Very shabby.
Blacklists suck as a defence.
Look at how many different versions of Windows Trojans like Zeus and Conficker there are. Blacklisting one only means that a malware author has to make minor revisions to get around it. A malware author with half a brain would have prepared several in advance.
Blacklist all you like. It wont help against an unpatched vulnerability or an 0day.
The problem with Apple security is that Apple have trained their users to believe they are automagically protected.
I dunno about Australia. But in the US, people are generally solicited by sales reps of the carriers - Verizon, AT&T, Sprint or T-Mobile - to sign up for 2 year service agreements, and then get discounted phones as a part of the deal. That's what results in getting a locked phone. If one wishes, one could buy an unlocked phone - at the proces that I mentioned.
Carriers in Oz do that too. But carriers must unlock the devices they sell at the users behest (this is enshrined in our fair trading laws) but this does not relieve the customer of the burden of paying for the device if they purchased it as part of a plan (this is enshrined in our contract law).
Where Australia benefits is that there are a lot of third party providers who sell phones direct to the public as well as our import laws which allow us to ship in gadgets under A$900 tax free. For people like me who don't spend hundreds of dollars on calls per month and want a good smart phone, it makes sense to drop $350 on a phone and $30 p/m on a pre-paid plan rather than sign up to a carrier's $70 a month plan for the same phone. Because of this, carriers here don't benefit from pissing customers off.
The US is screwed in the fact that every telco uses it's own frequency (and different technologies as well) to prevent customers from swapping between carriers. If the US govt forced the telcos to support 1 common freq, consumers will have a lot more power to change (but I'm sure this idea is communism or something).
Would you pay (guesstimates) $1200 for an xbox or $700 for a cell phone.. I am as against this locking crap as much as the next guy but you have to realize the hardware, software, support and infrastructure cost a few more dollars than the free phone or the $199-$399 you pay for xbox etc..
I understand the $1200 for an Xbox as the Xbox is sold as a loss leader (costs more to make than it's sold for) but you do know that mobile phones outside the US are sold for well under US$700?
If you didn't, you know now.
Your Nexus 4's start from A$350, only the latest note 2 LTE is even approaching $700, that I can get for A$670 including tax (which is 10% in Oz). Wait a few months and they'll drop in price, the HTC One X is under A$500.
Americans are definitely getting shafted by your telco's. I paid $350 for my GNEX and pay $29 p/m on a pre-paid (pay as you go) plan on Telstra with 400 MB data as standard and I can use that $29 credit to purchase an additional 1 GB... and Telstra is Australia's most expensive Telco.
But a cleaner way to do that - and get unlocked phones would be to pay the full price of the phone, whatever it is - $500, $800, $1000, whatever it is, and then get an unlocked phone which one can use with any carrier whatsoever. The way it is done in other countries.
Problem here - since the average American can't afford those sort of prices
A Nexus 4 starts at A$350, this includes the Australia tax where manufacturers add extra costs for customers in Australia.
If you have trouble affording this, you should really reconsider your need to have a phone at all. Even borrowing at 20% interest is $35 a month for a year.
Personally I haven't bought a locked phone since 2003. I haven't paid over $600 for any phone I've ever owned. These days I buy a new phone every 12 months, I just don't buy the latest phone. If I wait 3-4 months I can get a reasonably new handset as it drops in price, I paid $350 for my GNEX. Today, there is only one phone that is consistently over $500 and never drops in price... And we already know the people who buy Iphones are idiots.
If nVidia was this small minded, they deserve whatever they get.
Small minded?
Nvidia didn't want to continue because it was a losing proposition for them. They'd have to sell each unit for a loss for years, does it make business sense to produce 100 million units if you only make a profit on the last 20 million?
Quite the contrary, Nvidia have seen the writing on the wall for the next playstation and are concentrating on other things... Sony is asking them to make the chips for an unacceptable margin, Sony refused to negotiate so Nvidia walked away. Nvidia have plenty of other buyers, even if they sell fewer units, Nvidia will make more money because they aren't selling at a loss.
Jelly Bean was released in November, making it 4 months old, 5 months by the time the SIV is generally available. Jelly Bean will be obsoleted by Key Lime Pie at Google's I/O developer conference in May so you get a whole month to enjoy being on the current version of Android, that might be some kind of record.
That was 4.2, released in November, 4.2.2 was released on 11 February 2013. So just over 1 month old.
After which you get to wait another 4-5 months for Samsung to get the OS up and approved by US carriers.
If you dont live in the US (or do live in the US and buy directly from Samsung) this isn't a problem.
It's not an Android issue, it's an issue with your incompetent telco's.
They also review games that dont get a mention in mainstream press. OK a lot of them are "Euro Train Simulator 5" but you get a lot of columns on indie games and games that aren't the latest Call of Honour: Modern Crapfield.
The reason this works is because the app knows exactly where the vibration unit is and where it behaves.
If you had a stand for an Android phone the app would have to be calibrated for the stand, and for the exact model of phone you have.
If you've ever used Android, you'd know that the software handles panoramic photos, you simply move the phone and it automatically takes pictures when it reaches the right area. All a stand has to do is keep the phone level.
If you have to run a really old OS on a new system, you often find that while there's no drivers, the default ones work fine. The "standard VGA" driver works ok for display and so on.
There's also the minor issue of 2000 being unsupported (meaning unpatched) and almost 14 years old.
Yep, default drivers work fine on the VM, no VMtools though but W2K is small enough I can back up the entire VM.
I wish I could get rid of ancient W2K boxes but unfortunately they haven't found a replacement program yet.
Using the home button does not end the app, it's still running in the background using memory. I think OP might have meant "exit" to mean an easy way to exit the app that also 'force stops' it.
Hi,
That's what the back button does.
Judging from the OP's woefully inaccurate and froth laden post I doubt he wants a solution, or even has used Android.
* Apps need a standard user interface way to exit. Really.
Android has one, it's called the back button.
Pressing the home button pauses the application, pressing back tells Android to close it.
Applications that have a back or exit button only demonstrate the laziness of the developer who just ported over the UI from IOS wholesale and didn't care that Android doesn't have a deficiency in closing applications.
* Locking the Nexus homescreen to portrait is idiotic. Really.
How? I actually like it this way, it prevents the home screen from turning itself around when I'm holding it at funny angles.
If you want to do it a different way, try one of the myriad of launchers available for Android or maybe even a custom ROM, they're dead easy to install on a Nexus. This is the beuaty of Android.
* MTP looks great on paper,
MTP works, It works a hell of a lot better than being forced to use some flaky bit of software that thinks it knows how to manage your stuff better than you. They had to pull the plug on MSC because you cant have two devices (the phone and the USB connected device) using the same volume.
* Maps crashes all the time. Surely you know that. Fix it.
I've got a Nexus S and Nexus 4, no maps instability on it what so ever.
Either this is a problem with your setup or you've made it up.
* Pretending that Android is not Linux is intellectually dishonest.
Making this statement is intellectually dishonest.
Android uses the Linux Kernel in the same way that Debian uses the Linux kernel. Android 4.0 and up use Linux 3.x. You know that Linux itself, is the kernel. Maybe you meant it's not GNU\Linux, but this is not what you said.
* Support for unlocking and root access is still half hearted.
"oem fastboot unlock" works fine on my Nexus' but it's much simpler to use something like Wugs Nexus toolkit.
* Android is not a community project. Fix that.
Yes it is a community project, if you disagree with how it's being run, fork it and do your own damn OS.
When I am asked whether somebody should be moved from their current position, where I know they are doing a very good job to something else, which may seem to be more prestigious, I generally advise to increase their pay and keep them in their current job.
Erm, he wasn't removed. He stepping down.
Bit of a difference there. He could just want a different job.
In effect they are. Try running Windows 2000 on modern hardware (and XP isn't far off).
Erm, no they aren't.
Lack of driver support is an issue yes, but they are not actively blocking you from developing your own driver. They wont make it easy for you but they aren't blocking you.
Most of my XP/2000 applications have moved into Virtual Machines anyway and 2000 seems to work fine of VMware virtual hardware version 7. I wish the users who still require a Win 2K application worked half as well.
Actually, I like this little gem of a logical fallacy in atheists.
The problem with your logic is that the scientific method doesn't stop being the scientific method just because it hadn't been written down.
Descartes may have laid down the term "scientific method" but realistically it was just naming something scientists have been doing since the dawn of time. Going all the way back to Plato (deductive reasoning) and Aristotle (Empiricism), the ideas of experimentation and quantification were first documented to be used by Alhazen in his works (book of optics) in the 11th century (book of optics was written in 1021).
Descartes was improving and documenting methods that had been known for centuries, the importance of this cannot be understated but it's not like Descartes woke up one day and said "Huzzah, we have the scientific method". Descartes was not the last person to improve it either. This is what makes science great.
If we lost all trace of the scientific method the it would be rediscovered and be exactly the same (maybe it would have a different name). I cant say the same about religion which has reincarnated in so many different forms throughout history.
Please explain how this is any less of a full game than Assasin's Creed 2? Halo 2? Call of Duty Anything?
For those of us who've been gaming since before the original starcraft (first started gaming on a C64), this is what we expect in an expansion pack. Same engine with new levels, units and cinematics. Back in the 90's this was considered the norm for an expansion pack. Not like today where we get charged $5 for a hat and $15 for a single map.
BTW, I dont consider COD, Halo, et al. to be full games and refuse to buy them.
About the only thing that actually had to be done special is the voice work and any cinematics for the campaign.
Spoken by someone who's never had to do voice overs.
You have no idea how expensive and time consuming voice works and pre-rendered cinematic's are.
Also if you think the engine in HOTS is exactly the same as the engine that was released in WOL, you need your head examined. There's been continual patching. I've only played the first 5 levels of HOTS but you can spot a lot of work put into level design, they haven't simply slapped together some new maps with voiceovers. This isn't COD and EA for fucks sake, they actually put some work into it.
Frankly $40 for an expansion pack (yes, it's an expansion pack, like what we used to have in the Good Old Days(TM) before DLC) that has almost as much content as the original is a godsend when they charge $5 for a hat and $15 for a single map DLC.
Have you played the Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty campaign? It is a full game all by itself. Starcraft 2: Wings of Libery + Starcraft 2: Heart of Swarm + Starcraft 2: Legacy of the Void, = 3 Games. Most triple-A companies would charge you $60 per game which comes out to $180 for the series. Assuming the final game is also $40, Blizzard is charging you $140. They are $40 cheaper than most triple-A companies.
$60, Luxury.
In Australia they charge you A$90 (US$91). Starcraft 2 was A$44 (so $40 + 10% GST).
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Very shabby. Blacklists suck as a defence. Look at how many different versions of Windows Trojans like Zeus and Conficker there are. Blacklisting one only means that a malware author has to make minor revisions to get around it. A malware author with half a brain would have prepared several in advance. Blacklist all you like. It wont help against an unpatched vulnerability or an 0day. The problem with Apple security is that Apple have trained their users to believe they are automagically protected.
I dunno about Australia. But in the US, people are generally solicited by sales reps of the carriers - Verizon, AT&T, Sprint or T-Mobile - to sign up for 2 year service agreements, and then get discounted phones as a part of the deal. That's what results in getting a locked phone. If one wishes, one could buy an unlocked phone - at the proces that I mentioned.
Carriers in Oz do that too. But carriers must unlock the devices they sell at the users behest (this is enshrined in our fair trading laws) but this does not relieve the customer of the burden of paying for the device if they purchased it as part of a plan (this is enshrined in our contract law).
Where Australia benefits is that there are a lot of third party providers who sell phones direct to the public as well as our import laws which allow us to ship in gadgets under A$900 tax free. For people like me who don't spend hundreds of dollars on calls per month and want a good smart phone, it makes sense to drop $350 on a phone and $30 p/m on a pre-paid plan rather than sign up to a carrier's $70 a month plan for the same phone. Because of this, carriers here don't benefit from pissing customers off.
The US is screwed in the fact that every telco uses it's own frequency (and different technologies as well) to prevent customers from swapping between carriers. If the US govt forced the telcos to support 1 common freq, consumers will have a lot more power to change (but I'm sure this idea is communism or something).
Would you pay (guesstimates) $1200 for an xbox or $700 for a cell phone.. I am as against this locking crap as much as the next guy but you have to realize the hardware, software, support and infrastructure cost a few more dollars than the free phone or the $199-$399 you pay for xbox etc..
I understand the $1200 for an Xbox as the Xbox is sold as a loss leader (costs more to make than it's sold for) but you do know that mobile phones outside the US are sold for well under US$700?
If you didn't, you know now.
Your Nexus 4's start from A$350, only the latest note 2 LTE is even approaching $700, that I can get for A$670 including tax (which is 10% in Oz). Wait a few months and they'll drop in price, the HTC One X is under A$500.
Americans are definitely getting shafted by your telco's. I paid $350 for my GNEX and pay $29 p/m on a pre-paid (pay as you go) plan on Telstra with 400 MB data as standard and I can use that $29 credit to purchase an additional 1 GB... and Telstra is Australia's most expensive Telco.
But a cleaner way to do that - and get unlocked phones would be to pay the full price of the phone, whatever it is - $500, $800, $1000, whatever it is, and then get an unlocked phone which one can use with any carrier whatsoever. The way it is done in other countries.
Problem here - since the average American can't afford those sort of prices
A Nexus 4 starts at A$350, this includes the Australia tax where manufacturers add extra costs for customers in Australia.
If you have trouble affording this, you should really reconsider your need to have a phone at all. Even borrowing at 20% interest is $35 a month for a year.
Personally I haven't bought a locked phone since 2003. I haven't paid over $600 for any phone I've ever owned. These days I buy a new phone every 12 months, I just don't buy the latest phone. If I wait 3-4 months I can get a reasonably new handset as it drops in price, I paid $350 for my GNEX. Today, there is only one phone that is consistently over $500 and never drops in price... And we already know the people who buy Iphones are idiots.
If nVidia was this small minded, they deserve whatever they get.
Small minded?
Nvidia didn't want to continue because it was a losing proposition for them. They'd have to sell each unit for a loss for years, does it make business sense to produce 100 million units if you only make a profit on the last 20 million?
Quite the contrary, Nvidia have seen the writing on the wall for the next playstation and are concentrating on other things... Sony is asking them to make the chips for an unacceptable margin, Sony refused to negotiate so Nvidia walked away. Nvidia have plenty of other buyers, even if they sell fewer units, Nvidia will make more money because they aren't selling at a loss.
Jelly Bean was released in November, making it 4 months old, 5 months by the time the SIV is generally available. Jelly Bean will be obsoleted by Key Lime Pie at Google's I/O developer conference in May so you get a whole month to enjoy being on the current version of Android, that might be some kind of record.
That was 4.2, released in November, 4.2.2 was released on 11 February 2013. So just over 1 month old.
After which you get to wait another 4-5 months for Samsung to get the OS up and approved by US carriers.
If you dont live in the US (or do live in the US and buy directly from Samsung) this isn't a problem.
It's not an Android issue, it's an issue with your incompetent telco's.
Also, you've got the option of community ROMs.
Are you serious? A chief of marketing named Schiller?
No, he's quite serious and mr Schiller's entire job is to make false and inflammatory statements about Android.
+1 for RPS.
They also review games that dont get a mention in mainstream press. OK a lot of them are "Euro Train Simulator 5" but you get a lot of columns on indie games and games that aren't the latest Call of Honour: Modern Crapfield.
The reason this works is because the app knows exactly where the vibration unit is and where it behaves.
If you had a stand for an Android phone the app would have to be calibrated for the stand, and for the exact model of phone you have.
If you've ever used Android, you'd know that the software handles panoramic photos, you simply move the phone and it automatically takes pictures when it reaches the right area. All a stand has to do is keep the phone level.
So you, as per usual are full of it.
If you have to run a really old OS on a new system, you often find that while there's no drivers, the default ones work fine. The "standard VGA" driver works ok for display and so on.
There's also the minor issue of 2000 being unsupported (meaning unpatched) and almost 14 years old.
Yep, default drivers work fine on the VM, no VMtools though but W2K is small enough I can back up the entire VM.
I wish I could get rid of ancient W2K boxes but unfortunately they haven't found a replacement program yet.
Are Google burying the news of Andy Rubin's departure?
Rubin isn't leaving Google, he's moving to another project.
Using the home button does not end the app, it's still running in the background using memory. I think OP might have meant "exit" to mean an easy way to exit the app that also 'force stops' it.
Hi,
That's what the back button does.
Judging from the OP's woefully inaccurate and froth laden post I doubt he wants a solution, or even has used Android.
Android has one, it's called the back button.
Pressing the home button pauses the application, pressing back tells Android to close it.
Applications that have a back or exit button only demonstrate the laziness of the developer who just ported over the UI from IOS wholesale and didn't care that Android doesn't have a deficiency in closing applications.
How? I actually like it this way, it prevents the home screen from turning itself around when I'm holding it at funny angles.
If you want to do it a different way, try one of the myriad of launchers available for Android or maybe even a custom ROM, they're dead easy to install on a Nexus. This is the beuaty of Android.
MTP works, It works a hell of a lot better than being forced to use some flaky bit of software that thinks it knows how to manage your stuff better than you. They had to pull the plug on MSC because you cant have two devices (the phone and the USB connected device) using the same volume.
I've got a Nexus S and Nexus 4, no maps instability on it what so ever. Either this is a problem with your setup or you've made it up.
Making this statement is intellectually dishonest.
Android uses the Linux Kernel in the same way that Debian uses the Linux kernel. Android 4.0 and up use Linux 3.x. You know that Linux itself, is the kernel. Maybe you meant it's not GNU\Linux, but this is not what you said.
"oem fastboot unlock" works fine on my Nexus' but it's much simpler to use something like Wugs Nexus toolkit.
Yes it is a community project, if you disagree with how it's being run, fork it and do your own damn OS.
When I am asked whether somebody should be moved from their current position, where I know they are doing a very good job to something else, which may seem to be more prestigious, I generally advise to increase their pay and keep them in their current job.
Erm, he wasn't removed. He stepping down. Bit of a difference there. He could just want a different job.
Are these war-surplus dolphins addicted to heroin?
They've already been caught and turned into John West Tuna.
In effect they are. Try running Windows 2000 on modern hardware (and XP isn't far off).
Erm, no they aren't.
Lack of driver support is an issue yes, but they are not actively blocking you from developing your own driver. They wont make it easy for you but they aren't blocking you. Most of my XP/2000 applications have moved into Virtual Machines anyway and 2000 seems to work fine of VMware virtual hardware version 7. I wish the users who still require a Win 2K application worked half as well.
For the geek reference on the last two refer to the movie "The Core.
Please dont.
Actually, I like this little gem of a logical fallacy in atheists.
The problem with your logic is that the scientific method doesn't stop being the scientific method just because it hadn't been written down.
Descartes may have laid down the term "scientific method" but realistically it was just naming something scientists have been doing since the dawn of time. Going all the way back to Plato (deductive reasoning) and Aristotle (Empiricism), the ideas of experimentation and quantification were first documented to be used by Alhazen in his works (book of optics) in the 11th century (book of optics was written in 1021).
Descartes was improving and documenting methods that had been known for centuries, the importance of this cannot be understated but it's not like Descartes woke up one day and said "Huzzah, we have the scientific method". Descartes was not the last person to improve it either. This is what makes science great.
If we lost all trace of the scientific method the it would be rediscovered and be exactly the same (maybe it would have a different name). I cant say the same about religion which has reincarnated in so many different forms throughout history.
I got SC2 WoL release day for approx $70AUD by walking into a brick and mortar store in Melbourne, no preorder. $90? You got ripped off.
Where did I say I paid that for SC2. I paid $68 for that at JB HiFi.
Nope, $90 is the average price of a new game, or more accurately $89, which I just read as $90 these days.
I was pointing out that Blizzard is bucking the trend of expensive games AND price discrimination in Australia.
BTW, I usually buy my games from the US, UK or Hong Kong for around A$40 for a PC game. SC is one of the few games I dont want to wait for.
Please explain how this is any less of a full game than Assasin's Creed 2? Halo 2? Call of Duty Anything?
For those of us who've been gaming since before the original starcraft (first started gaming on a C64), this is what we expect in an expansion pack. Same engine with new levels, units and cinematics. Back in the 90's this was considered the norm for an expansion pack. Not like today where we get charged $5 for a hat and $15 for a single map.
BTW, I dont consider COD, Halo, et al. to be full games and refuse to buy them.
Spoken by someone who's never had to do voice overs.
You have no idea how expensive and time consuming voice works and pre-rendered cinematic's are.
Also if you think the engine in HOTS is exactly the same as the engine that was released in WOL, you need your head examined. There's been continual patching. I've only played the first 5 levels of HOTS but you can spot a lot of work put into level design, they haven't simply slapped together some new maps with voiceovers. This isn't COD and EA for fucks sake, they actually put some work into it.
Frankly $40 for an expansion pack (yes, it's an expansion pack, like what we used to have in the Good Old Days(TM) before DLC) that has almost as much content as the original is a godsend when they charge $5 for a hat and $15 for a single map DLC.
Have you played the Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty campaign? It is a full game all by itself. Starcraft 2: Wings of Libery + Starcraft 2: Heart of Swarm + Starcraft 2: Legacy of the Void, = 3 Games. Most triple-A companies would charge you $60 per game which comes out to $180 for the series. Assuming the final game is also $40, Blizzard is charging you $140. They are $40 cheaper than most triple-A companies.
$60, Luxury.
In Australia they charge you A$90 (US$91). Starcraft 2 was A$44 (so $40 + 10% GST).
A giant myth about Germany, one of many really. They do have speed cameras, they also take random shots of drivers to look for other infractions. http://www.toytowngermany.com/lofi/index.php/t33224.html
Actually no,
Germans obey the law because they're German. Germans are methodical and very strict.
They also have far better driver training programs and dont believe stupid things like "10 over is perfectly safe".
Start braking a bit earlier.
You mean when the light is still green?
Yes, all defensive drivers will prepare to stop when approaching a set of traffic lights. This means I'll lift my foot off of the accelerator.
Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
Why you never want to be stuck with a MILF in the Philipines.