doesn't every app the uses the google (map) SDK require the google components? that's a large percent of the apps. AFAIK, there's no replacement for things like the google SDK, and even if there was, nobody is writing software to utilize it.
regardless. cyanogen != no google. in 5 steps you can get the latest cyanogenmod with google components, in a google-approved manner.
there are lots of kinds of open source project. some thrive on the mind share of individuals. on the other end of the spectrum are those that are backed 100% by employees that are paid to be involved in (to run) the community. both are perfectly valid and valuable.
sun-mysql is the latter. anything that affects the sun-mysql employees (greatly) affects the community. mysql couldn't exist without the involvement of those people, people that will be under the thumb of oracle.
also, you have to look at motivation. the mysql CEO is most certainly looking at a fat bonus as soon as the deal goes through. there's a pool in the bakyward of his mansion that needs to be funded.
compare the size of japan and US. quite different. for an equal number of users, providing service over a larger area is more costly. japan's population density makes providers' problems easier to solve.
my old ISP comcast, while saying nothing overtly, would cut off people that exceeded some very high transfer limit. i think it was 100GB / mo. while i am not sure on the exact limit, the idea is probably a good one... don't let 0.01% of your users kill the experience of the other 99.99%.
at&t can have something similar. that data plan, while still technically unlimited, can include stipulations in the contract to cut off the 0.01% of users that are streaming CD quality audio 24 hours day. for users that for some reason need that bandwidth, offer a "business" data plan at a higher rate.
the problem is how to "cut off" those people. there'd probably be a lawsuit if the data service was just turned off. if you silently start charging a higher rate, there's going to be the story of the one person who got a $5k phone bill which will scare many users away from at&t+iphone.
the moblin site advertises it for netbooks and "netttops". netbooks have laptop-like batteries which are orders of magnitude more powerful than those in true mobile devices. nettops are "very small form factor , inexpensive, low-wattage desktop computers" (from wikipedia).
even on android which puts a lot of design into getting the most out of your battery, you can easily shoot yourself in the foot by running the simplest process continuously. people don't understand how tiny and weak mobile batteries are. trying to run any "normal" operating system on it is going to fail for that reason.
Also, look up Locale for it. It can change settings on your phone depending on *where you are*. IMO, it's Android's killer app.
eh hem. if android phones had reasonable battery life the usefulness of Locale would go way down. sure it's interesting to be able to set my screen brightness lower and turn the ringer off at night, but the real application of Locale is around squeezing a few more minutes out of that battery: turning wifi / bluetooth on and off, setting screen timeout, etc.
on the iphone, you don't need locale for these things. my wife leaves bluetooth, wifi, etc enabled all the time and still gets 4x the battery life that i do with my android phone.
I did a little bit of research, but it didn't seem like a good open source platform to play with. I couldn't find a site with publicly downloadable dev tools
$25 8GB micro SDs fix the storage issue nicely and you can actually *replace* the battery
the memory problem is about a lack of space to store apps and their data. apps are stored in internal memory, not the SD card and you can't increase internal memory. a bigger SD card only gets you more space to store music, pictures, etc. that is unless you run one of the "apps to SD" hacks, which will allow ample apps storage space but cripples the speed of the phone.
and yes you can replace the battery but it's common knowledge that the only thing that will help with battery life is one of the 2400mAh batteries that adds 5mm to the thickness of an already thick phone and requires a new battery cover. also, it retails for $70. the battery life on the G1 isn't just bad, it's ridiculously unacceptable.
hey idiot friend, obviously ii didn't mean i can never, ever imagine man going to mars. but i can't imagine it happening in mr. bush's time frame. if you care to do any reading o nthe topic instead of cutting be down because i am stupid and have no imagination, you'll find that opinion in the majority. anything is is possible if you far enough into the future, but today's technology, and budget make robotics the logical option. again, go do some readying and you'll find that most people in the know feel the same way (including a guy named stephen).
Unless you're a leading rocket scientist, what's unimaginable to you is hardly relevant, is it?
it must make you very, very mad that someone said something you don't agree with. please post and provide verification for you credentials. after all you posted with an opinion also right? this is slashdot, it's where people post opinions about things. this isn't a NASA think tank.
Sending people to Mars would be something completely new. It's an accomplishment on the scale of putting the first people on the moon. And people on Mars would be able to investigate things that all those Mars rovers never can.
sorry to go off topic, but the only purpose of manned space exploration is political gain. the same scientific results can be obtained at a fraction of the cost using robotic missions.
moreover, there's a point where the concept of a manned mission just becomes impractical. lock a few people in cramped capsule for 3 days? not so bad. when it comes to mars, it's more like 200 days for a fuel conserving path. jupiter? cassini took 7 years. the logistics of keeping 1 or more people alive, fed, and not insane for 400+ days (round trip) is unimaginable to me considering the current state of our technology. when it comes to anything beyond mars, well just forget it. it's robotics or nothing.
it's hard enough to prove guilt in a court of law. suggesting that project failure is going to fit neatly into one of the categories you mentioned is silly, let alone that you will be able to arrive at some objective truth about the reasons.
it's impossible to attribute the failure of a project to individual contributors. they might have been a contributor to the failure, or just a victim of circumstance. you won't know until you interview them, just like anyone else.
as you go up the chain, i think there's more reason to blame. it's up to a manager to assemble the right team to perform a task. if they aren't doing that, there's some fault. and on up, if the manager isn't given the authority to assemble the right team... etc.
it's quite backward that execs carry little or no blame for failures. if there's any blame at all, it should be on them. they have ultimate authority to make whatever changes are necessary to make things work. why do failed execs make out like bandits with payoffs and future opportunities? it's called an OLD BOYS' CLUB. they protect each other, or scratch each others' backs so to say.
it's well known that the US would be in big trouble if it was forced to fight two major conflicts... i.e., if we engaged n. korea. so yes, forcing the US into that could very well unbalance it. anything that raises tensions between the US and n. korea furthers that end.
if china considers n. korea an ally (do they?), it's only because of proximity and because "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". i seriously doubt that would stop them from using n. korea to further their goals.
as for why n. korea... 1) they are technologically backwards and probably aren't up to disproving the claim and 2) they are one of a few nations that we could believe would make such an attack.
china gains by stressing it's enemies. assuming they consider the US an enemy, raising tensiosn with n. korea destabilizes the US because it's already up to it's neck in afghanistan and iraq.
i'm not accusing china, jut making an observation.
Careful with that. The people uploading videos are the ones providing YouTube with lots of free content.
actually, youtube's draw is not the crap videos, it's professionally produced material whose posting lies somewhere between fair use and stealing.
have whatever opinion you want about freedom, piracy, fair use, etc... that doesn't change the fact that google is making money by re-distributing other people's content, most of the time without their permission.
i wonder if amazon could turn around and place a "rhose island surcharge" on purchases made from rhode island to cover the expense. of course, this would upset consumers, which would create pressure to change the law. not sure if this is legal however.
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Some of us don't want or need cellphones.
and you are most definitely not the teeny-tiny demographic that companies like Garmin want to base their future upon.
doesn't every app the uses the google (map) SDK require the google components? that's a large percent of the apps. AFAIK, there's no replacement for things like the google SDK, and even if there was, nobody is writing software to utilize it.
regardless. cyanogen != no google. in 5 steps you can get the latest cyanogenmod with google components, in a google-approved manner.
there are lots of kinds of open source project. some thrive on the mind share of individuals. on the other end of the spectrum are those that are backed 100% by employees that are paid to be involved in (to run) the community. both are perfectly valid and valuable.
sun-mysql is the latter. anything that affects the sun-mysql employees (greatly) affects the community. mysql couldn't exist without the involvement of those people, people that will be under the thumb of oracle.
also, you have to look at motivation. the mysql CEO is most certainly looking at a fat bonus as soon as the deal goes through. there's a pool in the bakyward of his mansion that needs to be funded.
yes, and your post was very much like a post that is written to mislead the reader.
compare the size of japan and US. quite different. for an equal number of users, providing service over a larger area is more costly. japan's population density makes providers' problems easier to solve.
my old ISP comcast, while saying nothing overtly, would cut off people that exceeded some very high transfer limit. i think it was 100GB / mo. while i am not sure on the exact limit, the idea is probably a good one ... don't let 0.01% of your users kill the experience of the other 99.99%.
at&t can have something similar. that data plan, while still technically unlimited, can include stipulations in the contract to cut off the 0.01% of users that are streaming CD quality audio 24 hours day. for users that for some reason need that bandwidth, offer a "business" data plan at a higher rate.
the problem is how to "cut off" those people. there'd probably be a lawsuit if the data service was just turned off. if you silently start charging a higher rate, there's going to be the story of the one person who got a $5k phone bill which will scare many users away from at&t+iphone.
just like they do with all the other bogus fees they try to mislabel as some generic 'government tax' like fee
oh i see. so at&t adds fake fees and deceptively labels them as government taxes? do you think that might get them in a bit of trouble? sheesh.
oh you read slashdot a lot you must be an authority on such issues? actually, there's probably an inverse relationship.
that's an awfully big word, are you sure you are qualified to use it?
gartner is not some "dude". just because you've been an unqualified consultant, it doesn't follow that every other consultant is also unqualified.
the moblin site advertises it for netbooks and "netttops". netbooks have laptop-like batteries which are orders of magnitude more powerful than those in true mobile devices. nettops are "very small form factor , inexpensive, low-wattage desktop computers" (from wikipedia).
even on android which puts a lot of design into getting the most out of your battery, you can easily shoot yourself in the foot by running the simplest process continuously. people don't understand how tiny and weak mobile batteries are. trying to run any "normal" operating system on it is going to fail for that reason.
Also, look up Locale for it. It can change settings on your phone depending on *where you are*. IMO, it's Android's killer app.
eh hem. if android phones had reasonable battery life the usefulness of Locale would go way down. sure it's interesting to be able to set my screen brightness lower and turn the ringer off at night, but the real application of Locale is around squeezing a few more minutes out of that battery: turning wifi / bluetooth on and off, setting screen timeout, etc.
on the iphone, you don't need locale for these things. my wife leaves bluetooth, wifi, etc enabled all the time and still gets 4x the battery life that i do with my android phone.
I doubt a flash card for about $10-$15 could change the race between HTC and iPhone THAT much!
a 16GB class 6 SD card runs about $50. even that is going to have much slower transfer rates that the iPhone's SIM based memory.
I did a little bit of research, but it didn't seem like a good open source platform to play with. I couldn't find a site with publicly downloadable dev tools
http://developer.android.com
$25 8GB micro SDs fix the storage issue nicely and you can actually *replace* the battery
the memory problem is about a lack of space to store apps and their data. apps are stored in internal memory, not the SD card and you can't increase internal memory. a bigger SD card only gets you more space to store music, pictures, etc. that is unless you run one of the "apps to SD" hacks, which will allow ample apps storage space but cripples the speed of the phone.
and yes you can replace the battery but it's common knowledge that the only thing that will help with battery life is one of the 2400mAh batteries that adds 5mm to the thickness of an already thick phone and requires a new battery cover. also, it retails for $70. the battery life on the G1 isn't just bad, it's ridiculously unacceptable.
hey idiot friend, obviously ii didn't mean i can never, ever imagine man going to mars. but i can't imagine it happening in mr. bush's time frame. if you care to do any reading o nthe topic instead of cutting be down because i am stupid and have no imagination, you'll find that opinion in the majority. anything is is possible if you far enough into the future, but today's technology, and budget make robotics the logical option. again, go do some readying and you'll find that most people in the know feel the same way (including a guy named stephen).
Unless you're a leading rocket scientist, what's unimaginable to you is hardly relevant, is it?
it must make you very, very mad that someone said something you don't agree with. please post and provide verification for you credentials. after all you posted with an opinion also right? this is slashdot, it's where people post opinions about things. this isn't a NASA think tank.
Sending people to Mars would be something completely new. It's an accomplishment on the scale of putting the first people on the moon. And people on Mars would be able to investigate things that all those Mars rovers never can.
sorry to go off topic, but the only purpose of manned space exploration is political gain. the same scientific results can be obtained at a fraction of the cost using robotic missions.
moreover, there's a point where the concept of a manned mission just becomes impractical. lock a few people in cramped capsule for 3 days? not so bad. when it comes to mars, it's more like 200 days for a fuel conserving path. jupiter? cassini took 7 years. the logistics of keeping 1 or more people alive, fed, and not insane for 400+ days (round trip) is unimaginable to me considering the current state of our technology. when it comes to anything beyond mars, well just forget it. it's robotics or nothing.
That's like taking 6 months of the Iraq war funding and just burning it.
you are correct. there is a lot of pointless killing that could be done with that money. let's not blow the opportunity.
it's hard enough to prove guilt in a court of law. suggesting that project failure is going to fit neatly into one of the categories you mentioned is silly, let alone that you will be able to arrive at some objective truth about the reasons.
it's impossible to attribute the failure of a project to individual contributors. they might have been a contributor to the failure, or just a victim of circumstance. you won't know until you interview them, just like anyone else.
as you go up the chain, i think there's more reason to blame. it's up to a manager to assemble the right team to perform a task. if they aren't doing that, there's some fault. and on up, if the manager isn't given the authority to assemble the right team ... etc.
it's quite backward that execs carry little or no blame for failures. if there's any blame at all, it should be on them. they have ultimate authority to make whatever changes are necessary to make things work. why do failed execs make out like bandits with payoffs and future opportunities? it's called an OLD BOYS' CLUB. they protect each other, or scratch each others' backs so to say.
it's well known that the US would be in big trouble if it was forced to fight two major conflicts ... i.e., if we engaged n. korea. so yes, forcing the US into that could very well unbalance it. anything that raises tensions between the US and n. korea furthers that end.
if china considers n. korea an ally (do they?), it's only because of proximity and because "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". i seriously doubt that would stop them from using n. korea to further their goals.
as for why n. korea ... 1) they are technologically backwards and probably aren't up to disproving the claim and 2) they are one of a few nations that we could believe would make such an attack.
china gains by stressing it's enemies. assuming they consider the US an enemy, raising tensiosn with n. korea destabilizes the US because it's already up to it's neck in afghanistan and iraq. i'm not accusing china, jut making an observation.
Careful with that. The people uploading videos are the ones providing YouTube with lots of free content.
actually, youtube's draw is not the crap videos, it's professionally produced material whose posting lies somewhere between fair use and stealing.
... that doesn't change the fact that google is making money by re-distributing other people's content, most of the time without their permission.
have whatever opinion you want about freedom, piracy, fair use, etc
i wonder if amazon could turn around and place a "rhose island surcharge" on purchases made from rhode island to cover the expense. of course, this would upset consumers, which would create pressure to change the law. not sure if this is legal however.