So Android is better if you are willing to rebuild it yourself and spend time vetting all the applications you install. Excellent. Mjust what everyone wantsnin a phone:)
And just to clarify, downloading a replacement home app from the Android Market does not count as "rebuilding it yourself." Anyone can do that with a couple of taps, and can then have an entirely different, generally more capable, user experience. Furthermore, a number of cell phone vendors have taken it upon themselves to replace the stock Android home app with their own, with varying degrees of success. That kind of flexibility generally seems to unnerve iPhone people for some reason, but to me it's a definite plus on the Android side.
I also went into some more detail about how the phone can be improved even further, sure: sorry if you found that offensive.
So Android is better if you are willing to rebuild it yourself and spend time vetting all the applications you install. Excellent. Mjust what everyone wantsnin a phone:)
???
It's better for some people. It's better for me. I don't think I made the claim that it's better for all people. But at a half million units activated per day, I'd say that the stock Android (regardless of how it compares to the iPhone in sales) is something that one hell of a lot of users find perfectly acceptable. That's just reality, even if it doesn't fit into the Apple fan's view of the world.
Also, time to face a few facts. There are people (now this may be hard for you to accept, but please bear with me) who actually don't much like the Apple way. Not slamming the iPhone's GUI, it's a fine implementation, but some people want something else, something more (better is a loaded term.) While you may feel (as does The Jobs and his company) that one size does-and-should fit all... a lot of people don't. They'd like a little bit of choice in how their portable computer system works. Android offers that, Apple doesn't.
The fact that you might have to (*gasp*) use your brain to make a complex device do what you want is not actually a detriment. It just means that people who are either too stupid to use a computer, or perceive such machines as mere appliances, may settle for the stock iPhone or Android experience. Those that want to fiddle with it, customize it, make it more truly our own, will stick with Android. Apple, in spite of it's marketing claims, is not about consumer choice: hasn't been for a long, long time.
T-Mobile is still a buyout target, and at this point I think Google or Microsoft could pick them up for less than AT&T offered. Since T-Mobile is more Android friendly than WP7 I think Google would be a more likely suitor.
I've thought about that. Not sure the regulators would go for it, although I think it would be better for consumers if Google got T-Mobile than American Terrorphone and Terrorgraph.
The recent purchase of Motorola puts Google in a unique position, communications infrastructure-wise. I could see Google buying out T-Mobile, and offering data-only phones and plans that don't use any voice frequencies, and eventually re-purposing that spectrum for more data usage. Put it this way, Android (since Gingerbread) has supported SIP calling. Android terms it "Internet Calling" but if you get a SIP account (pbxes.org, etc.) you can do it now. Unfortunately T-Mobile doesn't offer a data-only plan or I'd dump voice calling in a heartbeat. I can use Skype, but the Android app sucks (and keeps getting worse with time, for some reason) but I do use CSipSimple with a pbxes.org account and it works very well.
Hundreds of thousands of miles of dark fiber, the Motorola purchase, Google Voice... Google is up to something, and it has to do with telecommunications and mobile, but I'm not sure yet what it is.
It wasn't the iPhone, it was MetroPCS, Cricket, Straight Talk, Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile. The fact is, you don't need to sign a 2 year contract for an "unlimited everything" plan on a budget these days. T-Mobile's prices aren't good enough to compete with the real budget carriers, and their network and device selection isn't good enough to compete with AT&T and Verizon, so they're kinda stuck in the middle. Sprint is feeling the same pain (although, their Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile prepaid divisions are gaining customers). Apparently, there's not much market for people who are just a _little_ cheap.
I dunno. We have a T-Mobile phone on a pay-as-you go plan with unlimited voice and 2 Gb of data. No contract. I'm not sure what all these people complaining about T-Mobile and contracts are talking about.
Why are you posting on Slashdot and complaining about being on Froyo? Root the damn thing.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Bought my original G1 from T-Mobile and rooted it a couple of days later. I'm on a G2 now (HTC Desire Z) and haven't run the stock firmware longer than it takes to put Cyanogenmod on it.
After using the iPhone (both original and 3G), and owning an iPad, after switching to an Android handset in February of this year (HTC Desire),
Well, okay. You have a G2 with the stock firmware, probably using the stock Android launcher. Yeah, it works, but it's not the best, I agree. However, unlike the vaunted iPhone, you'll find (with a little research) that you can completely change your experience. Try playing around with some different home apps in the market: some of them are very good and might very well change your opinion. Download something like Home Manager to help you switch among the different environments until you find one that suits you better. That's a strength of the Android ecosystem, one that Apple will never offer you, and actually reflects Android's roots as yet another Linux distribution. Apple gives you a standardized user experience that is what it is, take it or leave it, like it or not. Android gives you more in that regard.
Consider rooting your G2 and installing a third-party ROM, such as Cyanogenmod or one of the MIUI releases (probably the most iPhone-like of them, if that's your thing.) You'll get better performance on a given device, more stability, and faster updates. My G2, for example, has a stock CPU clock of 800 Mhz, but can be overclocked to 1.5 Ghz. or more. A faster clock rate was one of the reasons I rooted it in the first place, but the upgraded kernel is so fast now that I still run at 800 Mhz: that blew me away. Even more interestingly, the Cyanogenmod group makes its nightly builds available with changelogs: it's fascinating to watch how a major software project like this evolves and responds to user feedback. Things get fixed fast, stuff improves, and you get to see it happen. Something that Apple Computer and the cellular carriers won't give you.
That's another reason that I went to T-Mobile in the first place: they were very friendly towards rooters and modders, and Google for its part encouraged the development of third-party ROMs. Much of Cyanogen's work has ended up back in Google's main source tree. That allows all users (even those running stock firmware) to benefit from the open source nature of Android. What's fascinating to me is that Cyanogenmod has become the Debian of the Android world: more and more distributions are coming out that are based upon Cyanogenmod (because it's fast, rock solid and works) but are customized or oriented to specific needs or interests.
Contrast that to Apple's rather Microsoft-like closed source approach. iPhone fans like to state, with absolute certainty, that iOS (which is just a BSD Unix kernel with a GUI layer) is fundamentally more secure than Android. Well, that's not a legitimate claim: nobody but Apple knows exactly what's been done to that kernel, or what security issues exist in the Apple-created components. Android has the benefit of the many-eyes principle, and there have been a *lot* of very sharp engineers outside of Google going through the Android codebase. That's more than Apple can say.
I greatly appreciate your post, and the non-confrontational nature of it. However I must say I disagree that CEO's hold all the cards when it comes to making "something". Jobs may have shown leadership and helped bring Apple out of a dire situation, but the people that did the actual work doing so are still there.
True, and that's why I said "it remains to be seen." But historically I'm correct: committees don't have vision, individuals do. I never personally liked Jobs or where he took his company, but he did have a vision and he made it happen, and the company was successful because of that. That is, after all, leadership, and a board of directors without out the right leader is about as useful as tits on a boar.
T-Mobile does not have terrible cellular. That is a myth that anyone on T-Mobile can verify.
I agree... I've been on them for about three years now, and where I live I've had no problems whatsoever. I've had AT&T, U.S. Cellular and Sprint, and I've had the best coverage on T-Mobile. Period. And actually manage to pull in about 10 mbits/sec on my data channel, so I'm a happy camper. And the GP's talk of "incompetence"? Where did he get that from? I experienced an incredible degree of incompetence dealing with AT&T and Sprint: billing error after billing error to the point that I switched to T-Mobile. If nothing else, the Germans know how to run an accounting system.
On top of that, for the $25 I'm spending each month on 3G/4G, I get unlimited data and voice roaming. So I can go anywhere in the U.S. and not worry about coverage. Drove cross-country last year through a dozen states, and had data, voice, tethering and Google Nav all the way, and I lost track of how many different networks I went through.
AT&T and Verizon can take their pretty little floating colored maps and stick them where the Sun don't shine. This merger is certainly not in my best interests, I'll tell you that. All this talk about "savings" and "scaleability" and "service" is a smoke screen. AT&T doesn't do anything like this to benefit the consumer. They do it to benefit AT&T, and that letter that got accidentally posted to the FCC's Web site last month made that pretty damn clear. AT&T can go to hell in a handbasket so far as I'm concerned.
Fanboi rantAre you kidding? Unless you are paid by Apple or a Zombie, can do you really believe and iPhone is any better and a T-Mobile G2 or any high end Android handset?
Although I dislike using the term "fanboi" in any context, I cannot help but note how ironic it is that you disparage iPhone users by using that term, when you yourself seem to be blindly pushing Android even to people who would be better served by using an iPhone. There is a real difference in security and ease of use.
You are a fanboi. He wasn't pushing anything: he was making a valid point that the market today is not like it was when the iPhone was first introduced. From a functional perspective, Android products are generally equivalent in capability to the iPhone, and are actually ahead of the game in others. They're often a better value as well, although I've never found an iPhone user to understand that concept when applied to smartphones.
There may or may not be a "real" difference anymore (many people prefer Android for one reason or another, hey, no accounting for taste) so claims that one is intrinsically superior to the other are fundamentally ridiculous. Face facts: smartphone tech is maturing, rapidly, and the iPhone is no longer the unquestioned leader in that market. Certainly it isn't in terms of unit sales. And that is to be expected and is entirely proper: nobody (and I mean nobody) remains market leader forever. That's just the way it works.
Put it this way: there's a reason that Apple broke into the tablet market, even though they were hardly the originators of that technology either. It's because they knew very well that their lead in the cellular market would eventually be lost, and it has been. No different than Microsoft casting desperately about to find something, anything with which they can make money outside of Windows and Office. Well, it is different in that Microsoft has continually failed at that whereas Apple has had some spectacular successes. But it's the same idea, and I give Apple credit for pulling it off again.
Of course, it remains to be seen whether their new leadership can continue Jobs' tradition of learning from his own failures and coming up with something that people just absolutely must have. Generally speaking, when the founder of a successful organization dies or retires, his creation loses focus, becomes excessively conservative and risk-averse... and falls from the top spot. We'll see. Jobs' vision drove Apple to where it is and it remains to be seen if the company can flourish without it.
I was a loyal and happy T-mobile customer since the Voicestream days, just before they became T-mobile. I waited as long as I could for them to get the iPhone, I considered the G2 and myTouch phones, but ultimately my job (iPhone app development) required that I own an iPhone, so I could wait no longer. So yeah, I'm one of those who left T-mobile to get an iPhone.
Can't argue with your decision since you're a developer, but you should understand that you're far in the minority. People left AT&T in droves to go to T-Mobile, and that had much more to do with T-Mobile's reasonable policies and pricing than choice of smartphone. The same thing happened to Comcast when AT&T U-Verse became widely available. If your decision isn't based around the availability of a specific piece of hardware, but instead revolves around overall value... well, odds are you'll make a different decision. I've received far better value for my money on T-Mobile with my Android phone than the people I know who continually bitch about being stuck on (and I quote) "AT&T's crappy network." Generally people like their iPhones... they just hate the company that provides their connectivity.
To those of you who are on AT&T, remember this: it is not your Daddy's AT&T. That company was taken over by SBC (known by some as Southern Bell, but considered by most to be the Southern Bastards Club, the acknowledged worst of the one-time Baby Bells) some years ago. It is American Telephone and Telegraph now in name only. So, when your service sucks, your costs go up, and you get overage charges and limited, tiered bandwidth... you'll know precisely who to thank for it.
There's a reason why so many people are up in arms about this deal. It's going to mean even more consolidation in a market dominated by the likes of SBC and Verizon, who have turned bending their customers over the end table into a high art form.
Are you kidding? Unless you are paid by Apple or a Zombie, can do you really believe and iPhone is any better and a T-Mobile G2 or any high end Android handset?
Really? Want some Apple flavored Kool Aid?
I agree. Why is it that Apple fans have to make everything about the iPhone? Considering that the handset market is owned by Android, not by Apple (half a million Android phones light up every day) the claim that T-Mobile is being hurt by the lack of that product is remarkable. Now, the tablet market is a different matter entirely, but we aren't talking about tablets here.
More to the point, when you look at the total number of handsets sold, smartphones are a drop in the bucket. Supersmart phones such as the iPhone and high-end Android devices, even more so. Cellular outfits did just fine before the iPhone came along, and they'd do just fine without it. About the only thing the iPhone did for AT&T was allow them to sell voice/data plans at the subsidized price for unsubsidized phones!
The fact that millions of iPhone owners fell for that ongoing scam still amazes me. Those people who bought a Nexus One from Google and went with T-Mobile found themselves getting a discount, because T-Mobile wasn't providing the phone. Just good business. Now, I suppose in that context the iPhone did hurt T-Mo, because AT&T was making extra money to not supply a device to the consumer. Really says a lot about AT&T's management than anything else. Says even more about your average iPhone user.
I also agree with you about the T-Mobile G2 / HTC Desire Z... I have one of those and you'll pry it from my cold dead fingers. It's rooted and running Cyanogenmod 7 (no choice in operating system is yet another reason why I detest Apple and AT&T.)
I would also like to see some education on the parental front. I would much rather a parent monitoring my communications with a child than my employer. After all, it is the parent who is ultimately responsible for the upbringing of the child and it is the parent who should be deciding the boundaries that other adults have with their children.
While I agree with this, it is easier said than done. When I was a kid, I always a quarter in my pocket which I could use to call home or my parent's work. Today, there are simply no pay phones anywhere where my kids spend time (a big city in the USA). My kids don't have mobile phones yet (because they can't reliably use them yet), but when they do, they will have them on their person all day. How do you monitor phone calls/sms/web browsing in this scenario? Not a glib question -- I try to do a lot to monitor my children's online/tv/etc time. There are no private TVs or computers in the house; we talk about what it means to enter an email address into a Club Penguin form; etc. But at some point, they are going to have to go out into the world on their own, and they are going to have to have a way to phone home when they are in trouble. Am I supposed to do a data dump on their phones at the end of each day and interrogate them about mysterious SMSs that I find? I'm not really interested in that for many reasons...
Sometimes that abuse will have extraordinarily negative consequences, such as a teacher using their position to gain access to children then physically, emotionally, or sexually abusing them.
Sure, and for every case of abuse that occurs, should millions of otherwise perfectly normal, healthy, nurturing relationships be artificially severed? That attitude is morally questionable, akin to the "no matter the cost, if it saves but one life, it's worth it" attitude that is so prevalent among our psychotically risk-averse society.
A lot of those are already illegal; explicit violations of the first amendment through new legislation dont really fix any problems, they just create a zillion new ones.
Tell me, if its already illegal for a teacher to abuse their position of power to have an inappropriate relationship with their students, and if such laws dont always work, what makes THIS law so effective that it will put a stop to such relationships?
It won't, it can't, and it was never intended to work. What it does do (as others in this thread have pointed out) is gain votes for certain politicians, so in that context it will work whether it is ultimately signed into law or not. Even when such a law is struck down, the lawmakers involved can point to it and say with pride, "I'm here for you, people! I tried to Protect your Children but the courts stabbed me in the back. Just remember that next time you in the polling booth."
What disturbs me about that, even more than the ethically-challenged... hell, morally bankrupt leadership, are the voters who never bother to ask why a judge said, "No dice."
You have no first amendment rights when it comes to talking to children. Sorry.
Having a right, and having your government fail to acknowledge that right, are two entirely different matters, ones that I wish people around here would get straight in their heads. The Supreme Law of our Land reserves most rights to the people, and places substantial restrictions upon government. That is because the Constitution was primarily intended to rein in the behavior of our leadership, not that of We the People. If you understood that document in the context of the times in which it was written, that would make more sense to you.
All else is a matter of deliberate misinterpretation of the Constitution by the courts and our lawmakers. We should be telling our elected officials what is Constitutional, not the other way around. The Founders would be not be pleased by the current situation. Not at all.
Have you ever heard the phrase, "leaving the fox to guard the henhouse?" Well, just think of Congress as the fox and the Constitution as the henhouse.
...are assumed to be under the "parental supervision" of the school-- the teachers receive some degree of the authority that the parent has, including the right to ask students to be silent.
Yes, it's called in loco parentis. The linked article goes into some detail about what that actually means.
People are seriously talking about leaving all Google services (and posting how-to FAQs). They're even contemplating using Bing for search. Just how toxic do you need to make your brand for people to contemplate using Bing?
True, but we're talking the early adopters here, the ones that are actually thinking about these issues (like us, here on Slashdot.) Google is using us to help work out the bugs. Now that's just great, I'm happy to help so far as that goes. But ultimately Google is going to have to shoot for popularity, for numbers, and I doubt that the bulk of humanity is really very concerned about their privacy. The fact that there are seven hundred million Facebook users tells me that much.
Google is just figuring out a way to pry as much information out of each user as it possibly can, in order to more effectively advertise to them. I mean, it's what they do. So I don't really expect Google to pay much attention to the privacy naysayers. All this smoke about trying to improve the quality of the conversations is just that: smoke: I've had hundreds of very interesting dialogues here on Slashdot, and I've never used my real name. So I really don't buy that real names are necessary for a viable social networking service.
It's a fine line though: the people who are signing up now are the ones that are going to either a. proselytize on Google's behalf or b. dis the service to all and sundry. It doesn't matter how wonderful your service is if it gets an initial bad rap among the very people you're depending upon to sell it to other people for you!
Even if the European Patent Convention literally excludes software from patents, the European Patent Office and the German courts interpret the exclusion narrowly, which makes software patents valid in the end.
What does that mean, exactly?
... and the legislators have destroyed software patents...
Sounds like they've been attempting to destroy software patents, without as much real success as we might like.
Sounds like they have grown too large and really don't care what their 'customers' think ( yes, i know their *true* customers are the companies who advertise, but you get my point ). Time to find another "service" provider.
That's a good idea. I hear there's this thing called "Facebook"...
I'm tempted to just drop anybody who signs up for this scheme in protest.
I'm inclined to agree. Google always seemed to have a better handle on the importance of trust than many others in the online world. I never bothered with Facebook for that reason, and if Google puts me in the position where I don't trust who I have to thank for their services, no matter how useful they are... well, it's not like social networking is an essential. Some will claim that it is, but that's only because they need psychiatric care.
Obviously Google is hoping that enough people will find G+ sufficiently valuable in spite of this issue. And they're probably right: given how little thought millions of people give to their privacy online, those of us who are complaining about this are the merest blip on the radar.
That's too bad though: from a technical and usability perspective, Google+ is pretty nice.
I'm not exactly sure what Google is trying to achieve. I think that's part of the problem. It's not enough to say, "Oh, we're just trying to maintain and improve the user experience." That's the same kind of blathering idiocy that outfits like Comcast spew when they perform MITM attacks on their own customers and claim it was just "network management". What kind of community are you trying to build, and exactly what do you, Google, expect to receive in return for your largesse? Is it just that they want to force the use real identities so they can better their profiling, to improve the rate of return on targeted advertising? That's all fine and dandy, I suppose... but maybe I don't want that. And maybe there's something else.
These two parts in particular are exactly right. It seems that no matter what, people refuse to understand what is actually happening. It is scary to see just how easily the justice system can be perverted, provided you have enough money and a loud enough voice.
Thank you. A sales guy who used to work at my company told me one day that, "you know, they need all those powers." I asked him why... he said, "because otherwise they wouldn't make any money."
I did make an effort to try and educate him but he just point-blank didn't want to hear it. In his (admittedly tiny) mind, "Downloading = Piracy = Lost Sales." No room for any further discussion, and I told him that he was, in fact, an ideal music industry customer. That seemed to please him, for some odd reason.
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So Android is better if you are willing to rebuild it yourself and spend time vetting all the applications you install. Excellent. Mjust what everyone wantsnin a phone :)
And just to clarify, downloading a replacement home app from the Android Market does not count as "rebuilding it yourself." Anyone can do that with a couple of taps, and can then have an entirely different, generally more capable, user experience. Furthermore, a number of cell phone vendors have taken it upon themselves to replace the stock Android home app with their own, with varying degrees of success. That kind of flexibility generally seems to unnerve iPhone people for some reason, but to me it's a definite plus on the Android side.
I also went into some more detail about how the phone can be improved even further, sure: sorry if you found that offensive.
So Android is better if you are willing to rebuild it yourself and spend time vetting all the applications you install. Excellent. Mjust what everyone wantsnin a phone :)
???
... a lot of people don't. They'd like a little bit of choice in how their portable computer system works. Android offers that, Apple doesn't.
It's better for some people. It's better for me. I don't think I made the claim that it's better for all people. But at a half million units activated per day, I'd say that the stock Android (regardless of how it compares to the iPhone in sales) is something that one hell of a lot of users find perfectly acceptable. That's just reality, even if it doesn't fit into the Apple fan's view of the world.
Also, time to face a few facts. There are people (now this may be hard for you to accept, but please bear with me) who actually don't much like the Apple way. Not slamming the iPhone's GUI, it's a fine implementation, but some people want something else, something more (better is a loaded term.) While you may feel (as does The Jobs and his company) that one size does-and-should fit all
The fact that you might have to (*gasp*) use your brain to make a complex device do what you want is not actually a detriment. It just means that people who are either too stupid to use a computer, or perceive such machines as mere appliances, may settle for the stock iPhone or Android experience. Those that want to fiddle with it, customize it, make it more truly our own, will stick with Android. Apple, in spite of it's marketing claims, is not about consumer choice: hasn't been for a long, long time.
T-Mobile is still a buyout target, and at this point I think Google or Microsoft could pick them up for less than AT&T offered. Since T-Mobile is more Android friendly than WP7 I think Google would be a more likely suitor.
I've thought about that. Not sure the regulators would go for it, although I think it would be better for consumers if Google got T-Mobile than American Terrorphone and Terrorgraph.
... Google is up to something, and it has to do with telecommunications and mobile, but I'm not sure yet what it is.
The recent purchase of Motorola puts Google in a unique position, communications infrastructure-wise. I could see Google buying out T-Mobile, and offering data-only phones and plans that don't use any voice frequencies, and eventually re-purposing that spectrum for more data usage. Put it this way, Android (since Gingerbread) has supported SIP calling. Android terms it "Internet Calling" but if you get a SIP account (pbxes.org, etc.) you can do it now. Unfortunately T-Mobile doesn't offer a data-only plan or I'd dump voice calling in a heartbeat. I can use Skype, but the Android app sucks (and keeps getting worse with time, for some reason) but I do use CSipSimple with a pbxes.org account and it works very well.
Hundreds of thousands of miles of dark fiber, the Motorola purchase, Google Voice
It wasn't the iPhone, it was MetroPCS, Cricket, Straight Talk, Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile. The fact is, you don't need to sign a 2 year contract for an "unlimited everything" plan on a budget these days. T-Mobile's prices aren't good enough to compete with the real budget carriers, and their network and device selection isn't good enough to compete with AT&T and Verizon, so they're kinda stuck in the middle. Sprint is feeling the same pain (although, their Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile prepaid divisions are gaining customers). Apparently, there's not much market for people who are just a _little_ cheap.
I dunno. We have a T-Mobile phone on a pay-as-you go plan with unlimited voice and 2 Gb of data. No contract. I'm not sure what all these people complaining about T-Mobile and contracts are talking about.
Why are you posting on Slashdot and complaining about being on Froyo? Root the damn thing.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Bought my original G1 from T-Mobile and rooted it a couple of days later. I'm on a G2 now (HTC Desire Z) and haven't run the stock firmware longer than it takes to put Cyanogenmod on it.
After using the iPhone (both original and 3G), and owning an iPad, after switching to an Android handset in February of this year (HTC Desire),
Well, okay. You have a G2 with the stock firmware, probably using the stock Android launcher. Yeah, it works, but it's not the best, I agree. However, unlike the vaunted iPhone, you'll find (with a little research) that you can completely change your experience. Try playing around with some different home apps in the market: some of them are very good and might very well change your opinion. Download something like Home Manager to help you switch among the different environments until you find one that suits you better. That's a strength of the Android ecosystem, one that Apple will never offer you, and actually reflects Android's roots as yet another Linux distribution. Apple gives you a standardized user experience that is what it is, take it or leave it, like it or not. Android gives you more in that regard.
Consider rooting your G2 and installing a third-party ROM, such as Cyanogenmod or one of the MIUI releases (probably the most iPhone-like of them, if that's your thing.) You'll get better performance on a given device, more stability, and faster updates. My G2, for example, has a stock CPU clock of 800 Mhz, but can be overclocked to 1.5 Ghz. or more. A faster clock rate was one of the reasons I rooted it in the first place, but the upgraded kernel is so fast now that I still run at 800 Mhz: that blew me away. Even more interestingly, the Cyanogenmod group makes its nightly builds available with changelogs: it's fascinating to watch how a major software project like this evolves and responds to user feedback. Things get fixed fast, stuff improves, and you get to see it happen. Something that Apple Computer and the cellular carriers won't give you.
That's another reason that I went to T-Mobile in the first place: they were very friendly towards rooters and modders, and Google for its part encouraged the development of third-party ROMs. Much of Cyanogen's work has ended up back in Google's main source tree. That allows all users (even those running stock firmware) to benefit from the open source nature of Android. What's fascinating to me is that Cyanogenmod has become the Debian of the Android world: more and more distributions are coming out that are based upon Cyanogenmod (because it's fast, rock solid and works) but are customized or oriented to specific needs or interests.
Contrast that to Apple's rather Microsoft-like closed source approach. iPhone fans like to state, with absolute certainty, that iOS (which is just a BSD Unix kernel with a GUI layer) is fundamentally more secure than Android. Well, that's not a legitimate claim: nobody but Apple knows exactly what's been done to that kernel, or what security issues exist in the Apple-created components. Android has the benefit of the many-eyes principle, and there have been a *lot* of very sharp engineers outside of Google going through the Android codebase. That's more than Apple can say.
I greatly appreciate your post, and the non-confrontational nature of it. However I must say I disagree that CEO's hold all the cards when it comes to making "something". Jobs may have shown leadership and helped bring Apple out of a dire situation, but the people that did the actual work doing so are still there.
True, and that's why I said "it remains to be seen." But historically I'm correct: committees don't have vision, individuals do. I never personally liked Jobs or where he took his company, but he did have a vision and he made it happen, and the company was successful because of that. That is, after all, leadership, and a board of directors without out the right leader is about as useful as tits on a boar.
T-Mobile does not have terrible cellular. That is a myth that anyone on T-Mobile can verify.
I agree ... I've been on them for about three years now, and where I live I've had no problems whatsoever. I've had AT&T, U.S. Cellular and Sprint, and I've had the best coverage on T-Mobile. Period. And actually manage to pull in about 10 mbits/sec on my data channel, so I'm a happy camper. And the GP's talk of "incompetence"? Where did he get that from? I experienced an incredible degree of incompetence dealing with AT&T and Sprint: billing error after billing error to the point that I switched to T-Mobile. If nothing else, the Germans know how to run an accounting system.
On top of that, for the $25 I'm spending each month on 3G/4G, I get unlimited data and voice roaming. So I can go anywhere in the U.S. and not worry about coverage. Drove cross-country last year through a dozen states, and had data, voice, tethering and Google Nav all the way, and I lost track of how many different networks I went through.
AT&T and Verizon can take their pretty little floating colored maps and stick them where the Sun don't shine. This merger is certainly not in my best interests, I'll tell you that. All this talk about "savings" and "scaleability" and "service" is a smoke screen. AT&T doesn't do anything like this to benefit the consumer. They do it to benefit AT&T, and that letter that got accidentally posted to the FCC's Web site last month made that pretty damn clear. AT&T can go to hell in a handbasket so far as I'm concerned.
What hurt them the most was the announcement that AT&T was going to acquire them.
Now that is probably true. And you know what? For all we know, that was the whole idea all long.
Fanboi rant Are you kidding? Unless you are paid by Apple or a Zombie, can do you really believe and iPhone is any better and a T-Mobile G2 or any high end Android handset?
Although I dislike using the term "fanboi" in any context, I cannot help but note how ironic it is that you disparage iPhone users by using that term, when you yourself seem to be blindly pushing Android even to people who would be better served by using an iPhone. There is a real difference in security and ease of use.
You are a fanboi. He wasn't pushing anything: he was making a valid point that the market today is not like it was when the iPhone was first introduced. From a functional perspective, Android products are generally equivalent in capability to the iPhone, and are actually ahead of the game in others. They're often a better value as well, although I've never found an iPhone user to understand that concept when applied to smartphones.
... and falls from the top spot. We'll see. Jobs' vision drove Apple to where it is and it remains to be seen if the company can flourish without it.
There may or may not be a "real" difference anymore (many people prefer Android for one reason or another, hey, no accounting for taste) so claims that one is intrinsically superior to the other are fundamentally ridiculous. Face facts: smartphone tech is maturing, rapidly, and the iPhone is no longer the unquestioned leader in that market. Certainly it isn't in terms of unit sales. And that is to be expected and is entirely proper: nobody (and I mean nobody) remains market leader forever. That's just the way it works.
Put it this way: there's a reason that Apple broke into the tablet market, even though they were hardly the originators of that technology either. It's because they knew very well that their lead in the cellular market would eventually be lost, and it has been. No different than Microsoft casting desperately about to find something, anything with which they can make money outside of Windows and Office. Well, it is different in that Microsoft has continually failed at that whereas Apple has had some spectacular successes. But it's the same idea, and I give Apple credit for pulling it off again.
Of course, it remains to be seen whether their new leadership can continue Jobs' tradition of learning from his own failures and coming up with something that people just absolutely must have. Generally speaking, when the founder of a successful organization dies or retires, his creation loses focus, becomes excessively conservative and risk-averse
I was a loyal and happy T-mobile customer since the Voicestream days, just before they became T-mobile. I waited as long as I could for them to get the iPhone, I considered the G2 and myTouch phones, but ultimately my job (iPhone app development) required that I own an iPhone, so I could wait no longer. So yeah, I'm one of those who left T-mobile to get an iPhone.
Can't argue with your decision since you're a developer, but you should understand that you're far in the minority. People left AT&T in droves to go to T-Mobile, and that had much more to do with T-Mobile's reasonable policies and pricing than choice of smartphone. The same thing happened to Comcast when AT&T U-Verse became widely available. If your decision isn't based around the availability of a specific piece of hardware, but instead revolves around overall value ... well, odds are you'll make a different decision. I've received far better value for my money on T-Mobile with my Android phone than the people I know who continually bitch about being stuck on (and I quote) "AT&T's crappy network." Generally people like their iPhones ... they just hate the company that provides their connectivity.
... you'll know precisely who to thank for it.
To those of you who are on AT&T, remember this: it is not your Daddy's AT&T. That company was taken over by SBC (known by some as Southern Bell, but considered by most to be the Southern Bastards Club, the acknowledged worst of the one-time Baby Bells) some years ago. It is American Telephone and Telegraph now in name only. So, when your service sucks, your costs go up, and you get overage charges and limited, tiered bandwidth
There's a reason why so many people are up in arms about this deal. It's going to mean even more consolidation in a market dominated by the likes of SBC and Verizon, who have turned bending their customers over the end table into a high art form.
No thanks.
Are you kidding? Unless you are paid by Apple or a Zombie, can do you really believe and iPhone is any better and a T-Mobile G2 or any high end Android handset?
Really? Want some Apple flavored Kool Aid?
I agree. Why is it that Apple fans have to make everything about the iPhone? Considering that the handset market is owned by Android, not by Apple (half a million Android phones light up every day) the claim that T-Mobile is being hurt by the lack of that product is remarkable. Now, the tablet market is a different matter entirely, but we aren't talking about tablets here.
... I have one of those and you'll pry it from my cold dead fingers. It's rooted and running Cyanogenmod 7 (no choice in operating system is yet another reason why I detest Apple and AT&T.)
More to the point, when you look at the total number of handsets sold, smartphones are a drop in the bucket. Supersmart phones such as the iPhone and high-end Android devices, even more so. Cellular outfits did just fine before the iPhone came along, and they'd do just fine without it. About the only thing the iPhone did for AT&T was allow them to sell voice/data plans at the subsidized price for unsubsidized phones!
The fact that millions of iPhone owners fell for that ongoing scam still amazes me. Those people who bought a Nexus One from Google and went with T-Mobile found themselves getting a discount, because T-Mobile wasn't providing the phone. Just good business. Now, I suppose in that context the iPhone did hurt T-Mo, because AT&T was making extra money to not supply a device to the consumer. Really says a lot about AT&T's management than anything else. Says even more about your average iPhone user.
I also agree with you about the T-Mobile G2 / HTC Desire Z
I would also like to see some education on the parental front. I would much rather a parent monitoring my communications with a child than my employer. After all, it is the parent who is ultimately responsible for the upbringing of the child and it is the parent who should be deciding the boundaries that other adults have with their children.
While I agree with this, it is easier said than done. When I was a kid, I always a quarter in my pocket which I could use to call home or my parent's work. Today, there are simply no pay phones anywhere where my kids spend time (a big city in the USA). My kids don't have mobile phones yet (because they can't reliably use them yet), but when they do, they will have them on their person all day. How do you monitor phone calls/sms/web browsing in this scenario? Not a glib question -- I try to do a lot to monitor my children's online/tv/etc time. There are no private TVs or computers in the house; we talk about what it means to enter an email address into a Club Penguin form; etc. But at some point, they are going to have to go out into the world on their own, and they are going to have to have a way to phone home when they are in trouble. Am I supposed to do a data dump on their phones at the end of each day and interrogate them about mysterious SMSs that I find? I'm not really interested in that for many reasons...
One word: Latitude.
Sometimes that abuse will have extraordinarily negative consequences, such as a teacher using their position to gain access to children then physically, emotionally, or sexually abusing them.
Sure, and for every case of abuse that occurs, should millions of otherwise perfectly normal, healthy, nurturing relationships be artificially severed? That attitude is morally questionable, akin to the "no matter the cost, if it saves but one life, it's worth it" attitude that is so prevalent among our psychotically risk-averse society.
A lot of those are already illegal; explicit violations of the first amendment through new legislation dont really fix any problems, they just create a zillion new ones.
Tell me, if its already illegal for a teacher to abuse their position of power to have an inappropriate relationship with their students, and if such laws dont always work, what makes THIS law so effective that it will put a stop to such relationships?
It won't, it can't, and it was never intended to work. What it does do (as others in this thread have pointed out) is gain votes for certain politicians, so in that context it will work whether it is ultimately signed into law or not. Even when such a law is struck down, the lawmakers involved can point to it and say with pride, "I'm here for you, people! I tried to Protect your Children but the courts stabbed me in the back. Just remember that next time you in the polling booth."
... hell, morally bankrupt leadership, are the voters who never bother to ask why a judge said, "No dice."
What disturbs me about that, even more than the ethically-challenged
{sigh} Ignorance is bliss, I guess.
You have no first amendment rights when it comes to talking to children. Sorry.
Having a right, and having your government fail to acknowledge that right, are two entirely different matters, ones that I wish people around here would get straight in their heads. The Supreme Law of our Land reserves most rights to the people, and places substantial restrictions upon government. That is because the Constitution was primarily intended to rein in the behavior of our leadership, not that of We the People. If you understood that document in the context of the times in which it was written, that would make more sense to you.
All else is a matter of deliberate misinterpretation of the Constitution by the courts and our lawmakers. We should be telling our elected officials what is Constitutional, not the other way around. The Founders would be not be pleased by the current situation. Not at all.
Have you ever heard the phrase, "leaving the fox to guard the henhouse?" Well, just think of Congress as the fox and the Constitution as the henhouse.
...are assumed to be under the "parental supervision" of the school-- the teachers receive some degree of the authority that the parent has, including the right to ask students to be silent.
Yes, it's called in loco parentis . The linked article goes into some detail about what that actually means.
People are seriously talking about leaving all Google services (and posting how-to FAQs). They're even contemplating using Bing for search. Just how toxic do you need to make your brand for people to contemplate using Bing?
True, but we're talking the early adopters here, the ones that are actually thinking about these issues (like us, here on Slashdot.) Google is using us to help work out the bugs. Now that's just great, I'm happy to help so far as that goes. But ultimately Google is going to have to shoot for popularity, for numbers, and I doubt that the bulk of humanity is really very concerned about their privacy. The fact that there are seven hundred million Facebook users tells me that much.
Google is just figuring out a way to pry as much information out of each user as it possibly can, in order to more effectively advertise to them. I mean, it's what they do. So I don't really expect Google to pay much attention to the privacy naysayers. All this smoke about trying to improve the quality of the conversations is just that: smoke: I've had hundreds of very interesting dialogues here on Slashdot, and I've never used my real name. So I really don't buy that real names are necessary for a viable social networking service.
It's a fine line though: the people who are signing up now are the ones that are going to either a. proselytize on Google's behalf or b. dis the service to all and sundry. It doesn't matter how wonderful your service is if it gets an initial bad rap among the very people you're depending upon to sell it to other people for you!
Even if the European Patent Convention literally excludes software from patents, the European Patent Office and the German courts interpret the exclusion narrowly, which makes software patents valid in the end.
What does that mean, exactly?
... and the legislators have destroyed software patents ...
Sounds like they've been attempting to destroy software patents, without as much real success as we might like.
Sounds like they have grown too large and really don't care what their 'customers' think ( yes, i know their *true* customers are the companies who advertise, but you get my point ). Time to find another "service" provider.
That's a good idea. I hear there's this thing called "Facebook" ...
I'm tempted to just drop anybody who signs up for this scheme in protest.
I'm inclined to agree. Google always seemed to have a better handle on the importance of trust than many others in the online world. I never bothered with Facebook for that reason, and if Google puts me in the position where I don't trust who I have to thank for their services, no matter how useful they are ... well, it's not like social networking is an essential. Some will claim that it is, but that's only because they need psychiatric care.
Obviously Google is hoping that enough people will find G+ sufficiently valuable in spite of this issue. And they're probably right: given how little thought millions of people give to their privacy online, those of us who are complaining about this are the merest blip on the radar.
That's too bad though: from a technical and usability perspective, Google+ is pretty nice.
I'm not exactly sure what Google is trying to achieve. I think that's part of the problem. It's not enough to say, "Oh, we're just trying to maintain and improve the user experience." That's the same kind of blathering idiocy that outfits like Comcast spew when they perform MITM attacks on their own customers and claim it was just "network management". What kind of community are you trying to build, and exactly what do you, Google, expect to receive in return for your largesse? Is it just that they want to force the use real identities so they can better their profiling, to improve the rate of return on targeted advertising? That's all fine and dandy, I suppose ... but maybe I don't want that. And maybe there's something else.
Hm.
I'm pretty sure that most of those verified big artists don't even use their facebook/g+ account, but let their marketing team manage it.
No doubt you're right. On the other hand, very little else about modern media personalities is real either.
I feel terribly sorry for waking you, but if what you're saying is true, then Sony would be bankrupt.
I think it's only a matter of time.
These two parts in particular are exactly right. It seems that no matter what, people refuse to understand what is actually happening. It is scary to see just how easily the justice system can be perverted, provided you have enough money and a loud enough voice.
Thank you. A sales guy who used to work at my company told me one day that, "you know, they need all those powers." I asked him why ... he said, "because otherwise they wouldn't make any money."
I did make an effort to try and educate him but he just point-blank didn't want to hear it. In his (admittedly tiny) mind, "Downloading = Piracy = Lost Sales." No room for any further discussion, and I told him that he was, in fact, an ideal music industry customer. That seemed to please him, for some odd reason.
Yeah. Scary.