Full Disclosure: I'm a bit of an Android enthusiast though I'm not sure if I rise to the level of fanboy as I don't own any android themed toys, stickers or clothing:)
Regardless of the merits of this case (or any of the other cases) one can only hope that these lawsuits call attention to the huge flaws in our patent system and how they stifle innovation. Of course realistic me knows that lobbyists will prevent any real reform from happening but anything that slows the tide of stupid patents being issued would be a good thing.
Dunno, I've tried speed tests at various places in 4 different regions, Los Angeles County (where I live), San Diego, San Francisco Bay area and Las Vegas area and not gotten more than ~5.2MBPS even with 5 bars of HSPA+.
On the LTE phone it's rare I can pull an LTE signal and where it's stuck on HSPA+ it's quite a bit slower than the T-Mobile HSPA+ (usually 2-3 MBPS)
Faster theoretically maybe but not in reality, I've got a "4G" HSPA+ T-Mobile phone (which is the fastest of all the fake "4G" networks) and an AT&T LTE phone and where I can get an LTE signal it destroys the HSPA+ network. The fastest I've ever seen on the HSPA+ network was 5MB, the slowest LTE I;ve seen was 10MB.
In any case IMO the blame does indeed fall with the ITU, they set the "4G" barrier artificially high so that LTE let alone WiMax wouldn't get there, which invited the carriers to say fuck it and start slapping the "4G" label on their existing 3G networks. If the ITU had just said that LTE and WiMax were 4G we wouldn't have this problem.
Sounds good (and hillarious) but I think it would be harder to pull off than one would think, even for Google.
How would Google identify which tickets were scalped? I guess they could make the tickets non-transferrable but that would affect people who bought tickets with the intention of going but later found out they couldn't and would give their tickets to someone else (or sell them at cost).
The ever increasing "stuff" that attendees get, a few years ago everyone got a Nexus One, a couple years ago I forget but last year people got a XOOM tablet and some other multi-hundred-dollar gizmo.
I've always wondered with I/O how much people want to go because of whatever new technology is being introduced or discussed there or because the expectation being set that all attendees will get a full featured Android device (phone or tablet or STB).
The developer of the dominant alternative recovery for MANY android devices wasn't able to get a ticket this year (though he may well get one via back-channels) due to the mobs of people who snatched up the tickets like it was a Queen concert complete with zombie Freddie Mercury.
Also as TFS pointed out I suspect there are a fair number of people who got tickets with the intention of reselling them at a profit.
I have 2 phones plugged in that work fine with no power, including the one on my night stand, I also have another one in a drawer I can use if needed.
The batteries at the CO will last longer than my UPS The generator at the CO will last longer than my generator The power company will put a higher priority on restoring power to the CO than they will to my house or my ISP for that matter.
As I mentioned previously, the ability to have a more reliable access to 911 is not the only reason we have a land line. We use it for our local calls which don't cost us anything extra.
It's simply ridiculous to claim that a land line is no more reliable than VoIP, in the last 2 major earthquakes we have seen (94 and 71) power was out for more than a day but the land line never stopped working, after the initial flood of calls following the quakes the phones worked fine for contacting & communicating with friends & family.
If I switched to a VoIP provider I could save a few bucks but I've introduced several more potential points of failure into the scenario, even if I have a spare DSL modem and router (which I do) they won't run more than a few hours on a consumer-grade UPS, I suppose I could buy a $1000 higher end UPS to run me for longer but that's going to create it's own problems and increase my power costs.
Far from the only reason, but the reliability of a land line is nothing to discount. We use our land line primarily for local calls, it provides better call quality and allows us to cost effectively place phones in every room of the house where we might be.
If we ditched our land line we would need to upgrade our cell plan to one with more minutes so much if not all of the savings of cutting the land line is going to disappear.
Perhaps it's just a small part of my plan, I've got a small generator, stored water + non-perishable food, not to mention camping gear, even if I don't need to call 911 it might be helpful to reach out to loved ones.
You might or I might be fine, but I was talking specifically about elderly people without a lot of stamina, especially problematic for a widow who's never had to worry about how to deal with the cold in her entire lifetime.
In general, many people have become soft thanks to modern life.
Seriously, 10,000 911 calls is a huge number, even if 911 is being abused there were no doubt a lot of calls from people trapped in their homes (for people who have ditched their landlines) or cars. Imagine an elderly person in their home when the heat goes out, in those cold temperatures that can become life threatening very quickly.
Things like this are one of the main reasons we pay ~$25/mo for a land line despite having 5 active cell phones in the house on 2 separate networks (not to mention a few inactive ones that can still call 911) I know that if the excrement hits the air circulator that I will have more options to reach people than finicky mobile networks.
There are no DSL providers available in this area?
Even if there are not Cable or DSL providers there are always more traditional connectivity options, of course those might be cost prohibitive for a small company.
If your ISP (Verizon and Comcast) are blocking port 25 outbound it doesn't sound like they think you have a "Business" connection. Check your contract/TOS for any provisions that would prevent you from running a server (common for residential cable connections but not for business) and if there isn't one call and complain. If they won't unblock port 25 for your mail server (assuming it's properly configured) you need to find a new ISP.
Our policy is stricter, we explicitly prohibit someone from connecting to the company E-Mail system with a personally owned device, of course we provide BlackBerry or iPhone devices (user/manager preference) to anyone with even a halfway reasonable explanation.
Our latest Dell and HP notebooks include a DisplayPort instead of an HDMI port which the previous models featured, apparently PC makers have to pay something like $0.06 per machine in royalties to include HDMI so they go with DisplayPort instead.
Unfortunately for us users even at monoprice a DisplayPort to HDMI cable costs several $ more than a regular HDMI cable, of course also the DisplayPort cables only come in white.
Well since so far AT&T only has a single Android phone, I guess you can say that the fact that they block installation of external downloads on that phone "routine" but it's not exactly an accurate representation. In any case the AT&T Backflip is the only Android phone in existence that has this behavior, and they were widely criticized within the Android community for that and other anomalies on that phone, including the use of Yahoo! instead of Google for search as well as the use of Android 1.5 which is the last version made that doesn't support Google Maps with Navigation.
AT&T is coming out with a new Android phone soon, we will see if they do the same thing.
Of course, one could speculate that AT&T has a vested interest in making their Android users experience sup-par to make a certain other phone they sell seem better by comparison.
Actually the summary is incredibly misleading there, TFA talking about 20% apps doesn't say that those 20% are "malicious" only that 20% access your personal information. Which itself isn't much of an issue because anytime you install an App from the market you are presented with a notice that explains everything this app does and interacts with. The word "malicious" doesn't even appear in the article at all. You can credit itwbennett for that bit of FUDdiness.
Also related to the deleting of apps off your phone, just to be clear that's only an option for Google if you install from the Android Market, if you install from a different app source or manually install (both easy to do on any android phone besides the AT&T Backflip) Google has no ability to touch that app.
Slashdot Mirror
Full Disclosure: I'm a bit of an Android enthusiast though I'm not sure if I rise to the level of fanboy as I don't own any android themed toys, stickers or clothing :)
Regardless of the merits of this case (or any of the other cases) one can only hope that these lawsuits call attention to the huge flaws in our patent system and how they stifle innovation. Of course realistic me knows that lobbyists will prevent any real reform from happening but anything that slows the tide of stupid patents being issued would be a good thing.
Too bad anybody who was warning us at the time when it could have been avoided was promptly labeled a "Micro$oft Shill"
Dunno, I've tried speed tests at various places in 4 different regions, Los Angeles County (where I live), San Diego, San Francisco Bay area and Las Vegas area and not gotten more than ~5.2MBPS even with 5 bars of HSPA+.
On the LTE phone it's rare I can pull an LTE signal and where it's stuck on HSPA+ it's quite a bit slower than the T-Mobile HSPA+ (usually 2-3 MBPS)
Not talking about data cap but data speeds, I rounded the numbers to the closest MB.
Faster theoretically maybe but not in reality, I've got a "4G" HSPA+ T-Mobile phone (which is the fastest of all the fake "4G" networks) and an AT&T LTE phone and where I can get an LTE signal it destroys the HSPA+ network. The fastest I've ever seen on the HSPA+ network was 5MB, the slowest LTE I;ve seen was 10MB.
In any case IMO the blame does indeed fall with the ITU, they set the "4G" barrier artificially high so that LTE let alone WiMax wouldn't get there, which invited the carriers to say fuck it and start slapping the "4G" label on their existing 3G networks. If the ITU had just said that LTE and WiMax were 4G we wouldn't have this problem.
Sounds good (and hillarious) but I think it would be harder to pull off than one would think, even for Google.
How would Google identify which tickets were scalped? I guess they could make the tickets non-transferrable but that would affect people who bought tickets with the intention of going but later found out they couldn't and would give their tickets to someone else (or sell them at cost).
The ever increasing "stuff" that attendees get, a few years ago everyone got a Nexus One, a couple years ago I forget but last year people got a XOOM tablet and some other multi-hundred-dollar gizmo.
I've always wondered with I/O how much people want to go because of whatever new technology is being introduced or discussed there or because the expectation being set that all attendees will get a full featured Android device (phone or tablet or STB).
The developer of the dominant alternative recovery for MANY android devices wasn't able to get a ticket this year (though he may well get one via back-channels) due to the mobs of people who snatched up the tickets like it was a Queen concert complete with zombie Freddie Mercury.
Also as TFS pointed out I suspect there are a fair number of people who got tickets with the intention of reselling them at a profit.
SPOT has had the ability to post to Twitter or Facebook via satellite for a while now with their SPOT Connect product.
http://www.findmespot.com/en/index.php?cid=116
I'm pretty sure that technically it is in-fact news. Obviously not the kind that everyone is interested in.
In any case CmdrTaco posted this particular FA, I would suspect he would know what does and doesn't belong on /.
I have 2 phones plugged in that work fine with no power, including the one on my night stand, I also have another one in a drawer I can use if needed.
The batteries at the CO will last longer than my UPS
The generator at the CO will last longer than my generator
The power company will put a higher priority on restoring power to the CO than they will to my house or my ISP for that matter.
As I mentioned previously, the ability to have a more reliable access to 911 is not the only reason we have a land line. We use it for our local calls which don't cost us anything extra.
It's simply ridiculous to claim that a land line is no more reliable than VoIP, in the last 2 major earthquakes we have seen (94 and 71) power was out for more than a day but the land line never stopped working, after the initial flood of calls following the quakes the phones worked fine for contacting & communicating with friends & family.
If I switched to a VoIP provider I could save a few bucks but I've introduced several more potential points of failure into the scenario, even if I have a spare DSL modem and router (which I do) they won't run more than a few hours on a consumer-grade UPS, I suppose I could buy a $1000 higher end UPS to run me for longer but that's going to create it's own problems and increase my power costs.
Far from the only reason, but the reliability of a land line is nothing to discount. We use our land line primarily for local calls, it provides better call quality and allows us to cost effectively place phones in every room of the house where we might be.
If we ditched our land line we would need to upgrade our cell plan to one with more minutes so much if not all of the savings of cutting the land line is going to disappear.
Perhaps it's just a small part of my plan, I've got a small generator, stored water + non-perishable food, not to mention camping gear, even if I don't need to call 911 it might be helpful to reach out to loved ones.
You might or I might be fine, but I was talking specifically about elderly people without a lot of stamina, especially problematic for a widow who's never had to worry about how to deal with the cold in her entire lifetime.
In general, many people have become soft thanks to modern life.
Called it ;)
Seriously, 10,000 911 calls is a huge number, even if 911 is being abused there were no doubt a lot of calls from people trapped in their homes (for people who have ditched their landlines) or cars. Imagine an elderly person in their home when the heat goes out, in those cold temperatures that can become life threatening very quickly.
Things like this are one of the main reasons we pay ~$25/mo for a land line despite having 5 active cell phones in the house on 2 separate networks (not to mention a few inactive ones that can still call 911) I know that if the excrement hits the air circulator that I will have more options to reach people than finicky mobile networks.
There are no DSL providers available in this area?
Even if there are not Cable or DSL providers there are always more traditional connectivity options, of course those might be cost prohibitive for a small company.
If your ISP (Verizon and Comcast) are blocking port 25 outbound it doesn't sound like they think you have a "Business" connection. Check your contract/TOS for any provisions that would prevent you from running a server (common for residential cable connections but not for business) and if there isn't one call and complain. If they won't unblock port 25 for your mail server (assuming it's properly configured) you need to find a new ISP.
Our policy is stricter, we explicitly prohibit someone from connecting to the company E-Mail system with a personally owned device, of course we provide BlackBerry or iPhone devices (user/manager preference) to anyone with even a halfway reasonable explanation.
That isn't Pluto, that's Pluto's moon Charon.
They could just replace the java dependent code with native code for the individual platforms.
It always seemed to me that the Java dependencies were introduced arbitrarily to force OpenOffice users to use Java.
Our latest Dell and HP notebooks include a DisplayPort instead of an HDMI port which the previous models featured, apparently PC makers have to pay something like $0.06 per machine in royalties to include HDMI so they go with DisplayPort instead.
Unfortunately for us users even at monoprice a DisplayPort to HDMI cable costs several $ more than a regular HDMI cable, of course also the DisplayPort cables only come in white.
I stand corrected then, I haven't paid much attention to the Aria.
In any case, this practice seems to be limited to AT&T, why they would do this is easy to speculate about.
Well since so far AT&T only has a single Android phone, I guess you can say that the fact that they block installation of external downloads on that phone "routine" but it's not exactly an accurate representation. In any case the AT&T Backflip is the only Android phone in existence that has this behavior, and they were widely criticized within the Android community for that and other anomalies on that phone, including the use of Yahoo! instead of Google for search as well as the use of Android 1.5 which is the last version made that doesn't support Google Maps with Navigation.
AT&T is coming out with a new Android phone soon, we will see if they do the same thing.
Of course, one could speculate that AT&T has a vested interest in making their Android users experience sup-par to make a certain other phone they sell seem better by comparison.
Actually the summary is incredibly misleading there, TFA talking about 20% apps doesn't say that those 20% are "malicious" only that 20% access your personal information. Which itself isn't much of an issue because anytime you install an App from the market you are presented with a notice that explains everything this app does and interacts with. The word "malicious" doesn't even appear in the article at all. You can credit itwbennett for that bit of FUDdiness.
Also related to the deleting of apps off your phone, just to be clear that's only an option for Google if you install from the Android Market, if you install from a different app source or manually install (both easy to do on any android phone besides the AT&T Backflip) Google has no ability to touch that app.