In a word: yes. Up until about 2 years ago, I used to make the bi-monthly trek to my mother's house to clean off the virus/trojan/malware du jour from her Windows computer. I would go over there and fix everything, make sure it all worked well, update everything leave and then BAM a few weeks later like clockwork, she would call me. "The internet don't work" "When I click on something in Google it goes somewhere else" "Constant pop ups trying to sell me stuff" and on and on and on and on. It drove me nuts. Finally, as a Linux user, I just got sick of supporting her Windows habit and I told her "you know what? I have something for you." I installed Ubuntu 10.04 on her computer set it up just so, chattr +i'd all the settings I didn't want her to be able to change and let her go with it. It's been two years and everytime I go over there, I check on the computer and it's just humming right along. She's happy as a clam and so am I.
I just ran Addon Detector agains all of the apps on my Xoom and you're right. Pretty much all of the well performing apps make use of the NDK. I just wonder what this means for platforms like FirefoxOS that rely on web technology for development.
Back in the day my Aunt Cindy who was in her early 40s and disabled would play Quake/Heretic/Hexen etc. all day long. That woman was the most avid fps gamer I've ever seen in my life. It was surreal.
To put a finer point on it, yes, if you make a casual throw away game then, of course, you can expect to only get a buck or two for it. However, if you make a game with some depth like Final Fantasy 3, Shadowgun, The Dark Knight Rises, etc. then you can price accordingly. It is pure laziness and tech blog echo chamber bandwagoning that developers are bitching and moaning about only being able to charge a dollar for a game on mobile devices. And the really funny thing is it is so easy to actually look for yourself and see it for the lie it is. Make a good game and people will pay. Make crap and bitch.
I have no problem professing genuine hate for some companies. Billions have been spent in marketing trying to attract the opposite after all. If it is an accepted and legitimate endeavor to try to make me like you or to make me feel cool to associate myself with you then I am perfectly within my rights to make a conscious decision to feel the opposite. Anyone trying to argue against this is oblivious to human nature.
The government created Tor specifically for dissidents to communicate so they aren't going to try to shut it down. This is a case of idiots down the totem pole not "getting it".
Yay! More ways to download stuff. I was just finishing working my way through this list and now I have 30 pages worth of new knowledge to assimilate. Keep it coming!
I think we are having a misunderstanding here. I get what tor is all about. My only point was that anybody whose porn and piracy habits are compromised because they are caught going through an exit node aren't doing it right. That's what the.onion sites are for. Basically, you can surf to your hearts content all the porn and warez you could ever hope to consume and never touch an exit node. As far as checking out hackaday through a firewall or even slashdot, I've done both of those and tor is great for that as well.
You bring up a good point about the cops hanging out in pedo forums etc. The way I see it, that's where the real action is for law enforcement. You will never nab the sickos by poaching exit nodes and putting people in jail because some kiddy porn or whatever went through it. That would be stupid as the real criminals are the ones actually consuming and creating that content. The government should be happy that tor exists. It gives them a honeypot where they can do real police work. Go to a pedo forum and blend in. Get people to trust you and get some pics with identifying exif data, or whatever and make a bust. Rinse and repeat. You'd be a fool to go after the exit nodes. It would be like busting your informants. The bottom line is many criminals are stupid and despite using tor they will fuck up. Old fashioned police work does not mean being stupid and taking down the exits. I hope I haven't been unclear.
Reading your link I see it's mostly talking about sending personally identifying information unencrypted through the network that just gets sniffed when it leaves the exit node. Torrenting through tor is really dumb since many torrenting programs send your ip address to the tracker unencrypted, so duh, the exit node sniffers get that and if you send other traffic through the same node, then, yes, that other traffic can easily be linked to you. The other issue is in your link is pretty much the same thing. If you log in to your email or whatever through tor and those credentials aren't going through https then, again, yes you will have those credentials stolen. It's the same problem with doing that sitting in Starbucks and using the wi-fi. Of course, tor has been warning people over and over and over not to use bittorrent through tor as it is an insecure protocol by design. The bittorrent creators will tell you that. It is just incidental that people use torrents to trade infringing media. To sum it up, Newsflash: don't torrent through tor as your ip address will show up to the exit node. Newsflash #2: don't send your login credentials through the onion because if an attacker can link those to your real identity, they can link other things going through the same exit node to your real identity which depending on what you're using tor for can be a real problem.
If you're already connected to the tor network anyway, why would you need to go to a regular web page to surf porn or pirated content when you can just make an end to end encrypted connection to any of the multitude of.onion pseudo-domains that serve that particular kind of media and not worry about it?
But the number of Android users who are willing to pay for their software is simply too low.
Too low for what? There are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of applications on Android. EA has a slew of high quality games as does Madfinger. What percentage of devs are making these complaints?.01 percent?.1 percent? If you want lockdown, there is an app(store) for that. BTW, don't look now but this exists and it makes it drop dead easy to pirate practically every single app on iTunes. Easier than Android even.
In contrast on many Android devices rooting is unnecessary, just going into settings and allowing apps from "unknown sources".
Oh, for the love of GAWD! You mean people can actually do what they want with the device they bought and own? What'll those crazy Googlers think of next?
Android appeals mainly to two huge groups of people: 1) the tech savvy folks who like an open platform, but also know how to pirate software and to 2) people who are looking for a bargain.
Really? So there are no Android users in between these two extremes? 10,000,000 people have bought the Galaxy S3 which is an expensive phone. You are trying to say that all of those people are tech savvy people who "know how to pirate software"? Millions of people bought the S2 in its heyday. Are you saying the same thing about those people? And if it's all about the tech nerds buying the expensive Androids why aren't they all just getting Galaxy Nexus's since that's the one with the unlockable bootloader out of the box. Android appeals mainly to two huge groups of people: 1) the tech savvy folks who like an open platform, but also know how to pirate software and to 2) people who are looking for a bargain.
Now that we've explored your hypothesis and found it lacking, has it occurred to you that there are actually people out there that walk into a phone shop with plenty of money to spend, look at the options available including Blackberry, iPhone, Windows, etc. and then *gasp*, decide to buy Android because they like it? If that hasn't occurred to you then maybe you should have a look at your biases.
So basically you're complaining that Android OS does not act like Windows OS.
Windows, OSX, Gnome, KDE, LXDE, Unity, Fluxbox, and on and on all work exactly like I described above. I don't have a problem with Android being different on the desktop but it can't be worse and be a viable option.
Is the "good content" that existed before ads actually gone though? I realize that content evolves over time but I would presume that the ad supported stuff is additive rather than a replacement for what is/was already there. I'm curious though, how would something like Google search be supported if not through ads? Micro-payments? Subscription?
I realize we've all been lulled into believing that inflation is somehow inevitable but in a correctly functioning capitalist society, prices for just about everything should actually go down as production becomes ever more efficient.
I've been experimenting with an Android desktop for a while and it does have potential but there is still a ways to go. The first issue is many programs don't work well with the keyboard. Pulse news reader is a great example as it is basically useless with the arrow keys. You try to navigate and just get stuck somewhere pressing the keys and nothing happening. Another issue is global keyboard shortcuts like alt-tab just don't work as well as they do on other systems. When you alt-tab on Android, you get the 6 icons of the most recent apps to select from but to go back and forth to the most recent app, you have to hold alt and hit tab twice as the first tab just highlights the app you are currently using. No other system works like that and it is annoying. Also, things like keyboarding the browser are a bit annoying. Things like ctrl-click don't work very well. And you can forget about middle click etc. Right click should give you the long press menu but it doesn't, e.g., it just acts like a regular click. The mouse pointer doesn't change when you hover over links either. Another issue is how selecting text works. Nobody wants to long press and drag handles on the desktop. They want to just click and drag. Also, the fact that there is no actual windowing system in Android (at least AOSP Android) makes multi-tasking weaker than other systems. Another deal killer is how the system kills apps in the background. Nobody on the desktop wants to reload every tab every single time they alt-tab back to the browser. Boatloads of RAM would solve that though.
All in all, I think some combination of Android and ChromeOS with support for X applications and Dalvik apps would be very exciting and a potential disrupter if Google plays it right.
Slashdot Mirror
is supporting Windows and Office that bad?
In a word: yes. Up until about 2 years ago, I used to make the bi-monthly trek to my mother's house to clean off the virus/trojan/malware du jour from her Windows computer. I would go over there and fix everything, make sure it all worked well, update everything leave and then BAM a few weeks later like clockwork, she would call me. "The internet don't work" "When I click on something in Google it goes somewhere else" "Constant pop ups trying to sell me stuff" and on and on and on and on. It drove me nuts. Finally, as a Linux user, I just got sick of supporting her Windows habit and I told her "you know what? I have something for you." I installed Ubuntu 10.04 on her computer set it up just so, chattr +i'd all the settings I didn't want her to be able to change and let her go with it. It's been two years and everytime I go over there, I check on the computer and it's just humming right along. She's happy as a clam and so am I.
And if it's bothering you that much, you can just turn your computer off and whine about it in...wait for it...3D!
You're replying to a not so cleverly disguised false flag waving anti-Linux troll. Just thought you'd like to know.
I just ran Addon Detector agains all of the apps on my Xoom and you're right. Pretty much all of the well performing apps make use of the NDK. I just wonder what this means for platforms like FirefoxOS that rely on web technology for development.
most of them
I seriously doubt that is true. Do you have a reliable source that agrees that most Android apps use the NDK?
Back in the day my Aunt Cindy who was in her early 40s and disabled would play Quake/Heretic/Hexen etc. all day long. That woman was the most avid fps gamer I've ever seen in my life. It was surreal.
1-2$ tops
This is trivially easy to debunk. Just go here.
To put a finer point on it, yes, if you make a casual throw away game then, of course, you can expect to only get a buck or two for it. However, if you make a game with some depth like Final Fantasy 3, Shadowgun, The Dark Knight Rises, etc. then you can price accordingly. It is pure laziness and tech blog echo chamber bandwagoning that developers are bitching and moaning about only being able to charge a dollar for a game on mobile devices. And the really funny thing is it is so easy to actually look for yourself and see it for the lie it is. Make a good game and people will pay. Make crap and bitch.
I have no problem professing genuine hate for some companies. Billions have been spent in marketing trying to attract the opposite after all. If it is an accepted and legitimate endeavor to try to make me like you or to make me feel cool to associate myself with you then I am perfectly within my rights to make a conscious decision to feel the opposite. Anyone trying to argue against this is oblivious to human nature.
The government created Tor specifically for dissidents to communicate so they aren't going to try to shut it down. This is a case of idiots down the totem pole not "getting it".
Yay! More ways to download stuff. I was just finishing working my way through this list and now I have 30 pages worth of new knowledge to assimilate. Keep it coming!
I think we are having a misunderstanding here. I get what tor is all about. My only point was that anybody whose porn and piracy habits are compromised because they are caught going through an exit node aren't doing it right. That's what the .onion sites are for. Basically, you can surf to your hearts content all the porn and warez you could ever hope to consume and never touch an exit node. As far as checking out hackaday through a firewall or even slashdot, I've done both of those and tor is great for that as well.
You bring up a good point about the cops hanging out in pedo forums etc. The way I see it, that's where the real action is for law enforcement. You will never nab the sickos by poaching exit nodes and putting people in jail because some kiddy porn or whatever went through it. That would be stupid as the real criminals are the ones actually consuming and creating that content. The government should be happy that tor exists. It gives them a honeypot where they can do real police work. Go to a pedo forum and blend in. Get people to trust you and get some pics with identifying exif data, or whatever and make a bust. Rinse and repeat. You'd be a fool to go after the exit nodes. It would be like busting your informants. The bottom line is many criminals are stupid and despite using tor they will fuck up. Old fashioned police work does not mean being stupid and taking down the exits. I hope I haven't been unclear.
Reading your link I see it's mostly talking about sending personally identifying information unencrypted through the network that just gets sniffed when it leaves the exit node. Torrenting through tor is really dumb since many torrenting programs send your ip address to the tracker unencrypted, so duh, the exit node sniffers get that and if you send other traffic through the same node, then, yes, that other traffic can easily be linked to you. The other issue is in your link is pretty much the same thing. If you log in to your email or whatever through tor and those credentials aren't going through https then, again, yes you will have those credentials stolen. It's the same problem with doing that sitting in Starbucks and using the wi-fi. Of course, tor has been warning people over and over and over not to use bittorrent through tor as it is an insecure protocol by design. The bittorrent creators will tell you that. It is just incidental that people use torrents to trade infringing media. To sum it up, Newsflash: don't torrent through tor as your ip address will show up to the exit node. Newsflash #2: don't send your login credentials through the onion because if an attacker can link those to your real identity, they can link other things going through the same exit node to your real identity which depending on what you're using tor for can be a real problem.
Very true but that is legal in most jurisdictions and won't compromise the exit node provider. I was more referring to the porn and pirating.
If you're already connected to the tor network anyway, why would you need to go to a regular web page to surf porn or pirated content when you can just make an end to end encrypted connection to any of the multitude of .onion pseudo-domains that serve that particular kind of media and not worry about it?
I heard that in the Urkel voice. :-)
I love Puppy Linux and install it from time to time on really old hardware so I'm with you on that.
yeah I'll be sure to remember that while I cash the checks. ;)
But the number of Android users who are willing to pay for their software is simply too low.
Too low for what? There are hundreds and hundreds of thousands of applications on Android. EA has a slew of high quality games as does Madfinger. What percentage of devs are making these complaints? .01 percent? .1 percent? If you want lockdown, there is an app(store) for that. BTW, don't look now but this exists and it makes it drop dead easy to pirate practically every single app on iTunes. Easier than Android even.
In contrast on many Android devices rooting is unnecessary, just going into settings and allowing apps from "unknown sources".
Oh, for the love of GAWD! You mean people can actually do what they want with the device they bought and own? What'll those crazy Googlers think of next?
Android appeals mainly to two huge groups of people: 1) the tech savvy folks who like an open platform, but also know how to pirate software and to 2) people who are looking for a bargain.
Really? So there are no Android users in between these two extremes? 10,000,000 people have bought the Galaxy S3 which is an expensive phone. You are trying to say that all of those people are tech savvy people who "know how to pirate software"? Millions of people bought the S2 in its heyday. Are you saying the same thing about those people? And if it's all about the tech nerds buying the expensive Androids why aren't they all just getting Galaxy Nexus's since that's the one with the unlockable bootloader out of the box. Android appeals mainly to two huge groups of people: 1) the tech savvy folks who like an open platform, but also know how to pirate software and to 2) people who are looking for a bargain.
Now that we've explored your hypothesis and found it lacking, has it occurred to you that there are actually people out there that walk into a phone shop with plenty of money to spend, look at the options available including Blackberry, iPhone, Windows, etc. and then *gasp*, decide to buy Android because they like it? If that hasn't occurred to you then maybe you should have a look at your biases.
So basically you're complaining that Android OS does not act like Windows OS.
Windows, OSX, Gnome, KDE, LXDE, Unity, Fluxbox, and on and on all work exactly like I described above. I don't have a problem with Android being different on the desktop but it can't be worse and be a viable option.
Is the "good content" that existed before ads actually gone though? I realize that content evolves over time but I would presume that the ad supported stuff is additive rather than a replacement for what is/was already there. I'm curious though, how would something like Google search be supported if not through ads? Micro-payments? Subscription?
I realize we've all been lulled into believing that inflation is somehow inevitable but in a correctly functioning capitalist society, prices for just about everything should actually go down as production becomes ever more efficient.
All in all, I think some combination of Android and ChromeOS with support for X applications and Dalvik apps would be very exciting and a potential disrupter if Google plays it right.