Inspire, Desire HD, Dinc 2 - yeah, basically all the same phone, but for a critical and important reason - each carrier required a different radio baseband.
Same for Samsung - Captivate, Fascinate, Vibrant, Epic (I think the Epic was Sprint's GS variant...) - all Galaxy S phones, but each with different radios to suit their respective carriers.
Here's my guess of what happens: Google buys Moto Mobility for the patents. Google then spins off MM's hardware division, with a full license to the patents obtained, but with Google retaining ownership and control of the patents
That way Google gets the defensive patent pile without the negatives of competing with their licensees and entering the (less pleasant) hardware business.
In terms of market for casual gaming companies, Google+ does indeed have "no users".
1) G+ launched without gaming integration, so no one on G+ went there for the gaming, and thus can't be considered a "user" from the perspective of gaming companies.
2) G+ launched without gaming integration, and was a major reason many early adopters started using it. Many of G+'s users are NOT users from the perspective of the gaming companies because they went to G+ specifically to get away from the gaming spam.
It's frustrating - I can keep games from showing up on my general news feed, but if I want to see what a specific friend has been up to lately, if they game I can't find anything other than gaming spam. (Gaming spam isn't hidden when you look at the player's profile.)
1) Google puts a quash on the bootloader locking bullshit and things get MUCH better. Motorola devices were nice hardware with crap software and lockdown. 2) Google continues with bootloader locking in order to extend the Honeycomb mess, paying open-source lip service. I understand a desire to get rid of "poison pill" poorly supported Android devices, but cracking down on Market licensing was the way to do this, not restricting source availability. At least Google seems to be forcing Honeycomb vendors to not slack as far as updates. HC devices seem to have a latency of 1-2 months at worst - not the nearly-a-year latency some phones see.
I was under the impression the Droid was lightly locked and it got broken (unlike now, you didn't have many other choices if you wanted a flagship 2.x phone when the Droid came out). I may be wrong on that - in that case the Droid is an extremely rare exception to the norm.
All successors to the Droid have been locked. It may have been that Motorola just didn't have the locking technology they wanted in place yet.
Similarly, someone might be able to find a Samsung Android phone that has a locked bootloader - but those are as rare as Motorolas with unlocked bootloaders. Samsung and Moto are polar opposites in this regard with no carrier-specific trends that are statistically significant.
In addition, Samsung is extra careful to put up code BEFORE a device is released in most if not all situations.
The sources for the Rogers variant of the Infuse 4G (SGH-I997R) dropped the Monday before anyone had the device. (Devices showed up two days later on Wednesday.) As I understand it, it was the same with the initial Infuse release on AT&T.
As another poster said - It's not about defeating gravity, it's about how the weight and pressure are distributed. Bad backpacks put most of the weight onto the shoulders in such a way as to cause a sore back/neck. Nearly all photo backpacks are in this category. Good backpacks put a lot of weight onto the hips.
There's a reason military personnel can carry 40-60 pounds of gear - it's not just about the shape they're in, it's the design of the packs. An external frame backpack can allow a human to carry a LOT of weight comfortably, far more than you might expect. Internal-frame packs like the Kelty work very well too. Many photo backpacks have no frame at all.
"Again, a backpack of this size is NOT going to be light, you will NOT want to carry it very much and you WILL have a sore back/neck afterwards."
Wrong. A properly made backpack can allow you to carry a LOT of weight without getting sore.
Unfortunately, 95%+ of backpacks from the camera bag manufacturers are not designed well in terms of how they are worn on the back. There are some exceptions but they're rare.
Look at Kelty, North Face, Osprey, and their brethren, not Kata, Lowepro, Tamrac, etc.
It's a lot easier to make a hiking backpack suitable for a laptop/photo gear (add dividers) than to fix the fundamental comfort deficiencies of a camera backpack.
The XL is a great laptop bag for carrying from one place to another, but it's a poor camera bag. The main deficiency is lack of a good way to strap a tripod to the side.
I own an XL for my laptop. I have never put my camera into it. That's what my Kelty Redwing is for.
I have put my laptop into the Redwing using a neoprene sleeve though.
I agree. There's an almost universal pattern - backpacks that are "camera-oriented" have vastly inferior frames and suspensions to good hiking backpacks. There are a few exceptions but they are rare.
I strongly recommend a frontloader pack and not a toploader - unfortunately in larger sizes this is rare. The Kelty Redwing is one of the exceptions. It's an excellent frontloader that is VERY comfortable.
Put your padded cases inside, or possibly go "all out" and convert it to a dedicated camera backpack by adding your own foam dividers.
The sides are great for holding a tripod and monopod - stick 2 feet of a tripod into the water bottle pocket and strap the tripod to the pack (there are straps for this).
If you go to Kinesis Photo Gear, you can get straps/harnesses that let you clip your camera to the shoulder straps of the pack - FAR more comfortable than a neckstrap!
You may want to consider a modified Redwing from photobackpacker.com - the modified ones have a "squared up" top (more room) and a zipper extended all the way to the bottom of the pack (easier loading/unloading). I kind of regret buying a standard Redwing instead of one of the PBP modified ones. Unfortunately, PBP's inserts for the pack are oriented towards LF cameras, but the pack itself is a great base.
"The locking of the bootloader is because of the extorsion that is tethering in the US."
Then why are no Samsung devices locked on the same exact carriers, and why are only a few HTC devices locked, with the pattern of "locked vs unlocked" following release date and not carrier?
AT&T: Sam Captivate - no bootloader locking at all Sam Infuse 4G - Bootloaders locked from overwriting themselves, but will happily boot any kernel you want Motorola anything - Locked bootloader
Verizon: Sam Fascinate - no bootloader locking Sam Continuum - no bootloader locking Samsung Droid Charge - no bootloader locking Motorola anything - Locked bootloader
The Motorola Milestone was sold with a locked bootloader, and that's a purely international unit not sold domestically by any US carrier.
I'm talking about firmware/software/bootloader lockdown, not SIMlocks. That's a completely different issue. Basically any GSM phone sold by a US carrier is SIMlocked to that carrier.
Show me one Samsung Android phone that has a locked bootloader that prevents you from booting an arbitrary kernel.
Then show me one Motorola Android phone that wasn't shipped with a locked bootloader.
The trend clearly follows manufacturer and there is zero carrier-dependent pattern to bootloader locking. (You might be able to discern some patterns with HTC, but the sample size here is too small - it's primarily dependent on release date in this case. HTC started in late 2010/early 2011, and quickly reversed it after public outcry.)
NOTE: I am not talking about SIM locking, I am talking about bootloader locking, which renders the open-source aspects of Android irrelevant because even if you have complete kernel source, you can't execute the kernel without having Motorola's private signing key. SIM locking is a whole other beast (although the unlocked bootloaders and software architecture of Samsung devices makes it REALLY easy to SIM-unlock them.)
No, Motorola is the worst. Poor software customizations combined with lockdown that prevents you from fixing the poor customizations.
It was sad how two single-core phones (Inspire and Infuse) could smoke the Atrix in terms of real-world usability. Yes, Motorola screwed up the software THAT badly.
Compare to Samsung, who has been providing highly polished devices with the Galaxy S line. Yes, they have made some stupid design choices (RFS, STL/BML partitioning) that they are starting to move away from, but more importantly - no Samsung phone has a locked bootloader and Samsung typically posts kernel source a few days BEFORE a device is released. So it's easy to fix RFS, and a little less easy to fix STL/BML.
Actually STL/BML isn't that bad except for the fact that it's a proprietary module that won't load unless the kernel version is 100% unchanged. So you can't move to newer base Linux releases. That's why most Cyanogenmod releases for Samsung move to MTD (even though it's a pain in the ass for the original transition.)
I keep seeing people claim that locked bootloaders are a carrier demand... When this is clearly NOT the case.
Across ALL carriers, at least in the United States: None of the Samsung Galaxy S line have locked bootloaders. (Tab 7s may be mildly locked?) The exception is the Galaxy Tab 10.1 line, which actually has randomly locked bootloaders for the non-carrier-distributed wifi version. (Don't know about the Verizon LTE variant). Even then, the bootloader locking is fairly minimal. The closest to "bootloader locking" I've seen in a Samsung Android phone is locking out flashing alternate bootloaders (Infuse 4G), but never a bootloader that locked out flashing any kernel or userland you wanted. A small number of HTCs came out locked in early 2011 - HTC quickly reversed this decision after user outcry. The locked phones were distributed across multiple carriers. Nearly all Motorola Android phones are locked down, regardless of carrier.
Motorola may claim it's the carrier - but if you look at the trends across carriers vs. trends across manufacturers, the trend CLEARLY follows the manufacturer and not the carrier.
250KW is perfectly reasonable - that's 335 horsepower. 250MW is 1/4 the electrical output of the typical uranium-fueled fission reactor.
However even if you correct for that typo, everything about the article screams "snake oil" to me. The only way to get THAT much energy out of 8 grams of thorium is to use it as fission fuel in a bona fide nuclear reactor. But this is clearly not a fission reactor - everything I see indicates that this is breaking the law of conservation of energy.
Slashdot Mirror
No other vendor is any different there.
Inspire, Desire HD, Dinc 2 - yeah, basically all the same phone, but for a critical and important reason - each carrier required a different radio baseband.
Same for Samsung - Captivate, Fascinate, Vibrant, Epic (I think the Epic was Sprint's GS variant...) - all Galaxy S phones, but each with different radios to suit their respective carriers.
Here's my guess of what happens:
Google buys Moto Mobility for the patents.
Google then spins off MM's hardware division, with a full license to the patents obtained, but with Google retaining ownership and control of the patents
That way Google gets the defensive patent pile without the negatives of competing with their licensees and entering the (less pleasant) hardware business.
You just quoted my exact point.
A jack is a FEMALE connector.
A large MALE connector cannot fit into a smaller FEMALE jack.
NO. You didn't read the article.
New plugs will be compatible with old ports. (New plugs are physically smaller than the old port)
There is NO way for old plugs to be compatible with new ports. (New ports will be physically smaller than the plug.)
Wrong. Current ports would be compatible with the new plug, but NOT the other way around.
And there's already a more standard approach to this - 2.5mm audio jacks.
I'm happy if in the process of halving the game length they halve the costs.
Otherwise - it's a bullshit cost-cutting measure to me.
Bad for the game companies, bad for trying to get them to play, good for keeping most of the current userbase happy.
I realize I may not have been specific that my game rant above was in reference to Facbook's way of doing things.
Yeah. I know of at least 2-3 people who have created fake FBI_SURVEILLANCE_VAN networks to screw with their neighbors.
Anyone believing that a network with that SSID is actually an FBI van is a complete and total idiot.
In terms of market for casual gaming companies, Google+ does indeed have "no users".
1) G+ launched without gaming integration, so no one on G+ went there for the gaming, and thus can't be considered a "user" from the perspective of gaming companies.
2) G+ launched without gaming integration, and was a major reason many early adopters started using it. Many of G+'s users are NOT users from the perspective of the gaming companies because they went to G+ specifically to get away from the gaming spam.
It's frustrating - I can keep games from showing up on my general news feed, but if I want to see what a specific friend has been up to lately, if they game I can't find anything other than gaming spam. (Gaming spam isn't hidden when you look at the player's profile.)
Yeah. There are two ways this could go:
1) Google puts a quash on the bootloader locking bullshit and things get MUCH better. Motorola devices were nice hardware with crap software and lockdown.
2) Google continues with bootloader locking in order to extend the Honeycomb mess, paying open-source lip service. I understand a desire to get rid of "poison pill" poorly supported Android devices, but cracking down on Market licensing was the way to do this, not restricting source availability. At least Google seems to be forcing Honeycomb vendors to not slack as far as updates. HC devices seem to have a latency of 1-2 months at worst - not the nearly-a-year latency some phones see.
I was under the impression the Droid was lightly locked and it got broken (unlike now, you didn't have many other choices if you wanted a flagship 2.x phone when the Droid came out). I may be wrong on that - in that case the Droid is an extremely rare exception to the norm.
All successors to the Droid have been locked. It may have been that Motorola just didn't have the locking technology they wanted in place yet.
Similarly, someone might be able to find a Samsung Android phone that has a locked bootloader - but those are as rare as Motorolas with unlocked bootloaders. Samsung and Moto are polar opposites in this regard with no carrier-specific trends that are statistically significant.
There's no evidence that it was 3.x source - after all the comment was that it was "source not even shared with Google's partners".
90% certain that was the source to part of the GApps suite - NONE of which are open source or ever have been.
Except that I don't think MS donated hardware to the Chevron team... Samsung has donated multiple GSIIs to Cyanogenmod devs.
In addition, Samsung is extra careful to put up code BEFORE a device is released in most if not all situations.
The sources for the Rogers variant of the Infuse 4G (SGH-I997R) dropped the Monday before anyone had the device. (Devices showed up two days later on Wednesday.) As I understand it, it was the same with the initial Infuse release on AT&T.
As another poster said - It's not about defeating gravity, it's about how the weight and pressure are distributed. Bad backpacks put most of the weight onto the shoulders in such a way as to cause a sore back/neck. Nearly all photo backpacks are in this category. Good backpacks put a lot of weight onto the hips.
There's a reason military personnel can carry 40-60 pounds of gear - it's not just about the shape they're in, it's the design of the packs. An external frame backpack can allow a human to carry a LOT of weight comfortably, far more than you might expect. Internal-frame packs like the Kelty work very well too. Many photo backpacks have no frame at all.
"Again, a backpack of this size is NOT going to be light, you will NOT want to carry it very much and you WILL have a sore back/neck afterwards."
Wrong. A properly made backpack can allow you to carry a LOT of weight without getting sore.
Unfortunately, 95%+ of backpacks from the camera bag manufacturers are not designed well in terms of how they are worn on the back. There are some exceptions but they're rare.
Look at Kelty, North Face, Osprey, and their brethren, not Kata, Lowepro, Tamrac, etc.
It's a lot easier to make a hiking backpack suitable for a laptop/photo gear (add dividers) than to fix the fundamental comfort deficiencies of a camera backpack.
The XL is a great laptop bag for carrying from one place to another, but it's a poor camera bag. The main deficiency is lack of a good way to strap a tripod to the side.
I own an XL for my laptop. I have never put my camera into it. That's what my Kelty Redwing is for.
I have put my laptop into the Redwing using a neoprene sleeve though.
I agree. There's an almost universal pattern - backpacks that are "camera-oriented" have vastly inferior frames and suspensions to good hiking backpacks. There are a few exceptions but they are rare.
I strongly recommend a frontloader pack and not a toploader - unfortunately in larger sizes this is rare. The Kelty Redwing is one of the exceptions. It's an excellent frontloader that is VERY comfortable.
Put your padded cases inside, or possibly go "all out" and convert it to a dedicated camera backpack by adding your own foam dividers.
The sides are great for holding a tripod and monopod - stick 2 feet of a tripod into the water bottle pocket and strap the tripod to the pack (there are straps for this).
If you go to Kinesis Photo Gear, you can get straps/harnesses that let you clip your camera to the shoulder straps of the pack - FAR more comfortable than a neckstrap!
You may want to consider a modified Redwing from photobackpacker.com - the modified ones have a "squared up" top (more room) and a zipper extended all the way to the bottom of the pack (easier loading/unloading). I kind of regret buying a standard Redwing instead of one of the PBP modified ones. Unfortunately, PBP's inserts for the pack are oriented towards LF cameras, but the pack itself is a great base.
"The locking of the bootloader is because of the extorsion that is tethering in the US."
Then why are no Samsung devices locked on the same exact carriers, and why are only a few HTC devices locked, with the pattern of "locked vs unlocked" following release date and not carrier?
AT&T:
Sam Captivate - no bootloader locking at all
Sam Infuse 4G - Bootloaders locked from overwriting themselves, but will happily boot any kernel you want
Motorola anything - Locked bootloader
Verizon:
Sam Fascinate - no bootloader locking
Sam Continuum - no bootloader locking
Samsung Droid Charge - no bootloader locking
Motorola anything - Locked bootloader
The Motorola Milestone was sold with a locked bootloader, and that's a purely international unit not sold domestically by any US carrier.
Just as locked down as any other iPhone.
I'm talking about firmware/software/bootloader lockdown, not SIMlocks. That's a completely different issue. Basically any GSM phone sold by a US carrier is SIMlocked to that carrier.
Show me one Samsung Android phone that has a locked bootloader that prevents you from booting an arbitrary kernel.
Then show me one Motorola Android phone that wasn't shipped with a locked bootloader.
The trend clearly follows manufacturer and there is zero carrier-dependent pattern to bootloader locking. (You might be able to discern some patterns with HTC, but the sample size here is too small - it's primarily dependent on release date in this case. HTC started in late 2010/early 2011, and quickly reversed it after public outcry.)
NOTE: I am not talking about SIM locking, I am talking about bootloader locking, which renders the open-source aspects of Android irrelevant because even if you have complete kernel source, you can't execute the kernel without having Motorola's private signing key. SIM locking is a whole other beast (although the unlocked bootloaders and software architecture of Samsung devices makes it REALLY easy to SIM-unlock them.)
No, Motorola is the worst. Poor software customizations combined with lockdown that prevents you from fixing the poor customizations.
It was sad how two single-core phones (Inspire and Infuse) could smoke the Atrix in terms of real-world usability. Yes, Motorola screwed up the software THAT badly.
Compare to Samsung, who has been providing highly polished devices with the Galaxy S line. Yes, they have made some stupid design choices (RFS, STL/BML partitioning) that they are starting to move away from, but more importantly - no Samsung phone has a locked bootloader and Samsung typically posts kernel source a few days BEFORE a device is released. So it's easy to fix RFS, and a little less easy to fix STL/BML.
Actually STL/BML isn't that bad except for the fact that it's a proprietary module that won't load unless the kernel version is 100% unchanged. So you can't move to newer base Linux releases. That's why most Cyanogenmod releases for Samsung move to MTD (even though it's a pain in the ass for the original transition.)
They made that promise in April and then...
Oh wait, the Droid 3 (released months later) is locked!
I keep seeing people claim that locked bootloaders are a carrier demand... When this is clearly NOT the case.
Across ALL carriers, at least in the United States:
None of the Samsung Galaxy S line have locked bootloaders. (Tab 7s may be mildly locked?) The exception is the Galaxy Tab 10.1 line, which actually has randomly locked bootloaders for the non-carrier-distributed wifi version. (Don't know about the Verizon LTE variant). Even then, the bootloader locking is fairly minimal. The closest to "bootloader locking" I've seen in a Samsung Android phone is locking out flashing alternate bootloaders (Infuse 4G), but never a bootloader that locked out flashing any kernel or userland you wanted.
A small number of HTCs came out locked in early 2011 - HTC quickly reversed this decision after user outcry. The locked phones were distributed across multiple carriers.
Nearly all Motorola Android phones are locked down, regardless of carrier.
Motorola may claim it's the carrier - but if you look at the trends across carriers vs. trends across manufacturers, the trend CLEARLY follows the manufacturer and not the carrier.
250KW is perfectly reasonable - that's 335 horsepower. 250MW is 1/4 the electrical output of the typical uranium-fueled fission reactor.
However even if you correct for that typo, everything about the article screams "snake oil" to me. The only way to get THAT much energy out of 8 grams of thorium is to use it as fission fuel in a bona fide nuclear reactor. But this is clearly not a fission reactor - everything I see indicates that this is breaking the law of conservation of energy.