I don't know why you choose to underutilize a very useful device, but not everyone has the same experience.
I have an iPad2 and I use it a lot. I carry it with me between meetings and use it for email, calendar, reading documents, and an occasional terminal session to fix a problem with one of the servers using iSSH. The notepad application is pretty useful, and I've become spoiled with having my meeting notes already in my computer when I do make it to my office. Our office uses an internal wiki and we have web applications that I'm able to use with my iPad. I get exceptional battery life when compared against my netbook and I don't have to open and close the clamshell as I move from meeting to meeting or travel on public transportation.
At home I'll watch netflix on it, or HBO GO. In addition, I can quickly reply to the emails that flood my inbox at all times of the day.
This is my personal preference. I'm sure everybody's is different.
And finally, the server admins who choose FreeBSD are pretty self-selecting. Someone who really knows how to tune and administer Linux is probably going to have just as stable a system as someone who really knows FreeBSD.
Unless the Linux admin needs PPS or ZFS. Speaking as someone who had to implement PPS in Linux, there have been many times where I wished I could just use FreeBSD. I couldn't because there were board support packages for Linux that weren't close to being available for any of the BSDs.
It would suck. The JVM is a lumbering undead monstrosity. I say this as someone who's livelihood depends on it on a daily basis and (unfortunately) spends about 70% of his time writing Java code, now. It's just bad.
JVM is not Java. Scala, Jython, and JRuby run within the JVM and JVM7 has better support for these dynamic languages.
And I'm listing that as a negative, not a positive. So much of the legacy Java 1.1 stuff is just BAD and completely broken, but it stays around and causes problems for everyone. So many APIs are completely braindead, and yet we can't fix them because that may break someone's code from 1996!
That's a feature that separates a mature language from a flavor of the month language. With your examples, I doubt the authenticity of your points.
How about either when you use an implement -- such as a belt -- to perform it, or when it leaves clear physical damage to the child. Those are two simple clear lines you can and should use.
As someone who had to pick his switch from the whipping tree, my point still stands. Differences in belief on what constitutes corporal punishment exist between generations. I wasn't abused by my parents, but I did get a whipping when I did something wrong.
At what point does corporal punishment become child abuse? Sure the "time out" generation will say any amount is child abuse, however the previous generation will see nothing wrong.
Timing is everything and when I see a 23 year old releasing a video 7 and a half years later, I'm thinking the child attempted to extort the father for continued financial support thinking that him being a judge provided her some leverage. It looks like he didn't meet her demands, so out comes the video on youtube.
No, that's not it at all. It has nothing to do with openness and everything to do with ensuring that there can never be a JVM that competes with the one Oracle bought from Sun.
You may have your tin foil hat on too tight. The suit has more to do with Google trying to circumvent Sun's license by making a "clean room" implementation of JVM for mobile use. Sun was never happy about Google doing an end run on their sale of embedded Java.
That said, nothing prevents us from wondering "what if" Google had based their JVM on OpenJDK. Google wouldn't be using J2ME and they would have a GPL'd JVM running the code. They would have a Dalvik Java library and could offered the minimum compatibility with standard Java libraries required by the license. Naturally developers would stick with the Dalvik library for performance issues and we would still have the Android OS. Oracle wouldn't have much of a legal leg to stand on, at least a more tenuous one, because technically their JVM would be installed in a portable computer that happens to be a phone and not an embedded version of Java with a MIDP profile for that hardware. We will never know.
Sometimes Google suffers from NIH (Not invented here). I think Google would came up with any excuse to have their own JVM, since the creator of the JVM would have the most control of the development space. Think about it... What would happen if Google supported Meego or other open source based Phone OS? Instead we have a potential new boss (Google) that is the same as the old boss (Oracle/Sun). Got to guarantee those ad clicks somehow. You're right conjecture is fun!
The sad part of all this is Sun was a pretty lackluster steward of Java (too unwilling to break backwards compatibility with bytecode written in 1996 to fix problems in the language), but Oracle has been downright harmful to Java since taking it over. For their first major JVM release, they punted all the important features for Java 7 to a later release and then shipped with a (known) bug that broke loops.
Let me repeat that again:
THEY. BROKE. LOOPS.
Bending the truth a little to make a point are we? They didn't break loops. There was a bug in the hot spot compiler that would incorrectly optimize the loops produced by the JVM. THIS WAS FIXED IN A PATCH that was released shortly after the initial release of Java 7.
Of all the modern programming languages in popular use today, Java is the most backward compatible. Python2 v. Python3, Perl5.10 v. Perl6, and Ruby 1.8 v. Ruby 1.9 comes to mind. And just like you can have several versions of these languages and their associated libraries installed on your computer, nothing prevents you from having Java5, Java6 and Java7 installed at the same time too. Though I never really had a reason to keep all versions installed, since Java7 still runs all the code on my server. Once we test the code on Java7, we change the settings to run that code using Java7. In a very short period of time testing, we had all code running on the latest Java. BTW, we go through this same process when updating any software/library.
Glad I'm the 'C++' guy and I'm learning Flex.:)
Good for you. Here's your cookie. To be fair, as a fellow C++ guy, I would be remiss if we perpetuated a false image of C++ code always being backward compatible or working unmodified on different platforms or even using different compilers on the same platform. While there is a C++ standard, the implementation of that standard is left to each compiler vendor and your milage may vary.
With regards to Flex, it looks nice and it has potential. It still will be a jack of all trades and a master of none.
I think you are twisting his words around to try to make an off topic discussion on piracy. He did say (emphasis mine):
If people stop installing pirated software or being dumb and installing software without questioning it, this problem would go away in the MacOSX space.
I would put VLC Media player in the be smart about where you download it from portion of his comment.
Why even mention Android? We have Linux, Windows, BSD, and other operating systems for the desktop. Also, this ONLY applies to applications sold in the App Store. You can still download directly from a vendor, or buy a DVD/CDROM from your local software retailer.
Right, because computers haven't changed much in the last twenty years probably.
Yet we all went back to Linux which is based on a very mature way of doing things.
WHY do you cut every single program into little pieces and box them together?
Look at the RHEL Tomcat RPM, compare to traditional/opt/tomcat or/usr/local/tomcat or even/tomcat
WHY does anyone think cutting that or any application into ten different directories, mixing its private bits with private bits of completely unrelated programs is a good idea?
It's called being modular. Those distinct RPM packages allows a dependency to be fulfilled without requiring the entire Tomcat software suite being installed. Also it allows the developer to only install the portions of Tomcat that is needed. You can do the same thing using the source tar file that you place in/opt/tomcat or/usr/local/tomcat, except you would have to specify the configuration manually.
One other thing, some of those Tomcat RPMs are optional plugins not included with the core Tomcat tar file.
Among other things: They force you to splatter files from different pieces of software into the same directory, making it impossible to install different versions of the same application.
/lib,/bin,/usr/lib,/usr/bin,/sbin,/usr/sbin,/usr/local/bin,/usr/local/lib have their place. You are not "forced" to splater files from different pieces of software into the same directory, but it makes sense to have these in a standard location if they are meant to be shared with other programs. Don't forget you can place different versions of the same application in separate subdirectories (e.g./lib/widget/ver-1,/lib/widget/ver-2) or you could indicate version in the filename (e.g./lib/libwidget-ver1,/lib/libwidget-ver2).
I'm a little disappointed with Fedora's direction. I use them as the bleeding-edge OS and scientific linux (RHEL) as my stable OS. Changing UI isn't a deal breaker, but making differing file directory structures is pushing the limits. Maybe they should just change their name to Fubuntu?
Well depends on how much you need credit. The average small business LLC don't enjoy full indemnity since banks will be hesitant to lend money to your next venture. However if you are a large company making strawmen LLCs to do your bidding then it's great.
"If" you read the article you would have read the following:
"Only one generator, on the first floor of a building near unit 6, kept going; unlike the others, all of its equipment was above the water line. Reactor 6 and its sister unit, reactor 5, would weather the crisis without serious damage, thanks in part to that generator."
You'd also known that most of the emergency power survived the quake but the flood quickly took them out. Therefore they didn't protect the nuclear plant from a possible tsunami and that was the point of the article.
and keep them locked in your desk. We do this at home. No one can hack our locked desk drawer without physical access. We can still change our passwords and update the information on our pad which happens to be a cheap and small ledger book from the local office supply store.
No need to make it complicated. It's not that we're that interesting of a target in the first place.
Prior to the invention and manufacture of cheap capacitive touch screens it wasn't practical to do so; resistive touch screens aren't that good at detecting finger swipes and it's fairly pointless with a stylus. Apple didn't invent those, they were just the second to release a phone with one. (The first was the LG Prada. Apparently it had software limitations that made swipe gestures impractical due to the hurried development.)
So you agree that Apple was the first to introduce "swipe to unlock". The fact that they went out of their way to make sure the hardware could support gestures should provide more evidence to support Apple's patent application.
The LG Prada had a key unlock button on the right side of the phone. It did not use gestures to unlock the phone. Like you said, the Prada didn't use swipe gestures.
patents protect both the concept and implementation of an invention. Otherwise it would just be a fancy form of copyright allowing derivative works without compensating the original inventor.
As for the "obviousness" of a patent, most things are pretty obvious when someone else figures it out for you. I think the obvious argument is being a little over used. It's almost to the point of the old "I could had a V8" vegetable juice commercial. For example:
Intermittent windshield wipes seems obvious now, but it didn't prevent Robert Kearns from patenting it. He approached Ford and Chrysler with the idea of installing them on their new cars. Both car companies rejected the idea, but later installed their own version of the intermittent windshield wiper. Even though Ford Motor Company came up with a different method for delaying the wiping motion of the windshield wiper, they lost their case. Chrysler lost later. The other automakers' cases were dismissed because Kearns missed court filing deadlines. The point being that the patent did its job and gave the inventor legal authority to defend his right for compensation, regardless of the methods used by the infringers to workaround the patent.
As for Apple's "slide to unlock" patent, it seems novel to me. I don't recall anybody else using a similar method of unlocking a phone prior to Apple's implementation of it. I also think this is a trivial patent to get so worked over about. There has to be a better way to unlock a cell phone than activating the screen with a home button and sliding your finger across the screen. Just because Apple did it, doesn't mean the Android phones had to follow suit. Nothing prevents Google for making the unlock action Home + Menu Button, or Home + button on the screen, or anything other combination of actions. Personally, I would prefer the two button press method.
I think the anti-french sentiment in the US has been exaggerated. Maybe like the anti-american sentiment in France prior to recent events were exaggerated.
The city I live in has history as a french colony and we celebrate it as a part of our history.
Now, if this guy weren't such an obvious Apple fanboy and decided to do some real work instead of just one that shows what he wants it to show, he would track down a sample population and find out how many actually give a...
The survey appears accurate and the author was upfront with his research methods. The issue is not that the author is an Apple fanboy, it's if the survey results have merit. His survey results should not surprise anybody that owns an Android phone.
A fanboy reaction would to come up with justifications like "no desire for upgrades" which I doubt is true, or accusing the author of being an Apple fanboy.
Hobbyist support is an outlier when compared to the much larger mainstream consumer. The survey performed by the author only dealt with support provided by the carrier/hardware manufacturer. I believe this is a valid criteria for a survey.
Yes it show Android OS in a unfavorable light, but we knew this already. This is not a surprise and is well known to the Slashdot readers. This survey simply attempts to quantify the problem.
While your feeling for community support software may have merit, this survey does nothing to support or argue against your position. Your statement:
Who cares if the vendor continues to support it, most people wipe the stock image as soon as they get it home and put a better build on it. Nothing better than free support.
is a false premise. It's like throwing a table cloth over the elephant in the room. It may make you feel better or you hope that no one else notices the elephant. If anything, this survey should be used positively by the Android community as evidence that something needs to be done to correct the problem. Ignoring it or exhibiting typical fanboi behavior does nobody any good.
Answering your question "Who cares if the vendor continues to support it"? An overwhelming majority of the end users do. This is why iOS has an advantage in the market. Address it and don't blow it off on a false premise. This warrants repeating, and Google has said that they are attempting to make adjustments to mitigate this problem.
Unfortunately, Google doesn't seem to be prepared to force hardware vendors to an agreed platform to release against that would lower the barriers that prevent Google from issuing direct updates. Until this is accomplished, Android is at the mercy of hardware manufactures and phone carriers who are more interested in selling the latest phone or renewing a contract. HTC (solely as an example) is a hardware company, and T-Mobile (again only an example) is a phone company. Neither directly benefits from having a customer sticking with their current phone.
Again, you falsely label me as a Republican and assume I think Bush was great. Bush started a massive invasion and attempted erosion of our rights that Obama has continued and expanded. You assume I believe Obama is full of shit, and you are correct. However, your assumption of my view of Bush is incorrect, as he was full of shit as well.
It was not my intent to label you as a republican. It was a shotgun method of addressing you and others that have very similar views which happen to be the republican right. I'm considered a RINO myself even though my "liberal" views are very similar to that of Ronald Reagan that the right idolize. I don't think they like Reagan the person/president. They worship the myth of Reagan who was the most popular republican president in modern history therefore they pretend that Reagan had views similar to theirs and point to the myth as something that pattern themselves as.
You need to see more proposals. The title of "expert" in the organization is loosely applied. Kind of like "sanitation engineers" being real engineers. Many awards are indeed given toward legitimate research, but a strong bias does exist as to who gets the funds. Solyndra is no the only organization working on solar, but they certainly got a disproportionate amount of funds, which was certainly not an accident.
Well I think Solyndra was an earmark from the Obama administration. There is evidence that Obama ignore advisers concern about Solyndra and even insisted on using them as a campaign photo opportunity.
Earmarks are dead. They make up a smaller percentage of the budget than the R&D lines you are standing behind. And many earmarks supported very good programs that are now funded on their own lines. That system was abused, but every government process is abused. And when the earmarks went away, those that abused it didn't stop - they simply shifted their behavior to funding mechanisms you have not learned about yet.
Sorry earmarks are alive and well, the infamous earmark ban never passed congressional vote. However thanks to the Republicans in congress (only because they did this as a publicity stunt) it takes an even larger percentage of the R&D budget and it's less transparent (requires FOIA requests to agencies to uncover). This is how it works.
1. Publicly declare that they will no longer ask for earmarks in legislation.
2. Allocate the money that would have gone to the earmark to the agency that is closest to the function of the earmark. This provides legitimacy to the questionable earmark.
3. Send a letter to the head of the agency stating the intent of sending more money to the agency in exchange for the agency to allocate a portion of the money to the senator's pet project. This allows the agency to collect more money for their management in the form of overhead.
It's called Letter Marking and it's use has risen dramatically since the republican pledge for no more earmarks.
One example is Republican Senator Mark Steven Kirk who solicited the Department of Education (ironic considering the republican rhetoric) to release money "needed to support students and educational programs" in his district. It was later revealed that his district received an additional $1.1 million in stimulus money.
More info can be found here.
Knowing how politicians are, I'm sure Democratic congressmen are just as prone to use such a tactic. Except maybe not as hypocritical.
Anyway despite the rampant letter marking, the overwhelming majority of the research grants issued by the government are competition based.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know why you choose to underutilize a very useful device, but not everyone has the same experience.
I have an iPad2 and I use it a lot. I carry it with me between meetings and use it for email, calendar, reading documents, and an occasional terminal session to fix a problem with one of the servers using iSSH. The notepad application is pretty useful, and I've become spoiled with having my meeting notes already in my computer when I do make it to my office. Our office uses an internal wiki and we have web applications that I'm able to use with my iPad. I get exceptional battery life when compared against my netbook and I don't have to open and close the clamshell as I move from meeting to meeting or travel on public transportation.
At home I'll watch netflix on it, or HBO GO. In addition, I can quickly reply to the emails that flood my inbox at all times of the day.
This is my personal preference. I'm sure everybody's is different.
Unless the Linux admin needs PPS or ZFS. Speaking as someone who had to implement PPS in Linux, there have been many times where I wished I could just use FreeBSD. I couldn't because there were board support packages for Linux that weren't close to being available for any of the BSDs.
Why not? I'm seeing the same thing done with Dalvik. JVM is ahead of the game when it comes to JIT and dynamic language support.
I didn't mean to sound too harsh on the "authenticity" comment.
JVM is not Java. Scala, Jython, and JRuby run within the JVM and JVM7 has better support for these dynamic languages.
That's a feature that separates a mature language from a flavor of the month language. With your examples, I doubt the authenticity of your points.
As someone who had to pick his switch from the whipping tree, my point still stands. Differences in belief on what constitutes corporal punishment exist between generations. I wasn't abused by my parents, but I did get a whipping when I did something wrong.
At what point does corporal punishment become child abuse? Sure the "time out" generation will say any amount is child abuse, however the previous generation will see nothing wrong.
Timing is everything and when I see a 23 year old releasing a video 7 and a half years later, I'm thinking the child attempted to extort the father for continued financial support thinking that him being a judge provided her some leverage. It looks like he didn't meet her demands, so out comes the video on youtube.
You may have your tin foil hat on too tight. The suit has more to do with Google trying to circumvent Sun's license by making a "clean room" implementation of JVM for mobile use. Sun was never happy about Google doing an end run on their sale of embedded Java.
That said, nothing prevents us from wondering "what if" Google had based their JVM on OpenJDK. Google wouldn't be using J2ME and they would have a GPL'd JVM running the code. They would have a Dalvik Java library and could offered the minimum compatibility with standard Java libraries required by the license. Naturally developers would stick with the Dalvik library for performance issues and we would still have the Android OS. Oracle wouldn't have much of a legal leg to stand on, at least a more tenuous one, because technically their JVM would be installed in a portable computer that happens to be a phone and not an embedded version of Java with a MIDP profile for that hardware. We will never know.
Sometimes Google suffers from NIH (Not invented here). I think Google would came up with any excuse to have their own JVM, since the creator of the JVM would have the most control of the development space. Think about it... What would happen if Google supported Meego or other open source based Phone OS? Instead we have a potential new boss (Google) that is the same as the old boss (Oracle/Sun). Got to guarantee those ad clicks somehow. You're right conjecture is fun!
Bending the truth a little to make a point are we? They didn't break loops. There was a bug in the hot spot compiler that would incorrectly optimize the loops produced by the JVM. THIS WAS FIXED IN A PATCH that was released shortly after the initial release of Java 7.
Of all the modern programming languages in popular use today, Java is the most backward compatible. Python2 v. Python3, Perl5.10 v. Perl6, and Ruby 1.8 v. Ruby 1.9 comes to mind. And just like you can have several versions of these languages and their associated libraries installed on your computer, nothing prevents you from having Java5, Java6 and Java7 installed at the same time too. Though I never really had a reason to keep all versions installed, since Java7 still runs all the code on my server. Once we test the code on Java7, we change the settings to run that code using Java7. In a very short period of time testing, we had all code running on the latest Java. BTW, we go through this same process when updating any software/library.
Good for you. Here's your cookie. To be fair, as a fellow C++ guy, I would be remiss if we perpetuated a false image of C++ code always being backward compatible or working unmodified on different platforms or even using different compilers on the same platform. While there is a C++ standard, the implementation of that standard is left to each compiler vendor and your milage may vary. With regards to Flex, it looks nice and it has potential. It still will be a jack of all trades and a master of none.
Just so we are all on the same page, Mac App store is for OS X not iOS.
I think you are twisting his words around to try to make an off topic discussion on piracy. He did say (emphasis mine):
I would put VLC Media player in the be smart about where you download it from portion of his comment.
Why even mention Android? We have Linux, Windows, BSD, and other operating systems for the desktop. Also, this ONLY applies to applications sold in the App Store. You can still download directly from a vendor, or buy a DVD/CDROM from your local software retailer.
You are not alone.
Yet we all went back to Linux which is based on a very mature way of doing things.
It's called being modular. Those distinct RPM packages allows a dependency to be fulfilled without requiring the entire Tomcat software suite being installed. Also it allows the developer to only install the portions of Tomcat that is needed. You can do the same thing using the source tar file that you place in /opt/tomcat or /usr/local/tomcat, except you would have to specify the configuration manually.
One other thing, some of those Tomcat RPMs are optional plugins not included with the core Tomcat tar file.
/lib, /bin, /usr/lib, /usr/bin, /sbin, /usr/sbin, /usr/local/bin, /usr/local/lib have their place. You are not "forced" to splater files from different pieces of software into the same directory, but it makes sense to have these in a standard location if they are meant to be shared with other programs. Don't forget you can place different versions of the same application in separate subdirectories (e.g. /lib/widget/ver-1, /lib/widget/ver-2) or you could indicate version in the filename (e.g. /lib/libwidget-ver1, /lib/libwidget-ver2).
I'm a little disappointed with Fedora's direction. I use them as the bleeding-edge OS and scientific linux (RHEL) as my stable OS. Changing UI isn't a deal breaker, but making differing file directory structures is pushing the limits. Maybe they should just change their name to Fubuntu?
Well depends on how much you need credit. The average small business LLC don't enjoy full indemnity since banks will be hesitant to lend money to your next venture. However if you are a large company making strawmen LLCs to do your bidding then it's great.
"If" you read the article you would have read the following:
"Only one generator, on the first floor of a building near unit 6, kept going; unlike the others, all of its equipment was above the water line. Reactor 6 and its sister unit, reactor 5, would weather the crisis without serious damage, thanks in part to that generator."
You'd also known that most of the emergency power survived the quake but the flood quickly took them out. Therefore they didn't protect the nuclear plant from a possible tsunami and that was the point of the article.
and keep them locked in your desk. We do this at home. No one can hack our locked desk drawer without physical access. We can still change our passwords and update the information on our pad which happens to be a cheap and small ledger book from the local office supply store.
No need to make it complicated. It's not that we're that interesting of a target in the first place.
So you agree that Apple was the first to introduce "swipe to unlock". The fact that they went out of their way to make sure the hardware could support gestures should provide more evidence to support Apple's patent application.
The LG Prada had a key unlock button on the right side of the phone. It did not use gestures to unlock the phone. Like you said, the Prada didn't use swipe gestures.
patents protect both the concept and implementation of an invention. Otherwise it would just be a fancy form of copyright allowing derivative works without compensating the original inventor.
As for the "obviousness" of a patent, most things are pretty obvious when someone else figures it out for you. I think the obvious argument is being a little over used. It's almost to the point of the old "I could had a V8" vegetable juice commercial. For example:
Intermittent windshield wipes seems obvious now, but it didn't prevent Robert Kearns from patenting it. He approached Ford and Chrysler with the idea of installing them on their new cars. Both car companies rejected the idea, but later installed their own version of the intermittent windshield wiper. Even though Ford Motor Company came up with a different method for delaying the wiping motion of the windshield wiper, they lost their case. Chrysler lost later. The other automakers' cases were dismissed because Kearns missed court filing deadlines. The point being that the patent did its job and gave the inventor legal authority to defend his right for compensation, regardless of the methods used by the infringers to workaround the patent.
As for Apple's "slide to unlock" patent, it seems novel to me. I don't recall anybody else using a similar method of unlocking a phone prior to Apple's implementation of it. I also think this is a trivial patent to get so worked over about. There has to be a better way to unlock a cell phone than activating the screen with a home button and sliding your finger across the screen. Just because Apple did it, doesn't mean the Android phones had to follow suit. Nothing prevents Google for making the unlock action Home + Menu Button, or Home + button on the screen, or anything other combination of actions. Personally, I would prefer the two button press method.
I think the anti-french sentiment in the US has been exaggerated. Maybe like the anti-american sentiment in France prior to recent events were exaggerated.
The city I live in has history as a french colony and we celebrate it as a part of our history.
The survey appears accurate and the author was upfront with his research methods. The issue is not that the author is an Apple fanboy, it's if the survey results have merit. His survey results should not surprise anybody that owns an Android phone.
A fanboy reaction would to come up with justifications like "no desire for upgrades" which I doubt is true, or accusing the author of being an Apple fanboy.
Hobbyist support is an outlier when compared to the much larger mainstream consumer. The survey performed by the author only dealt with support provided by the carrier/hardware manufacturer. I believe this is a valid criteria for a survey.
Yes it show Android OS in a unfavorable light, but we knew this already. This is not a surprise and is well known to the Slashdot readers. This survey simply attempts to quantify the problem.
While your feeling for community support software may have merit, this survey does nothing to support or argue against your position. Your statement:
is a false premise. It's like throwing a table cloth over the elephant in the room. It may make you feel better or you hope that no one else notices the elephant. If anything, this survey should be used positively by the Android community as evidence that something needs to be done to correct the problem. Ignoring it or exhibiting typical fanboi behavior does nobody any good.
Answering your question "Who cares if the vendor continues to support it"? An overwhelming majority of the end users do. This is why iOS has an advantage in the market. Address it and don't blow it off on a false premise. This warrants repeating, and Google has said that they are attempting to make adjustments to mitigate this problem.
Unfortunately, Google doesn't seem to be prepared to force hardware vendors to an agreed platform to release against that would lower the barriers that prevent Google from issuing direct updates. Until this is accomplished, Android is at the mercy of hardware manufactures and phone carriers who are more interested in selling the latest phone or renewing a contract. HTC (solely as an example) is a hardware company, and T-Mobile (again only an example) is a phone company. Neither directly benefits from having a customer sticking with their current phone.
Then maybe you could raise money to sponsor a duckduckgo version.
... they just close their last parenthesis.
It was not my intent to label you as a republican. It was a shotgun method of addressing you and others that have very similar views which happen to be the republican right. I'm considered a RINO myself even though my "liberal" views are very similar to that of Ronald Reagan that the right idolize. I don't think they like Reagan the person/president. They worship the myth of Reagan who was the most popular republican president in modern history therefore they pretend that Reagan had views similar to theirs and point to the myth as something that pattern themselves as.
Well I think Solyndra was an earmark from the Obama administration. There is evidence that Obama ignore advisers concern about Solyndra and even insisted on using them as a campaign photo opportunity.
Sorry earmarks are alive and well, the infamous earmark ban never passed congressional vote. However thanks to the Republicans in congress (only because they did this as a publicity stunt) it takes an even larger percentage of the R&D budget and it's less transparent (requires FOIA requests to agencies to uncover). This is how it works.
1. Publicly declare that they will no longer ask for earmarks in legislation.
2. Allocate the money that would have gone to the earmark to the agency that is closest to the function of the earmark. This provides legitimacy to the questionable earmark.
3. Send a letter to the head of the agency stating the intent of sending more money to the agency in exchange for the agency to allocate a portion of the money to the senator's pet project. This allows the agency to collect more money for their management in the form of overhead.
It's called Letter Marking and it's use has risen dramatically since the republican pledge for no more earmarks.
One example is Republican Senator Mark Steven Kirk who solicited the Department of Education (ironic considering the republican rhetoric) to release money "needed to support students and educational programs" in his district. It was later revealed that his district received an additional $1.1 million in stimulus money. More info can be found here.
Knowing how politicians are, I'm sure Democratic congressmen are just as prone to use such a tactic. Except maybe not as hypocritical.
Anyway despite the rampant letter marking, the overwhelming majority of the research grants issued by the government are competition based.
It doesn't.