Maybe, just like the amount of money America spends on wars keeps the American illiterate and homeless very happy, not to mention the immense benefit it is providing to the recession-hit debt-ridden American economy.
Yes and no. I applaud India for wanting to have the ability to launch satellites: the economic benefits from advanced weather prediction alone have been worth the investment. So investing in space is not automatically a matter of taking food from the mouths of starving children. Helping farmers produce more food, more reliably, does the exact opposite in fact.
Ultimately, the problem is one of critical mass, getting enough self-sustaining infrastructure in space so that we can begin to exploit resources elsewhere in the System.
See, this is what I detest about Americans. The sheer smugness, ignorance, arrogance and incredible lack of knowledge is mind boggling.
So, we're both ignorant and suffering from an incredible lack of knowledge? Wow, we must all be pretty stupid then, low-IQ sub-humans who can, at best, feed ourselves and perhaps learn to tie our own shoes. I guess all the scientific, technological and military progress we've made in the past century is just a figment of your fevered imagination.
See, this is what I detest about bigoted non-Americans. Matter of fact, I detest it in anyone, from any society. This bland assumption that one can extrapolate from obviously limited experience with another people (in this case, to a nation of some THREE HUNDRED MILLION) goes beyond merely mind-boggling to being truly Biblical in nature. For myself, I know people from a variety of different cultures: some are remarkable individuals, some are truly ignorant, and some are just assholes... but in none of those cases do I assume that I can extend my knowledge of them to make any judgment whatsoever about their fellow citizens. To do so is bigotry, and the picture you just painted of yourself is one of a bigot.
I wish you would just read back your own message, and ask yourself, "How would I feel if someone made such an uninformed, demeaning remark about my country, my people? Would I like it?"
I rather suspect you're not capable of such intellectual honesty, but that's not my problem, fortunately.
I recommend that you just grow up. It's hard, but once you do you start to see a lot of good in people of other countries. It's a big world out there, and not everyone is as they seem, not everyone can be placed into neat little pigeonholes in order to satisfy your ego, your need for some feeling of superiority. If anyone is being smug, arrogant, and expressing ignorance... well my friend, in this thread you're it.
Agreed on your last comment. No matter how much America wants the world to become this utopia, it won't ever happen until this type of helpful information is shared. Too bad it all comes down to military technology and egos.
Privatize the space program already!! Whos in??
No, it comes down to military technology and egos that really really want to use it. We have a big military (although, to be fair, it's a hell of a lot smaller now that it once was, massive force reductions since the fall of the Soviet Empire) because certain of those big egos were pointing big explosive devices at us. They still are, but certain other big egos in Washington seem constitutionally unable to accept that, in the odd belief that the "world is now safe for Democracy", whatever the Hell that means. Since the USSR collapsed, the world is a lot more dangerous place.
Furthermore, you seem to be of the (badly mistaken) idea that such information, when shared with allies, will remain with allies. That's just not true. China, for example, is not an ally, and never will be an ally. So far as I'm concerned, if they want to achieve the same capabilities in near-space that we and the Russians have demonstrated, they should have to spend the same untold billions that we did. Period. There's no benefit to us for sharing space technology, none whatsoever, not at this time. The military applications are too real, and too readily exploited. That's pretty basic: you don't give an enemy his weapons, you make him pay to build them for himself, and you make him pay even more if he ever decides to use them. And, in the end, he may decide it's not worth the investment, and find other uses for those resources. And if he does, that's to your benefit, because now he's less of a threat.
Besides, forgetting the military aspects of space technology for a moment, why should we give any such nation a leg up on the economic advantages of space? That's not what our government (in fact, any government) is paid to do... give away its citizens hard-earned investments to hostile foreign powers. Frankly, I think the United States Federal Government has already done far too much of that, and it has been to the ongoing detriment of this country. Much more of this give-away-the-candy-store mentality is going to destroy what little we have left, and it's not as much as some people think.
it's not clear what effect this will have on Google's ultimate video strategy.
For that matter, Google's ultimate video strategy is unclear, quite possibly because they don't actually have one. Google is investing big money in lots of technologies, presumably hoping that one or more of them will become the "next big thing" when advertising is no longer the cash cow for them that it is now.
I agree that T-Mobile is the least evil of the U.S. cellular carriers. But I still can't, say, try a Nokia N900 in a store before I buy one online and put a T-Mo SIM in it.
Oh I agree, and when I say that T-Mobile is the only worthwhile carrier, that is only in comparison to the rest of the bunch. And T-Mobile is only as customer-friendly as they are because they are the underdog in the U.S. market, and are trying to gain marketshare. But that's competition at work: T-Mobile has something to gain by being nice to us, and so long as that's true, they'll get my business.
It can be done- the Palm Pre/Pixi/WebOS was/is that way. There was no NEED to "root" the phone, because they gave everyone root access by just entering developer mode. It was wonderful- very hackable, very nice. If you screw up the phone (which I never did), no big deal... it is "unbrickable". Just power it on with a key held in, download the current image from the web and flash it back to normal. Why the carriers didn't lock it down, I don't know.
If Android could do that, then I would be very happy. It is irritating when carriers put junkware on the phone, especially stuff that launches automatically and runs/does stuff you don't want.
The initial releases of Android were shipped with root access enabled by default. Nobody seemed to care, at first. But as the Market developed, Google was concerned that developers would eschew Android if any user could just copy.APKs from phone to phone. So they disabled root access. It wasn't, so far as I'm aware, a carrier decision. And, truth be told, it simply did not (and still does not) matter for the bulk of users. Regardless, these devices are still computers, and no user should be prevented from accessing any resource on the system if he or she wants, including replacing the carrier-supplied operating system. So far as I'm concerned, unless they plan to simply rent phones rather than subsidize and sell the things, they shouldn't be locking users out of their own property.
Not a fanboi but I can say T-Mobile didn't screw with my Android.
Well, not much I suppose, unless you count that stupid unremovable Facebook app. They must have done some kind of deal with that Zuckerberg kid. But yes, on my recently-acquired G2 it was pretty much a stock Froyo experience, and it even had the USB/Wireless tethering options enabled. Nevertheless, after I got S-OFF, root and installed Cyanogenmod I stopped caring much about what T-Mobile did or didn't offer anyway. And that is precisely how it should be: locking my computer (any computer, desktop, laptop, notebook... or smartphone) to a branded OS prevents me from considering your product in my purchasing decisions.
Also "Unlimited Data" still means that, unlike the Asshats at Verizon and ATT that have the nerve to legally tell you unlimited data means 5GB or whatever. Then here comes Joe Asshat public and says "Oh, unlimited means 5 GB! OK- here let me bend over a little farther to make it easier for you".
Actually, no it doesn't. T-Mobile has a 5 Gb limit (used to be ten gigs, some time ago) after which they throttle you. Slow your connection, that is... so far as I know T-Mobile hasn't asphyxiated any customers yet. So you do have a continuous data connection no matter how much you use, but if you hit the cap you're not getting your 3G or HSUPA speeds anymore. I don't mind that: what I'm more concerned about is suddenly not having a data connection rather than not being able to watch Youtube. Now, I'm not actually sure what the speed hit is: the store manager said (and I quote) "I don't think they slow you down to Edge speeds, not quite." I'm paying the extra five bucks a month for HSUPA, and it is fairly impressive. Tethering to my laptop via USB, and running a broadbandreports.com speed test, I've been getting consistent 6-7 mbit/sec speeds, and the phone is supposedly capable of about double that. Latency is fairly high, compared to a wired connection, but still not bad at all, and better than the previous technology.
And I'll admit, on a recent cross-country road trip it was pretty damn cool to be online everywhere we went. One of us would be driving, and the other could browse, check mail, and Skype from the laptop we took along.
The downside might be more support headaches or returned bricked phones for the phone companies. But can't they look at that as a potential new market? Yeah, when you sell someone a computer and they trash it, it's a headache.
These phones could be made damn-near unbrickable. The only reason anyone bricks their phone is because of the hoops that you have to go through, the risks you have to take, when flashing boot-loader and radio firmware. I managed to get S-OFF on my G2 so I could root it, and I was more than a little nervous as I was doing it (and I've spent over thirty years at the command line.) Nevertheless, it's a nice phone but if I couldn't get my Cyanogenmod on it, it was going to take the damn thing back. Thanks to the hard work of a number of coders, I was able to get my favorite ROM on my G2, and now I'm as happy as a bee in a china shop (or was that a bull in a flower shop?)
If the manufacturers stopped wasting time and money trying to protect the things from "unauthorized" changes, and spent that same energy making those same changes safe and painless, all of this would go away. The carriers are sooooo afraid that they're going to lose business by having all their crapware removed. Ironically, in the PC world, crapware was losing companies business: Sony even tried, at one point, to charge for the crapware removal to make customers pay for the "loss of revenue" (and got severely bitch-slapped in the press.) They all, cellphone carriers and PC vendors alike, see crapware as an alternate revenue stream. But you know what? That's not a legitimate use of the computer I bought from you, whether it sits on my desk or fits in my pocket. Find another way to make more money, or give me the phone and service free for the life of the contract.
So far as carrier complaints about the reliability of third-party ROMs is concerned, I'll place my faith in the likes of Steve Kondik (aka Cyanogen) and his crew.
There is a standard. It's just that the US has not widely adopted it yet.
Do a little research and see how much of the world uses GSM and how much follows your 'lead'.
Why did you have to make that comment that way? Comes off like sour grapes. Besides, the GP made no references to our "lead" in anything, and he was registering a legitimate complete about the lack of standardization here. Whether or not that standard will ultimately prove to be GSM is irrelevant, and we are under no particular compulsion to follow Europe's "lead". Europe had no choice but to standardize, but the reasons for that don't necessarily follow in the U.S. Here, the benefits of standardization are primarily to the user, not the carriers, consequently they have little motivation to move to a single standard. And if we do, there's no reason that it will have to look anything like GSM (or CDMA, or anything else currently in existence.) Everything has room for improvement.
The only major U.S. network that is GSM is T-Mobile (and yes, I happen to be using them, but not because they're GSM-based... it's because their plans and policies suit my needs.)
Why didn't Google put a clause in the manufacturer/provider contract "The user will always be allowed full access to the device being managed by this operating system"?
Because Google cares more about pragmatism than ideals, and wanted to sell phones.
Well, Google isn't exactly a cellphone carrier or provider, not yet (there's been a lot of speculation as to what would happen if Google did decide to enter those markets.) What they actually care about are eyeballs viewing ads, and in fact Android was never intended to be anything but a way for Google to extend its advertising hegemony into mobile space. That, and as a research platform to find out what it is we want, or can be convinced we want, that may at some point make them additional revenue. Sales of handsets doesn't make them any money at all, unlike Microsoft which charges a substantial royalty for its mobile operating system.
I get the distinct impression that the success of Android as a mobile operating system was rather a surprise for Google's leadership. Probably an unpleasant surprise for the likes of the two Steves, who both have their own designs on the smartphone market.
you mean gooogle and the end user. but he's not important. Anyway, its regretable to see how the spirit of open source is being perverted. And you have stated the justifications they would use. from hardware manufacturers to app developers. Sad Sad Sad...
Yes, but the reason this persists is because users have (from the beginning) been taught that their phones are nothing but appliances whose functionality is controlled by the provider. That attitude, that level of acceptance. must be changed, people must begin to understand that those so-called "smart phones" are nothing else but full-fledged pocket computers. It has been said before, but I'll say it again: why do we tolerate a level of control over computers that happen to reside in our pockets, that we would never, ever tolerate on our laptops or our desktop machines?
In a way, the Android Market and Apple's equivalent help to enforce that way of thinking. I mean, if a carrier (or Google, or Apple) doesn't want people to have a particular program they simply remove it from the market (or don't allow it to ever be put there in the first place) so users are none the wiser. Yes, in the case of a stock Android install, you can turn on the ability to load non-Market applications, but how many people know that? How many would even know how to download and install an.APK that wasn't from the market? And some distros even eliminate that ability entirely, making the device much more iPhone like in its closedness.
It's a devious approach, when you get right down to it. Say, for example, the Android and Apple smartphones had been offered as WinMo traditionally was, e.g. without a repository. it would be very obvious when you went online to buy some software, tried to put it on your phone... and found that it wouldn't run because the carrier had blocked it. The repository approach, because it is controlled by commercial entities with a vested interested in keeping certain classes of software away from the masses, doesn't work as well as it should. Remember the flap over tethering? Carriers first said, "well, tethering isn't technically possible" on the one hand, while removing and blocking such apps from being available with the other.
We all know how Apple handles the iPhone Market (with a heavy, mailed fist) and Google has, for its part, been too damn carrier-friendly when removing apps from the Android Market. I absolutely do not want any corporate entity determining what software I can, and can not, run on my own personal computer.
the customers of the handset vendors IS NOT YOU THE END USER, it is the carriers.
Why is this the case? Why isn't it easy to go into an electronics store and buy an unlocked phone at retail, and then take it to your T-Mobile store to get a SIM-only "Even More Plus" plan?
It is, as long as you're talking T-Mo. So far as I'm concerned, as a long-time Android user, T-Mobile is about the only worthwhile carrier out there (somewhat ironic given that they're nothing more than Deutsche Telekom's U.S. division, and people in Germany that I know complain about them for the same reason we complain about the likes of AT&T or Verizon.) They're hardly perfect, policywise, and coverage isn't as good as some of the big boys, funny-colored floating maps aside. However my plan covers unlimited voice roaming in the U.S. so I don't care whose area I'm in for that, and the only time I've lost data for more than a few seconds was when driving across the desert through New Mexico and Texas (although, oddly enough, I got HSUPA, five bars, in Amarillo.) For a lot of that trip, I was running Edge or occasionally GPRS, but Google Nav worked, and the service was good enough for my friends to track us on Latitude. Canyons and crevasses were a problem for my service, but then again AT&T and Verizon failed just as quickly there.
My current plan gives me 5 Gb of transfer per month: I felt comfortable with this since I track my usage, and I rarely go above a gig. They also don't shut you off if you go over, they just throttle you, which is a more reasonable policy (maybe you can't stream movies off Youtube but at least you can browse, navigate and get your mail.) It's an "Unlimited" plan (yeah, I know, dirty word here on Slashdot) but it's really more an unlimited time plan, vs unlimited transfer. Still, unless you're downloading torrents or a lot of music that's not so bad, so long as you are talking the amount of data that a cellular device can consume. If you start adding what users can do with a tethered laptop, for example, it's a very different picture. Unfortunately, you really can't replace that home broadband connection with your cell phone just yet.
Furthermore, if you consider the cost per bit, well, obviously cellular providers are making out like bandits. Take a home broadband provider: Comcast limits you to, what, 250 gigabytes per month? My current U-Verse connection doesn't have any such caps (yet!) but let's assume it is a similar order of magnitude before they get cranky and start finger pointing and shouting "bandwidth hog! bandwidth hog!" The cost for my home connection is roughly double that of my phone connection and has well over double the maximum transfer speed. As it happens, I have a 12 meg connection at home, and I benchmarked my phone at six (which is kinda impressive actually.) That means I'm paying twice as much to T-Mobile for approximately 50 times less transfer.
Which goes to show that, so far as broadband and data connections are concerned, "good" is very much relative to what part of the industry you are discussing.
Re:Okay, here's a question ...
on
New IE Zero Day
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· Score: 1
I've met smart people who think that Internet Explorer is the Internet.
No, you haven't.
That's nothing. I know smart people who believe that AOL is the Internet.
Okay, here's a question ...
on
New IE Zero Day
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· Score: -1, Troll
Microsoft has released a notice about a new zero day attack against Internet Explorer.
And this is noteworthy why? How many Slashdotters use Internet Explorer for anything other than the occasional WindowsUpdate in XP? This may be News for Nerds, but it hardly matters. Everyone here knows very well that Internet Explorer is too dangerous for general Web use. That Microsoft is suffering yet another security failure doesn't really elicit much interest from me, I must say.
It irks me that there are better options than Explorer readily available, but so many people just don't care enough about their own security and privacy to avail themselves of those options. It's not like paying through the nose for an anti-virus product: these things are free to use! I feel less and less sorry for Explorer users every day, having heard all the excuses ("it doesn't look like Explorer, my favorite free-malware-site doesn't like it, it's too hard to install, I'm too stupid to use a computer, and so on ad infinitum.) It's not as if the likes of Firefox, Chrome and Opera are hard to find, or aren't in the public's eye nowadays. Hell, a few months ago a major U.S. bank issued a warning recommending that its customers eschew Explorer in favor of anything else and further recommended that any online banking be done in anything but Windows (preferably Linux/Unix.) Of course, the month after that they made another public statement to the effect that they would only support Internet Explorer (note: they didn't follow through on that threat. I got the distinct impression that it was a "left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing" situation.)
I am not at all convinced that getting the government involved will improve my life.
Unfortunately, leaving corporate America unregulated, and leaving the current state of regulatory capture intact is untenable.
Regardless of your political point of view shouldn't the Internet remain free from regulation?
There's a dichotomy here that I don't think most people understand. Yes, the Internet should remain free of regulation, however the companies that provide Internet connectivity should not. The two are not the same, and regulating one is not the same as regulating the other. In fact, properly regulating one (the ISPs) is very likely to keep the other (the Internet) more free than it is now. Take AT&T, for example. Since it was originally chartered, it was a heavily-regulated State-instituted monopoly, and the regulations under which it labored were there to guarantee that all Americans had quality phone service. Yet, at the same time, the law (specifically, the Communications Act of 1934) had little to say about how We the People actually used the phone system we were paying for, just as the law should not dictate how we use the Internet.
Besides, it's pretty clear from recent events that allowing major American corporations (and it doesn't matter if it's a bank, an ISP, or an automobile maker) free reign over their alleged customers is a bad idea. The people that run these outfits are sociopaths (and I'm being generous there) and either we boot their collective ass out, or we have to control them, and the government is the only entity capable of doing that.
Ultimately, history is shown us that we need the institution of government. The question is what do we actually want it to do for us. Nothing is no longer an option.
I have been enough to America, to know that msot of the folk is highly prejudicied for a reason or another.
Do you realize that you just expressed a fundamental level of bigotry that exceeds whatever you're claiming we have? What's more remarkable, you apparently didn't even recognize that fact.
So, for a country as vast as ours, some three hundred million souls, you're saying that our entire culture is impolite, based entirely upon your obviously limited experience? All of us? Really? Americans have to deal with people from, well, every other nation on the planet on a daily basis. We just do, it's part and parcel of who we are. Yes, there is a lot of antipathy towards certain societies, for various reasons but, you know what? That's true everywhere. If you're trying to make the astonishing claim that Europeans (especially the French) have some kind of otherworldly tolerance for people of other societies, well, you're full of little red ants. I have nothing against the French, myself, but if you're intellectually honest you'll have to admit that you do tend to hold yourselves in pretty high regard, and you may not realize it but that attitude (especially towards ugly, coarse, crude, uncivilized Americans) often comes through when you interact with us, and some people don't like it. So, take a look at yourself before you criticize us, and don't go around calling other people dicks until you're absolutely certain that you aren't the cause of the problem.
A few weeks ago I drove several thousand miles across my country in a sixteen foot truck. You know what? I met a bunch of very polite and respectful individuals. Somehow managed to miss encountering any dicks. My feeling, just reading between the lines of your post, is that you're something of a dick yourself, who probably managed to offend a few people during your stay. Honestly, you're hilarious. One thing you will find about Americans (so far as you can generalize about such a fractious society) is that we'll tend to treat you the way you treat us. Come off like an arrogant prick, and if you're lucky you'll just be ignored.
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Maybe, just like the amount of money America spends on wars keeps the American illiterate and homeless very happy, not to mention the immense benefit it is providing to the recession-hit debt-ridden American economy.
Yes and no. I applaud India for wanting to have the ability to launch satellites: the economic benefits from advanced weather prediction alone have been worth the investment. So investing in space is not automatically a matter of taking food from the mouths of starving children. Helping farmers produce more food, more reliably, does the exact opposite in fact.
Ultimately, the problem is one of critical mass, getting enough self-sustaining infrastructure in space so that we can begin to exploit resources elsewhere in the System.
American children have a saying...
'When you point a finger at me, three point back at you."
Re-read your rant and think about it.
Ha ... nowadays they point .38s, but hey, the principle's the same.
Calm down, he's just frustrated that we don't like Cricket.
Yeah. Or soccer (I mean, football.)
See, this is what I detest about Americans. The sheer smugness, ignorance, arrogance and incredible lack of knowledge is mind boggling.
So, we're both ignorant and suffering from an incredible lack of knowledge? Wow, we must all be pretty stupid then, low-IQ sub-humans who can, at best, feed ourselves and perhaps learn to tie our own shoes. I guess all the scientific, technological and military progress we've made in the past century is just a figment of your fevered imagination.
... but in none of those cases do I assume that I can extend my knowledge of them to make any judgment whatsoever about their fellow citizens. To do so is bigotry, and the picture you just painted of yourself is one of a bigot.
... well my friend, in this thread you're it.
See, this is what I detest about bigoted non-Americans. Matter of fact, I detest it in anyone, from any society. This bland assumption that one can extrapolate from obviously limited experience with another people (in this case, to a nation of some THREE HUNDRED MILLION) goes beyond merely mind-boggling to being truly Biblical in nature. For myself, I know people from a variety of different cultures: some are remarkable individuals, some are truly ignorant, and some are just assholes
I wish you would just read back your own message, and ask yourself, "How would I feel if someone made such an uninformed, demeaning remark about my country, my people? Would I like it?"
I rather suspect you're not capable of such intellectual honesty, but that's not my problem, fortunately.
I recommend that you just grow up. It's hard, but once you do you start to see a lot of good in people of other countries. It's a big world out there, and not everyone is as they seem, not everyone can be placed into neat little pigeonholes in order to satisfy your ego, your need for some feeling of superiority. If anyone is being smug, arrogant, and expressing ignorance
Agreed on your last comment. No matter how much America wants the world to become this utopia, it won't ever happen until this type of helpful information is shared. Too bad it all comes down to military technology and egos.
Privatize the space program already!! Whos in??
No, it comes down to military technology and egos that really really want to use it. We have a big military (although, to be fair, it's a hell of a lot smaller now that it once was, massive force reductions since the fall of the Soviet Empire) because certain of those big egos were pointing big explosive devices at us. They still are, but certain other big egos in Washington seem constitutionally unable to accept that, in the odd belief that the "world is now safe for Democracy", whatever the Hell that means. Since the USSR collapsed, the world is a lot more dangerous place.
... give away its citizens hard-earned investments to hostile foreign powers. Frankly, I think the United States Federal Government has already done far too much of that, and it has been to the ongoing detriment of this country. Much more of this give-away-the-candy-store mentality is going to destroy what little we have left, and it's not as much as some people think.
Furthermore, you seem to be of the (badly mistaken) idea that such information, when shared with allies, will remain with allies. That's just not true. China, for example, is not an ally, and never will be an ally. So far as I'm concerned, if they want to achieve the same capabilities in near-space that we and the Russians have demonstrated, they should have to spend the same untold billions that we did. Period. There's no benefit to us for sharing space technology, none whatsoever, not at this time. The military applications are too real, and too readily exploited. That's pretty basic: you don't give an enemy his weapons, you make him pay to build them for himself, and you make him pay even more if he ever decides to use them. And, in the end, he may decide it's not worth the investment, and find other uses for those resources. And if he does, that's to your benefit, because now he's less of a threat.
Besides, forgetting the military aspects of space technology for a moment, why should we give any such nation a leg up on the economic advantages of space? That's not what our government (in fact, any government) is paid to do
it's not clear what effect this will have on Google's ultimate video strategy.
For that matter, Google's ultimate video strategy is unclear, quite possibly because they don't actually have one. Google is investing big money in lots of technologies, presumably hoping that one or more of them will become the "next big thing" when advertising is no longer the cash cow for them that it is now.
Uh, they bought On2 and open sourced its best codec. They didn't bought On2 just to kill it. They killed a small part of the On2 product line.
Oh, and I think you mean "cue", not "queue".
Well, to his credit he spelled "excoriate" correctly, even if he was otherwise off-base.
I agree that T-Mobile is the least evil of the U.S. cellular carriers. But I still can't, say, try a Nokia N900 in a store before I buy one online and put a T-Mo SIM in it.
Oh I agree, and when I say that T-Mobile is the only worthwhile carrier, that is only in comparison to the rest of the bunch. And T-Mobile is only as customer-friendly as they are because they are the underdog in the U.S. market, and are trying to gain marketshare. But that's competition at work: T-Mobile has something to gain by being nice to us, and so long as that's true, they'll get my business.
It can be done- the Palm Pre/Pixi/WebOS was/is that way. There was no NEED to "root" the phone, because they gave everyone root access by just entering developer mode. It was wonderful- very hackable, very nice. If you screw up the phone (which I never did), no big deal... it is "unbrickable". Just power it on with a key held in, download the current image from the web and flash it back to normal. Why the carriers didn't lock it down, I don't know.
If Android could do that, then I would be very happy. It is irritating when carriers put junkware on the phone, especially stuff that launches automatically and runs/does stuff you don't want.
The initial releases of Android were shipped with root access enabled by default. Nobody seemed to care, at first. But as the Market developed, Google was concerned that developers would eschew Android if any user could just copy .APKs from phone to phone. So they disabled root access. It wasn't, so far as I'm aware, a carrier decision. And, truth be told, it simply did not (and still does not) matter for the bulk of users. Regardless, these devices are still computers, and no user should be prevented from accessing any resource on the system if he or she wants, including replacing the carrier-supplied operating system. So far as I'm concerned, unless they plan to simply rent phones rather than subsidize and sell the things, they shouldn't be locking users out of their own property.
Not a fanboi but I can say T-Mobile didn't screw with my Android.
Well, not much I suppose, unless you count that stupid unremovable Facebook app. They must have done some kind of deal with that Zuckerberg kid. But yes, on my recently-acquired G2 it was pretty much a stock Froyo experience, and it even had the USB/Wireless tethering options enabled. Nevertheless, after I got S-OFF, root and installed Cyanogenmod I stopped caring much about what T-Mobile did or didn't offer anyway. And that is precisely how it should be: locking my computer (any computer, desktop, laptop, notebook ... or smartphone) to a branded OS prevents me from considering your product in my purchasing decisions.
Also "Unlimited Data" still means that, unlike the Asshats at Verizon and ATT that have the nerve to legally tell you unlimited data means 5GB or whatever. Then here comes Joe Asshat public and says "Oh, unlimited means 5 GB! OK- here let me bend over a little farther to make it easier for you".
Actually, no it doesn't. T-Mobile has a 5 Gb limit (used to be ten gigs, some time ago) after which they throttle you. Slow your connection, that is ... so far as I know T-Mobile hasn't asphyxiated any customers yet. So you do have a continuous data connection no matter how much you use, but if you hit the cap you're not getting your 3G or HSUPA speeds anymore. I don't mind that: what I'm more concerned about is suddenly not having a data connection rather than not being able to watch Youtube. Now, I'm not actually sure what the speed hit is: the store manager said (and I quote) "I don't think they slow you down to Edge speeds, not quite." I'm paying the extra five bucks a month for HSUPA, and it is fairly impressive. Tethering to my laptop via USB, and running a broadbandreports.com speed test, I've been getting consistent 6-7 mbit/sec speeds, and the phone is supposedly capable of about double that. Latency is fairly high, compared to a wired connection, but still not bad at all, and better than the previous technology.
And I'll admit, on a recent cross-country road trip it was pretty damn cool to be online everywhere we went. One of us would be driving, and the other could browse, check mail, and Skype from the laptop we took along.
If one carrier did that then the others would be forced to do the same or lose their customers.
Until they got some friendly Congressprick to make that competition illegal by attaching a rider to a farm bill.
The downside might be more support headaches or returned bricked phones for the phone companies. But can't they look at that as a potential new market? Yeah, when you sell someone a computer and they trash it, it's a headache.
These phones could be made damn-near unbrickable. The only reason anyone bricks their phone is because of the hoops that you have to go through, the risks you have to take, when flashing boot-loader and radio firmware. I managed to get S-OFF on my G2 so I could root it, and I was more than a little nervous as I was doing it (and I've spent over thirty years at the command line.) Nevertheless, it's a nice phone but if I couldn't get my Cyanogenmod on it, it was going to take the damn thing back. Thanks to the hard work of a number of coders, I was able to get my favorite ROM on my G2, and now I'm as happy as a bee in a china shop (or was that a bull in a flower shop?)
If the manufacturers stopped wasting time and money trying to protect the things from "unauthorized" changes, and spent that same energy making those same changes safe and painless, all of this would go away. The carriers are sooooo afraid that they're going to lose business by having all their crapware removed. Ironically, in the PC world, crapware was losing companies business: Sony even tried, at one point, to charge for the crapware removal to make customers pay for the "loss of revenue" (and got severely bitch-slapped in the press.) They all, cellphone carriers and PC vendors alike, see crapware as an alternate revenue stream. But you know what? That's not a legitimate use of the computer I bought from you, whether it sits on my desk or fits in my pocket. Find another way to make more money, or give me the phone and service free for the life of the contract.
So far as carrier complaints about the reliability of third-party ROMs is concerned, I'll place my faith in the likes of Steve Kondik (aka Cyanogen) and his crew.
There is a standard. It's just that the US has not widely adopted it yet.
Do a little research and see how much of the world uses GSM and how much follows your 'lead'.
Why did you have to make that comment that way? Comes off like sour grapes. Besides, the GP made no references to our "lead" in anything, and he was registering a legitimate complete about the lack of standardization here. Whether or not that standard will ultimately prove to be GSM is irrelevant, and we are under no particular compulsion to follow Europe's "lead". Europe had no choice but to standardize, but the reasons for that don't necessarily follow in the U.S. Here, the benefits of standardization are primarily to the user, not the carriers, consequently they have little motivation to move to a single standard. And if we do, there's no reason that it will have to look anything like GSM (or CDMA, or anything else currently in existence.) Everything has room for improvement.
... it's because their plans and policies suit my needs.)
The only major U.S. network that is GSM is T-Mobile (and yes, I happen to be using them, but not because they're GSM-based
Why didn't Google put a clause in the manufacturer/provider contract "The user will always be allowed full access to the device being managed by this operating system"?
Because Google cares more about pragmatism than ideals, and wanted to sell phones.
Well, Google isn't exactly a cellphone carrier or provider, not yet (there's been a lot of speculation as to what would happen if Google did decide to enter those markets.) What they actually care about are eyeballs viewing ads, and in fact Android was never intended to be anything but a way for Google to extend its advertising hegemony into mobile space. That, and as a research platform to find out what it is we want, or can be convinced we want, that may at some point make them additional revenue. Sales of handsets doesn't make them any money at all, unlike Microsoft which charges a substantial royalty for its mobile operating system.
I get the distinct impression that the success of Android as a mobile operating system was rather a surprise for Google's leadership. Probably an unpleasant surprise for the likes of the two Steves, who both have their own designs on the smartphone market.
you mean gooogle and the end user. but he's not important. Anyway, its regretable to see how the spirit of open source is being perverted. And you have stated the justifications they would use. from hardware manufacturers to app developers. Sad Sad Sad...
Yes, but the reason this persists is because users have (from the beginning) been taught that their phones are nothing but appliances whose functionality is controlled by the provider. That attitude, that level of acceptance. must be changed, people must begin to understand that those so-called "smart phones" are nothing else but full-fledged pocket computers. It has been said before, but I'll say it again: why do we tolerate a level of control over computers that happen to reside in our pockets, that we would never, ever tolerate on our laptops or our desktop machines?
.APK that wasn't from the market? And some distros even eliminate that ability entirely, making the device much more iPhone like in its closedness.
... and found that it wouldn't run because the carrier had blocked it. The repository approach, because it is controlled by commercial entities with a vested interested in keeping certain classes of software away from the masses, doesn't work as well as it should. Remember the flap over tethering? Carriers first said, "well, tethering isn't technically possible" on the one hand, while removing and blocking such apps from being available with the other.
In a way, the Android Market and Apple's equivalent help to enforce that way of thinking. I mean, if a carrier (or Google, or Apple) doesn't want people to have a particular program they simply remove it from the market (or don't allow it to ever be put there in the first place) so users are none the wiser. Yes, in the case of a stock Android install, you can turn on the ability to load non-Market applications, but how many people know that? How many would even know how to download and install an
It's a devious approach, when you get right down to it. Say, for example, the Android and Apple smartphones had been offered as WinMo traditionally was, e.g. without a repository. it would be very obvious when you went online to buy some software, tried to put it on your phone
We all know how Apple handles the iPhone Market (with a heavy, mailed fist) and Google has, for its part, been too damn carrier-friendly when removing apps from the Android Market. I absolutely do not want any corporate entity determining what software I can, and can not, run on my own personal computer.
the customers of the handset vendors IS NOT YOU THE END USER, it is the carriers.
Why is this the case? Why isn't it easy to go into an electronics store and buy an unlocked phone at retail, and then take it to your T-Mobile store to get a SIM-only "Even More Plus" plan?
It is, as long as you're talking T-Mo. So far as I'm concerned, as a long-time Android user, T-Mobile is about the only worthwhile carrier out there (somewhat ironic given that they're nothing more than Deutsche Telekom's U.S. division, and people in Germany that I know complain about them for the same reason we complain about the likes of AT&T or Verizon.) They're hardly perfect, policywise, and coverage isn't as good as some of the big boys, funny-colored floating maps aside. However my plan covers unlimited voice roaming in the U.S. so I don't care whose area I'm in for that, and the only time I've lost data for more than a few seconds was when driving across the desert through New Mexico and Texas (although, oddly enough, I got HSUPA, five bars, in Amarillo.) For a lot of that trip, I was running Edge or occasionally GPRS, but Google Nav worked, and the service was good enough for my friends to track us on Latitude. Canyons and crevasses were a problem for my service, but then again AT&T and Verizon failed just as quickly there.
My current plan gives me 5 Gb of transfer per month: I felt comfortable with this since I track my usage, and I rarely go above a gig. They also don't shut you off if you go over, they just throttle you, which is a more reasonable policy (maybe you can't stream movies off Youtube but at least you can browse, navigate and get your mail.) It's an "Unlimited" plan (yeah, I know, dirty word here on Slashdot) but it's really more an unlimited time plan, vs unlimited transfer. Still, unless you're downloading torrents or a lot of music that's not so bad, so long as you are talking the amount of data that a cellular device can consume. If you start adding what users can do with a tethered laptop, for example, it's a very different picture. Unfortunately, you really can't replace that home broadband connection with your cell phone just yet.
Furthermore, if you consider the cost per bit, well, obviously cellular providers are making out like bandits. Take a home broadband provider: Comcast limits you to, what, 250 gigabytes per month? My current U-Verse connection doesn't have any such caps (yet!) but let's assume it is a similar order of magnitude before they get cranky and start finger pointing and shouting "bandwidth hog! bandwidth hog!" The cost for my home connection is roughly double that of my phone connection and has well over double the maximum transfer speed. As it happens, I have a 12 meg connection at home, and I benchmarked my phone at six (which is kinda impressive actually.) That means I'm paying twice as much to T-Mobile for approximately 50 times less transfer.
Which goes to show that, so far as broadband and data connections are concerned, "good" is very much relative to what part of the industry you are discussing.
No, you haven't.
That's nothing. I know smart people who believe that AOL is the Internet.
Microsoft has released a notice about a new zero day attack against Internet Explorer.
And this is noteworthy why? How many Slashdotters use Internet Explorer for anything other than the occasional WindowsUpdate in XP? This may be News for Nerds, but it hardly matters. Everyone here knows very well that Internet Explorer is too dangerous for general Web use. That Microsoft is suffering yet another security failure doesn't really elicit much interest from me, I must say.
It irks me that there are better options than Explorer readily available, but so many people just don't care enough about their own security and privacy to avail themselves of those options. It's not like paying through the nose for an anti-virus product: these things are free to use! I feel less and less sorry for Explorer users every day, having heard all the excuses ("it doesn't look like Explorer, my favorite free-malware-site doesn't like it, it's too hard to install, I'm too stupid to use a computer, and so on ad infinitum.) It's not as if the likes of Firefox, Chrome and Opera are hard to find, or aren't in the public's eye nowadays. Hell, a few months ago a major U.S. bank issued a warning recommending that its customers eschew Explorer in favor of anything else and further recommended that any online banking be done in anything but Windows (preferably Linux/Unix.) Of course, the month after that they made another public statement to the effect that they would only support Internet Explorer (note: they didn't follow through on that threat. I got the distinct impression that it was a "left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing" situation.)
Bread? Yep, you have an education from the states.
You are presuming that it was a spelling error rather than a simple typo.
What keeps politicians in check?
Guns. We used to be able to shoot votes at them to make them behave, but that's not working so well anymore.
Another "me too" post: I live in the city of Chicago, and I have exactly two options for consumer-grade wired Internet access: AT&T DSL, and Comcast.
Some parts of the city have more options (e.g., WOW and RCN), but not me.
Yeah. I have two as well: AT&T U-Verse and Comcast-down-to-the-depths-of-Hades.
Guess which one I have.
Regulation prevents corporations from putting melanine in our milk
They used to put chalk in it, once upon a time, in order to whiten it.
I am not at all convinced that getting the government involved will improve my life.
Unfortunately, leaving corporate America unregulated, and leaving the current state of regulatory capture intact is untenable.
Regardless of your political point of view shouldn't the Internet remain free from regulation?
There's a dichotomy here that I don't think most people understand. Yes, the Internet should remain free of regulation, however the companies that provide Internet connectivity should not. The two are not the same, and regulating one is not the same as regulating the other. In fact, properly regulating one (the ISPs) is very likely to keep the other (the Internet) more free than it is now. Take AT&T, for example. Since it was originally chartered, it was a heavily-regulated State-instituted monopoly, and the regulations under which it labored were there to guarantee that all Americans had quality phone service. Yet, at the same time, the law (specifically, the Communications Act of 1934) had little to say about how We the People actually used the phone system we were paying for, just as the law should not dictate how we use the Internet.
Besides, it's pretty clear from recent events that allowing major American corporations (and it doesn't matter if it's a bank, an ISP, or an automobile maker) free reign over their alleged customers is a bad idea. The people that run these outfits are sociopaths (and I'm being generous there) and either we boot their collective ass out, or we have to control them, and the government is the only entity capable of doing that.
Ultimately, history is shown us that we need the institution of government. The question is what do we actually want it to do for us. Nothing is no longer an option.
I have been enough to America, to know that msot of the folk is highly prejudicied for a reason or another.
Do you realize that you just expressed a fundamental level of bigotry that exceeds whatever you're claiming we have? What's more remarkable, you apparently didn't even recognize that fact.
So, for a country as vast as ours, some three hundred million souls, you're saying that our entire culture is impolite, based entirely upon your obviously limited experience? All of us? Really? Americans have to deal with people from, well, every other nation on the planet on a daily basis. We just do, it's part and parcel of who we are. Yes, there is a lot of antipathy towards certain societies, for various reasons but, you know what? That's true everywhere. If you're trying to make the astonishing claim that Europeans (especially the French) have some kind of otherworldly tolerance for people of other societies, well, you're full of little red ants. I have nothing against the French, myself, but if you're intellectually honest you'll have to admit that you do tend to hold yourselves in pretty high regard, and you may not realize it but that attitude (especially towards ugly, coarse, crude, uncivilized Americans) often comes through when you interact with us, and some people don't like it. So, take a look at yourself before you criticize us, and don't go around calling other people dicks until you're absolutely certain that you aren't the cause of the problem.
A few weeks ago I drove several thousand miles across my country in a sixteen foot truck. You know what? I met a bunch of very polite and respectful individuals. Somehow managed to miss encountering any dicks. My feeling, just reading between the lines of your post, is that you're something of a dick yourself, who probably managed to offend a few people during your stay. Honestly, you're hilarious. One thing you will find about Americans (so far as you can generalize about such a fractious society) is that we'll tend to treat you the way you treat us. Come off like an arrogant prick, and if you're lucky you'll just be ignored.
But I have +15 wisdom and +10 intelligence and would cast "Sanctuary"
Not good enough. They'd have to cast "anti-matter-powered defensive force field" or something like that.