Pretending Android was not a close copy of iOs is silly.
Well, do keep in mind that Android was developed before iOS, and the Google bought that company to bring Android on board. So claims that Android "copied" iOS are kinda silly. But you are correct: now that both are out there there's a lot of cross-fertilization going on and that's just great for the consumer.
Android does have a leg up on Apple and Microsoft in that it is open source and there's an enormous level of third-party development going on. Some of the Android ROMs (like Cyanogenmod) are pretty remarkable achievements.
you blog is wrong, it is comparing stock android to HTC modified android. The HTC modified android looks a lot different than the Google android on the nexus phones.
All these brainless comparisons of Android vs iPhone vs Windows 7 GUI styles are made hopelessly irrelevant by one simple fact: the Android user interface is completely changeable on a moment's notice by installing one of numerous third-party home applications. Right there in the Market: no tweaking, rooting or hacking needed. Just click and run: some of the best ones are even free! Even though both iOS and Android are Unix-derived operating systems at the core, one of the two locks you into what the manufacturer thinks is best for you... and the other doesn't.
Hell, there are so many home apps in the Market (some of them are seriously slick) that there are several "home manager" apps that let you switch between them at will! To give you a better idea of what I'm talking about, currently on my rooted G2 I have ADW Launcher (the default for Cyanogenmod, my favorite Android ROM), ADW Launcher Ex (my current favorite home app), Launcher Pro, Go Launcher, Regina 3D (uses the GPU and is visually stunning) and a few others. I sometimes switch interfaces just because of what I happen to be doing at the time (or, ha ha, who I happen to want to impress.. Regina 3D is good for that, "No way this is Android." "Yeah way". "No, no way.")
Furthermore, there are Android distributions that have completely rewritten user interfaces. There are several variants of the MIUI ROM: one of the more popular ones that is more iPhone-like in operation. Don't particularly care for it myself, but then again I don't particularly care for the iPhone. To each his own, I suppose. Regardless, it is utterly painless to give your Android device a complete GUI makeover in a matter of seconds. Consequently it's really, really hard to say that any phone's GUI is better than Android, because there are a ton of easily-installable options, many of which are very professional. I'm also tired of iPhone fanboys making cracks about "well, if I wanted to have to recompile my OS just to get my phone to work I'd have an Android." That's just pure ignorance (or spite) and belies the fact that Android really is pretty goddamned flexible, in ways that iPhone and Windows Mobile will never, ever be. Now, understand I'm making no claims about anything special about Android per se: it's just another smartphone operating system. What I am saying is that Android owners gain the many benefits of an open-source environment. Neither the iPhone or Windows 7 Mobile will ever be open. Period. End of statement. Do they have a "better" user interface than Android? Hard to say: which Android user interface are we going to compare against? Which version of Android? See the problem?
We may also be seeing an early trend by device manufacturers to start opening their boot loaders. HTC, for example, has actually released a bootloader SDK. That's a first, and it's amazing. I'd be willing to bet money that since Google now owns Motorola that that company will change its stance on third-party operating systems (I believe Cyanogenmod already supports the Atrix.) It's past time that handset makers start treating their products for what they are: general-purpose pocket-sized portable computers, and not dedicated black boxes of which they maintain ownership after they're sold. If this continues, it means that the concept of "rooting" will become a thing of the past, and that user choice in operating systems will become a reality. Not something that the likes of Microsoft and Apple ever want to see, but it's good for the consumer.
Speaking on a more general note about operating systems, one thing that generally stands out in the Linux world is the number of distros which are derived from a few older ones. Debian, for example, is the foundation for a number of other distributions (Ubuntu/Ku
Being a shill is nothing to be proud of. Besides shouldn't you be on the MSN online service? This Internet thing is nothing but a hobby or a toy since it is based on all that open source software.
As trolls/astroturfers go, he went too far. Dissing open source on Slashdot isn't bright, if you're trying to sound respectable here.
If any commercial 7" tablet fits your needs, check some brands/models out there and create a custom version of Android + your app.
If it doesn't (probably not rugged enough, or the touch screen not bulletproof....) get them, strip them and modify them. If you are planning to sell more than 100k units and you have enough $, get serious, contact a factory and ask for some redesign for you.
In both cases, you can use a stripped android + your app.
OR you can start with something like this:
http://www.geek.com/articles/gadgets/get-your-own-open-source-touchscreen-device-for-69-2011023/
There are plenty of ruggedized, industrial PCs out there. This guy needs to spend a few minutes Googling this stuff. Forget Android: just run stock Debian or BSD on the thing and forget about it. Or even Windows Embedded, if you happen to swing that way (as Seinfeld said, "But there's nothing wrong with that!")
No, when that happens you still have your local copies. And if you're sensible, you have backups of your local copies.
I maintain encrypted off-site backups for just that reason. I don't depend upon the cloud, I don't depend upon my Internet connection for access to my personal data, and I don't depend upon some server farm operator to keep my stuff secure.
But that's me. Most people are point-blank unwilling to take even the simplest steps to protect themselves, and when they get burnt I don't have much sympathy. And when they get burned again... I have none.
Since brick-and-mortar businesses don't need your explicit authorization to track you when you are on their premises, why should a website be any different?
I think you answered your own question. When you are visiting their web site, they obviously can track your activities and are entitled to an expectation that they can track you. The issue is being tracked when you visit other web sites, especially when logged out of Facebook. The analogy would be if Walmart tracks your activity when you visit Sav-On-Drugs, Barnes & Noble, Red Lobster, Exxon, etc., even though you don't use any Walmart loyalty cards or suchlike in your purchases.
Well, if you're comparing real-world situations, it would be like some dude from Wal-Mart follows out out of the store and goes with you to all the other places you're shopping and takes notes.
There are plenty of editing services that will do this for a fee. The problem is that self-published works rarely make many sales, so spending hundreds of dollars on editorial work for a book that will probably only make a couple hundred dollars in sales only makes sense if you regard the entire thing as an expensive hobby. Until you have an actual following, better to edit as best you can yourself, and try to get friends to proof-read for you. It's not as good as a good professional editor, but it's less expensive and the results can be decent if not perfect.
True enough, but on the other hand... this is the age of the Internet, of the social network. You can gain a following quite easily if you learn how to promote yourself online. Wil Wheaton is a good example of this, I think. He's a regular on G+. Get fifty or sixty thousand followers all sharing your circles and linking to your sales site and you might be able to do okay for yourself.
So so true. There is now a huge section in bookstores (B&N) called "Teen paranormal romance." It's as large as other sections with names like "Fiction", "Reference", and "Non-fiction".
What the fuck is a "teen paranormal romance?" Nevermind, I don't want to know. Really, I don't. The other thing that truly pisses me off is that nobody, not even the publishers, has the slightest capacity to distinguish between fantasy and science-fiction anymore. It's like they believe the two are synonymous. I can enjoy a good work in either category, but goddammit learn how to label them properly. I really hate it when a pure fantasy novel is marketed as a work of science fiction: they're two entirely different classes of writing. Might as well confuse romance with small-engine repair.
Yeah! If Amazon doesn't step up to the plate against this kind of abuse of authors, authors will know that down the road Amazon probably intends on crushing them just as the publishers did.
Yep. Trading one middleman for another is what this is all about, and Bezos is no angel. The publishers really ought to take a look at what happened with music, starting from the day the RIAA decided to sue Napster into oblivion. Face it, if the studios had chosen to work with Napster, they could easily have owned the online market instead of ultimately ceding the whole goddamn thing to Apple. And they're thoroughly pissed about that: yeah, they're making more money than ever before but that's not what this is about. Instead, they lost control of distribution, and that's what hurts them the most, because they see that as the key to profit, and for a hundred years or more the music publishers maintained iron-fisted control of content distribution.
The same exact thing is about to happen to book publishers and I, for one, won't shed a single tear for their passing. I'm tired of these petulant dinosaurs stomping about threatening and intimidating everyone in sight just to maintain their ill-deserved profit margins. They could set up their own sales system and offer their catalogs online, and reap the rewards themselves. They have the money: if they all got together and set something up they could blow Amazon out of the water. But they won't do it, because they want to keep things the way they are.
As Emperor Palpatine said to Luke: "You will pay the price for your lack of vision." And they will: statism doesn't work in the Internet age, change is the only constant.
Ideas and words are owned through the force of government.
That's what it's turning into, but that's not the way it was, or was meant to be by the Founders. The copyright cartels are dying to have the government (and hence taxpayer) assume the cost of enforcement. That's just wrong: the law gives you, the copyright holder, the right to seek redress in court, but it was never the government job to do that for you.
Nothing stops those other publishers from offering similar terms as Amazon. Well, sheer greed and stupidity does, but nothing else. It isn't like amazon actually has some huge advantage. Those publishing houses still have quite the shoe-in on distribution, marketing, editing etc. They just need to reexamine their business methods. Maybe they could even patent the new method;-) j/k
Quite. And if they fail to make the correct moves... they'll go under and someone else will buy up the pieces and try again, and maybe be more successful.
I'm less concerned about Amazon per se as I am about electronic books in general. We're ceding more and more control of our societal knowledge-base to corporations of one sort or another, who can revoke our access to that information on a whim. I like the fact that a paper book requires no high-technology to read it, and cannot be remotely disabled or erased.
If I remember correctly, authors get better terms if they publish exclusively with Amazon.
Sure... an exclusive is always worth more and that's probably reasonable. The author has to decide, based upon the quality and target demographics of the work, whether it's worth going that way, or keeping the options open.
Even if Penguin wins, it will still die. The pittance it can reclaim from this single author will not be enough to keep it afloat as new authors continue to sign with Amazon instead of Penguin.
Penguin can rage at the dying of the light....but that will only make it run out of breath sooner.
The problem is that the value that publishers are adding is not being perceived as worth the money any longer. Now, that may or may not be realistic, especially for new authors: editors do perform a valuable function. But the royalty rates that are traditionally charged are for traditional publishing, which was expensive and time-consuming. Publishing nowadays has an effective cost that's so close to zero as to make no difference. That means that the old-line publisher is pretty much screwed, and if it wants to maintain some relevance is going to have to shift its business model into providing services for authors, and forget about the actual "publishing". Yeah, it won't make much money, but that's what "creative destruction" is all about.
If the contract gave exclusive distribution rights to Penguin then the author is in breach of contract. Seems simple to me.
The devil is in the details. If it gave exclusive rights to all her works, past and future, that would be one thing. I would imagine that it didn't (I don't believe that's SOP.) I think they were just trying to make an example, generate a little deterrent effect, figured that a few C&D's would put the fear of God into her. Which is just fucking *stupid*: alienating your suppliers is never a good idea, especially when this is all about their having another outlet for their products. A better way would have been to sweeten the pot a little to keep her from going outside the fold, as it were. You can bet Penguin just lost any future output from that author, and I'll take more bets that other authors in their stable are now thinking about moving on.
Because everyone has one single static IP for their entire life?
No, but when they keep getting kicked off their ISPs for incurring the wrath of Slashdot ping-flood armada, they might start to think twice about posting shit like that.
Slashdot Mirror
Pretending Android was not a close copy of iOs is silly.
Well, do keep in mind that Android was developed before iOS, and the Google bought that company to bring Android on board. So claims that Android "copied" iOS are kinda silly. But you are correct: now that both are out there there's a lot of cross-fertilization going on and that's just great for the consumer.
Android does have a leg up on Apple and Microsoft in that it is open source and there's an enormous level of third-party development going on. Some of the Android ROMs (like Cyanogenmod) are pretty remarkable achievements.
you blog is wrong, it is comparing stock android to HTC modified android. The HTC modified android looks a lot different than the Google android on the nexus phones.
All these brainless comparisons of Android vs iPhone vs Windows 7 GUI styles are made hopelessly irrelevant by one simple fact: the Android user interface is completely changeable on a moment's notice by installing one of numerous third-party home applications. Right there in the Market: no tweaking, rooting or hacking needed. Just click and run: some of the best ones are even free! Even though both iOS and Android are Unix-derived operating systems at the core, one of the two locks you into what the manufacturer thinks is best for you ... and the other doesn't.
.. Regina 3D is good for that, "No way this is Android." "Yeah way". "No, no way.")
Hell, there are so many home apps in the Market (some of them are seriously slick) that there are several "home manager" apps that let you switch between them at will! To give you a better idea of what I'm talking about, currently on my rooted G2 I have ADW Launcher (the default for Cyanogenmod, my favorite Android ROM), ADW Launcher Ex (my current favorite home app), Launcher Pro, Go Launcher, Regina 3D (uses the GPU and is visually stunning) and a few others. I sometimes switch interfaces just because of what I happen to be doing at the time (or, ha ha, who I happen to want to impress
Furthermore, there are Android distributions that have completely rewritten user interfaces. There are several variants of the MIUI ROM: one of the more popular ones that is more iPhone-like in operation. Don't particularly care for it myself, but then again I don't particularly care for the iPhone. To each his own, I suppose. Regardless, it is utterly painless to give your Android device a complete GUI makeover in a matter of seconds. Consequently it's really, really hard to say that any phone's GUI is better than Android, because there are a ton of easily-installable options, many of which are very professional. I'm also tired of iPhone fanboys making cracks about "well, if I wanted to have to recompile my OS just to get my phone to work I'd have an Android." That's just pure ignorance (or spite) and belies the fact that Android really is pretty goddamned flexible, in ways that iPhone and Windows Mobile will never, ever be. Now, understand I'm making no claims about anything special about Android per se: it's just another smartphone operating system. What I am saying is that Android owners gain the many benefits of an open-source environment. Neither the iPhone or Windows 7 Mobile will ever be open. Period. End of statement. Do they have a "better" user interface than Android? Hard to say: which Android user interface are we going to compare against? Which version of Android? See the problem?
We may also be seeing an early trend by device manufacturers to start opening their boot loaders. HTC, for example, has actually released a bootloader SDK. That's a first, and it's amazing. I'd be willing to bet money that since Google now owns Motorola that that company will change its stance on third-party operating systems (I believe Cyanogenmod already supports the Atrix.) It's past time that handset makers start treating their products for what they are: general-purpose pocket-sized portable computers, and not dedicated black boxes of which they maintain ownership after they're sold. If this continues, it means that the concept of "rooting" will become a thing of the past, and that user choice in operating systems will become a reality. Not something that the likes of Microsoft and Apple ever want to see, but it's good for the consumer.
Speaking on a more general note about operating systems, one thing that generally stands out in the Linux world is the number of distros which are derived from a few older ones. Debian, for example, is the foundation for a number of other distributions (Ubuntu/Ku
And that Palm copied from Mac OS, which presumably copied it from Xerox?
Xerox copied from itself :P
Nope. Xerox copied from Doug Engelbart ... some of PARC's people were on Engelbart's original team. Nothing self-referential about it.
Being a shill is nothing to be proud of. Besides shouldn't you be on the MSN online service? This Internet thing is nothing but a hobby or a toy since it is based on all that open source software.
As trolls/astroturfers go, he went too far. Dissing open source on Slashdot isn't bright, if you're trying to sound respectable here.
Why such a negative connotation?
I'm sure there are plenty of people that would love to have that job.
Do you also blame individual soldiers when the war is lost?
No, I blame soldiers when they obey illegal orders knowing full well that they are illegal.
Just like I blame astroturfers for performing unethical activities knowing full well that they are unethical.
And you typed it all in less than a minute...
Three words "Cut and Paste".
It's a bit like handing your wallet to a hooker and watching them walk away.
No, it's more like having unprotected sex with that hooker and having to deal with all the fallout resulting from your initial bad decision.
If any commercial 7" tablet fits your needs, check some brands/models out there and create a custom version of Android + your app. If it doesn't (probably not rugged enough, or the touch screen not bulletproof....) get them, strip them and modify them. If you are planning to sell more than 100k units and you have enough $, get serious, contact a factory and ask for some redesign for you. In both cases, you can use a stripped android + your app. OR you can start with something like this: http://www.geek.com/articles/gadgets/get-your-own-open-source-touchscreen-device-for-69-2011023/
There are plenty of ruggedized, industrial PCs out there. This guy needs to spend a few minutes Googling this stuff. Forget Android: just run stock Debian or BSD on the thing and forget about it. Or even Windows Embedded, if you happen to swing that way (as Seinfeld said, "But there's nothing wrong with that!")
No, when that happens you still have your local copies. And if you're sensible, you have backups of your local copies.
I maintain encrypted off-site backups for just that reason. I don't depend upon the cloud, I don't depend upon my Internet connection for access to my personal data, and I don't depend upon some server farm operator to keep my stuff secure.
... I have none.
But that's me. Most people are point-blank unwilling to take even the simplest steps to protect themselves, and when they get burnt I don't have much sympathy. And when they get burned again
Since brick-and-mortar businesses don't need your explicit authorization to track you when you are on their premises, why should a website be any different?
I think you answered your own question. When you are visiting their web site, they obviously can track your activities and are entitled to an expectation that they can track you. The issue is being tracked when you visit other web sites, especially when logged out of Facebook. The analogy would be if Walmart tracks your activity when you visit Sav-On-Drugs, Barnes & Noble, Red Lobster, Exxon, etc., even though you don't use any Walmart loyalty cards or suchlike in your purchases.
Well, if you're comparing real-world situations, it would be like some dude from Wal-Mart follows out out of the store and goes with you to all the other places you're shopping and takes notes.
>> just type this into your Location bar: https://www.google.com/
Bad advice. This will just forward to http://www.google.com/
To get encrypted search using POST requests (where unencrypted URLs can't be tracked), use
https://encrypted.google.com/
Yeah, and it was right up there on my screen too, dammit.
They already know who their customers are: the people who pay them for the user's information!
Precisely. And they need to be told that those are not their customers.
You run your own DNS on your phone or do you VPN your DNS queries?
The latter. Interestingly, I get substantially better response times doing it that way.
Of course, if my house catches fire, all my paper books go up in smoke.
My ebooks, on the other hand, are completely unaffected.
And when the server farm that is housing your books goes up in flames without a disaster recovery plan ... you're still screwed.
Might as well confuse romance with small-engine repair.
Hey now, don't go getting all prejudicial just 'cause some of us get all happy with our spanner sets.
When your wife finds you knocking up that two-stroke in your lawnmower don't say I didn't warn you. But hey ... there's nothing wrong with that.
There are plenty of editing services that will do this for a fee. The problem is that self-published works rarely make many sales, so spending hundreds of dollars on editorial work for a book that will probably only make a couple hundred dollars in sales only makes sense if you regard the entire thing as an expensive hobby. Until you have an actual following, better to edit as best you can yourself, and try to get friends to proof-read for you. It's not as good as a good professional editor, but it's less expensive and the results can be decent if not perfect.
True enough, but on the other hand ... this is the age of the Internet, of the social network. You can gain a following quite easily if you learn how to promote yourself online. Wil Wheaton is a good example of this, I think. He's a regular on G+. Get fifty or sixty thousand followers all sharing your circles and linking to your sales site and you might be able to do okay for yourself.
So so true. There is now a huge section in bookstores (B&N) called "Teen paranormal romance." It's as large as other sections with names like "Fiction", "Reference", and "Non-fiction".
What the fuck is a "teen paranormal romance?" Nevermind, I don't want to know. Really, I don't. The other thing that truly pisses me off is that nobody, not even the publishers, has the slightest capacity to distinguish between fantasy and science-fiction anymore. It's like they believe the two are synonymous. I can enjoy a good work in either category, but goddammit learn how to label them properly. I really hate it when a pure fantasy novel is marketed as a work of science fiction: they're two entirely different classes of writing. Might as well confuse romance with small-engine repair.
Yeah! If Amazon doesn't step up to the plate against this kind of abuse of authors, authors will know that down the road Amazon probably intends on crushing them just as the publishers did.
Yep. Trading one middleman for another is what this is all about, and Bezos is no angel. The publishers really ought to take a look at what happened with music, starting from the day the RIAA decided to sue Napster into oblivion. Face it, if the studios had chosen to work with Napster, they could easily have owned the online market instead of ultimately ceding the whole goddamn thing to Apple. And they're thoroughly pissed about that: yeah, they're making more money than ever before but that's not what this is about. Instead, they lost control of distribution, and that's what hurts them the most, because they see that as the key to profit, and for a hundred years or more the music publishers maintained iron-fisted control of content distribution.
The same exact thing is about to happen to book publishers and I, for one, won't shed a single tear for their passing. I'm tired of these petulant dinosaurs stomping about threatening and intimidating everyone in sight just to maintain their ill-deserved profit margins. They could set up their own sales system and offer their catalogs online, and reap the rewards themselves. They have the money: if they all got together and set something up they could blow Amazon out of the water. But they won't do it, because they want to keep things the way they are.
As Emperor Palpatine said to Luke: "You will pay the price for your lack of vision." And they will: statism doesn't work in the Internet age, change is the only constant.
Ideas and words are owned through the force of government.
That's what it's turning into, but that's not the way it was, or was meant to be by the Founders. The copyright cartels are dying to have the government (and hence taxpayer) assume the cost of enforcement. That's just wrong: the law gives you, the copyright holder, the right to seek redress in court, but it was never the government job to do that for you.
Nothing stops those other publishers from offering similar terms as Amazon. Well, sheer greed and stupidity does, but nothing else. It isn't like amazon actually has some huge advantage. Those publishing houses still have quite the shoe-in on distribution, marketing, editing etc. They just need to reexamine their business methods. Maybe they could even patent the new method ;-) j/k
Quite. And if they fail to make the correct moves ... they'll go under and someone else will buy up the pieces and try again, and maybe be more successful.
I'm less concerned about Amazon per se as I am about electronic books in general. We're ceding more and more control of our societal knowledge-base to corporations of one sort or another, who can revoke our access to that information on a whim. I like the fact that a paper book requires no high-technology to read it, and cannot be remotely disabled or erased.
If I remember correctly, authors get better terms if they publish exclusively with Amazon.
Sure ... an exclusive is always worth more and that's probably reasonable. The author has to decide, based upon the quality and target demographics of the work, whether it's worth going that way, or keeping the options open.
Even if Penguin wins, it will still die. The pittance it can reclaim from this single author will not be enough to keep it afloat as new authors continue to sign with Amazon instead of Penguin.
Penguin can rage at the dying of the light....but that will only make it run out of breath sooner.
The problem is that the value that publishers are adding is not being perceived as worth the money any longer. Now, that may or may not be realistic, especially for new authors: editors do perform a valuable function. But the royalty rates that are traditionally charged are for traditional publishing, which was expensive and time-consuming. Publishing nowadays has an effective cost that's so close to zero as to make no difference. That means that the old-line publisher is pretty much screwed, and if it wants to maintain some relevance is going to have to shift its business model into providing services for authors, and forget about the actual "publishing". Yeah, it won't make much money, but that's what "creative destruction" is all about.
If the contract gave exclusive distribution rights to Penguin then the author is in breach of contract. Seems simple to me.
The devil is in the details. If it gave exclusive rights to all her works, past and future, that would be one thing. I would imagine that it didn't (I don't believe that's SOP.) I think they were just trying to make an example, generate a little deterrent effect, figured that a few C&D's would put the fear of God into her. Which is just fucking *stupid*: alienating your suppliers is never a good idea, especially when this is all about their having another outlet for their products. A better way would have been to sweeten the pot a little to keep her from going outside the fold, as it were. You can bet Penguin just lost any future output from that author, and I'll take more bets that other authors in their stable are now thinking about moving on.
Seriously considering clobbering all my replies to +1 this.
Yes ... if I had any mod points left I'd have glad spared him one.
then you could foe the IP address
Because everyone has one single static IP for their entire life?
No, but when they keep getting kicked off their ISPs for incurring the wrath of Slashdot ping-flood armada, they might start to think twice about posting shit like that.