different? Are we more enlightened or something?
To assume that this would not be followed by further legislation is naive at best. It may not happen under this government or the next, but it will happen.
That's a false argument. It's like saying I should be allowed to murder you as you might get murdered by someone else tomorrow anyway.
That's not terrorism, as you later claim it to be. It's a civil war combined with ethnic cleansing. Terrorism doesn't enter into it one bit. It's not been done to terrorise a segment of society, it's being done to kill them and seize power. Civil war, go look it up.
Agreed. It's also far better than the alternative, "terrorists", which was clearly chosen for it's propagandistic factitious links to the events in New York City in order to manipulate peoples opinions. Every time I hear it mentioned, my hope for mankind diminishes slightly.
Not true, the "coalition" has lost many battles. Why do you think they had to retake Faluja a year ago? This leads me onto the biggest difference between Vietnam and Iraq. The 60s war was a war of first in many regards. One of these was media coverage. In WW2, news from the front took ages and was highly filtered. In Vietnam, radio and TV allowed images to be sent home to the viewing public in a matter of hours.
This created a problem. War is hell and this uncensored media stop ultimately led to the end of the war. These images are iconic and I'm sure we all are familiar with most of them. This time around the government had to avoid that sort of thing. This is where embedded reporters come in. These guys travel with the troops and if they report anything untoward, they are immediately sent home with little or no oversight from those in charge of propaganda. They know this and numerous ones who haven't toed the line have come forward as whistle blowers.
This is why you think that the US has won all engagements in Iraq and it is also the biggest difference between the Vietnam conflict. It is only the independent media reporters that travel on their own at great risk to their lives that provide any useful reporting. These people are every bit as much heros as those who put their lives on the line for their fellow countrymen in order to report the truth.
You fail to realize that this is the "slippery slope" that so many people are concerned about. I don't mind the current set of affairs; numerous disconnected databases. It requires little bit of work to consolidate someones data for analysis and this represents a nice speed-bump in the process that reduces abuse. Take that away and there are two main fears; firstly the data could get to someone that it shouldn't due to it's accessibility. Not everyone in government employment is trustworthy and honest. Personal data is worth cold, hard cash and some government service roles have a high personnel turnover. Far too easy to abuse.
But more importantly is the next step, when they say that the database will be checked for everything. So, you apply to adopt a child but the fact you'd had two STDs in your teenage years goes against you. Or, when you apply for unemployment benefit after being laid off, your money is stopped because your credit card data shows that you spent some money on your wifes birthday instead of food. Or, how about when you go to the hospital for the free healthcare that the UK provides, only to find out that they won't touch you until you pay-off your parking tickets?
Only if you believe the lies. In reality, less than 10% are foreign, with most estimates putting the figure at less than 5%. Here are two articles on this subject:
Among Insurgents in Iraq, Few Foreigners Are Found
Iraq's foreign fighters: few but deadly
The myth that many are foreign is merely to continue the false belief that the War in Iraq is in some way connected to the War on Terrorism. It's not and it never has been. Planning for the Iraqi invasion was started in 1998 by Cheney and Rumsfeld, three years prior to 9/11. The attacks on New York merely gave them the political currency to promote the attack. The literally took a big dump on ground zero and wiped their arse with the US flag then handed it back to the 3,000+ victims families.
It's got nothing to do with "responsibility", it's not driven by a love for the Iraqi people. It's driven by the fact that an uncivilized Iraq will become a breeding ground for anti-US sentiment, essentially worst than Afghanistan was (and has become again). It's completely self-serving, as was the initial invasion. It would also result in a huge loss of face for the US on the international scene should the US leave the place in a civil war.
Also, the Project For a New American Century who count most of the top current administration as members published their intentions in 1998 about invading Iraq as a beachhead to the middle east. US troops will be in Iraq for 20 years barring outside political interference.
Finally, one of the main beefs Bin Laden had with the US was their troop deployments in Saudi Arabia. The USA likes to keep troops handy just in case things kick off over there. These troops have now been moved to permanent deployments in Iraq. In essence, the terrorist won and got what he wanted.
Care to back that up with an example? I've never heard of a case where manually installed software has caused harm. Oh, and the Pocket PC platform also started out as a PDA without phone functionality, and phones that can have installable applications have existed for a very long time.
That's correct, apps can "crash" these platforms. They could chew up 100% CPU time, or go full-screen and not let you quit them. They can leak memory and bog things down. But the general public can deal with that using the reset button. Besides, anyone who would be freaked out by a crash probably isn't installing obscure, untested applications.
It's no different from any other software. If you want to use the hardware, there is a risk that you do it wrong. Where would we be if we couldn't install third-party web-browsers on Windows?
Signed apps can however. Mindterm is a "freeish" Java SSH client that can run as an applet like this. You need to accept their certificate to connect to any host.
However, I've yet to see a mobile web browser that ran applets, so this is likely a non-starter.
This is an old idea; the part you bolded in your quote says it all. Essentially, the apps need to be digitally signed. It sucks; I used to use a platform that was like that. Things were stagnant in the first year, no interesting software came out. Getting the dev kit and certification is extremely expensive and well out of the reach for any OSS and most shareware.
After a while (almost a year), other operators started to sell the same phone without the limitation. Orange UK, the telco, were forced to allow users to disable the certificate check. After that, the number of applications available exploded, even despite the fact that this override wasn't made very public and was an "in-the-know" thing for some time. Nowadays, anyone can download the dev kit and program in a variety of languages.
So, it's not for sure that it'll never allow you to use a dev-kit, but it's pretty unlikely unless you have got at least $10,000 to burn. But this may change in future.
As an aside, Orange continued and still continued to protect their network. You need a special certificate to write applications that access the phone stack, and this keeps the network free from malicious apps. This can be a pain in the ass, but overall it's a good idea. As the devices generally have a fully working TCP stack, you can just use that for your comms. Sucks if you want to write e.g. fax software though.
What he said. Outgoing SMTP is about the only setting that needs changed from site to site for 99% of users. It used to annoy the hell out me but...
an alternative to your ISPs SMTP is to use Googles SMTP server, which also has the added bonus of being wrapped up in SSL. You need to have a valid account and validate any "from:" address you intend to use on Googles page, but other than that it's been working flawlessly for me for ages now. Works from any location, I use it on my laptop & PDA. Your email client needs to support SMTP authentication and SSL connections for SMTP, but most recent ones do.
Woot, one minor improvement. Smartphones clearly have less features! I'll just have to put up with the SMS telling me I've got a voice mail, what time it was left and who's it from. I don't know how long I can go on under these conditions!
I could list a dozen features that the iPhone doesn't have. SSH client, VNC client, TomTom sat nav blah blah blah.
Wake me up when there is a free dev-kit for the iPhone and it's confirmed you can install your own applications at will. Then things might get interesting.
I suppose we should really just roll-our-own Google Local application, but I've found there is a distinct lack of OSS software for all of the mobile platforms. Sure, there are ports of really useful applications, but you rarely see something new and open sourced.
The cab installers can generally be hacked to get around this. However, it makes sense that always-running stuff should go on the device itself.
I'd avoid Minimo by the way; it's the wrong way to go about writing mobile software IMHO. Cutting down an existing app is difficult, they'd have been better building from scratch. Opera is very good, as is the PIEPlus plugin which gives you tabs etc in IE.
I'd be surprised if the OS were that big. The ROM on my current device consists of a Radio ROM and an OS ROM. These are about 5 meg and 30 meg respectively. There are a number of hackers working to squeeze in as much functionality on these ROMs with homebrew "ROM kitchens", it's amazing what you can get in with a bit of effort.
I'd imagine the 30/60 GB versions are limited by battery life. An iPod can be turned off, but a phone needs to be on all the time. If you added an HD, you'd still need flash for the main storage and pre-buffer data into memory so the HD can be powered down ASAP. Plus, it's moving parts and therefore a reliabilty risk, though Apple have plenty of experience in these devices now. Even if this device was the best thing ever, I'd still consider waiting for the 2nd generation model.
It'll hopefully be the third-party apps that cause the most buzz in the next six months. I'm sure there are a lot of developers out there having some grand ideas.
All mobile carriers suck, deal with it! ;-) I'd consider buying unlocked myself, but to be honest in any bleeding edge technology, having a warranty is a nice comfort. I'm UK based at the moment and my provider (Orange) offers next day replacement for any fault; they send a courier out to swap your phone with a new one. I'd put up with some pretty oppressive pricing regimes before giving up that safety net!
Agreed, I reckon it'll be Intel as well. I would not be surprised if some sort of merger between the two companies has been considered in the past. I hope they don't go too nuts on the UI however; one of the first things I do on an out-the-box Windows Mobile device is to disable the screen animations and so on. It's speed over slick for me.
Before my time I'm afraid. I never owned one of these, but I have played around a little with them at the time. It was many years ago, so I'll concede to you there.
No, the resolution was likely picked based on cost and demand for the product. You assertion that it's licensing is crazy as they are the same platform. There hasn't been a product released as "Pocket PC" in years. It's like saying that Vista doesn't have WinFS because they couldn't license DOS. It doesn't make sense.
There are other licensing issues of course; for example OS upgrades are not generally available as they would need to be licensed. Sure, the devices have updates for new stuff, but not to new major revisions. There are ways of course to get new builds and as a result of this I've used most of the OSs available since WM2003.
It's not blind, that's the point. The iPhone isn't out yet and everyone is fapping away. Is that not blind?
For several years I've been stating the usefulness of convergence devices (not just MS) and I've consistently been shot down with sentiments such as "a phone should only be a phone". Then when Apple release a device that does everything I've been mentioning all this time, it's suddenly the next best thing. It's this blind devotion to a manufacturer that reeks of hypocrisy and childishness. It's an IT product for fucks sake, you'd think geeks would be less concerned with brand names than the general consumeristic public.
I've been a happy user of the Windows mobile devices for about four years, with two different devices. Never had a problem with them except for karma-damage as soon as you say anything positive about a Microsoft product. Somehow this seems to offend people. I must try harder to coincide with the groupthink from now on.
I'm fairly sure it's not a licensing issue. The square format is new to WM5 and AFAIK the Pocket PC platform was a fixed resolution. Pocket PC is Windows Mobile, it's just the old name for it; wikipedia has a section on the iterations here There are no versions of Pocket PC that allow for a square aspect ratio. WM2003 brought in landscape mode then WM5 brought in many different resolutions. This has made the developers lives a bit of a pain and a lot of old software needed updating to cope with the new ratios.
Devices without the touchscreen are essentially a different OS (SmartPhone), although they are mostly binary-compatible. The future release of Crossbow will be the first that works across all devices.
I've got my fingers crossed on that one, but you'll need to wait until it's released to be sure. Most recent competitors phones are very usable however, so they've got their work cut out here. I have no issues with the UI on mine, but I'm always upgrading to the latest OS as they come out, IIRC the one I currently have hasn't gone public yet.
What's stopping Google writing a native app for any platform they please? This has nothing to do with the platform really. I find that all mobile JVM interfaces bite, I don't even bother with a mobile JVM these days. And this is coming from a J2EE developer...
Ditto, I tend to use fingers myself where possible and dig out the stylus only when required. Which is extremely rare given that my current PDA has a keyboard. One-handed operation was one of the scoped requirements for the recent builds of Windows Mobile, so they are already ahead of the curve there.
Which OS has the main-memory restriction? I'm not that familiar with that issue, but I haven't used e.g. Symbian much. On my phone I've added a RAM disk and I can install to main memory, the RAM disk or the SD Card. WRT RAM, mine has 128meg which is more than adequate for todays applications (hence me throwing away 16 meg of it for high-speed storage). The CPU is more of a bottleneck than memory however it's a payoff between CPU power and battery life. I prefer the idea of removable cards; SD-cards cost next to nothing these days. I generally install the media players to main memory and keep the actual media on removable cards. Games go on the card as well; some of them are huge. Sat Nav software such as TomTom is even bigger.
Besides, how long do you think it'll be before Apple bring out an hard-drive version? They already have lots of experience in this field. I reckon the 8gig will be surpassed pretty quickly, especially if Apple want to leverage their iPod market to see this device as an iPod upgrade which would be a smart thing to do if they want to steal the mobile market from their competitors.
Thank you for the intelligent reply. It seems most of the folk active in this thread have little to no experience with mobile devices and it's refreshing to see someone who actually has a clue as to what's already out there.
So, how is it different to the Microsoft ones for example? They are not phones, in fact the early devices (and a few recent ones) did not have phone functionality. It was a new computing platform, the PocketPC. They later added the phone producing Pocket PC Phone Edition, to be later followed by Windows Mobile.
I'm sensing a lot of childish zealotry here.
I really hope you are right on that. However, I suspect they will lock it down. Once they announce an open SDK and the ability to deploy your own applications, then I might start to get excited.
I've never been a fan of Nokia. They claim to be leading the industry but technology-wise they are about year behind several other companies. Apple are great at putting together a UI, but you must note that the Windows Mobile platform has had 4 - 5 years of tweaking the UI and on the recent models it has been getting pretty slick.