I know I'll get modded to hell but I think that Android is in danger of suffering to forking into different carrier-specific versions.
only if the carrier wants to pay for the resources to maintain the fork, which are significant. the farther they diverge the more work it is to uptake bug fixes and features which puts them at a disadvantage to competitors.
the whole reason android took off is because google did most of the development on a new mobile OS that has the ability to compete with iOS. if each carrier took this upon themselves, it would have been a very costly effort with no guarantee of success.
LauncherPro is everything the stock launcher should be, but it bugs me constantly with pop-ups about paid features.
if you value the app so much why don't you pay for it? annoying popups / ads is the price of getting it for free.
Spending $200 on a phone just to hear "everything on your phone sucks- download these dozen programs to patch it up"
it might help to remember that the phone would have cost you $600+ if you bought it outright. all that bloatware is verizon's attempt to recoup their subsidization of the phone in the first place.
in an ideal world, you'd actually be able to buy that $600 phone and avoid the bloatware, but most (US) carriers don't allow that. if it's an option, you could get off verizon and onto t-mo which is pretty good about this sort of thing.
it also enables the CARRIER or vendor to 'comment out' stuff that we would want and adding crap to our screens that we do NOT want.
don't by that phone from that carrier?
there are plenty of android devices where that is not the case. if you care about that type of thing, then do your research before you buy, and problem solved.
a few weeks after you buy a 'smartphone' some other model makes yours a POS. well, almost. how can anyone buy in that kind of market and retain sanity?
maybe you detach your ego from having the absolutely shiniest smart phone? really, if you are going to off yourself because you only have a 3 megapixel camera and someone else has a 5 megapixel camera, perhaps you should seek professional help.
google fucked this up. and I think its too late now, the market is SO fragmented its actually damaged.
it's all part of the plan, like that plan or not.
android was never supposed to be a single homogenous platform like apple for RIM. google didn't want that. google wins by having as many possible phones with google apps and search enabled. carriers would have never took up android like they have if someone tried to dictate what they could do with it. carriers want the ability to differentiate their phones. why? because if they can't win on having the shiniest phone to get you locked into a contract, they have to compete on service, features, and price, and my god they don't want that.
very little. the lay person won't know the difference.
Why should cheaper phones be stuck on 1.6 when they're fully capable of running 2.2?
it's a porting effort. it's not really cheaper phones that are stuck, it's older phones, or phones that employ hardware for which android 1.6 (or whatever) has already been ported. getting them to run 2.2 requires $ and resources.
second, it's a support issue. if a company already has resources trained for support on 1.6, it's addition resources to train them to support 2.2. it's additional software devs to fix bugs and build patches for 2.2.
What is the POINT of having a waiting list for an electronic book? Is the value of the imaginary property magically diminished because people can read it concurrently?
yes, it's called supply and demand. every heard of it? if you flush the system with unlimited, free copies of a book, who's going to buy it? moreover, as it's done online now, even distance from the library wouldn't be a factor.
the reasons for actually purchasing a book, as opposed to checking it out from the library are,
1. i get to keep the book forever 2. i don't have to wait to read it (if there's a waiting list at the library)
if there are unlimited copies available immediately, i no longer have a reason to purchase a book, ever again. even if i can only "keep" the book for 14 days, the fact that there is no scarcity means i can just re-check out the book indefinitely. actually, as there are unlimited copies, there's really no reason to have a time limit at all. now your library is a free bookstore. neat.
Only the wealthy can afford e-book readers and the subsequent fees
you can read an ebook on any computer also. in 20 years, how many people won't have some type of computing device in their homes?
Not only is it disenfranchising, but it's putting control of information even more in the hands of just a few big corporations. Who trusts Sony with their books?
the books are loaned in EPUB format, which is standard and is not owned or controlled by sony. correct me if i wrong, but i though sony's involvement was that they were making readers compatible with the DRM'd EPUB ebooks being made available from the library. do they control the distribution of the ebooks in some way?
this is a play by Sony to get their eBook readers into peoples hands and gain traction on Kindle/iPad/etc
wait, you mean sony is a business? they are trying to make money? this might come as a surprise, but that is all any business ever does. you can't fault them for that.
being able to check out an ebook from a local library, for free, from the comfort of your home is a good thing for consumers. it might not be exactly perfect. you might want infinite copies. you might want infinite rental periods. you might want no DRM. but i can't see how authors and publishers and authors would accept anything less than what is offered, and to be honest the suggested model sounds pretty darn fair to them.
why is there an artificial limitation on the number?
simple: because not having such a limitation would reduce demand for paid copies. it's the same reason that libraries don't make hundreds of hard copies of in-demand books. if a library had infinite copies of books, it's essentially a free bookstore. even if there was a time limitation, i could just re-new indefinitely because it's not like there's someone is queue for the thing right?
would you ever buy another book if you knew you could get it for free from the library and use it as long as you want? now add in that it's as easy as logging into a website and selecting the book you want.
are you implying that it'd be okay to play quicktime as long as it used the native QT libs?
i think the no-competition clause is at the app level. that is, you can't get google maps on iOS because there's already a built-in maps app. it doesn't matter if the google maps app used the underlying iOS map services, it's that the google maps app duplicates the stock map app's functionality.
i don't know enough to say if they'd consider it duplicated functionality. my first though it yes, because a large number of people will use this app to play movies instead of itunes. on the other hand, i really doubt the authors went through the probably arduous porting process without some degree of certainty that their app will be approved.
i didn't mean to knock t-mo, i'm quite happy with them. decent customer service, unlimited data, free tethering, and -$10 / month for a no-contract plan.
in general they have significantly less coverage than AT&T, but 99% of the time it doesn't affect me.
i was hoping for this to be a "next-gen" android device, but it doesn't even meet modern specifications. 800mhz processor is a downgrade, and everything else is equivalent to what i could buy 4 months ago. the only folks this appeals to are those that are locked in to t-mobile for some reason.
unless the faster network speeds mean something to you. personally, 3g is fast enough for 99% of the things i do i would not sacrifice on other specs to have HSPA+. no information about the HSPA+ coverage yet either.
what's your point? you may also hardly ever dine and dash, or write bad checks, or stick a steak into your shirt at the grocery, but that doesn't make it okay when you do.
silently stealing content, alone in the privacy of your basement, is a pretty poor way of protesting your inability to make legal backup copies, etc. it's called having an ulterior motive. it's hard to take folks like you seriously when your "moral outrage" neatly enables you to consume content for free.
to find out if it's "good enough" for you to pay for it, why don't you read one of the multitudinous reviews you can find online for any movie / music on the face of the earth?
also, you might want to consider why the rest of the world doesn't work on this "if i think it's good i'll pay for it" model. because almost everyone, like you, would decide that almost all of their consumption isn't good enough, and they'd forgo compensating the producer. the producer will then stop producing, and you won't even have the option of paying for it if you wanted to.
your consumption model relies on a bunch of other people with different morals than yourself that will pay for the content. if those people all operated on your morals, the content wouldn't exist. those people support your habit.
don't get me wrong i think most movies / music are crap and not worth paying for either. but i understand that my option as a consumer is to consume that content, or not. or, if i steal the content (i don't deny doing this at one time or another in my life) i don't sit around and rationalize it.
That doesn't sound like too much money to prove (or more likely squelch) the theory that more computers = smarter students.
if anything, that's been disproven, or very close to being so. what happens is that the computer becomes much more a distraction than a learning aide.
loading text books on the ipad is great. can you shut off facebook, twitter, instant messaging, the thousands of available games, etc, etc, etc? if not, these kids will be seriously distracted.
and therein lies the problem. ipads aren't exactly durable, and when you pair them with clumsy pre-teens who are prone to dropping things and will in general just be jamming them into their backpacks with a half eaten cookie and some dirty sweat sox, and couple that with the fact that they aren't the owners of these devices and have very little incentive to take good care of them...
private schools are in general better because they don't get the money thrown at them every which way
i really doubt that *not* having money makes them better in some way. money might not fix the problem but it doesn't make it worse.
private schools rate higher because in general the children are attending because their parents are involved and interested enough in their education to pay a premium for their schooling. that weeds out the bottom scrapers that bring down test scores, the ones that are bottom scrapers because their parent's don't give a crap.
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I know I'll get modded to hell but I think that Android is in danger of suffering to forking into different carrier-specific versions.
only if the carrier wants to pay for the resources to maintain the fork, which are significant. the farther they diverge the more work it is to uptake bug fixes and features which puts them at a disadvantage to competitors.
the whole reason android took off is because google did most of the development on a new mobile OS that has the ability to compete with iOS. if each carrier took this upon themselves, it would have been a very costly effort with no guarantee of success.
LauncherPro is everything the stock launcher should be, but it bugs me constantly with pop-ups about paid features.
if you value the app so much why don't you pay for it? annoying popups / ads is the price of getting it for free.
Spending $200 on a phone just to hear "everything on your phone sucks- download these dozen programs to patch it up"
it might help to remember that the phone would have cost you $600+ if you bought it outright. all that bloatware is verizon's attempt to recoup their subsidization of the phone in the first place.
in an ideal world, you'd actually be able to buy that $600 phone and avoid the bloatware, but most (US) carriers don't allow that. if it's an option, you could get off verizon and onto t-mo which is pretty good about this sort of thing.
it also enables the CARRIER or vendor to 'comment out' stuff that we would want and adding crap to our screens that we do NOT want.
don't by that phone from that carrier?
there are plenty of android devices where that is not the case. if you care about that type of thing, then do your research before you buy, and problem solved.
a few weeks after you buy a 'smartphone' some other model makes yours a POS. well, almost. how can anyone buy in that kind of market and retain sanity?
maybe you detach your ego from having the absolutely shiniest smart phone? really, if you are going to off yourself because you only have a 3 megapixel camera and someone else has a 5 megapixel camera, perhaps you should seek professional help.
google fucked this up. and I think its too late now, the market is SO fragmented its actually damaged.
it's all part of the plan, like that plan or not.
android was never supposed to be a single homogenous platform like apple for RIM. google didn't want that. google wins by having as many possible phones with google apps and search enabled. carriers would have never took up android like they have if someone tried to dictate what they could do with it. carriers want the ability to differentiate their phones. why? because if they can't win on having the shiniest phone to get you locked into a contract, they have to compete on service, features, and price, and my god they don't want that.
What can Android 1.6 offer me that 2.2 can't?
very little. the lay person won't know the difference.
Why should cheaper phones be stuck on 1.6 when they're fully capable of running 2.2?
it's a porting effort. it's not really cheaper phones that are stuck, it's older phones, or phones that employ hardware for which android 1.6 (or whatever) has already been ported. getting them to run 2.2 requires $ and resources.
second, it's a support issue. if a company already has resources trained for support on 1.6, it's addition resources to train them to support 2.2. it's additional software devs to fix bugs and build patches for 2.2.
what's your point? those non-animated flash web pages / fragments use zero CPU cycles.
any app that has constant animation is processor intensive.
the nook's compatibility with the library was actually what sold me on it over the Kindle
the kindle supports .mobi.
What is the POINT of having a waiting list for an electronic book? Is the value of the imaginary property magically diminished because people can read it concurrently?
yes, it's called supply and demand. every heard of it? if you flush the system with unlimited, free copies of a book, who's going to buy it? moreover, as it's done online now, even distance from the library wouldn't be a factor.
the reasons for actually purchasing a book, as opposed to checking it out from the library are,
1. i get to keep the book forever
2. i don't have to wait to read it (if there's a waiting list at the library)
if there are unlimited copies available immediately, i no longer have a reason to purchase a book, ever again. even if i can only "keep" the book for 14 days, the fact that there is no scarcity means i can just re-check out the book indefinitely. actually, as there are unlimited copies, there's really no reason to have a time limit at all. now your library is a free bookstore. neat.
Only the wealthy can afford e-book readers and the subsequent fees
you can read an ebook on any computer also. in 20 years, how many people won't have some type of computing device in their homes?
Not only is it disenfranchising, but it's putting control of information even more in the hands of just a few big corporations. Who trusts Sony with their books?
the books are loaned in EPUB format, which is standard and is not owned or controlled by sony. correct me if i wrong, but i though sony's involvement was that they were making readers compatible with the DRM'd EPUB ebooks being made available from the library. do they control the distribution of the ebooks in some way?
this is a play by Sony to get their eBook readers into peoples hands and gain traction on Kindle/iPad/etc
wait, you mean sony is a business? they are trying to make money? this might come as a surprise, but that is all any business ever does. you can't fault them for that.
being able to check out an ebook from a local library, for free, from the comfort of your home is a good thing for consumers. it might not be exactly perfect. you might want infinite copies. you might want infinite rental periods. you might want no DRM. but i can't see how authors and publishers and authors would accept anything less than what is offered, and to be honest the suggested model sounds pretty darn fair to them.
why is there an artificial limitation on the number?
simple: because not having such a limitation would reduce demand for paid copies. it's the same reason that libraries don't make hundreds of hard copies of in-demand books. if a library had infinite copies of books, it's essentially a free bookstore. even if there was a time limitation, i could just re-new indefinitely because it's not like there's someone is queue for the thing right?
would you ever buy another book if you knew you could get it for free from the library and use it as long as you want? now add in that it's as easy as logging into a website and selecting the book you want.
are you implying that it'd be okay to play quicktime as long as it used the native QT libs?
i think the no-competition clause is at the app level. that is, you can't get google maps on iOS because there's already a built-in maps app. it doesn't matter if the google maps app used the underlying iOS map services, it's that the google maps app duplicates the stock map app's functionality.
i don't know enough to say if they'd consider it duplicated functionality. my first though it yes, because a large number of people will use this app to play movies instead of itunes. on the other hand, i really doubt the authors went through the probably arduous porting process without some degree of certainty that their app will be approved.
i didn't mean to knock t-mo, i'm quite happy with them. decent customer service, unlimited data, free tethering, and -$10 / month for a no-contract plan.
in general they have significantly less coverage than AT&T, but 99% of the time it doesn't affect me.
i was hoping for this to be a "next-gen" android device, but it doesn't even meet modern specifications. 800mhz processor is a downgrade, and everything else is equivalent to what i could buy 4 months ago. the only folks this appeals to are those that are locked in to t-mobile for some reason.
unless the faster network speeds mean something to you. personally, 3g is fast enough for 99% of the things i do i would not sacrifice on other specs to have HSPA+. no information about the HSPA+ coverage yet either.
what's your point? you may also hardly ever dine and dash, or write bad checks, or stick a steak into your shirt at the grocery, but that doesn't make it okay when you do.
silently stealing content, alone in the privacy of your basement, is a pretty poor way of protesting your inability to make legal backup copies, etc. it's called having an ulterior motive. it's hard to take folks like you seriously when your "moral outrage" neatly enables you to consume content for free.
you: "if it's any good, i pay for it".
to find out if it's "good enough" for you to pay for it, why don't you read one of the multitudinous reviews you can find online for any movie / music on the face of the earth?
also, you might want to consider why the rest of the world doesn't work on this "if i think it's good i'll pay for it" model. because almost everyone, like you, would decide that almost all of their consumption isn't good enough, and they'd forgo compensating the producer. the producer will then stop producing, and you won't even have the option of paying for it if you wanted to.
your consumption model relies on a bunch of other people with different morals than yourself that will pay for the content. if those people all operated on your morals, the content wouldn't exist. those people support your habit.
don't get me wrong i think most movies / music are crap and not worth paying for either. but i understand that my option as a consumer is to consume that content, or not. or, if i steal the content (i don't deny doing this at one time or another in my life) i don't sit around and rationalize it.
yeah, because i want to go find my phone and drain the batteries just to flip channels. real convenient.
That doesn't sound like too much money to prove (or more likely squelch) the theory that more computers = smarter students.
if anything, that's been disproven, or very close to being so. what happens is that the computer becomes much more a distraction than a learning aide.
loading text books on the ipad is great. can you shut off facebook, twitter, instant messaging, the thousands of available games, etc, etc, etc? if not, these kids will be seriously distracted.
and therein lies the problem. ipads aren't exactly durable, and when you pair them with clumsy pre-teens who are prone to dropping things and will in general just be jamming them into their backpacks with a half eaten cookie and some dirty sweat sox, and couple that with the fact that they aren't the owners of these devices and have very little incentive to take good care of them ...
i'd expect these ipads to have a very short life.
private schools are in general better because they don't get the money thrown at them every which way
i really doubt that *not* having money makes them better in some way. money might not fix the problem but it doesn't make it worse.
private schools rate higher because in general the children are attending because their parents are involved and interested enough in their education to pay a premium for their schooling. that weeds out the bottom scrapers that bring down test scores, the ones that are bottom scrapers because their parent's don't give a crap.
yes interesting. i can't say it *always* favors ad revenue related results, it almost always does.
why would he have sex with two different women he just had met in Sweden?
do i need to point out what's wrong with that statement?
i installed it last night on my wife's netbook. you have problems.
and it only works for international calls
no, it works for domestic and international calls. it's only free to US and canada though.