Fun times! Not only do I get to argue over Android but you had to throw in a Linux dig too!
there's no middle ground either you are using [Linux] as set up by default or you're constantly tweaking it.
So, for the former, you are basically in the same boat as the Mac and for the latter, at least Linux lets you tweak it how you want. And when you're done, guess what? You're done. It will run happily for as long as you want. Personally, I'm a very happy user of KDE 4.6 on a Debian based distro. The extent of the tweaking involved dragging a couple of my favorite applications to the taskbar and installing some applications. And that was it. Everything works fantastically. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it "sucks".
I could give an iPad to my parents and they could happily use it for years without having to do maintenance on it.
My mother was notorious for gumming up her XP machine with viruses and trojans. Of course, it was my job to fix it on a bi-monthly basis. Finally, I got fed up and I told her, "I have something for you." I installed Ubuntu, did a chattr +i on most of the settings in her home directory so she couldn't do something like delete the panel or whatever, made a few choice decisions on the default applications with ease of use in mind and that was it. Been over a year and she does nothing but rave about it to her friends. Total maintenance by me since then: zero.
The Nexus One's and S' are probably the exceptions to that rule. I talked my friend into dumping his iPhone for a Nexus S (he's very happy, btw) with the intention of rooting it. Thing was, I couldn't really come up with a good reason to do it as it did everything extra he wanted (basically tether) out of the box with no root necessary.
The iPad being replaced by a newer version is completely different from not being able to run an application on all current devices.
Not different at all when they are still selling them anyway so
Rovio
There are over 200,000 applications in the Android Marketplace. Of course, there will be some developers that will push the envelope and not be able to deliver a satisfactory experience on all devices. That is the exception as every single program I have installed on my G1 works on my Droid and my Xoom including some 3D games that require much more from my devices than Angry Birds which is a 2D sprite game consisting of shooting a projectile from one side of the screen to the other. Maybe Rovio is incompetent? They were practically bankrupt until they ripped these guys off so how much should I take from their example anyway?
better example would be when Rovio could not support Angry Birds on all Android devices
A better example of what? That technology marches on? Or should we just have stopped at the G1? If I write an iOS app that requires the iPad2's graphical prowess to run, does that reflect poorly on iOS that it runs like crap on the original iPad? They do still sell it so you can't use that as an excuse. Your arguments don't hold water, sir.
I think all users should be able to "root" or "jailbreak" any device they own if they so choose. The point was that he had to root it to do what he did, by your definition the iPhone isn't crippled either because it can be rooted to install unapproved apps or run another OS too.
I can't really say whether the iPhone is crippled or not as I don't own one and never have. My comments are confined purely to Android in that regard. I will say this though; it is ridiculous to say that a device is "crippled" just because some big name dev shop decides they don't want to support it be that iPhone or Android. Google hasn't made a navigation app for the iPhone. Does that mean iOS is crippled? Of course not.
Interesting. I have (had) a T-Mobile G1. The first thing I did was root the thing by downgrading the firmware, rooting, upgrading the firmware and the recovery partition and kept it up with the latest Cyanogenmod until the day it went kaput. I happened to be traveling in Pittsburgh when it happened. Went to the kiosk in the mall told them my phone broke, they switched it out for a new one. Lather, rinse, repeat on the Cyanogenmod.
I currently have a Droid from Verizon. It was rooted before I left the parking lot at the Best Buy where I bought it. Again, put Cyanogenmod on it. I had it for a while, then the screen stopped working when I would slide the keyboard out. Took it back to Verizon as is and guess what? Walked out with another one.
And if that isn't good enough for you, anybody clued in enough to root their phone is capable of flashing it back to factory.
You also, effectively, forfeit any customer support you would have received.
'Okay sure, type in *228'
"Hang on, my leet custom ROM is different, so I'm going to type in %228"
'Umm, I'm sorry sir, we don't support leet custom ROM'.
Ok. So why did Netflix specify those particular phones?
I haven't the slightest clue. What I do know is that every phone I've heard of so far that is running Gingerbread is capable of running this app. My Droid does and it is the slowest of the "second generation" Android phones out there so it can't be for performance or memory reasons. Obviously, they baked their own DRM in as my Droid doesn't have anything that they would likely be using so it can't be that. So, you tell me, why those phones?
Netflix has chosen the first option which is the most sensible right now on Android if you still want to do some quality assurance.
If that is true, then why are there so many applications in the Android market that do much more than stream video that work great on any device you put them on? I develop applications for Android and I haven't had any problems whatsoever with my software not running on someone's device. It's this simple:
... and accept that you're running it on an untested combination of software and hardware
So, every application on every platform is tested on every combination of hardware that is available for that platform? Thought not. And that hasn't been a problem. Until the trolls dreamed it up as a way to attack Android.
with no guarantee as to performance
It runs flawlessly on my OG Droid which is by far the slowest and most memory poor of any remotely modern Android phone with enough market share to matter.
and no support.
Support? For a streaming video player? Troll on, brother!
P.S. Looks like Slashdot has hit a new low when people are scorned for using their devices the way they want and not at the whim of the corporate nanny. Truly a sad day.
Once again the fragmentation of Android rears its ugly head.
How does Netflix intentionally not releasing their app for certain devices have anything to do with fragmentation? To spell it out, devices not on the approved list can run this app, Netflix just intentionally disallowed it. It's their choice and has nothing to do with Android. To wit, I have an OG Droid that is not on the supported devices list. Guess what? I installed the Netflix app and it works perfectly. The problem here lies solely at the feet of Netflix. Instead of blaming the victim, why don't you put your indignation to good use and shoot Netflix an email telling them how unhappy you are? Oh, that's right, because you are actually a troll. Now crawl back under your bridge.
Based on the fact that rooted phones (including my OG Droid) can run this application, this is more Netflix making an arbitrary decision than anything else. Furthermore, as an owner of a Droid, a Xoom, and a G1, I have found that I couldn't care less about the "fragmentation" you speak of. And as a geek and an Android developer, if anybody cared, it would be me. Well, I don't. And I actually know the difference between Eclair, Froyo, and Gingerbread. Joe Android Buyer hasn't the slightest clue what version of "Droid" he has and can't be bothered to find out. Fragmentation has devolved into a swear word irate Android haters throwh out when they having a hissy fit over the latest market share numbers.
Seems to me the exploit writers would have a much harder time if the market was split between a half dozen linux distros, windows, os x, android, chromeos, and the ipad. I'm doing my part.
I think times and expectations have changed. I went from a netbook running Ubuntu to my Xoom and now, anything less than hitting the button and a device being instantly ready is excruciating. As a matter of fact, my netbook not being able to give me alerts when it is asleep just feels wrong after an always on device like my tablet. When i want to do real work, I sit down at my desktop with dual monitors, wired connection, the whole deal. Anything else, I just use my Xoom and relax with the very occasional foray on my Acer Aspire One.
It's very hard to do. That's what makes the strategy so effective. Discretely speaking, unless the shill is really stupid, you can't say for sure. What you can do is look at a product such as the Kin phone where, despite the fact that it had many obvious objective deficiencies, was being touted large and wide as being a really great device. Often when someone disagreed with this rhetoric, that person was "shouted" down and told they "just don't get it." You can't really say if any one particular individual person who was doing this was a shill but it's quite obvious in retrospect that the Kin in general was being shilled for. The key, really, is to get the "retrospect" part and the "reading the comments right this minute" part temporally as close together as possible.
What is the difference between a shill and a fanboi?
A shill is paid whether he likes the product or not, generally follows some sort of script and is usually an account manned by more than one person. It's really a coordinated attack on the truth. A fanboy genuinely likes the product and, though extreme, is actually representative of the true fan base. It's the difference between grass-roots and astroturf to use the terminology generally associated with the phenomenon.
Real fanboys don't bother me because it's all in good fun but shills are pure poison and the practical differences are significant as what happened on usenet during the OS/2 NT wars. Say a product comes out and there are 10,000 people roaming around on the internet that actually care about it and post to message boards with a 50/50 distribution of for/against. Then a "relationship management" firm gets in the game with multiple shill accounts on the most important sites, i.e., Engadget, Slashdot, Zdnet, etc. It's not that hard to turn the conversation on its head with a coordinated campaign on a few target sites with the right kind of money in a specific time frame. Those 5000 people out of our hypothetical 10,000 can easily be drowned out by a room full of Indians shilling full time for the company du jour. This happens all of the time and has been going on for a while.
I can't remember seeing anyone having anything positive to say about the Kin at any time.
I think the AC's post is spot on as a very specific response to your criticism by linking to several posts in the original Slashdot story that did have positive things to say about the Kin.
Hey, I was just trying to give you a couple of pointers so people might actually take you seriously. But, you obviously feel like you have it figured out and don't have to listen to me. Party on, dude!
You're not getting it. You obviously think Google is over the top in their information gathering. Fine. But Google are not murderers and you cheapen your point by Godwinning the thread. It makes you sound hysterical and most reasonable people are going to either ignore you or just get irritated until you shut up.
Really? Are you >2million UID trolls that desperate that you would imply, no matter how slimily and subtley, that Google is somehow comparable to a murderous dictator? That's a slap in the face to people who have actually experienced such a thing and not in some medal of duty video game.
Slashdot Mirror
Very informative. Thank you.
there's no middle ground either you are using [Linux] as set up by default or you're constantly tweaking it.
So, for the former, you are basically in the same boat as the Mac and for the latter, at least Linux lets you tweak it how you want. And when you're done, guess what? You're done. It will run happily for as long as you want. Personally, I'm a very happy user of KDE 4.6 on a Debian based distro. The extent of the tweaking involved dragging a couple of my favorite applications to the taskbar and installing some applications. And that was it. Everything works fantastically. Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it "sucks".
I could give an iPad to my parents and they could happily use it for years without having to do maintenance on it.
My mother was notorious for gumming up her XP machine with viruses and trojans. Of course, it was my job to fix it on a bi-monthly basis. Finally, I got fed up and I told her, "I have something for you." I installed Ubuntu, did a chattr +i on most of the settings in her home directory so she couldn't do something like delete the panel or whatever, made a few choice decisions on the default applications with ease of use in mind and that was it. Been over a year and she does nothing but rave about it to her friends. Total maintenance by me since then: zero.
The Nexus One's and S' are probably the exceptions to that rule. I talked my friend into dumping his iPhone for a Nexus S (he's very happy, btw) with the intention of rooting it. Thing was, I couldn't really come up with a good reason to do it as it did everything extra he wanted (basically tether) out of the box with no root necessary.
The iPad being replaced by a newer version is completely different from not being able to run an application on all current devices.
Not different at all when they are still selling them anyway so
Rovio
There are over 200,000 applications in the Android Marketplace. Of course, there will be some developers that will push the envelope and not be able to deliver a satisfactory experience on all devices. That is the exception as every single program I have installed on my G1 works on my Droid and my Xoom including some 3D games that require much more from my devices than Angry Birds which is a 2D sprite game consisting of shooting a projectile from one side of the screen to the other. Maybe Rovio is incompetent? They were practically bankrupt until they ripped these guys off so how much should I take from their example anyway?
better example would be when Rovio could not support Angry Birds on all Android devices
A better example of what? That technology marches on? Or should we just have stopped at the G1? If I write an iOS app that requires the iPad2's graphical prowess to run, does that reflect poorly on iOS that it runs like crap on the original iPad? They do still sell it so you can't use that as an excuse. Your arguments don't hold water, sir.
I think all users should be able to "root" or "jailbreak" any device they own if they so choose. The point was that he had to root it to do what he did, by your definition the iPhone isn't crippled either because it can be rooted to install unapproved apps or run another OS too.
I can't really say whether the iPhone is crippled or not as I don't own one and never have. My comments are confined purely to Android in that regard. I will say this though; it is ridiculous to say that a device is "crippled" just because some big name dev shop decides they don't want to support it be that iPhone or Android. Google hasn't made a navigation app for the iPhone. Does that mean iOS is crippled? Of course not.
That's really all I have to say on that.
Rooting the phone (often) voids the warranty.
Interesting. I have (had) a T-Mobile G1. The first thing I did was root the thing by downgrading the firmware, rooting, upgrading the firmware and the recovery partition and kept it up with the latest Cyanogenmod until the day it went kaput. I happened to be traveling in Pittsburgh when it happened. Went to the kiosk in the mall told them my phone broke, they switched it out for a new one. Lather, rinse, repeat on the Cyanogenmod.
I currently have a Droid from Verizon. It was rooted before I left the parking lot at the Best Buy where I bought it. Again, put Cyanogenmod on it. I had it for a while, then the screen stopped working when I would slide the keyboard out. Took it back to Verizon as is and guess what? Walked out with another one.
And if that isn't good enough for you, anybody clued in enough to root their phone is capable of flashing it back to factory.
You also, effectively, forfeit any customer support you would have received. 'Okay sure, type in *228' "Hang on, my leet custom ROM is different, so I'm going to type in %228" 'Umm, I'm sorry sir, we don't support leet custom ROM'.
Pure strawman troll bs.
Ok. So why did Netflix specify those particular phones?
I haven't the slightest clue. What I do know is that every phone I've heard of so far that is running Gingerbread is capable of running this app. My Droid does and it is the slowest of the "second generation" Android phones out there so it can't be for performance or memory reasons. Obviously, they baked their own DRM in as my Droid doesn't have anything that they would likely be using so it can't be that. So, you tell me, why those phones?
Netflix has chosen the first option which is the most sensible right now on Android if you still want to do some quality assurance.
If that is true, then why are there so many applications in the Android market that do much more than stream video that work great on any device you put them on? I develop applications for Android and I haven't had any problems whatsoever with my software not running on someone's device. It's this simple:
<uses-sdk />
android:minSdkVersion="5"
android:targetSdkVersion="11"
and sticking to the official api's when writing your code. Surely Netflix with their bucketloads of cash can hire someone capable of that.
... and accept that you're running it on an untested combination of software and hardware
So, every application on every platform is tested on every combination of hardware that is available for that platform? Thought not. And that hasn't been a problem. Until the trolls dreamed it up as a way to attack Android.
with no guarantee as to performance
It runs flawlessly on my OG Droid which is by far the slowest and most memory poor of any remotely modern Android phone with enough market share to matter.
and no support.
Support? For a streaming video player? Troll on, brother!
this android user is watching netflix
You:
your device isn't crippled ?
Obviously not!
P.S. Looks like Slashdot has hit a new low when people are scorned for using their devices the way they want and not at the whim of the corporate nanny. Truly a sad day.
Once again the fragmentation of Android rears its ugly head.
How does Netflix intentionally not releasing their app for certain devices have anything to do with fragmentation? To spell it out, devices not on the approved list can run this app, Netflix just intentionally disallowed it. It's their choice and has nothing to do with Android. To wit, I have an OG Droid that is not on the supported devices list. Guess what? I installed the Netflix app and it works perfectly. The problem here lies solely at the feet of Netflix. Instead of blaming the victim, why don't you put your indignation to good use and shoot Netflix an email telling them how unhappy you are? Oh, that's right, because you are actually a troll. Now crawl back under your bridge.
Er, what if the phone has hdmi out and HD playback capabilities like many phones do?
Based on the fact that rooted phones (including my OG Droid) can run this application, this is more Netflix making an arbitrary decision than anything else. Furthermore, as an owner of a Droid, a Xoom, and a G1, I have found that I couldn't care less about the "fragmentation" you speak of. And as a geek and an Android developer, if anybody cared, it would be me. Well, I don't. And I actually know the difference between Eclair, Froyo, and Gingerbread. Joe Android Buyer hasn't the slightest clue what version of "Droid" he has and can't be bothered to find out. Fragmentation has devolved into a swear word irate Android haters throwh out when they having a hissy fit over the latest market share numbers.
half dozen linux distros, windows, os x, android, chromeos, and the ipad.
Half of the operating systems I mentioned will not run your perl script.
couldn't happen on Linux? Or OSX?
Seems to me the exploit writers would have a much harder time if the market was split between a half dozen linux distros, windows, os x, android, chromeos, and the ipad. I'm doing my part.
Posted from my Xooml
I think times and expectations have changed. I went from a netbook running Ubuntu to my Xoom and now, anything less than hitting the button and a device being instantly ready is excruciating. As a matter of fact, my netbook not being able to give me alerts when it is asleep just feels wrong after an always on device like my tablet. When i want to do real work, I sit down at my desktop with dual monitors, wired connection, the whole deal. Anything else, I just use my Xoom and relax with the very occasional foray on my Acer Aspire One.
It's very hard to do. That's what makes the strategy so effective. Discretely speaking, unless the shill is really stupid, you can't say for sure. What you can do is look at a product such as the Kin phone where, despite the fact that it had many obvious objective deficiencies, was being touted large and wide as being a really great device. Often when someone disagreed with this rhetoric, that person was "shouted" down and told they "just don't get it." You can't really say if any one particular individual person who was doing this was a shill but it's quite obvious in retrospect that the Kin in general was being shilled for. The key, really, is to get the "retrospect" part and the "reading the comments right this minute" part temporally as close together as possible.
What is the difference between a shill and a fanboi?
A shill is paid whether he likes the product or not, generally follows some sort of script and is usually an account manned by more than one person. It's really a coordinated attack on the truth. A fanboy genuinely likes the product and, though extreme, is actually representative of the true fan base. It's the difference between grass-roots and astroturf to use the terminology generally associated with the phenomenon.
Real fanboys don't bother me because it's all in good fun but shills are pure poison and the practical differences are significant as what happened on usenet during the OS/2 NT wars. Say a product comes out and there are 10,000 people roaming around on the internet that actually care about it and post to message boards with a 50/50 distribution of for/against. Then a "relationship management" firm gets in the game with multiple shill accounts on the most important sites, i.e., Engadget, Slashdot, Zdnet, etc. It's not that hard to turn the conversation on its head with a coordinated campaign on a few target sites with the right kind of money in a specific time frame. Those 5000 people out of our hypothetical 10,000 can easily be drowned out by a room full of Indians shilling full time for the company du jour. This happens all of the time and has been going on for a while.
I can't remember seeing anyone having anything positive to say about the Kin at any time.
I think the AC's post is spot on as a very specific response to your criticism by linking to several posts in the original Slashdot story that did have positive things to say about the Kin.
Here ya go, Skippy.
Welcome to Slashdot.
Wow. That's the most intelligent discourse you can come up with. A stupid fucking meme. You are pathetic.
Hey, I was just trying to give you a couple of pointers so people might actually take you seriously. But, you obviously feel like you have it figured out and don't have to listen to me. Party on, dude!
You're not getting it. You obviously think Google is over the top in their information gathering. Fine. But Google are not murderers and you cheapen your point by Godwinning the thread. It makes you sound hysterical and most reasonable people are going to either ignore you or just get irritated until you shut up.
Really? Are you >2million UID trolls that desperate that you would imply, no matter how slimily and subtley, that Google is somehow comparable to a murderous dictator? That's a slap in the face to people who have actually experienced such a thing and not in some medal of duty video game.