I couldn't stand what feedly and netvibes were trying to do. I imported my feeds into both The Old Reader and newsblur and newsblur is what stuck. The two things I didn't like about the old reader was that they were having trouble keeping stuff up to date and that they didn't wrap the content to a smaller, more readable width like Reader used to do. Otherwise I liked that they were even simpler than newsblur.
Yup, newsblur has been working great for me (well, except for the rush of server crushing users that came to every alternative service when google first announced their plans). I don't read enough feeds to need a premium account. If I did...I would probably just host the software myself.
I was also trying theoldreader and one other place I can't remember the name of. theoldreader was good but they were having growing pains with all the new users (feeds weren't updating well) and so newsblur was the site I kept coming back to.
I would guess that the proper response to the cops having a notebook of yours written in a language they don't understand is "GTFO and find a translator"
If they can't find a translator (maybe because its a language you made up), they are free to get a language expert to try and figure out your language like they might with a dead language. They might discover that it would take that guy 10 years of working day and night to be able to read your language...but too bad. Either they are going to have to wait 10 years to prosecute you (pretty sure statute of limitations can't expire while they are actively investigating something so they are good there), or they are going to have to find some other way to do it. No way could they force you to translate your language.
And the state is 100% free to keep trying to break his encryption. And they might do it with ease 10 years from now and have everything they need to throw this guy in jail.
Right now its more like he has a hidden safe and they are still looking for it. They know what county it is town in (his hard drive), but they don't really know where (the key). He doesn't have to tell them where. If they keep looking and find it (crack it or find the right key), then good for them...but just because this guy is probably a kiddie-toucher, doesn't mean he has to send himself to prison.
He also seems to think that murder is the only crime.
Earlier in his scenario, he mentions that "of course we should be able to refuse to answer what books we are reading". What if that's the question you choose not to answer? Trials can be about all sorts of things, and maybe the fact that you read a certain secret document would make you look very guilty of stealing trade secrets and thus you aren't going to admit to it. Most people done't refuse to answer the question "are you guilty of murder"...in fact they generally plead not guilty when the trial starts which is essentially their answer to that question.
Also, without the fifth amendment, you are basically forcing people to lie in many situations. At a certain point, if you compel them to speak, both a guilty party and an innocent party are going to answer the same way--with a bunch of reasons why they are innocent. I'd rather have a guilty party plead the fifth and get convicted based on other evidence than agree to testify but make everything up and create a drawn out trial where the prosecutor has to prove that they were lying and the jury deliberates forever.
It really seems like this guys premise rests on the idea that "wouldn't everyone agree that the public has a right to know if you would say you are a murderer". Setting aside that I don't agree that the public has that right, you still have to recognize that most trials aren't murders and that most murderers are going to lie in response to that question. A suspected terrorist organizer doesn't have to answer a question about whether his favorite book is the Quran if the only possible thing it could do is make the jury wield their prejudice against him.
I used to think certs were dumb (and I guess I still do), but I think my friend used one successfully in this type of situation to get a job at my company.
Basically, he taught himself something but had never done it in an academic/corporate environment. He got the impression after several interviews that people didn't see it as much different than when recent grads list the 7 programming languages they have ever touched (oh yeah, I used R in that one statistics class, econometrics had Stata, and the intro comp-sci class used Scheme) plus the foreign language they took in 10th grade. Without any experience to back it up (the job he had done for the 3 years since college was entirely unrelated), it just looked like he was listing a buzz word.
He decided to get the certification. I asked why? I program in it every day, as do most of my coworkers and not a single one has a certification or has ever considered it. But, he studied up a bit (gotta review all of the irrelevant stuff that the cert needs that would never get used at a job like this), went to the testing center, and got the cert. I think the cert really helped show that he was actually proficient in the language and wasn't just listing a something where he had copied a few lines of code from a textbook for a semester in college.
Obviously nobody has found an exception to disprove it yet. The dude wouldn't be offering a pile of money if he were just looking to disprove it...he would just funnel the money into some supercomputer time to step through an absurd amount of integers until he comes up with an exception. If your goal was to disprove, I would guess that this would be a better use of the money than offering a prize (unless you think you can get more computer cycles out of a group of people competing for a prize than you could get just by buying them).
So far, nobody has found an exception which means that it might be provable. To find a proof, you need actual people thinking about the question, hence the promise of a pile of cash.
Other comments have already said what you are missing and said that you might not be able to recapture it, at least not without the right setup. Its one of those films where you have to put yourself in a mindset where you remember when it came out and don't think too hard about what came after it (like showing someone Alien for the first time after the 2000s filled everyone's mind with fast paced, effects driven sci-fi).
I will say that the theatrical version is "wrong". Usually I think all of this "directors cut, extended cut, super duper directors extended special edition" stuff is trash (thanks Lucas), but in the case of Blade Runner, the theatrical cut is just wrong. It loses the message of the film and in doing so, adds some pretty ham-fisted elements (like the voice overs that are so bad that it is rumored Ford intentionally sucked it up to try and avoid their inclusion in the film), and removes some important stuff--all in the name of making such a dark film "happier".
The 1992 directors cut is a big improvement. Its not a true directors cut--more like somebody tried to rework the film back to the original working print and Ridley Scott approved it--but it fixes the glaring issues. The downside is some awkward silence when there is supposed to be voiceover but they took it out without shortening the scene or adding other noises. There is also the original workprint now on DVD with the 5-disc pack. I haven't watched this version but I suspect it comes off as unpolished (as it wasn't final). Its missing some things Scott wanted, but is also missing some things he didn't want that made it into the theatrical release (like the voiceovers).
The version to watch is probably the 2007 "Final Cut". It is the directors cut, but actually controlled by Scott. There is some cleanup work done to the film with modern techniques, but not in a bothersome way. Flows a little better than the 1992 cut and gets the message across, no voiceover, no happy ending. It doesn't stray too far though. There are a lot of deleted scenes that they include on the disk that an overambitious director would have tried to work back into the story--Scott kept them out, and I think it is for the better.
The FBI guy literally quotes the warning on the box of the Maxtor drive that says "Caution: If you forget your password, you won't be able to get your data back" and tries to construe that as "the forensic experts are worried that this is one of those systems where your data erases and a wisp of smoke comes out of the drive if you enter the wrong password 5 times". He is either lying through his teeth (and hoping the judge knows nothing of technology) or woefully unqualified to file anything related to this issue with the court. He even makes several references to "the microchips" and how it would be bad if they had to start fiddling with them.
I mean, it sure sounds like the suspect is scum. They have logs of child porn filenames being saved to the encrypted drives. It would suck if he is guilty and they somehow didn't have enough to convict him, but it would suck more if they compelled him to self-incriminate and set a precedent for doing so.
The worst part is how they try to address the fifth amendment issue. IANAL, but it just sounds so wrong. They think that if he types in the password in the presence of the court--but nobody watches him type it--that it doesn't count. To that, I would propose the following thought experiment: lets say you have a box, and the defendant can type a statement in response to a question into that box ("Were you in the park the night the victim was killed"). The box then destroys the exact words of the statement and outputs a generalized answer--"Yes, I was in the park that night"/"No, I was not in the park"--the actual content of the defendant's words is lost, but the output result is otherwise the same. If you have the right, via the fifth amendment, to refuse to answer the question on whether or not you were in the park, how could you possibly not have the right to refuse to input the answer into a black box that would then reveal the content of your answer to the court? Providing an encryption key is really the same situation. The court doesn't care what the actual key is, they care about whether or not the encryption key unlocks a Yes or No answer to the question "Is there child porn on this drive". That should absolutely be protected by the fifth amendment.
Hell, they could have placed it in a paypal acount. "Here's a few bucks in a paypal account that you can use next year to buy hundreds of dollars of textbooks on half.com"
Its better than that. There is a check box to completely disable the facebook home screen and it leaves you with a bone stock android install.
I was considering buying one (it compares to the nexus 4 favorably in specs) since I don't want a huge phone and samsung is taking their time with the S4 Mini (ditto for the HTC M4). Turning off home leaves you with what is actually quite a nice device--well designed and good build quality--that easily fits in my pants pocket.
Of course I think the facebook home thing scared everybody away--even the facebook addicts I see on the train don't want to admit it by buying the facebook phone. This phone is way better than any other midrange devices and was a steal at $99 on contract (and should have gone like hotcakes when they dropped it to 99 cents)...so the only explanation I can come up with is that people actively disliked the idea of facebook home and purchased lower-quality midrange phones that didn't include it. Unfortunately this means that I can't buy one...with so few units sold, there won't be any updates coming from HTC and there won't be a modding community to release updated unofficial roms.
Of course, in the late 90s, it was only used for archery...but that means that at some point since it was built (1950s?), the idea of kids using rifles in school wasn't that outrageous. That building is closed now...but if it was still open, I wonder if they would even give bows and arrows to a bunch of 7th graders or of they would be too scared that some kid would turn around and loose an arrow at someone.
He clearly was referring to the sms-replacement systems. Yes, people talk on facebook chat from phones, but its not the same as whatsapp, bbm, imessage, etc.
Honestly, I think imessage is something apple has mostly done right. You go to compose an SMS and it detects if the recipient has a compatible device. If so, it sends it as a data packet through imessage; if not, it sends an SMS. The thing that they have done stupidly wrong is that all mutli-recipient messages coming from an iphone are sent as an MMS (picture message, even if it is only text) rather than a standard SMS text message. If you have any friends who don't use smart phones, have a carrier that charges 2-5x as much for MMS as SMS (50c vs 10c), or use google voice, this is fucking terrible.
Old phones are quite slow to open these messages. Android phones don't even show a preview of the text (since MMS mesages can carry a subject line which is displayed with the notification). Google Voice users on any platform can't receive MMS messages so they just completely miss your text. Anyone who pays per message could end up wasting a lot of money to read your text since not all carriers include picture messages in their standard texting plans. All of this so people can see a list of recipients and reply-all? Reply-all sucks most of the time and if you really want to do this, why not just email everyone...if they are receiving it and responding, they probably have a smartphone with email anyways.
Yeah, the locked down set-top boxes and the specially written android and iOS apps don't need silverlight because they just build whatever they need into the app.
You need silverlight if you want to watch netflix from the browser (especially with a fully featured video player that can dynamically shift bitrates and resolutions, show all sorts of overlays, etc).
What I don't get is why they don't just write some netflix viewer software. It wouldn't even have to be a fully featured browser, it could just accept something like a netfix:// URI from the browser and then open up and start playing (like spotify does with spotify:// URIs). If they had a secure viewer, they could probably make a working linux version as well as osx and windows (especially given the similarities between osx, android, and linux). If you are on a supported system, you can still watch with silverlight, but if you are unsupported or want higher quality audio or more precise settings for your HTPC, you can use the standalone viewer application.
I have Docs to Go as well on my phone (got both docs to go and quickoffice free from amazon as apps of the day). Each one has pros and cons. IIRC quickoffice is faster but there are things that it doesn't do a good job with that Docs to Go can do better.
Have always had to hesitate when I open a doc and cant decide which tool to use (especially now that my phone also has "Document Viewer" from google...but maybe that is just read-only quickoffice).
Not that my computer is ever used by people I wouldn't trust...but the most common device I let someone use when they have a quick "can I borrow a computer do do something/print something" is my HTPC. It has a wireless mouse and keyboard (so its not like they are interacting from the lenovo mini-keyboard/remote) and it is connected to my network printer. They are unlikely to partake in any funny business because everything they are doing is happening on a TV-sized screen (with some UI elements magnified for couch-readability) in the middle of the living room.
And even if they did mess something up outside of the VM, its just an HTPC. Few programs installed besides XBMC and a browser, and the only local media are video files that have been downloaded for one-time viewing that I haven't gotten around to deleting...everything important is accessed from a backed up location on the network.
Umm..Do you realize that most of the iOS phones are being used for facebook ~25% of the time*? I don't see how an android only facebook launch-screen would raise iOS market share.
*based on observations on the bus during my morning commute...android phones are being used for Facebook at a roughly equal percentage (but maybe it is just easier to tell when some guy at the front of the bus is on facebook when he's got a galaxy note).
How about a smaller screen version for someone who could afford the big brother but would like something that can slip invisibly into a pocket (without wearing dad jeans or double pleated baggy trousers).
Laptop manufacturers do this all the time (and it seems like the tablets are this way too). It might cost less because you can use a cheaper display and you might have to lower the specs a little bit to fit the small size which might drop the cost, but asking for a mini is just asking for a smaller form factor. It has nothing to do with how much you want to pay for the phone.
Bezels are nice in this application. They keep you from hitting the screen with the part of your palm at the base of your thumb when you use the phone one handed (especially with giant screens where you really have to reach to make it to the other side).
There's probably a good solution to be had with OS-level edge-touch detection...then we can trash the bezel
No, the problem with the mini models (is it really models? I thought the S3 mini was the only one) is that they aren't widely available.
I *prefer* to buy my phone on contract. Yes, there is some stupid crap associated with it, but I've been with the same carrier forever and I don't foresee changing soon. If I did change, the ETF would probably be similar to the cost of the unlocked phone, so it wouldn't really matter (and its not like my gsm phone would still work if I switched to verizon). I can get a galaxy S3 for $199 (or probably $100 if I went to target and waited for a good price to come around) with a contract renewal. The same phone costs $500 unlocked on amazon. There is currently a random third party selling the S3 mini on amazon for a bit over $300. So I end up paying triple (assuming I can get a $100 S3) for a phone with a smaller screen and slightly lower specs. I see rumors that AT&T might start offering the S3 mini around the same time as the S4...but then the specs are starting to look pretty stale.
Maybe now that the screen size is only.3 inches away from the galaxy note (which just looks like a comical joke whenever I see someone using one on the train), they will actually have more incentive to combine the "big phone" lines and leave the rest of us a decent "pocket-sized" phone option. I don't even need the specs to be as good (the S3 to S3 mini performance dip is fine by me), but don't make it so hard/expensive to get a decent android phone in the same form factor that apple has managed to stick with for 5+ years.
For what its worth, I thought it was pretty cool. I don't have an iphone so I can't do it...but do you know how much automatic panning cameras can cost?
being able to have your iphone do a perfectly level 360* panorama without any extra equipment is pretty cool. Especially since it is doing a bunch of image processing to decide where to stop (it's not just running the motor until the compass has told it that it has turned around)
Because they made it hard to get to. It used to have a link up on the top bar and they used promote it.
Now you have to wade through a dropdown menu to get there but can instead get to youtube and the play store with one click. Hell...I go to youtube all of the time and have never clicked that link.
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I couldn't stand what feedly and netvibes were trying to do. I imported my feeds into both The Old Reader and newsblur and newsblur is what stuck. The two things I didn't like about the old reader was that they were having trouble keeping stuff up to date and that they didn't wrap the content to a smaller, more readable width like Reader used to do. Otherwise I liked that they were even simpler than newsblur.
I was also trying theoldreader and one other place I can't remember the name of. theoldreader was good but they were having growing pains with all the new users (feeds weren't updating well) and so newsblur was the site I kept coming back to.
If they can't find a translator (maybe because its a language you made up), they are free to get a language expert to try and figure out your language like they might with a dead language. They might discover that it would take that guy 10 years of working day and night to be able to read your language...but too bad. Either they are going to have to wait 10 years to prosecute you (pretty sure statute of limitations can't expire while they are actively investigating something so they are good there), or they are going to have to find some other way to do it. No way could they force you to translate your language.
Right now its more like he has a hidden safe and they are still looking for it. They know what county it is town in (his hard drive), but they don't really know where (the key). He doesn't have to tell them where. If they keep looking and find it (crack it or find the right key), then good for them...but just because this guy is probably a kiddie-toucher, doesn't mean he has to send himself to prison.
Earlier in his scenario, he mentions that "of course we should be able to refuse to answer what books we are reading". What if that's the question you choose not to answer? Trials can be about all sorts of things, and maybe the fact that you read a certain secret document would make you look very guilty of stealing trade secrets and thus you aren't going to admit to it. Most people done't refuse to answer the question "are you guilty of murder"...in fact they generally plead not guilty when the trial starts which is essentially their answer to that question.
Also, without the fifth amendment, you are basically forcing people to lie in many situations. At a certain point, if you compel them to speak, both a guilty party and an innocent party are going to answer the same way--with a bunch of reasons why they are innocent. I'd rather have a guilty party plead the fifth and get convicted based on other evidence than agree to testify but make everything up and create a drawn out trial where the prosecutor has to prove that they were lying and the jury deliberates forever.
It really seems like this guys premise rests on the idea that "wouldn't everyone agree that the public has a right to know if you would say you are a murderer". Setting aside that I don't agree that the public has that right, you still have to recognize that most trials aren't murders and that most murderers are going to lie in response to that question. A suspected terrorist organizer doesn't have to answer a question about whether his favorite book is the Quran if the only possible thing it could do is make the jury wield their prejudice against him.
Basically, he taught himself something but had never done it in an academic/corporate environment. He got the impression after several interviews that people didn't see it as much different than when recent grads list the 7 programming languages they have ever touched (oh yeah, I used R in that one statistics class, econometrics had Stata, and the intro comp-sci class used Scheme) plus the foreign language they took in 10th grade. Without any experience to back it up (the job he had done for the 3 years since college was entirely unrelated), it just looked like he was listing a buzz word.
He decided to get the certification. I asked why? I program in it every day, as do most of my coworkers and not a single one has a certification or has ever considered it. But, he studied up a bit (gotta review all of the irrelevant stuff that the cert needs that would never get used at a job like this), went to the testing center, and got the cert. I think the cert really helped show that he was actually proficient in the language and wasn't just listing a something where he had copied a few lines of code from a textbook for a semester in college.
So far, nobody has found an exception which means that it might be provable. To find a proof, you need actual people thinking about the question, hence the promise of a pile of cash.
I will say that the theatrical version is "wrong". Usually I think all of this "directors cut, extended cut, super duper directors extended special edition" stuff is trash (thanks Lucas), but in the case of Blade Runner, the theatrical cut is just wrong. It loses the message of the film and in doing so, adds some pretty ham-fisted elements (like the voice overs that are so bad that it is rumored Ford intentionally sucked it up to try and avoid their inclusion in the film), and removes some important stuff--all in the name of making such a dark film "happier".
The 1992 directors cut is a big improvement. Its not a true directors cut--more like somebody tried to rework the film back to the original working print and Ridley Scott approved it--but it fixes the glaring issues. The downside is some awkward silence when there is supposed to be voiceover but they took it out without shortening the scene or adding other noises. There is also the original workprint now on DVD with the 5-disc pack. I haven't watched this version but I suspect it comes off as unpolished (as it wasn't final). Its missing some things Scott wanted, but is also missing some things he didn't want that made it into the theatrical release (like the voiceovers).
The version to watch is probably the 2007 "Final Cut". It is the directors cut, but actually controlled by Scott. There is some cleanup work done to the film with modern techniques, but not in a bothersome way. Flows a little better than the 1992 cut and gets the message across, no voiceover, no happy ending. It doesn't stray too far though. There are a lot of deleted scenes that they include on the disk that an overambitious director would have tried to work back into the story--Scott kept them out, and I think it is for the better.
The FBI guy literally quotes the warning on the box of the Maxtor drive that says "Caution: If you forget your password, you won't be able to get your data back" and tries to construe that as "the forensic experts are worried that this is one of those systems where your data erases and a wisp of smoke comes out of the drive if you enter the wrong password 5 times". He is either lying through his teeth (and hoping the judge knows nothing of technology) or woefully unqualified to file anything related to this issue with the court. He even makes several references to "the microchips" and how it would be bad if they had to start fiddling with them.
I mean, it sure sounds like the suspect is scum. They have logs of child porn filenames being saved to the encrypted drives. It would suck if he is guilty and they somehow didn't have enough to convict him, but it would suck more if they compelled him to self-incriminate and set a precedent for doing so.
The worst part is how they try to address the fifth amendment issue. IANAL, but it just sounds so wrong. They think that if he types in the password in the presence of the court--but nobody watches him type it--that it doesn't count. To that, I would propose the following thought experiment: lets say you have a box, and the defendant can type a statement in response to a question into that box ("Were you in the park the night the victim was killed"). The box then destroys the exact words of the statement and outputs a generalized answer--"Yes, I was in the park that night"/"No, I was not in the park"--the actual content of the defendant's words is lost, but the output result is otherwise the same. If you have the right, via the fifth amendment, to refuse to answer the question on whether or not you were in the park, how could you possibly not have the right to refuse to input the answer into a black box that would then reveal the content of your answer to the court? Providing an encryption key is really the same situation. The court doesn't care what the actual key is, they care about whether or not the encryption key unlocks a Yes or No answer to the question "Is there child porn on this drive". That should absolutely be protected by the fifth amendment.
Hell, they could have placed it in a paypal acount. "Here's a few bucks in a paypal account that you can use next year to buy hundreds of dollars of textbooks on half.com"
If they have done it to you and you didn't quit...then it sounds like you are part of the problem.
I was considering buying one (it compares to the nexus 4 favorably in specs) since I don't want a huge phone and samsung is taking their time with the S4 Mini (ditto for the HTC M4). Turning off home leaves you with what is actually quite a nice device--well designed and good build quality--that easily fits in my pants pocket.
Of course I think the facebook home thing scared everybody away--even the facebook addicts I see on the train don't want to admit it by buying the facebook phone. This phone is way better than any other midrange devices and was a steal at $99 on contract (and should have gone like hotcakes when they dropped it to 99 cents)...so the only explanation I can come up with is that people actively disliked the idea of facebook home and purchased lower-quality midrange phones that didn't include it. Unfortunately this means that I can't buy one...with so few units sold, there won't be any updates coming from HTC and there won't be a modding community to release updated unofficial roms.
This is just a kid screwing around with a common noisemaker, its not a felony, and its a lot easier to clean up than some diet coke and mentos.
Of course, in the late 90s, it was only used for archery...but that means that at some point since it was built (1950s?), the idea of kids using rifles in school wasn't that outrageous. That building is closed now...but if it was still open, I wonder if they would even give bows and arrows to a bunch of 7th graders or of they would be too scared that some kid would turn around and loose an arrow at someone.
Honestly, I think imessage is something apple has mostly done right. You go to compose an SMS and it detects if the recipient has a compatible device. If so, it sends it as a data packet through imessage; if not, it sends an SMS. The thing that they have done stupidly wrong is that all mutli-recipient messages coming from an iphone are sent as an MMS (picture message, even if it is only text) rather than a standard SMS text message. If you have any friends who don't use smart phones, have a carrier that charges 2-5x as much for MMS as SMS (50c vs 10c), or use google voice, this is fucking terrible.
Old phones are quite slow to open these messages. Android phones don't even show a preview of the text (since MMS mesages can carry a subject line which is displayed with the notification). Google Voice users on any platform can't receive MMS messages so they just completely miss your text. Anyone who pays per message could end up wasting a lot of money to read your text since not all carriers include picture messages in their standard texting plans. All of this so people can see a list of recipients and reply-all? Reply-all sucks most of the time and if you really want to do this, why not just email everyone...if they are receiving it and responding, they probably have a smartphone with email anyways.
You need silverlight if you want to watch netflix from the browser (especially with a fully featured video player that can dynamically shift bitrates and resolutions, show all sorts of overlays, etc).
What I don't get is why they don't just write some netflix viewer software. It wouldn't even have to be a fully featured browser, it could just accept something like a netfix:// URI from the browser and then open up and start playing (like spotify does with spotify:// URIs). If they had a secure viewer, they could probably make a working linux version as well as osx and windows (especially given the similarities between osx, android, and linux). If you are on a supported system, you can still watch with silverlight, but if you are unsupported or want higher quality audio or more precise settings for your HTPC, you can use the standalone viewer application.
I have Docs to Go as well on my phone (got both docs to go and quickoffice free from amazon as apps of the day). Each one has pros and cons. IIRC quickoffice is faster but there are things that it doesn't do a good job with that Docs to Go can do better.
Have always had to hesitate when I open a doc and cant decide which tool to use (especially now that my phone also has "Document Viewer" from google...but maybe that is just read-only quickoffice).
Well, you could always go work in the produce department at the local Walmart. They won't make you join the union.
Not that my computer is ever used by people I wouldn't trust...but the most common device I let someone use when they have a quick "can I borrow a computer do do something/print something" is my HTPC. It has a wireless mouse and keyboard (so its not like they are interacting from the lenovo mini-keyboard/remote) and it is connected to my network printer. They are unlikely to partake in any funny business because everything they are doing is happening on a TV-sized screen (with some UI elements magnified for couch-readability) in the middle of the living room.
And even if they did mess something up outside of the VM, its just an HTPC. Few programs installed besides XBMC and a browser, and the only local media are video files that have been downloaded for one-time viewing that I haven't gotten around to deleting...everything important is accessed from a backed up location on the network.
*based on observations on the bus during my morning commute...android phones are being used for Facebook at a roughly equal percentage (but maybe it is just easier to tell when some guy at the front of the bus is on facebook when he's got a galaxy note).
Laptop manufacturers do this all the time (and it seems like the tablets are this way too). It might cost less because you can use a cheaper display and you might have to lower the specs a little bit to fit the small size which might drop the cost, but asking for a mini is just asking for a smaller form factor. It has nothing to do with how much you want to pay for the phone.
There's probably a good solution to be had with OS-level edge-touch detection...then we can trash the bezel
Maybe now that the screen size is only .3 inches away from the galaxy note (which just looks like a comical joke whenever I see someone using one on the train), they will actually have more incentive to combine the "big phone" lines and leave the rest of us a decent "pocket-sized" phone option. I don't even need the specs to be as good (the S3 to S3 mini performance dip is fine by me), but don't make it so hard/expensive to get a decent android phone in the same form factor that apple has managed to stick with for 5+ years.
being able to have your iphone do a perfectly level 360* panorama without any extra equipment is pretty cool. Especially since it is doing a bunch of image processing to decide where to stop (it's not just running the motor until the compass has told it that it has turned around)
Now you have to wade through a dropdown menu to get there but can instead get to youtube and the play store with one click. Hell...I go to youtube all of the time and have never clicked that link.