"Bad behaviour has to be more difficult than good behaviour".
very true. is it easy to scour malware-infested pirate sites for hacked APKs that contain who knows what malware? is it easy to have to do this every time the app is updated? is it easy to root your device and muck with hosts files and put of services that fake-authenticate your pirated apps?
by far, the easiest thing is to install your apps from the play store and pay your $.99. there's always going to be people that have way, way more time than money, even when it comes to amounts like $.99. you will never stop these people, so don't try. google has done it right. it's easy, very easy to buy android apps. managing their lifecycle is just as easy, and they've put enough locked doors to keep out the 99% of people with rational time / money balances.
i'd rather strive for a society that protects my rights than protects my privacy. e.g., i could care less who has my health records as long as they are prevented from discriminating against me because of them.
privacy is a losing battle anyhow. it takes a herculean effort to remain truly anonymous today. how will it be in 20 years?
maybe you could describe what exactly you need to do with your sub 3.2" display that can't be done by those devices? maybe you just need to watch 1080p movies on that 3.2" screen? or perhaps you've heard of this thing called a jellybean that every new smartphone has to have or it's a piece of poop?
there are probably more their on their site, and this is just one carrier. i also poked around on t-mobile and verizon and found many options. but hey, i'm not your personal shopper, i'm just here to point out how silly you are.
Address space randomization at best turns attacks into system crashes.
right, and after a newly installed app crashes, how many times do you keep re-starting it? or do you just uninstall it and install one of the other 1k apps that do the same thing?
that's exactly why android's permission model requires users to grant the permission before installation. writing an app that behaves reasonably with all possible combinations of permissions either granted or denied by the user is a nightmare.
here is an idea why not just use unix permission built into linux? give me sudo privileges by default so i don't have to hack it, and let me worry about the security.
if you want root, go root your device. please don't act like it's a good idea is give grandma a rooted device off the shelf.
the biggest selling point for me is the software. it's unix, but it actually works. linux just doesn't cut it when i have to spend hours and hours chasing down drivers and compiling things and patching just to make the basic features of the laptop work.
eah, it's definitely the best commercial desktop OS...oh except basically no corporate software runs of them, they're ungodly expensive, you'll never ever assemble an IT department that specializes in macs, there's no common management whatsoever, and all your employees are used to Windows. Other than all that, it's the best! Get fucking real. I am so sick of you clueless apple fanboys posting bullshit like this.
i work for a company of almost 10k people. everyone has a mac. it's fully supported by IT. it can access all enterprise resources. i'm sure there are windows boxes around, but i've been here 2 months, and i've never seen one. yes, we have to run mcafee security malware on them, but oh well. we don't use exchange here, but i have had exchange for osx at other companies, and it's quite nice.
macs aren't expensive when you realize what companies pay for fully supported windows computers from the likes of dell and HP. that, and at least two previous employers would give people windows laptops for email and such, and linux desktops for development. a single mac laptop would serve both purposes and be cheaper both in initial costs and support.
But really Samsung why are you playing games with releasing ICS for us? I like your products, but your lack of willingness to provide timely updates makes me question if I will buy from you again./rant
that's naive.
rolling out ICS is not as simple as grabbing AOSP and building. it's actually very complex. they have to port all of their UI customizations. they have validate and fix all of their add-on apps. they have to validate and fix their drivers. and the biggest of all, they have to get the carriers to sign off on it. carriers have final say on the software that goes onto devices sold into their network.
CM can get out faster because it's stock android UI, doesn't have add-on apps (or adds on free apps that don't need validation), doesn't need carrier approval, and the biggest of all, if there's a bug, they don't get tens of thousands of people calling their tech support and tons of bad press over it. CM can operate on best-effort. people are just happy to have something that works at all. they will put up with occasional crashes. on the contrary, if a stock consumer device crashes, the user is sending it back to the factory at the manufacturer's expense.
that being said, you have to ask why device manufacturers don't remedy the problems that they at least have control over. why don't they ship stock android? why don't they avoid bundling add-on applications and let users get what they want from the market (they can just switch to distributing their apps on the market, instead of flashing them onto the device). they don't do these things because UI customizations and add-on apps are differentiators. device manufacturers are scared to death of getting into a game where one tablet is as good as the other and they are competing on price alone. they all want to be where apple is at- selling premium hardware at a premium price.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, what about the effect of objects that aren’t part of the original magnetic field map, such as cars, moving lifts, and electric motors? Who knows, though — perhaps the effect of these objects is negligible.
well, most everyone knows actually. the effects of even a slab of metal is significant. the effects of powered devices like a monitor, or an electric motor, or a stationary magnet are massive. anyone can see it. grab an app that displays the magnetic levels from your smart phone's sensor, and watch them fluctuate wildly as you move it past various electronic devices.
i guess it's okay though because places like malls aren't known for having electronic devices about... oh wait. maybe they have some great technology to get around these problems, but TFA doesn't provide any inkling of that.
Which open source projects we may trust (to rely on them)?
none? even if there's a business behind it, there's no guarantee that business will be around tomorrow, and if there is a business behind it, you will find your destiny under control of said business.
as long as you have the source, you can always staff up and take over the project. you'd be in no worse of a situation than if you had staffed up and wrote the code from scratch yourself.
if you have multiple open source projects to choose from, there are obvious things to look for: active community, consistent releases, etc. of course none of those are guarantees it will be around tomorrow - when you are relying on people that aren't paid to do the work and can therefore on a whim choose to put their efforts in other places.
I am 22 years of age and have been working in the IT field for over a year. I try to learn as much about technology as my cranium can handle; I even earned the nickname 'Google' because of the amount of time I spend attempting to pack my brain with new information
my god. if someone at work told me their nickname was "google", i'd do whatever i could to avoid contact with them. you are lucky your coworkers haven't strangled you yet.
seriously, actions speak louder than words. shut up and do your job, and do it good. don't worry about what everyone else is doing. if you really are the superstar you think, then you'll be noticed.
Both of these announcements remind me why I covet local storage for documents and the ability to set my own GUI prefs.
great, enjoy your 1993 desktop computer experience. basically, since there are a few examples of cloud services not lasting until the end of the universe, you won't use them. you did read where YOU wrote that the files can be downloaded to your desktop, right?
i'd get it if they went offline without warning, but that's not what's happening.
The fine-grained permissions are informative but nothing more. You either accept them or not install the app. There's no actual control for the user. I really, really hate that.
first, it's better to know before hand so you can avoid the malware getting on your device. one it is installed, who knows that it has done.
second, it would not be practical for an app to be written to gracefully handle the user accepting or denying all possible combinations of permissions. well, maybe that's too strong. at the very least, it'd be a pain in the arse. if you were a developer you'd thank your lucky stars that it works like this.
in theory, and not in practice that is. the *only* thing that makes android more vulnerable is apple's more severe vetting for apps in their store, and the fact that android apps can be "side loaded", or installed from arbitrary sources (other than the google play store). side loaded is disabled by default and must be explicitly enabled by the user after subjecting them to a scary warning dialog.
android security model of fine-grained permissions that are presented to the user before the app is even installed is superior to iOS. what android doesn't do is protect users from their own stupidity. read the permissions. if you choose to go ahead and install that flashlight app that requests permission to the internet and to read your contacts, you'll get what you deserve.
i'm sorry, you misunderstood me. when i said "data", i meant facts. you typing something does not make it a fact.
Piracy is up, so are sales, so are profits
profits are up? whose profits? the artist? link please.
my understanding is that artists can no longer count of making any money from record sales and in stead can only depend on money from live performance ticket sales. if you have to figure the $ / hour, it has gone down massively. touring is hard. recording is hard also, but they could do it once and reap the profits over a long period.
for older artists that are no longer touring / want to tour and depend only on record sales, well, too bad for them.
Suppose the aliens evolved on the dark side of a tidally locked planet and are busy braodcasting light signals at us?
i assume you mean visible light. visible light and all radio frequencies are just certain wavelengths of EM radiation. it's all the same thing. if you are suggesting that SETI won't find ET because they aren't looking in the visible light spectrum, you are incorrect, http://www.setileague.org/askdr/light.htm
beyond that, SETI listens at what it thinks other technologically advanced civilizations would assume to be a "common" band... for example, the molecular line frequency of the hydrogen atom. there also some practical limitations that they take into considerations. for example, certain frequencies are not passed through a planet's atmosphere. ET would certainly make the same observations. you can read more here, http://www.radiosky.com/faq.html#freq
More seriously though it's about timing.
since we don't even know other technologically advanced civilizations exist, we have no idea how long lived they are. a billion years? that stretches our imagination but it's certainly possible. how long did it take humanity to obtain the technology to broadcast and listen for signals from space? 10,000 years?
how long have these possible long-lived civilizations been broadcasting and listening? possibly, a very long, long time. what sort of technology could a million-year civilization apply to the problem? what sort of power could be applied to a broadcast / directed transmission?
Unless you know how the digital is encoded/modulated/carried, all you're going to hear is random noise. And who says aliens use anything like we do?
you miss the point entirely.
it's not that we expect to overhear their personal or broadcast communications so much, but rather it's about listening for "hello, here we are" broadcasts or even directed transmissions. we can now locate habitable planets. such messages obviously wouldn't be encrypted, and would necessarily be something very simple that would have a high chance of being understood by completely alien species with different thought patterns, senses, and levels of technology.
Slashdot Mirror
"Bad behaviour has to be more difficult than good behaviour".
very true. is it easy to scour malware-infested pirate sites for hacked APKs that contain who knows what malware? is it easy to have to do this every time the app is updated? is it easy to root your device and muck with hosts files and put of services that fake-authenticate your pirated apps?
by far, the easiest thing is to install your apps from the play store and pay your $.99. there's always going to be people that have way, way more time than money, even when it comes to amounts like $.99. you will never stop these people, so don't try. google has done it right. it's easy, very easy to buy android apps. managing their lifecycle is just as easy, and they've put enough locked doors to keep out the 99% of people with rational time / money balances.
i'd rather strive for a society that protects my rights than protects my privacy. e.g., i could care less who has my health records as long as they are prevented from discriminating against me because of them.
privacy is a losing battle anyhow. it takes a herculean effort to remain truly anonymous today. how will it be in 20 years?
"So you're ok with me installing a camera in your bedroom?"
if you were interested enough to install a camera in my bedroom and actually watch it, i'd be flattered.
maybe you could describe what exactly you need to do with your sub 3.2" display that can't be done by those devices? maybe you just need to watch 1080p movies on that 3.2" screen? or perhaps you've heard of this thing called a jellybean that every new smartphone has to have or it's a piece of poop?
here you go. from at&t's website. all modern, GSM phones available for purchase right now. all sub-3.2" screens.
http://www.att.com/shop/wireless/devices/pantech/crossover-p8000-grey.html#fbid=LgoXmk5H4Gf
http://www.att.com/shop/wireless/devices/sharp/fx-plus-black.html#fbid=LgoXmk5H4Gf
http://www.att.com/shop/wireless/devices/lg/phoenix-silver-refurb.html#fbid=LgoXmk5H4Gf
http://www.att.com/shop/wireless/devices/samsung/doubletime-white-with-pink-accents.html#fbid=LgoXmk5H4Gf
there are probably more their on their site, and this is just one carrier. i also poked around on t-mobile and verizon and found many options. but hey, i'm not your personal shopper, i'm just here to point out how silly you are.
i'd say a 3.2" screen fits in anyone's pocket. why not take a look here?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Android_devices
this lists even older devices, but there are plenty of devices released in the last year w/ 3.2 or less screens. here's a few,
motorola admiral ...
samsung GT-B5510, Galaxy Y Pr
samsung replenish
samsung galaxy mini
Huawei mercury
and many others.
right. add 20% to the resale value for having the original materials. i* boxes are usually minimal and don't take up a lot of space either.
Address space randomization at best turns attacks into system crashes.
right, and after a newly installed app crashes, how many times do you keep re-starting it? or do you just uninstall it and install one of the other 1k apps that do the same thing?
seems like a pretty useful result to me.
that's exactly why android's permission model requires users to grant the permission before installation. writing an app that behaves reasonably with all possible combinations of permissions either granted or denied by the user is a nightmare.
here is an idea why not just use unix permission built into linux? give me sudo privileges by default so i don't have to hack it, and let me worry about the security.
if you want root, go root your device. please don't act like it's a good idea is give grandma a rooted device off the shelf.
the biggest selling point for me is the software. it's unix, but it actually works. linux just doesn't cut it when i have to spend hours and hours chasing down drivers and compiling things and patching just to make the basic features of the laptop work.
eah, it's definitely the best commercial desktop OS...oh except basically no corporate software runs of them, they're ungodly expensive, you'll never ever assemble an IT department that specializes in macs, there's no common management whatsoever, and all your employees are used to Windows. Other than all that, it's the best! Get fucking real. I am so sick of you clueless apple fanboys posting bullshit like this.
i work for a company of almost 10k people. everyone has a mac. it's fully supported by IT. it can access all enterprise resources. i'm sure there are windows boxes around, but i've been here 2 months, and i've never seen one. yes, we have to run mcafee security malware on them, but oh well. we don't use exchange here, but i have had exchange for osx at other companies, and it's quite nice.
macs aren't expensive when you realize what companies pay for fully supported windows computers from the likes of dell and HP. that, and at least two previous employers would give people windows laptops for email and such, and linux desktops for development. a single mac laptop would serve both purposes and be cheaper both in initial costs and support.
But really Samsung why are you playing games with releasing ICS for us? I like your products, but your lack of willingness to provide timely updates makes me question if I will buy from you again. /rant
that's naive.
rolling out ICS is not as simple as grabbing AOSP and building. it's actually very complex. they have to port all of their UI customizations. they have validate and fix all of their add-on apps. they have to validate and fix their drivers. and the biggest of all, they have to get the carriers to sign off on it. carriers have final say on the software that goes onto devices sold into their network.
CM can get out faster because it's stock android UI, doesn't have add-on apps (or adds on free apps that don't need validation), doesn't need carrier approval, and the biggest of all, if there's a bug, they don't get tens of thousands of people calling their tech support and tons of bad press over it. CM can operate on best-effort. people are just happy to have something that works at all. they will put up with occasional crashes. on the contrary, if a stock consumer device crashes, the user is sending it back to the factory at the manufacturer's expense.
that being said, you have to ask why device manufacturers don't remedy the problems that they at least have control over. why don't they ship stock android? why don't they avoid bundling add-on applications and let users get what they want from the market (they can just switch to distributing their apps on the market, instead of flashing them onto the device). they don't do these things because UI customizations and add-on apps are differentiators. device manufacturers are scared to death of getting into a game where one tablet is as good as the other and they are competing on price alone. they all want to be where apple is at- selling premium hardware at a premium price.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, what about the effect of objects that aren’t part of the original magnetic field map, such as cars, moving lifts, and electric motors? Who knows, though — perhaps the effect of these objects is negligible.
well, most everyone knows actually. the effects of even a slab of metal is significant. the effects of powered devices like a monitor, or an electric motor, or a stationary magnet are massive. anyone can see it. grab an app that displays the magnetic levels from your smart phone's sensor, and watch them fluctuate wildly as you move it past various electronic devices.
i guess it's okay though because places like malls aren't known for having electronic devices about ... oh wait. maybe they have some great technology to get around these problems, but TFA doesn't provide any inkling of that.
Which open source projects we may trust (to rely on them)?
none? even if there's a business behind it, there's no guarantee that business will be around tomorrow, and if there is a business behind it, you will find your destiny under control of said business.
as long as you have the source, you can always staff up and take over the project. you'd be in no worse of a situation than if you had staffed up and wrote the code from scratch yourself.
if you have multiple open source projects to choose from, there are obvious things to look for: active community, consistent releases, etc. of course none of those are guarantees it will be around tomorrow - when you are relying on people that aren't paid to do the work and can therefore on a whim choose to put their efforts in other places.
I am 22 years of age and have been working in the IT field for over a year. I try to learn as much about technology as my cranium can handle; I even earned the nickname 'Google' because of the amount of time I spend attempting to pack my brain with new information
my god. if someone at work told me their nickname was "google", i'd do whatever i could to avoid contact with them. you are lucky your coworkers haven't strangled you yet.
seriously, actions speak louder than words. shut up and do your job, and do it good. don't worry about what everyone else is doing. if you really are the superstar you think, then you'll be noticed.
Both of these announcements remind me why I covet local storage for documents and the ability to set my own GUI prefs.
great, enjoy your 1993 desktop computer experience. basically, since there are a few examples of cloud services not lasting until the end of the universe, you won't use them. you did read where YOU wrote that the files can be downloaded to your desktop, right?
i'd get it if they went offline without warning, but that's not what's happening.
The fine-grained permissions are informative but nothing more. You either accept them or not install the app. There's no actual control for the user. I really, really hate that.
first, it's better to know before hand so you can avoid the malware getting on your device. one it is installed, who knows that it has done.
second, it would not be practical for an app to be written to gracefully handle the user accepting or denying all possible combinations of permissions. well, maybe that's too strong. at the very least, it'd be a pain in the arse. if you were a developer you'd thank your lucky stars that it works like this.
My only complaint is that the App Store doesn't give you this information before you download the app.
android has done with since it's inception, both for app store installed and side-loaded apps.
While Android is well known for malware,
in theory, and not in practice that is. the *only* thing that makes android more vulnerable is apple's more severe vetting for apps in their store, and the fact that android apps can be "side loaded", or installed from arbitrary sources (other than the google play store). side loaded is disabled by default and must be explicitly enabled by the user after subjecting them to a scary warning dialog.
android security model of fine-grained permissions that are presented to the user before the app is even installed is superior to iOS. what android doesn't do is protect users from their own stupidity. read the permissions. if you choose to go ahead and install that flashlight app that requests permission to the internet and to read your contacts, you'll get what you deserve.
i'm sorry, you misunderstood me. when i said "data", i meant facts. you typing something does not make it a fact.
Piracy is up, so are sales, so are profits
profits are up? whose profits? the artist? link please.
my understanding is that artists can no longer count of making any money from record sales and in stead can only depend on money from live performance ticket sales. if you have to figure the $ / hour, it has gone down massively. touring is hard. recording is hard also, but they could do it once and reap the profits over a long period.
for older artists that are no longer touring / want to tour and depend only on record sales, well, too bad for them.
Suppose the aliens evolved on the dark side of a tidally locked planet and are busy braodcasting light signals at us?
i assume you mean visible light. visible light and all radio frequencies are just certain wavelengths of EM radiation. it's all the same thing. if you are suggesting that SETI won't find ET because they aren't looking in the visible light spectrum, you are incorrect,
http://www.setileague.org/askdr/light.htm
beyond that, SETI listens at what it thinks other technologically advanced civilizations would assume to be a "common" band ... for example, the molecular line frequency of the hydrogen atom. there also some practical limitations that they take into considerations. for example, certain frequencies are not passed through a planet's atmosphere. ET would certainly make the same observations. you can read more here,
http://www.radiosky.com/faq.html#freq
More seriously though it's about timing.
since we don't even know other technologically advanced civilizations exist, we have no idea how long lived they are. a billion years? that stretches our imagination but it's certainly possible. how long did it take humanity to obtain the technology to broadcast and listen for signals from space? 10,000 years?
how long have these possible long-lived civilizations been broadcasting and listening? possibly, a very long, long time. what sort of technology could a million-year civilization apply to the problem? what sort of power could be applied to a broadcast / directed transmission?
your problem is that your imagination is limited to the technology you understand.
Unless you know how the digital is encoded/modulated/carried, all you're going to hear is random noise. And who says aliens use anything like we do?
you miss the point entirely.
it's not that we expect to overhear their personal or broadcast communications so much, but rather it's about listening for "hello, here we are" broadcasts or even directed transmissions. we can now locate habitable planets. such messages obviously wouldn't be encrypted, and would necessarily be something very simple that would have a high chance of being understood by completely alien species with different thought patterns, senses, and levels of technology.
for inspiration, check out the pioneer plaque,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque
that attempts to describe our location in the galaxy. or, the voyager golden record,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record
showing mathematical and physical quantities, the solar system and its planets, DNA, and human anatomy and reproduction.
As the cherry topping, I introduced my 10yo son to WKRP and he devoured all of the episodes, watching some of them twice and three times
now that's parenting.