All I've seen is that the base model is $500, the UI is supposed to be pretty slick and that it will run Android apps as well as Blackberry apps.
And a quick Google search shows that RIM confirmed the tablet will have a native mail app, it just won't be ready on day 1. But you can simply point your browser on the tablet to Gmail, Yahoo or whatever.
My wife has the Samsung Captivate. It shipped with Android 2.1, which has a notorious file system bug that made everything extremely slow. The GPS was basically unusable. The moment she flashed 2.2, it was considerably faster. Then she flashed the Cynogen mod version of 2.3, and it is even faster.
And 2.x builds of Android can't use hardware acceleration for rendering on the screen.
Honeycomb was specifically built around dual-core processors and hardware acceleration. I'm in the exact opposite boat where I find my iPhone 4 to be pretty laggy, where as my Xoom is really fast.
I still hear on a regular basis that Macs are better for graphics. My mother is convinced she needs a Mac because she can't design a basic flyer on a PC. Perception trumps reality.
Apps and marketing. Most people I talk to don't seem to know the Xoom exists. I bought one, and while I love most things about the Xoom, so far there are very few Xoom-native apps. And many apps designed for phones crash when trying to upscale to the Xoom resolution.
For $600 you can get a 32 GB iPad or a 32 GB Xoom.
The Xoom has better cameras, Flash support, SD card reader, higher resolution, faster processor, more RAM, etc, and yet no one seems to care.
Then again if I'm a developer, I'd jump all over the lack of Xoom-native apps. It is easier to stand out in a very small pool of apps.
As for the Phoenix lights, if I recall they were large enough to be visible by the whole city, with the same reports coming in from neighboring cities, and even other states.
I'm saying that it is a common trope to suggest there are never any photos or videos of UFOs. In reality there are tons of documented cases that remain unidentified and unexplained. But since they are unexplained, it is easy to just overlook them and move on.
I pointed to two examples off the top of my head that I recall following in the news as they happened. Both are well documented and vouched for by government employees. UFOs are not a hobby of mine. I frankly don't care that much about them, but I do see them pop-up in the news from time to time, only to be ignored the next day.
I watched the video of the Mexico event as it happened. The lights appeared to stay in a formation and moved through the sky. They also disappeared and reappeared. Oil platforms are stationary. If I recall off hand, the pilots witnessed the balls in the sky for about 30 minutes.
Is that what you call thoroughly debunking?
It was also definitively debunked as ball lightning, except for the fact that ball lightning is a proposed and undocumented phenomenon itself. And no theory on ball lightning would have it hanging around for 30 minutes.
Randomly throwing out theories that don't make the least bit of sense don't count as thoroughly debunking.
They exist, but sadly haven't given us any more answers. For example, the 2004 Mexico incident. The Mexican government says they were UFOs. CNN had live video as it was happening. You can find the video on YouTube.
Or the Phoenix Lights. I've seen tons of video of the lights themselves, which remain unexplained. I've also seen video during the Phoenix Lights when a large mass covers the sky and blankets out the stars.
In both cases, you had government agencies openly confirmed the incident as unexplainable phenomena, and both incidents were well documented. But what can you say other than that you don't have any explanation?
If there is a problem introduced with a Red Hat patch, it will be fixed upstream. And since CentOS promises binary compatibility with Red Hat, they tend to just take the Red Hat sources and compile them as is.
And Red Hat isn't hiding their source. They're just not listing kernel patches as broken out. Any kernel developer should be able to look at their existing patch set, compare it to new kernel patches floating around and figure it out. It isn't rocket surgery. Don't make a mountain out of a red hat-rack.
If you are completely unsatisfied with the 2.x series of software, then please explain why you bought a 2.x series tablet? Especially when Google said, don't buy these tablets and hold out for 3?
If the iPad was only $250 of hardware, than everyone and their mother would be putting out the same hardware at the same price.
Putting the same type of hardware in such a small form factor isn't cheap or easy.
The pure cost of the components in the iPad 2 is $326 dollars. Now consider the cost of research and development, the overhead of the cost of like Apple, paying Foxconn to manufacture them, marketing costs, etc. And I bet the price goes closer to $450 in cost for that $500 tablet.
So please don't spread FUD.
The tablet you listed has the hardware to run Honeycomb but there is a plethora of sub $200 tablets that don't have the hardware to run Honeycomb.
You bought a $360 tablet, so you must think the $500 iPad is horribly overpriced for having "similar" hardware. Except the Xoom and iPad also include two cameras, gyroscopes, GPS, etc. and weigh a full pound less.
If you have an older, cheap tablet with an older version of Android, Honeycomb may not work well for you. The UI is designed specifically around GPU accelerated rendering, and overall it is targeted at a fast dual-core processor.
There are unofficial roms for Gingerbread you can get on your tablet now that would actually be faster.
Man, you are hilarious. No one in history has ever done that before. And you've created a couple accounts today just for that. When you look back on your life, I'm sure you'll feel content and fulfilled.
CentOS is fine, because they're a 100% clone of Red Hat. Red Hat is putting their kernel patches together instead of separate. If you wanted to pick and choose which ones you used and make something different, it would be *slightly* more difficult. But considerate the last release was broken out. You know what they were starting with. Take a diff of the new patchset against the old one, and you should have an idea of what they've changed or added.
Google isn't really making money off the price of the hardware.
And tons of people already took versions of Android that weren't ready for tablets and shipped a bunch of crappy tablets. I think Google is worried about the overall experience and perception of Android. But what Google did with the crappy tablets was disallow the use of Google Apps, including the Android Marketplace.
For a cheap tablet, they could still ship it, because some people literally just need a browser on their tablet. I don't think Motorolla, HTC, Samsung, etc. would ship a Honeycomb phone without the Android Marketplace.
I believe most of the Android stack itself has been released GPL previously. But as the copyright holder, they can release future versions under another license. The existing GPL tools they built upon, like the kernel, have to remain GPL.
The real issue is that they're making a poor decision. Supposedly Honeycomb has APIs for handling display on a phone as well as a tablet. Google bragged about this new column API. There may be specific aspects of the UI that need to be redesigned for a phone, but they don't need to keep it closed source.
Release the source and allow carriers to start working on customizations, but tell them they can't ship with the Google Apps (no mail, no calendar, no Android Market). That will prevent any meaningful phone release until it is ready, while still keeping the code in the open.
The developer tools might be decent but the finished product of what they shipped now is still 5 steps behind what everyone else is offering.
I'm not a massive Microsoft hater. I'm just being honest. A decent API for developing apps, and a decent interface (Metro) don't overcome the massive shortcomings, not to mention it is also easy to develop iPhone and Android apps currently.
Is it offensive to gays? Certainly. But it suggests that you "cure" gays through peace, love and understanding. I'd agree it is wrong in that I don't think homosexuality is a simple choice, a flip you easily switch. But in comparison to those whose suggest you need to hunt down and beat, prosecute and kill gays, it is considerably more lenient. The app isn't advocating the hatred and persecution of gays.
I think the app is sad, pathetic and offensive. But I wouldn't necessarily suggest it advocates "bashing".
You're mixing it up. Only the Hasidic Jews care about mixed textiles or menstruating women, as those were Jewish laws invented for the Jews.
The Catholic Church determined you need to focus on rote prayer to outside figures (intercessory prayer). The rosary may have been borrowed from outside culture. Catholicism claims to have invented in the 15th century, despite the number 108 having meaning in other religions for thousands of years.
I don't know of any group that eats Christ's bones in particular. The eucharist, or Communion bread (seen differently in different circles) is either the supposed literal, or metaphorical body of Christ. I haven't ever heard it called the bones specifically though.
Some are Mormons who believe that if they are married in a Mormon temple, they can enter the third level of heaven and become God themselves, creating planets of billions of worshipers.
Some are Catholics, and believe in intercessory prayer, where you can't pray directly to God, even though that contradicts the entire Bible. You are dependent wholly on the Church still. You get forgiveness through the Church (not God) and must confess sins to a priest.
Some are Christian Scientists who believe 95% of the Bible is a lie, and that we don't really exist. Sin is going to a hospital, because it is believing the lie that physical reality is real.
Some are the Westboro Baptist Church, who ignore 99% of the Bible, and focus largely on 1 verse which is recorded only for historical purposes, which was a law the Jews made for themselves (as opposed to a commandment from God). But frankly, they believe it is their duty to celebrate the death of innocent people because God wants everyone to die for tolerating homosexuality. Every American in particular really needs to die, except for Westboro Baptist Church.
Some, like Trinity Broadcasting believe in bilking innocent people out money. Tons of televangelists seem to believe that you can tell people that you will die unless people give you millions, because God commanded it. And those millions better go into your pocket directly.
And some Christians believe in peace, forgiveness, tolerance, decency, trying to follow Christ's example, and non-judgementalism.
Lumping all 2.1 billion Christians on the earth in one bucket isn't easy.
1 - Sony wants the case fought in California where their offices are, because it is cheaper and more convenient for them there. It is also more expensive for GeoHot in California, and it less likely he can afford to go to trial. By running him out of legal defense funds and keeping the case in California, they might force him to settle. Unless there is a smoking gun, such as the majority of the donations coming from California, this really shouldn't keep the case there.
2 - Secondly, Sony wants to sue others, not just GeoHot. They're trying to get info via discovery to do precisely that.
Slashdot Mirror
I hadn't read that.
All I've seen is that the base model is $500, the UI is supposed to be pretty slick and that it will run Android apps as well as Blackberry apps.
And a quick Google search shows that RIM confirmed the tablet will have a native mail app, it just won't be ready on day 1. But you can simply point your browser on the tablet to Gmail, Yahoo or whatever.
My wife has the Samsung Captivate. It shipped with Android 2.1, which has a notorious file system bug that made everything extremely slow. The GPS was basically unusable. The moment she flashed 2.2, it was considerably faster. Then she flashed the Cynogen mod version of 2.3, and it is even faster.
And 2.x builds of Android can't use hardware acceleration for rendering on the screen.
Honeycomb was specifically built around dual-core processors and hardware acceleration. I'm in the exact opposite boat where I find my iPhone 4 to be pretty laggy, where as my Xoom is really fast.
The WebOS tablets from HP and the Playbook from Blackberry certainly look promising. I think both are supposed to ship this month.
I still hear on a regular basis that Macs are better for graphics. My mother is convinced she needs a Mac because she can't design a basic flyer on a PC. Perception trumps reality.
Apps and marketing. Most people I talk to don't seem to know the Xoom exists. I bought one, and while I love most things about the Xoom, so far there are very few Xoom-native apps. And many apps designed for phones crash when trying to upscale to the Xoom resolution.
For $600 you can get a 32 GB iPad or a 32 GB Xoom.
The Xoom has better cameras, Flash support, SD card reader, higher resolution, faster processor, more RAM, etc, and yet no one seems to care.
Then again if I'm a developer, I'd jump all over the lack of Xoom-native apps. It is easier to stand out in a very small pool of apps.
As for the Phoenix lights, if I recall they were large enough to be visible by the whole city, with the same reports coming in from neighboring cities, and even other states.
And since when do birds glow brightly at night?
I'm not saying aliens are real.
I'm saying that it is a common trope to suggest there are never any photos or videos of UFOs. In reality there are tons of documented cases that remain unidentified and unexplained. But since they are unexplained, it is easy to just overlook them and move on.
I pointed to two examples off the top of my head that I recall following in the news as they happened. Both are well documented and vouched for by government employees. UFOs are not a hobby of mine. I frankly don't care that much about them, but I do see them pop-up in the news from time to time, only to be ignored the next day.
I watched the video of the Mexico event as it happened. The lights appeared to stay in a formation and moved through the sky. They also disappeared and reappeared. Oil platforms are stationary. If I recall off hand, the pilots witnessed the balls in the sky for about 30 minutes.
Is that what you call thoroughly debunking?
It was also definitively debunked as ball lightning, except for the fact that ball lightning is a proposed and undocumented phenomenon itself. And no theory on ball lightning would have it hanging around for 30 minutes.
Randomly throwing out theories that don't make the least bit of sense don't count as thoroughly debunking.
They exist, but sadly haven't given us any more answers. For example, the 2004 Mexico incident. The Mexican government says they were UFOs. CNN had live video as it was happening. You can find the video on YouTube.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3707057.stm
Or the Phoenix Lights. I've seen tons of video of the lights themselves, which remain unexplained. I've also seen video during the Phoenix Lights when a large mass covers the sky and blankets out the stars.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Lights
In both cases, you had government agencies openly confirmed the incident as unexplainable phenomena, and both incidents were well documented. But what can you say other than that you don't have any explanation?
If there is a problem introduced with a Red Hat patch, it will be fixed upstream. And since CentOS promises binary compatibility with Red Hat, they tend to just take the Red Hat sources and compile them as is.
And Red Hat isn't hiding their source. They're just not listing kernel patches as broken out. Any kernel developer should be able to look at their existing patch set, compare it to new kernel patches floating around and figure it out. It isn't rocket surgery. Don't make a mountain out of a red hat-rack.
If you are completely unsatisfied with the 2.x series of software, then please explain why you bought a 2.x series tablet? Especially when Google said, don't buy these tablets and hold out for 3?
If the iPad was only $250 of hardware, than everyone and their mother would be putting out the same hardware at the same price.
Putting the same type of hardware in such a small form factor isn't cheap or easy.
The pure cost of the components in the iPad 2 is $326 dollars. Now consider the cost of research and development, the overhead of the cost of like Apple, paying Foxconn to manufacture them, marketing costs, etc. And I bet the price goes closer to $450 in cost for that $500 tablet.
So please don't spread FUD.
The tablet you listed has the hardware to run Honeycomb but there is a plethora of sub $200 tablets that don't have the hardware to run Honeycomb.
You bought a $360 tablet, so you must think the $500 iPad is horribly overpriced for having "similar" hardware. Except the Xoom and iPad also include two cameras, gyroscopes, GPS, etc. and weigh a full pound less.
There are 2.3 roms out there, and that is a valid upgrade for 2.2 tablets.
If you have an older, cheap tablet with an older version of Android, Honeycomb may not work well for you. The UI is designed specifically around GPU accelerated rendering, and overall it is targeted at a fast dual-core processor.
There are unofficial roms for Gingerbread you can get on your tablet now that would actually be faster.
Goatse, again.
Man, you are hilarious. No one in history has ever done that before. And you've created a couple accounts today just for that. When you look back on your life, I'm sure you'll feel content and fulfilled.
CentOS is fine, because they're a 100% clone of Red Hat. Red Hat is putting their kernel patches together instead of separate. If you wanted to pick and choose which ones you used and make something different, it would be *slightly* more difficult. But considerate the last release was broken out. You know what they were starting with. Take a diff of the new patchset against the old one, and you should have an idea of what they've changed or added.
Google isn't really making money off the price of the hardware.
And tons of people already took versions of Android that weren't ready for tablets and shipped a bunch of crappy tablets. I think Google is worried about the overall experience and perception of Android. But what Google did with the crappy tablets was disallow the use of Google Apps, including the Android Marketplace.
For a cheap tablet, they could still ship it, because some people literally just need a browser on their tablet. I don't think Motorolla, HTC, Samsung, etc. would ship a Honeycomb phone without the Android Marketplace.
I believe most of the Android stack itself has been released GPL previously. But as the copyright holder, they can release future versions under another license. The existing GPL tools they built upon, like the kernel, have to remain GPL.
The real issue is that they're making a poor decision. Supposedly Honeycomb has APIs for handling display on a phone as well as a tablet. Google bragged about this new column API. There may be specific aspects of the UI that need to be redesigned for a phone, but they don't need to keep it closed source.
Release the source and allow carriers to start working on customizations, but tell them they can't ship with the Google Apps (no mail, no calendar, no Android Market). That will prevent any meaningful phone release until it is ready, while still keeping the code in the open.
The developer tools might be decent but the finished product of what they shipped now is still 5 steps behind what everyone else is offering.
I'm not a massive Microsoft hater. I'm just being honest. A decent API for developing apps, and a decent interface (Metro) don't overcome the massive shortcomings, not to mention it is also easy to develop iPhone and Android apps currently.
Windows Mobile is a massive sinking ship.
The network gets a 0.3 rating in its best time slot. Less than 1% of the population is watching it.
That is a far cry from a majority/40% you claim.
Vocal minorities can easily seem like the majority because they extreme and vocal. That doesn't actually make them a majority.
It depends on your definition of bashing.
Is it offensive to gays? Certainly. But it suggests that you "cure" gays through peace, love and understanding. I'd agree it is wrong in that I don't think homosexuality is a simple choice, a flip you easily switch. But in comparison to those whose suggest you need to hunt down and beat, prosecute and kill gays, it is considerably more lenient. The app isn't advocating the hatred and persecution of gays.
I think the app is sad, pathetic and offensive. But I wouldn't necessarily suggest it advocates "bashing".
You're mixing it up. Only the Hasidic Jews care about mixed textiles or menstruating women, as those were Jewish laws invented for the Jews.
The Catholic Church determined you need to focus on rote prayer to outside figures (intercessory prayer). The rosary may have been borrowed from outside culture. Catholicism claims to have invented in the 15th century, despite the number 108 having meaning in other religions for thousands of years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/108_(number)#Religion_and_the_arts
I don't know of any group that eats Christ's bones in particular. The eucharist, or Communion bread (seen differently in different circles) is either the supposed literal, or metaphorical body of Christ. I haven't ever heard it called the bones specifically though.
There are 2.1 billion "Christians" on the planet.
Some are Mormons who believe that if they are married in a Mormon temple, they can enter the third level of heaven and become God themselves, creating planets of billions of worshipers.
Some are Catholics, and believe in intercessory prayer, where you can't pray directly to God, even though that contradicts the entire Bible. You are dependent wholly on the Church still. You get forgiveness through the Church (not God) and must confess sins to a priest.
Some are Christian Scientists who believe 95% of the Bible is a lie, and that we don't really exist. Sin is going to a hospital, because it is believing the lie that physical reality is real.
Some are the Westboro Baptist Church, who ignore 99% of the Bible, and focus largely on 1 verse which is recorded only for historical purposes, which was a law the Jews made for themselves (as opposed to a commandment from God). But frankly, they believe it is their duty to celebrate the death of innocent people because God wants everyone to die for tolerating homosexuality. Every American in particular really needs to die, except for Westboro Baptist Church.
Some, like Trinity Broadcasting believe in bilking innocent people out money. Tons of televangelists seem to believe that you can tell people that you will die unless people give you millions, because God commanded it. And those millions better go into your pocket directly.
And some Christians believe in peace, forgiveness, tolerance, decency, trying to follow Christ's example, and non-judgementalism.
Lumping all 2.1 billion Christians on the earth in one bucket isn't easy.
Discovery works both ways. GeoHot also has a right to find out what information Sony has, and how Sony plans to attack him legally.
Believe it or not, this is fairly normal for our legal system.
There are two things here.
1 - Sony wants the case fought in California where their offices are, because it is cheaper and more convenient for them there. It is also more expensive for GeoHot in California, and it less likely he can afford to go to trial. By running him out of legal defense funds and keeping the case in California, they might force him to settle. Unless there is a smoking gun, such as the majority of the donations coming from California, this really shouldn't keep the case there.
2 - Secondly, Sony wants to sue others, not just GeoHot. They're trying to get info via discovery to do precisely that.