No phone will ever do OTA automatically. The reason is that Firmware updates CAN mess up.. and secondly, if you dont have a mobile data plan, imagine the cost of the downloads, especially when you are abroad.
Lastly, With customization by Operators, most phones are branded, and usually have the OTA disabled. I know the T-Mobile firmware disables OTA for Sony Ericsson phones.
Sony Ericcsons have really good OTA though, which will even schedule checks, and tell you if the update is availavle, download the firmware, then update.
It wasn't Luke himself who fell completely to the dark side, but a clone, called Luuke (note 2 "u"s).
He did break the Jedi code again, when he killed Lumiya in cold blood, in the mistaken assumption she killed his wife, Mara. IT was actually Jacen Solo, (son of Leia and Han, who turned to the dark side and became Darth Caedus), who killed his wife.
When Luke finds out the truth, he knows that Caedus must be killed. Caedus has become very powerful, and only Luke has the necessary skills to possibly defeat and destroy him.
However, he is unable to do it himself, because the of the way he killed Lumiya would cause him to turn to the dark side himself if he killed Jacen/Caedus.
So he trains and assists Jaina Solo (Jacen's twin sister) to do the deed, with Boba Fett providing the training, as Boba felt that Jedi skills alone will not defeat Ceadus, as a single lapse will result in her death at the hands of her twin brother. Boba Fett, trained her to be a Jedi Knight who fought with the power and focus of a Jedi, and the tenacity and brutality of a Mandalorian warrior.
Luke provided assistance from afar using mind tricks, and illusions.
In the expanded universe, I think either Luke, or his children, turn over to the dark side, but return. I am not sure, as much of the expanded Star Wars universe was written by others.
Considering that Star Wars, is itself Fiction, you can always debate about it, but considering that it IS fiction, you are right and wrong. It doesn't matter.
However, the incident with Luke and the Lightsaber, it was never denied that Luke DID turn to the dark side at that point. He did intend to take the life of the Emperor, and did turn to the dark side. Its better described in the official book. However, he "came to his senses" and rescind the dark side later when he cast the lightsaber, and declared that he is a Jedi, and always will be a Jedi, just like his father before him. Especially he did it with a sense of realization and compassion. You have to remember, if he finished off Darth Vader at that point, he would have been the apprentice. HE had nothing to know that his friends had actually succeeded in Endor, and the end was near for the Galactic Empire. As far as he knew, all had failed, and the Empire was set to win. He had experienced some of the power of the dark side, and the promise it gave. Yet he declined it, and in the end was willing to sacrifice his life for it, Begging for help from his father, when the emperor used his dark force on him. It was that which also brought Anakin Skywalker back from the dark side to save his son. And why Anakin died as a Jedi, and not a Sith.
That makes a whole big difference. Just because a Jedi turns to the dark side doesn't not make him a Sith. He is a Sith for as long as he or she embraces the Dark side. The moment a sith rescinds the Dark Side in a real and genuine manner, he or she ceases to be a sith, and returns to the light of the Jedi. With Luke, he returned far quicker. Anakin took much longer, but the intent was still noble (he knew of his death, yet he destroyed the emperor and save his son, the son who refused the dark side)
This may be a USA thing.. in the UK, T-Mobile actually have a pretty "free" access to the net, (unles you enabled the content blocker, which is a voluntary thing.. and maybe enabled by default for those whoa re under 18, or on PAYG.. but easily removed by calling them)
whooosh.. thats the sound of something going totally over your head.
YES, the "phone that was demoed" indeed does have technical features that existed before. Considering HTC has been building windows mobiles for ages, that is not surprising.
The point here, is the SOFTWARE. Windows Mobile has MANY limitations, partly due to its age. We all know its limitations on the interface (most apps not yet read for finger access, inability to use more that 16bit colour schemes, and OS tuned for a screen res of 320x200, just to mention a few). HTC has done an incredible job of creating customisations to Windows Mobile, to give it some touch sanity, but they can only do so much, before you hit the ugly windows interface again.
Until windows Mobile 7 is released, it will possibly remain that way in windows Land.
Android gives a new Operating System, that will probably take better advantage of the technology available. Note what I said, it will take better use of technology AVAILABLE in the handset.
IT will work on a 2g flip like phone, or a singing and dancing, megapixel screen slider, with full qwerty keyboard, accel, compass, etc.
HTC will not be the only provider, Expect to see phones also from Samsung, LG, and maybe more.
You are correct. they are NOT using a classic JVM, but a precompiler to convert java bytecode to Dalvik bytecode (dx). Dalvik, appears to be a register (as opposed to stack) oriented VM. And is better tuned to work with ARM processors.
The Andriod development kit, DOES use some J2SE stuff, for familiarity reasons (Stringbuffer, etc) and uses Apache Harmony to provide the implementations.
all information is on Wikipedia, and Android websites.
Thats the thing, it has been surprisingly flexible for such a "closed" unit. The use of USB for connectivity, bluetooth for wireless, the ability to use a normal bluetooth keyboard. etc... upgrade via normal SATA drives... etc.
actually it does 60fps at 1080i, not 1080p (limitations of various technology, and bandwidth). But seriously supporting 24fps at 1080p is a HUGE advantage. in NTSC land, converting 24 to 29.97 does cassue some issues during motion, that are frankly annoying. here in PAL land (25fps) films are just really sped up.
What blue ray does is it can work with films that was "converted" to either 3:2 pulldown, or 25fps speed up, and slowdown/remove the pulldown to play at exactly 24fps. This is somethign that "works" with PAL a lot more, as there is usually little or no loss.
The main problem with LF and slightly less so with MF (Medium Format), compared with 35mm, is the very narrow depth of field. Now, whilst i LOVE love narrow depth of field on my photographs of people, its not ideal for Movies/TV. the camera would need to continuously and quickly focus, and generally be a pain in the ass.
Also imagine the size of the Film Reels. I shudder to think!
But the fact is, to get LF working with a broad DoF, you need smaller parature lenses, which are harder to make with a large film size/Sensor size, and would not unnecessarily beat a 35mm
LF has its uses, but (except maybe IMAX) nromal films/movies are not a target.
LCDs are likely to last a long time.... the reason is.. there are less to go wrong. no magnetism to fade, etc. The only thing is realisticly the Cathode light source at the back, but even they are rated with a long lifetime, and are supposedly not THAT difficult to replace, it certainly is NOT liek buyign a new tube.
So other than the electronics, there is little left to go wrong.
But, in the case of DIVX disks, they were discs that only had the "advantage" of selfdestructing, so that one can view it for 48 hours and then dispose, as an alternative to video rental. If you wanted to watch it again, either you pay for another disc to watch for a further 48hours, or "silver" the disc for further cost so that you can watch it forever (provided you use the same player/account you purchased the silvering from). Heaven healp you if your phone line was faulty, or if your player became broken (happened often), or if DIVX stopped (happened eventually). You could purchase a "gold" version of the disc, which is playable on ANY DIVX player, but seriously whats the difference between DVD and DIVX.
To add to that, the encryption on DIVX, and other technical issues, meant the picture was often 4:3 pan and scan, lacked special features, and the picture was degraded (the 4:3 limitation, apparently was put in because crackers could detect the black bars and possibly crack the encryption).
So DIVX offered no TECHNICAL benefits to the user, other than the somewhat dodgy avoid late fees issue, and actually was "worse" than DVD in terms of picture quality, and had that insideous DRM to boot. With the "openDVD" campaign by Warner Brothers, etc, DIVX eventually failed.. and with the development of Self Destructing DVDS (where the dye went cloudy after 48 hours..) DIVX was quickly forgotten
BluRay is nothing like DIVX. It actually has a technical, picture, and sound advantage. Also, due to certain issues with regards to the closeness of the recording layer to the surface, it also helped develop some scratch resistant technologies that also work with DVD. Its Java based menus give some interesting scope for interaction.
Sure... its copy protection is a bit extreme, but that was what the industry wanted. At least you dont have a player that phones home. Once you have a disk/Player/TV, its good "forever" (until new tech make it obselete)
Microsoft, and Apple are trying to promote a pay per view download system as an alternative to BluRay. Thats the "new" DIVX. for starters I cannot see how you can "rent" a 1080p movie (probably at least 30 to 40 GB to download.. up to 50GB). its most likely going to be less quality than BluRay.
You can buy a Bluetooth Remote for the PS3, that is actually quite good, (no line of sight required).
Also, if you have a PSP, you can use that as a remote too, useful if you are in the kitchen, and using it to control your PS3's music playback.
But yes, unless they make a universal Remote with bluetooth support, its a bit of a bug...
However, the PS3's BluRay, DVD (upscaling), DivX/Xvid support is actually very good.... plus.. its a great games machine.. whough, admittelly i am more addicted to some of the games that have been downloaded (for cheap) than disc based ones.
The problem is.... At least here in the UK, A lot of people bought so called HD-READY (720p) 32 inch LCD screens, and are wondering what the fuss is all about. Use Blu Ray with a full 1080p, 42inch or greater, then notice the difference.
Recently on a neighbours laptop when booting of a (linux) live cd, upon rebooting into windows the system started complaining that the system would possibly be severely damaged and that it had to be checked. This was on an acer, one of the better known microsoft cronies.
Microsoft may be evil, or not, but dont assume EVERYTHING they do is evil. the reason for THIS particular warning (and it is a warning) is because of one of 2 reasons:
1) When you install Linux, you are given an option to resize your windows partition to fit Linux. The rezise only moves the partition, but does not update any checksums or transient indexes. Therefore When windows next boots up, it has to do a checkdisk, to ensure that the partition is still valid (same as a linux fsck), and data integrity is maintained. There is usually nothing wrong with this, and in general is a "good thing"
2) if you mount a windows NTFS partition in Linux in read/write mode (not reccommended) it will also need to to a chkdsk, as checksums are not updated.
No it doesn't ask in that autorun case. I was also under the impression that autorun will be more careful about automatically running a EXE from a removable disk and I got lazy about disabling Autorun. However, I got blasted by a virus recently via that means. Rather embarrassing, because in over 15 years of computing, I never got a virus, ever, despite never running "on demand" virus checkers.
Funny, we thought we were getting screwed over here in the UK, as we have had to pay 10p per message to send to another UK mobile, or 20p for international (receiving text, as well as receiving calls is always free in the UK)
However, it seems like we are not too bad in the end. Plus most of our plans have included free text. For example, my dad pays £20 per month and gets 400 minutes and 400 text, I pay £30 per month and get 1400 minutes and "unlimited" text to UK numbers (subject to a fairy generous and practically unreachable Fair Use policy, which normal people should not really reach). Since this particular plan is not linked to a phone subsidy, they are also 1 month contracts, not 12 month, or 18 month.
Throw in a 3gb per month data plan for £11, and 3.5g network (HSPDA). and practically I never have to pay more than my line rental, despite being a fairly heavy data/voice/text user.
Another thing some UK guys are not aware of, we get 200 free sms messages with our BT landline package automatically. so with just about any modern DECT cordless phone, you can send 200 text for free via your land line.
Although I am not a muslim, I do have some friends who are. And what you said really does ring a bell. From what I read of the Koran, from official translations, the koran itself seems very straightforward, however, my friends believe that there are some mis-translations which give gains to those who are not very nice, even though they claim to represent the Koran.
My friends say that while the Koran (properly and professionally translated) is good, they do have some misgivings about the hadiths and the suras, specifically that they can be open to huige variances of interpretation, and feel that they represent a time past.
Need to correct you there, most Dharhmic (Hinduism, Siekhism, Jainism, Bhuddism) religions actually DO say to be nice to people in other religions, each in their own way. In hinduism (my own) it says: "The truth is one, though different sages may describe it different" Statign that all religions are a path to the same destination, and should be respected.
Also Hinduism frowns upon conversions, though supports and encourages, learning and adapting. Its not an exclusive religion, but rather inclusive. This is a very different mindset to Abrahamic religions, and may even be alien to some.
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No phone will ever do OTA automatically. The reason is that Firmware updates CAN mess up.. and secondly, if you dont have a mobile data plan, imagine the cost of the downloads, especially when you are abroad.
Lastly, With customization by Operators, most phones are branded, and usually have the OTA disabled. I know the T-Mobile firmware disables OTA for Sony Ericsson phones.
Sony Ericcsons have really good OTA though, which will even schedule checks, and tell you if the update is availavle, download the firmware, then update.
It wasn't Luke himself who fell completely to the dark side, but a clone, called Luuke (note 2 "u"s).
He did break the Jedi code again, when he killed Lumiya in cold blood, in the mistaken assumption she killed his wife, Mara. IT was actually Jacen Solo, (son of Leia and Han, who turned to the dark side and became Darth Caedus), who killed his wife.
When Luke finds out the truth, he knows that Caedus must be killed. Caedus has become very powerful, and only Luke has the necessary skills to possibly defeat and destroy him.
However, he is unable to do it himself, because the of the way he killed Lumiya would cause him to turn to the dark side himself if he killed Jacen/Caedus.
So he trains and assists Jaina Solo (Jacen's twin sister) to do the deed, with Boba Fett providing the training, as Boba felt that Jedi skills alone will not defeat Ceadus, as a single lapse will result in her death at the hands of her twin brother. Boba Fett, trained her to be a Jedi Knight who fought with the power and focus of a Jedi, and the tenacity and brutality of a Mandalorian warrior.
Luke provided assistance from afar using mind tricks, and illusions.
In the expanded universe, I think either Luke, or his children, turn over to the dark side, but return. I am not sure, as much of the expanded Star Wars universe was written by others.
Considering that Star Wars, is itself Fiction, you can always debate about it, but considering that it IS fiction, you are right and wrong. It doesn't matter.
However, the incident with Luke and the Lightsaber, it was never denied that Luke DID turn to the dark side at that point. He did intend to take the life of the Emperor, and did turn to the dark side. Its better described in the official book. However, he "came to his senses" and rescind the dark side later when he cast the lightsaber, and declared that he is a Jedi, and always will be a Jedi, just like his father before him. Especially he did it with a sense of realization and compassion. You have to remember, if he finished off Darth Vader at that point, he would have been the apprentice. HE had nothing to know that his friends had actually succeeded in Endor, and the end was near for the Galactic Empire. As far as he knew, all had failed, and the Empire was set to win. He had experienced some of the power of the dark side, and the promise it gave. Yet he declined it, and in the end was willing to sacrifice his life for it, Begging for help from his father, when the emperor used his dark force on him. It was that which also brought Anakin Skywalker back from the dark side to save his son. And why Anakin died as a Jedi, and not a Sith.
That makes a whole big difference. Just because a Jedi turns to the dark side doesn't not make him a Sith. He is a Sith for as long as he or she embraces the Dark side. The moment a sith rescinds the Dark Side in a real and genuine manner, he or she ceases to be a sith, and returns to the light of the Jedi. With Luke, he returned far quicker. Anakin took much longer, but the intent was still noble (he knew of his death, yet he destroyed the emperor and save his son, the son who refused the dark side)
This may be a USA thing.. in the UK, T-Mobile actually have a pretty "free" access to the net, (unles you enabled the content blocker, which is a voluntary thing.. and maybe enabled by default for those whoa re under 18, or on PAYG.. but easily removed by calling them)
whooosh.. thats the sound of something going totally over your head.
YES, the "phone that was demoed" indeed does have technical features that existed before. Considering HTC has been building windows mobiles for ages, that is not surprising.
The point here, is the SOFTWARE. Windows Mobile has MANY limitations, partly due to its age. We all know its limitations on the interface (most apps not yet read for finger access, inability to use more that 16bit colour schemes, and OS tuned for a screen res of 320x200, just to mention a few). HTC has done an incredible job of creating customisations to Windows Mobile, to give it some touch sanity, but they can only do so much, before you hit the ugly windows interface again.
Until windows Mobile 7 is released, it will possibly remain that way in windows Land.
Android gives a new Operating System, that will probably take better advantage of the technology available. Note what I said, it will take better use of technology AVAILABLE in the handset.
IT will work on a 2g flip like phone, or a singing and dancing, megapixel screen slider, with full qwerty keyboard, accel, compass, etc.
HTC will not be the only provider, Expect to see phones also from Samsung, LG, and maybe more.
Android is an "enabler"
You are correct. they are NOT using a classic JVM, but a precompiler to convert java bytecode to Dalvik bytecode (dx). Dalvik, appears to be a register (as opposed to stack) oriented VM. And is better tuned to work with ARM processors.
The Andriod development kit, DOES use some J2SE stuff, for familiarity reasons (Stringbuffer, etc) and uses Apache Harmony to provide the implementations.
all information is on Wikipedia, and Android websites.
Thats the thing, it has been surprisingly flexible for such a "closed" unit. The use of USB for connectivity, bluetooth for wireless, the ability to use a normal bluetooth keyboard. etc... upgrade via normal SATA drives... etc.
actually it does 60fps at 1080i, not 1080p (limitations of various technology, and bandwidth). But seriously supporting 24fps at 1080p is a HUGE advantage. in NTSC land, converting 24 to 29.97 does cassue some issues during motion, that are frankly annoying. here in PAL land (25fps) films are just really sped up.
What blue ray does is it can work with films that was "converted" to either 3:2 pulldown, or 25fps speed up, and slowdown/remove the pulldown to play at exactly 24fps. This is somethign that "works" with PAL a lot more, as there is usually little or no loss.
The main problem with LF and slightly less so with MF (Medium Format), compared with 35mm, is the very narrow depth of field. Now, whilst i LOVE love narrow depth of field on my photographs of people, its not ideal for Movies/TV. the camera would need to continuously and quickly focus, and generally be a pain in the ass.
Also imagine the size of the Film Reels. I shudder to think!
But the fact is, to get LF working with a broad DoF, you need smaller parature lenses, which are harder to make with a large film size/Sensor size, and would not unnecessarily beat a 35mm
LF has its uses, but (except maybe IMAX) nromal films/movies are not a target.
LCDs are likely to last a long time.... the reason is.. there are less to go wrong. no magnetism to fade, etc. The only thing is realisticly the Cathode light source at the back, but even they are rated with a long lifetime, and are supposedly not THAT difficult to replace, it certainly is NOT liek buyign a new tube.
So other than the electronics, there is little left to go wrong.
But, in the case of DIVX disks, they were discs that only had the "advantage" of selfdestructing, so that one can view it for 48 hours and then dispose, as an alternative to video rental. If you wanted to watch it again, either you pay for another disc to watch for a further 48hours, or "silver" the disc for further cost so that you can watch it forever (provided you use the same player/account you purchased the silvering from). Heaven healp you if your phone line was faulty, or if your player became broken (happened often), or if DIVX stopped (happened eventually). You could purchase a "gold" version of the disc, which is playable on ANY DIVX player, but seriously whats the difference between DVD and DIVX.
To add to that, the encryption on DIVX, and other technical issues, meant the picture was often 4:3 pan and scan, lacked special features, and the picture was degraded (the 4:3 limitation, apparently was put in because crackers could detect the black bars and possibly crack the encryption).
So DIVX offered no TECHNICAL benefits to the user, other than the somewhat dodgy avoid late fees issue, and actually was "worse" than DVD in terms of picture quality, and had that insideous DRM to boot. With the "openDVD" campaign by Warner Brothers, etc, DIVX eventually failed.. and with the development of Self Destructing DVDS (where the dye went cloudy after 48 hours..) DIVX was quickly forgotten
BluRay is nothing like DIVX. It actually has a technical, picture, and sound advantage. Also, due to certain issues with regards to the closeness of the recording layer to the surface, it also helped develop some scratch resistant technologies that also work with DVD. Its Java based menus give some interesting scope for interaction.
Sure... its copy protection is a bit extreme, but that was what the industry wanted. At least you dont have a player that phones home. Once you have a disk/Player/TV, its good "forever" (until new tech make it obselete)
Microsoft, and Apple are trying to promote a pay per view download system as an alternative to BluRay. Thats the "new" DIVX. for starters I cannot see how you can "rent" a 1080p movie (probably at least 30 to 40 GB to download.. up to 50GB). its most likely going to be less quality than BluRay.
You can buy a Bluetooth Remote for the PS3, that is actually quite good, (no line of sight required).
Also, if you have a PSP, you can use that as a remote too, useful if you are in the kitchen, and using it to control your PS3's music playback.
But yes, unless they make a universal Remote with bluetooth support, its a bit of a bug...
However, the PS3's BluRay, DVD (upscaling), DivX/Xvid support is actually very good.... plus.. its a great games machine.. whough, admittelly i am more addicted to some of the games that have been downloaded (for cheap) than disc based ones.
The problem is.... At least here in the UK, A lot of people bought so called HD-READY (720p) 32 inch LCD screens, and are wondering what the fuss is all about. Use Blu Ray with a full 1080p, 42inch or greater, then notice the difference.
I am not sure which distro you used, but I know later versions of Ubuntu DOES access the windows partition, and yes it can causes some craziness.
its AuthenticAMD, not GenuineAMD
Recently on a neighbours laptop when booting of a (linux) live cd, upon rebooting into windows the system started complaining that the system would possibly be severely damaged and that it had to be checked. This was on an acer, one of the better known microsoft cronies.
Microsoft may be evil, or not, but dont assume EVERYTHING they do is evil. the reason for THIS particular warning (and it is a warning) is because of one of 2 reasons:
1) When you install Linux, you are given an option to resize your windows partition to fit Linux. The rezise only moves the partition, but does not update any checksums or transient indexes. Therefore When windows next boots up, it has to do a checkdisk, to ensure that the partition is still valid (same as a linux fsck), and data integrity is maintained. There is usually nothing wrong with this, and in general is a "good thing"
2) if you mount a windows NTFS partition in Linux in read/write mode (not reccommended) it will also need to to a chkdsk, as checksums are not updated.
Don't throw arrows. Be diplomatic.
Well, some say, the art of diplomacy is learning how to say "Nice Doggy", whilst trying to find a bigger stick.
You may need something pretty heavy duty to throw him!
Probably easier to strategically place a banana/oil spill, so when he does his dance next, he will slip and fly on his own power/momentum!
No it doesn't ask in that autorun case. I was also under the impression that autorun will be more careful about automatically running a EXE from a removable disk and I got lazy about disabling Autorun. However, I got blasted by a virus recently via that means. Rather embarrassing, because in over 15 years of computing, I never got a virus, ever, despite never running "on demand" virus checkers.
Funny, we thought we were getting screwed over here in the UK, as we have had to pay 10p per message to send to another UK mobile, or 20p for international (receiving text, as well as receiving calls is always free in the UK)
However, it seems like we are not too bad in the end. Plus most of our plans have included free text. For example, my dad pays £20 per month and gets 400 minutes and 400 text, I pay £30 per month and get 1400 minutes and "unlimited" text to UK numbers (subject to a fairy generous and practically unreachable Fair Use policy, which normal people should not really reach). Since this particular plan is not linked to a phone subsidy, they are also 1 month contracts, not 12 month, or 18 month.
Throw in a 3gb per month data plan for £11, and 3.5g network (HSPDA). and practically I never have to pay more than my line rental, despite being a fairly heavy data/voice/text user.
Another thing some UK guys are not aware of, we get 200 free sms messages with our BT landline package automatically. so with just about any modern DECT cordless phone, you can send 200 text for free via your land line.
Although I am not a muslim, I do have some friends who are. And what you said really does ring a bell. From what I read of the Koran, from official translations, the koran itself seems very straightforward, however, my friends believe that there are some mis-translations which give gains to those who are not very nice, even though they claim to represent the Koran.
My friends say that while the Koran (properly and professionally translated) is good, they do have some misgivings about the hadiths and the suras, specifically that they can be open to huige variances of interpretation, and feel that they represent a time past.
Do you agree with that? I am just curious.
No religion says to be nice to other religions.
Need to correct you there, most Dharhmic (Hinduism, Siekhism, Jainism, Bhuddism) religions actually DO say to be nice to people in other religions, each in their own way. In hinduism (my own) it says: "The truth is one, though different sages may describe it different" Statign that all religions are a path to the same destination, and should be respected.
Also Hinduism frowns upon conversions, though supports and encourages, learning and adapting. Its not an exclusive religion, but rather inclusive. This is a very different mindset to Abrahamic religions, and may even be alien to some.
Only one point, that particular act was condemned by majority of the Siekhs, who openly said that was NOT the means of their religion.
Tomcat is only "faster" if you have the later versions (I think tomcat 5.0 or above) and you enable AJP which I don't believe is enabled by default.
Even for "Apache" it would be Tomcat..............
As the individual names are: "Apache HTTPD" and "Apache Tomcat", I think you can still use the A for Apache :)