"If you are not a developer, open source adds nothing for an end user so it is a straw man excuse to get a phone. "
If you really think this then you have no clue what the real benefits of an open platform are.
All one has to do is look at all the wickedly useful Android applications that in iPhone land simply can not be written *at all*, or have to be relegated to rogue app stores because Apple will not "approve" them, for stupid reasons like "we don't allow applications that make desktops". You can't put on a better home screen, you can't put on a better dialer, you are stuck with all the horrible Apple crap forever.
I am sick and tired of people making a big deal about scalping.
Isn't scalping basically the epitome of free market capitalism?
If I buy 10 of the new Xbox 360 from the local Walmart where there are lots, and sell them on eBay for a profit, is that "scalping" 360s ?
When Exxon drills oil in the middle east and sells it to Europe for a profit where there is none, is that "scalping" oil?
"Scalping" is just taking a gamble, buying something that you think will be in demand (tickets), and re-selling for a (hopefully) profit. There is plenty of potential to lose money for scalpers buying tickets to things and them going unsold, this happens all the time.
What is wrong with this? If you wanted your damn tickets, you should have waited in line like everyone else.
When you install apps from the market or elsewhere, Android prompts you in advance letting you know of all of the permissions this app requires.
There is with this at all. It is no different from random app X requiring my root password and prompting for it. If I trust the app and give it up, this is not a security issue.
This is how you allow apps to have access to these low level permissions, without disallowing them totally, liek Apple in it's walled garden.
It is why there are so many more in-depth Android apps than there are iPhone ones. You can replace the dialer, replace the address book, etc.
This company is fear-mongering about nothing to such a degreee that I wonder if they are on Apple's payroll.
Garland's film 'Sunshine,' directed by Danny Boyle, was one of the stand-out science fiction films of the last decade,
Stand out in what way?
It was a commercial flop, it was boring, it had a ridiculous plot, it had horrible acting, it had little to no character development at all. It was an all-around horrible movie from start to end as far as I'm concerned, and most of the movie-going public seems to agree with me.
You are making it sound like Linux/UNIX encourages decentralization. Quite the opposite. Even the earliest UNIX OSed has support for NFS and it was in wide use.
In fact the whole UNIX OS is designed around the idea of having large numbers of people share one centralized environment, via terminal sessions.
Even XWindows is architected this way, implicit remote support built in.
Only in the past decade as Linux migrated to be a more single-desktop envinroment a-la windows. This is far from "encouraging" decentralization.
Young children are thirsty for knnowledge. Anyone who has had any exposure to a 6-8 year old in the "why daddy" stage knows this. The problem is this is not fostered in many kids. If, at this stage, children are taught how to answer their own questions, using the tools available to them, then it will foster a lifetime of learning.
This is what my parents did with me, although in my day it was "why don't you go get the encyclopedia and we will look it up together?". Nowadays it should be "why don't we go look at the computer together". Guided by a parent, from a YOUNG AGE, this helps in several ways
- It teaches kids that, if they have questions, the materials are available to help them. They don't have to sit in ignorance just because they don't know the answer.
- It teaches kids how to find information when they need it
- It teaches kids how to think critically about that information, and discard the good from the bad.
Android is 100% open source. Don't like the Market? Replace it. Don't like the keyboard? Replace it. Don't like Google integrations? Remove them.
If you think all of this is somehow difficult or discouraged, I think you should take a closer look at the forums at xda-developers.com, or even at developer.android.com, where you can check out the entire OS source code with git and re-build it from scratch and re-flash your phone, if you want.
All this talk about Jailbreaking Android phones is for people who want root access but *DO NOT* want to re-flash their phone. There is no such problem for people that are comfortable replacing the software. And in fact this is what you have to do with most open source projects running on specialized hardware.
If you had even read the first 3 paras of the article, you would know that YES it can answer questions posed like that. The whole point of WATSON is that it has very advanced natural language processing, enough that it can even understand the puns and strange grammar of jeopardy questions.
http://www.pleaserobme.com/ had it dead on. Before they took it down, they basically had a real-time feed with a linked Google Map showing houses that could likely be robbed *right now*, because the author (who "owns" that house on FourSquare", tagged themself as not being home.
I have yet to see any real use for FourSquare at all, other than this inane social networking game. If you want to share your location with trusted friends, use Google Latitude. Why on earth do you think everyone on the planet cares that you visit the corner Starbucks every day? The only people who would care about that are criminals and stalkers (yes ladies, FourSquare is basically a stalkers paradise).
Saying twitter is "useless / pointless / I hate it" because you don't know how to manage your follow list is like saying a hammer is useless because when I use it I hit my thumb.
It's not the tool, it's the methodology. Same with "Web 2.0", as per your above example.
How can people's memories be so short? Video calling was all the rage 3 years ago with Sprint Vision phones and many others with front-facing cameras. Guess what, it was a massive failure, for many reasons. For one, people talk on the phone while doing other things, they don't want to have to hold a phone in front of their face 9stupid reality TV speaker-phone calls aside). For two, no one wants to see you answer the phone in your boxers on Sunday morning.
I agree with you, and also find that most of the people who "hate" or "can't stand" twitter are all people who either have never used it in their life, or are not using it properly.
They also tend to be the same people who "hate" or "can't stand" *anything* when first released, then become reluctant adopters, then eventually embrace it.
They are basically the opposite group of early adopters, they are the technological equivalent of grumpy old "get off my lawn" men.
These same people who railed and whined and moaned about "Web 2.0" and how annoying AJAX and dynamic websites were back in '03, and now all have GMail as their primary email account.
They used to play the video for that on Much Music in Canada all the time, so I guess you could say it was basically main-stream up here.
Back on topic, I am unsure why everyone is so upset. He is continuing the show online, which may make it more popular than ever before, and have much more of an impact. Things go viral online now, not based on radio shows. Any good act he promotes has the potential to be twittered / facebooked / dugg ad-infinitum within minutes.
The guy who discovered and reported the leak is a Canadian. The NHSTA is a US Government agency, it is not a Canadian agency.
So not only is the government leaking sensitive information, it took a foreigner to discover and disclose it. Embarrassment all around today.
Considering spelling an intellectual pursuit is akin to considering playing wii Tiger Woods major physical activity.
Sure it is better than nothing, but there are a heck of a lot better things you could be doing with your time. I will not care in the slightest if my kids can't spell. In fact, I am a horrible speller - I admit it, but who cares? As I type this all my mistakes are auto-corrected anyway. I fail to see how not being able to spell will have any effect in modern society.
Having well rounded math and grammar skills is much more important than having spelling skills.
Slashdot Mirror
"If you are not a developer, open source adds nothing for an end user so it is a straw man excuse to get a phone. "
If you really think this then you have no clue what the real benefits of an open platform are.
All one has to do is look at all the wickedly useful Android applications that in iPhone land simply can not be written *at all*, or have to be relegated to rogue app stores because Apple will not "approve" them, for stupid reasons like "we don't allow applications that make desktops". You can't put on a better home screen, you can't put on a better dialer, you are stuck with all the horrible Apple crap forever.
I am sick and tired of people making a big deal about scalping.
Isn't scalping basically the epitome of free market capitalism?
If I buy 10 of the new Xbox 360 from the local Walmart where there are lots, and sell them on eBay for a profit, is that "scalping" 360s ?
When Exxon drills oil in the middle east and sells it to Europe for a profit where there is none, is that "scalping" oil?
"Scalping" is just taking a gamble, buying something that you think will be in demand (tickets), and re-selling for a (hopefully) profit. There is plenty of potential to lose money for scalpers buying tickets to things and them going unsold, this happens all the time.
What is wrong with this? If you wanted your damn tickets, you should have waited in line like everyone else.
Er, why do you think they make a copy to display thumbs? Your home PC does not have to do this.
You do not have to use the Market to install apps.
If Google removes an app you like from the market, or even does a remote-uninstall, you can just re-install it yourself, and it is then un-nukeable.
The market can only remote-uninstall apps installed via it.
When you install apps from the market or elsewhere, Android prompts you in advance letting you know of all of the permissions this app requires.
There is with this at all. It is no different from random app X requiring my root password and prompting for it. If I trust the app and give it up, this is not a security issue.
This is how you allow apps to have access to these low level permissions, without disallowing them totally, liek Apple in it's walled garden.
It is why there are so many more in-depth Android apps than there are iPhone ones. You can replace the dialer, replace the address book, etc.
This company is fear-mongering about nothing to such a degreee that I wonder if they are on Apple's payroll.
Garland's film 'Sunshine,' directed by Danny Boyle, was one of the stand-out science fiction films of the last decade,
Stand out in what way?
It was a commercial flop, it was boring, it had a ridiculous plot, it had horrible acting, it had little to no character development at all. It was an all-around horrible movie from start to end as far as I'm concerned, and most of the movie-going public seems to agree with me.
Any business has to weigh priorities. If you are spending your time fixing bug X, then that means either bug Y or feature Z is not being done.
Just because you know bug X exists does not mean it is more important than bug Y or feature Z, especially if no customers have reported it occurring.
Of course this all depends on the nature of the bug and what you mean by "crash".
You are making it sound like Linux/UNIX encourages decentralization. Quite the opposite. Even the earliest UNIX OSed has support for NFS and it was in wide use.
In fact the whole UNIX OS is designed around the idea of having large numbers of people share one centralized environment, via terminal sessions.
Even XWindows is architected this way, implicit remote support built in.
Only in the past decade as Linux migrated to be a more single-desktop envinroment a-la windows. This is far from "encouraging" decentralization.
Young children are thirsty for knnowledge. Anyone who has had any exposure to a 6-8 year old in the "why daddy" stage knows this. The problem is this is not fostered in many kids. If, at this stage, children are taught how to answer their own questions, using the tools available to them, then it will foster a lifetime of learning.
This is what my parents did with me, although in my day it was "why don't you go get the encyclopedia and we will look it up together?". Nowadays it should be "why don't we go look at the computer together". Guided by a parent, from a YOUNG AGE, this helps in several ways
- It teaches kids that, if they have questions, the materials are available to help them. They don't have to sit in ignorance just because they don't know the answer.
- It teaches kids how to find information when they need it
- It teaches kids how to think critically about that information, and discard the good from the bad.
When can I get a Chrome version?
Android is 100% open source. Don't like the Market? Replace it. Don't like the keyboard? Replace it. Don't like Google integrations? Remove them.
If you think all of this is somehow difficult or discouraged, I think you should take a closer look at the forums at xda-developers.com, or even at developer.android.com, where you can check out the entire OS source code with git and re-build it from scratch and re-flash your phone, if you want.
All this talk about Jailbreaking Android phones is for people who want root access but *DO NOT* want to re-flash their phone. There is no such problem for people that are comfortable replacing the software. And in fact this is what you have to do with most open source projects running on specialized hardware.
If you had even read the first 3 paras of the article, you would know that YES it can answer questions posed like that. The whole point of WATSON is that it has very advanced natural language processing, enough that it can even understand the puns and strange grammar of jeopardy questions.
http://www.pleaserobme.com/ had it dead on. Before they took it down, they basically had a real-time feed with a linked Google Map showing houses that could likely be robbed *right now*, because the author (who "owns" that house on FourSquare", tagged themself as not being home.
I have yet to see any real use for FourSquare at all, other than this inane social networking game. If you want to share your location with trusted friends, use Google Latitude. Why on earth do you think everyone on the planet cares that you visit the corner Starbucks every day? The only people who would care about that are criminals and stalkers (yes ladies, FourSquare is basically a stalkers paradise).
You are totally missing my point.
Technology is a tool, not an end to itself.
Saying twitter is "useless / pointless / I hate it" because you don't know how to manage your follow list is like saying a hammer is useless because when I use it I hit my thumb.
It's not the tool, it's the methodology. Same with "Web 2.0", as per your above example.
How can people's memories be so short? Video calling was all the rage 3 years ago with Sprint Vision phones and many others with front-facing cameras. Guess what, it was a massive failure, for many reasons. For one, people talk on the phone while doing other things, they don't want to have to hold a phone in front of their face 9stupid reality TV speaker-phone calls aside). For two, no one wants to see you answer the phone in your boxers on Sunday morning.
I agree with you, and also find that most of the people who "hate" or "can't stand" twitter are all people who either have never used it in their life, or are not using it properly.
They also tend to be the same people who "hate" or "can't stand" *anything* when first released, then become reluctant adopters, then eventually embrace it.
They are basically the opposite group of early adopters, they are the technological equivalent of grumpy old "get off my lawn" men.
These same people who railed and whined and moaned about "Web 2.0" and how annoying AJAX and dynamic websites were back in '03, and now all have GMail as their primary email account.
Why do you have the Slashdot/Games section on if you don't care about games?
Anyone worth their salt knows the only place to go to get firmware updates for HTC phones is www.xda-developers.com.
Developers there always have the latest Windows Mobile or Android roms backported to all HTC phones within a week of them releasing.
They used to play the video for that on Much Music in Canada all the time, so I guess you could say it was basically main-stream up here. Back on topic, I am unsure why everyone is so upset. He is continuing the show online, which may make it more popular than ever before, and have much more of an impact. Things go viral online now, not based on radio shows. Any good act he promotes has the potential to be twittered / facebooked / dugg ad-infinitum within minutes.
Why would the DMV even have your SSN?
The guy who discovered and reported the leak is a Canadian. The NHSTA is a US Government agency, it is not a Canadian agency. So not only is the government leaking sensitive information, it took a foreigner to discover and disclose it. Embarrassment all around today.
Considering spelling an intellectual pursuit is akin to considering playing wii Tiger Woods major physical activity.
Sure it is better than nothing, but there are a heck of a lot better things you could be doing with your time. I will not care in the slightest if my kids can't spell. In fact, I am a horrible speller - I admit it, but who cares? As I type this all my mistakes are auto-corrected anyway. I fail to see how not being able to spell will have any effect in modern society.
Having well rounded math and grammar skills is much more important than having spelling skills.
Yes except then every existing windows application in the world would not run.
Pretty sure if this thing will run Windows, it is not going to be an ARM chip.