There is a thing called a "rendering engine." Safari, Chrome, OmniWeb, and others (presumably including The Atomic Browser) all use the same rendering engine
Then why do things display differently on Chrome and Safari?
Because they have different implementations and often different versions. Just saying that it's WebKit does not make it identical to other browsers, when they could be using differnt JS engines as well as other components and features.
Same basic engine != same browser.
Further more you seemed to miss the point with your inaccurate rant is that Atomic does not use any of it's own rendering components, it is using the Safari rendering engine 100%, it's not even a different implementation (as Apple will not permit a "duplication of functionality"). Saying that Atomic is a different browser is like saying a blue theme for Firefox is a different browser.
(presumably including The Atomic Browser) all use the same rendering engine,
This would be partially true if the Atomic Browser actually had it's own rendering engine. So say after me, Atomic is not a browser, it is a front end for another browser.
This is the same for Steel on Android, it's a front end for the default Chrome browser or any of the themes available for Dolphin browser.
Also WebOS has a better UI than Android and as good or arguably better than the iPhone.
Which is why the UI is not as important as you think./.er's really need to get over this point.
An average UI is just as good as a great UI as long as it gets the job done. This is the important bit, people will ignore UI to get whatever then need to get done, done. So superior functionality becomes more important. Why do you think Windows and RIM became so widely used, using XP/7 or Blackberry is a pig but its a pig that lets me do what I need to in the shortest possible time. Emphasise UI over functionality and you end up with a stillborn OS that no-one wants to use. Looks are unimportant, results matter.
Vanilla Android isn't cutting it, so everyone has to brew their own "secret sauce", lets look at how that's working out?
Which is exactly why the Motorola Milestone/Droid, being the biggest selling Android phone uses the vanilla interface. Or why the Nexus One, also uses the vanila interface. The HTC Dream and Magic also did. Oh snap.
Sense and Motoblur are for specific purposes, especially Motoblur. The vanilla interface is for general purposes and the X10 is so far behind other Android phones it's not funny (only Sony could release an Android 1.6 phone and call it high end).
Also lose the fanboyism. WebOS was stillborn with a bad SDK, no NDK and a really really bad framework for applications. Bad marketing didn't help but Android has been making leaps and bounds without the need for hype-ridden flashy marketing campaigns (read: it advanced based on the strength of the OS). WebOS was doomed to failure, although I'm certain all 300 people in the UK who bough one would disagree with me. Especially as it was released on CDMA hardware, you couldn't even export it.
Palm needs to die, its needed to die for a long time and HP can make that happen.
When was the last time Jobs was in reactive mode? That's not his normal style.
The Reality Distortion Field has stopped working and now everyone has realised that Apple really is quite backwards.
Apple's been eclipsed on almost all fronts. Their MacBook's are the equivalent of A$700 Dells yet cost more then A$1400 (for A$1400 at Dell I can get a Vostro 3300 with i5, Geforce 310, 7.2K RPM 500 GB disk, 4 GB RAM and a 2 year NBD warranty).
Compared to the Iphone I have the HTC Desire, Nexus One or Motorola Milestone (not beholden to App store, far more features, don't have to pay extra for tethering).
This has always been the case but Apple has had better marketing, up until now at least. The hype effect is wearing off and people are realising that Apples been eclipsed.
Adobe let's you switch your license from OSX to Windows very easily and very cheap (something like $20 processing fee).
On Adobe's Open Licensing program it's free (cross licensed). You of course have to pay for the media (A$150 a pop) but that's pocket change on top of the A$2,500 CS suite license. I did this when a graphic design arm started transitioning from Print to Web, 3 out of 4 Macs got replaced with PC's (1/2 the price for more powerful machines, if you're a sysadmin who doesn't know how to push Dell et al. you should turn in your sysadmin card and take up carpentry) The other Mac also got replaced with an Intel model.
and that's it. In other news Shantanu Narayen is given a giant bonus from Adobe as the company benefits from cutting development and support costs.
There, fixed that for you.
Only an idiot cannot install Windows on a Mac. the printing industry switched to Windows based PC's almost a decade ago because Apple couldn't be relied upon for production so Adobe is reacting to the needs of its customers by focusing on Windows. Graphic designers in corporate environments have little choice in the matter and this is where Adobe gets it's cash. Most of the designers I know would happily switch to Linux if CS ran on it, most hate being beholden to Apple.
As a Linux fan, as much as I'd like it I doubt we'll see CS on Linux.
And what's he going to do if someone gets a bug up their ass and turns gnash into a standalone player/app for the iphone? Will he still be using the "proprietary" card then? The way I see it, the only open part of the iPhone itself is the compiler...
Nope, that's when he plays the security card and writes a tirade about how open source is insecure and bad. Meanwhile fanboys praise the wisdom of master Steve and forget about this tirade on openness.
You should have learned by now that the truth is whatever Apple says it is today, even if it conflicts with what Apple said yesterday.
He doesn't ignore that argument at all. He makes it very clear that they are rejecting flash applications because they don't want it to become a primary way of developing applications. If it *did* become a primary way of developing applications, apple would add features to the iPhone, and no one would use them, because adobe hadn't yet got round to adding support to flash. They don't want that situation.
So, this is what many of us have been saying for a long time.
Apple will never permit flash because it wants to protect Apple's revenue stream by ensuring that all customers must go through Apple to get absolutely anything.
And people are still asking why Android will eventually win. Apple has HTML 5 but Android has HTML 5 and Flash, more content will get more users. The web isn't going to automagially change from Flash to an Apple friendly implementation of HTML 5, especially when Flash across disparate platforms is consistent whilst HTML5 across different browsers is not.
BTW, I'm not a flash fan but I have to deal with it and it does do what is says it does on the tin.
Anyone that gripes about wanting Flash on their phone/mobile device *HAS NEVER HAD* Flash on a mobile device. If they had, they wouldn't want it so bad.
This is the exact opposite of my experiences.
I've seen flash working on the HTC Hero and it's brilliant. The lower resolution displays are better suited to viewing flash videos as there is fewer artefacts (of course your still at the mercy of how the video was encoded in the first place). It may be a bit of a CPU hog but for the functionality it delivers it is well worth it. The version on the Hero was Flash 9, I cant wait to find out 10.1 works on the Milestone when it is released (I'm betting on late June).
I've got a Nokia N800, and the Flash experience is *terrible*. Let me tell you what great fun it is to wait for a page to render because some advertiser has a tiny little flash ad in the corner of a page.
I also give it 10 minutes after Flash is released to Android 2.1/2.2 phones before a flashblock style plugin/browser front end is released. I wouldn't be surprised if it was an inside job either. Google and Adobe know about all the issues. Android is not closed like the Iphone, problems like the one you describe are coded around very quickly.
I don't know why *you* can't run The Atomic Browser on your phone
It's not a browser, it's just a theme for Safari that ad's no extra rendering features.
It it well known here on/. that you cant browse/. properly on an Iphone. However on Android there doesn't seem to be any problems with it. It works better with Dolphin browser the the default browser, I can also get it working for Opera mobile and the Fennec alpha, I'm pretty sure Dolphin is a different implementation of Chrome but Fennec and Opera use different rendering engines.
Don't mistake a skin for a new browser, Apple still controls the back end and will break or degrade anything it doesn't want you using.
Don't you remember how fast the iPhone grew and how it changed the world of smartphones?
no.
All that I and most people (read: non fanboys) remember is an over hyped consumer phone that didn't have half the functionality of smartphones of the time. Since then smartphones have come a long way due to Android and Symbian displacing WinMo and RIM at the high end.
But don't let that get in the way of your revisionist history.
But to those who found my "comeback" hilarious, hey, I'm glad I made you laugh.
Hate to break it to you son, but no-one found your comeback funny at all. In fact the only other poster above +1 called you a retard and after reading your post I'm inclined to agree.
As for UAT not being done in the beta stage, it's not a absolute rule at all.
By "not an absolute rule" I assume you sometimes mean ignored by inexperienced and just plain stupid engineers, which is how bad products are bought to market. Acceptance testing is normally the last testing you do before giving the system to a client, as a sysadmin almost all my acceptance testing involves the client, most engineers I meet tell me the same and I've only met 1 senior dev who disagreed with me.
If you're doing UAT in the beta cycle you are doing something horribly, horribly wrong. Usability testing yes but as we've established UAT is not usability testing.
As for the AC's "pure bunk" qualifier, someone posted this link:
Not a fan of reading, OK, just stop pretending to be an expert. The post you refer to, was taking exception to a definition of Pre-alpha, which the AC does not explicitly question. This does not prove you right in any way, shape or form. Nowhere in that article is acceptance testing mentioned. Besides you back-pedalled and said:
First of all, I didn't mean to equate usability Testing with UAT
First rule when in a hole: stop digging.
Read the article on Acceptance Testing and tell me it belongs in beta when and I quote:
In software development, acceptance testing by the system provider is often distinguished from acceptance testing by the customer (the user or client) prior to accepting transfer of ownership. In such environments
So, you'd sell beta code as a finished product? Do you work from Microsoft by any chance?
Looks like it was "pure bunk" after all. And no, I don't thank people for correcting me. I'd rather be a "dick".
There, Fixed that for you. You could have just admitted that tiny bit of errata, perhaps even learned from it but instead you make another ignorant and wrong rant.
So how did the iPhone come to be the dominant smartphone
When did that happen.
RIM are still in the lead, as are Nokia in most of the world. 4% of sales does not make one dominant. Don't ever mistake marketing noise for actual dominance. Iphones are practically non-existent in Asia, which is the largest mobile phone market and considerably less popular in Europe (then the US) which has some of the most advanced mobile networks.
The answers you seek are in my post above you, you simply did not want to read them. The tortoise and the hare, Apple rushed ahead with an extremely hyped up marketing campaign and almost got to the end before they went to sleep while Android took the slow path developing a highly skilled user base. Now Android has eclipsed Apple, every Australian telco is fighting for exclusivity of new Android handsets yet they all get access to the Iphone. why I hear you ask, if they all have sooper dooper Iphones why fight for Android? Because even Telsrta who for two years rallied against Android in favour of Iphone has admitted they were wrong and is now pushing the HTC Desire because it is a better phone and they cant see the popularity of the Iphone lasting much longer, its entire reputation is based on "cool" and cool is a fickle mistress.
Besides this, Asia will decide who wins in the mobile phone maker and the rest of the world will follow Asia as they always have. Chip giant MTK (MeidaTek) have 90% of Asia's market and are pushing Android after positive responses in the Chinese market.
Also, even better than having to ask a geek for help with your phone is to have a phone that just works.
When that actually happens in real life, I'll let you know. I've had many Iphones come to me with problems like "x doesnt work", "I cant get internet" (some versions of the OS dont even let you enter your own APN) and "how do I do x" (x is a function the Iphone often lacks). I've had to knock them all back because of my experience in supporting Mac's I've vowed never to touch one of those horrid devices ever again. The "Just Works(TM)" dogma gets in the way when trying to find the cause of a problem (no error message is as useless as "an error has occurred").
Besides, if you bothered to read my post, more often I'm asked for advice on what to buy. Now to a rational person (as much as I criticise mundanes, most of them are capable of rational though when money is involved) they will seek the advice of a friend who is most experienced with such matters, hence as a geek I get asked about computers and communications, not relationships (for some reason, rebooting a relationship doesn't have the desired effect).
As a Capitalist, that really offends me. If businesses want to be treated laissez faire then they damn well better learn to make society not feel like they're a bunch of crooks who care so little about the common good that if regulators aren't going Big Brother on them every nanosecond they'll steal everything that isn't nailed down and cheat everyone who isn't paying 110% attention to every detail of their lives.
Here's the thing, you cant force businesses to act in an appropriate manner under a laissez faire system, they are permitted to do whatever they want which is why Libertarianism will never work. It relies on everyone thinking in the exact same way, which fails in reality.
Today, the Golman boss Lloyd Blankfein told the senate they have "no moral obligation" to investors when advising them to invest in ventures they themselves are betting against. Corporations are not good entities, this is what Libertarianism will always fail at seeing. Under laissez faire corporations have no imperative to act any different, it is as they say "anarchy for rich people".
So, the highly regulated telecommunications industries of Australia and Europe are in better shape and a lot more competitive then the poorly regulated US industry and this tells you regulation is a bad thing. I know I can go into any major Australian city and get coverage on any telco yet US telco's consider the line "fewest dropouts" to be a sign of a good network.
CLUEBAT: you are permitted to buy a competitor. What you cannot do is use a dominant market position to prevent new competitors from entering the market (seeing as there is not monopoly in the mobile phone market HP/Palm may do as they please).
No it wouldn't. Aircraft Carriers are warships and designed with compartmentalization to isolate damage and flooding. All things being equal, a single hit below the waterline would probably not be enough to sink a CVN.
As did the titanic.
Even with compartmentalisation you severely change the buoyancy of the vessel to make the carriers weight work against it. A large enough it would put enough stress on the keel of the ship, the last thing a ship needs is a massive redistribution of weight below the water line. This is under good sea conditions.
You left out the first part: finding the carrier. The most important part of naval warfare is finding your enemy before he finds you. This is easier said than done, even with modern technology such as satellites and radar.
Which was my point about being undetected. If you start actively scanning you'll light up light up like a Christmas tree. Gaining a passive lock is quite difficult under the best of conditions.
Says who? The British and French are both building a new class of fleet carriers. The Brits in particular have a lot of experience with VTOL aircraft and even fought a war with them
The British are building SVTOL carriers, similar to their current Invincible class, you are of course referring to the forthcoming Queen-Elizabeth class. These are a lot smaller then current Nimitz class fleet carriers (QE class - 65,000 tonnes, Nimitz - 100,000 tonnes). France and the US are the only ones actually building fleet carriers and the French one is significantly smaller then the Gerald R Ford class (75,000 tonnes vs 100,000 tonnes). Most nations are looking at deploying S/VTOL carriers, Australia already has three under way (Canberra Class).
As drone and VTOL tech increases it becomes more efficient to field smaller carriers with fewer crew, better defences and greater speed. Drones (UCAV's) will do for the carrier what the missile did for the battleship. In the end only the US fielded battleships (Iowa class) and they were only used as oversized missile cruisers (as in they did the exact same job as missile cruisers of the time). My prediction is the submarine carrier will make a comeback as a drone carrier as they don't need to be larger then existing US/Russian boomers. Plus with drones, recovery can become an optional extra.
Efficiency includes economy of scale. If you want the capability to operate 60-100 aircraft it's going to be cheaper to build a fleet carrier than to build several smaller carriers
Efficiency included economy of scale. If you want the capacity to operate 16 or 18 heavy guns it's going to be cheaper to built a battleship then several smaller cruisers.
We've heard this one before. Compared to the efficiency of an F35 equipped carrier, an FA18 equipped carrier is enormously expensive whilst providing no significant advantages. Once UCAV technology improves these will be even cheaper and provide the same impact.
Actually, no. People who use bandwidth are an ISP's worst customers.
Actually no, some ISP's are like that. Here in the socialist paradise of Australia (note the heavy sarcasm dear rednecks) we have already dealt with this. Regulation such as fixing wholesale leasing prices, setting minimum standards for service and punishments for false advertising have created a market where competition can enter easily and ISP's are not permitted to deceive the public. Also due to our communistic contract law, ISP's are not permitted to take away anything from my contract unless I agree and sign a new contract.
We have telco's that thrive off the uninformed users (Hellstra and OptArse) but we also have good ISP's like iinet and Internode. Now because we have truth in advertising laws ISP's are not permitted to advertise "unlimited" plans that cut you off after X number of GB so they have to advertise the service they actually offer (download quota). iinet, just yesterday expanded my quota from 30+30 GB* to 50+50 GB as their wholesale price of bandwidth dropped (bandwidth out of Australia is very expensive due to our isolation). I pay A$49.95 a month for this, iinet makes more money from it's heavy downloaders as the light downloaders go onto the A$20 plan where as if you want 100+100 GB you need to pay A$130. The more you DL, the more you are worth to your ISP. For the email crowd, DSL ISP's are competing with wireless (3G mobile) ISP's who sell 1 GB a month for A$20.
* 30+30 refers to 30 GB metered during the on peak (8 AM to 2 AM for iinet) and 30 GB metered during the off peak time (2 AM to 8 AM for iinet). After exceeding your quota your connection is shaped to 128 Kbs until your next billing period.
Msft owns the US DoJ. Remember the US DoJ getting all over msft about 15 years ago?
Forget the US DoJ, they are a paper tiger.
Now the EU on the other hand, have actually enforced rulings on MS. Not only this HTC is a Taiwanese corporation, Taiwan (republic of/province of China) has some really special rules when it comes to MS software and software in general. Taiwan is the only place where it's legal to reverse engineer MS software, also being a province of china (depends who you believe) the government may also have access to the source code.
MS has the chance to be burned by this badly. But as many other posters have pointed out HTC rules WinMo, without HTC MS is in a really wont be able to push WinMo 7.
In over a year of having Android phones I've never once needed to hard reset Android. It's an incredibly stable OS, even with the crappiest crashing apps on an aftermarket ROMs I've never made it lock up.
Same here, I ran CyanogenMod on my HTC Dream and whilst it did force close occasionally it always managed to restart by itself. I haven't had any such issues using the default HTC ROM or the standard ROM on my Milestone.
Android is designed so that a crappy application cant bring down the entire system, not even crashing one of the core processes can bring down other applications, android.process.acore cannot bring down com.android.phone if it crashes.
This is just FUD bases on some early reports prior to Cupcake (1.5). Very few phones run an earlier version of Android.
Slashdot Mirror
Then why do things display differently on Chrome and Safari?
Because they have different implementations and often different versions. Just saying that it's WebKit does not make it identical to other browsers, when they could be using differnt JS engines as well as other components and features.
Same basic engine != same browser.
Further more you seemed to miss the point with your inaccurate rant is that Atomic does not use any of it's own rendering components, it is using the Safari rendering engine 100%, it's not even a different implementation (as Apple will not permit a "duplication of functionality"). Saying that Atomic is a different browser is like saying a blue theme for Firefox is a different browser.
This would be partially true if the Atomic Browser actually had it's own rendering engine. So say after me, Atomic is not a browser, it is a front end for another browser.
This is the same for Steel on Android, it's a front end for the default Chrome browser or any of the themes available for Dolphin browser.
Yes, yes it does.
Which is why the UI is not as important as you think. /.er's really need to get over this point.
An average UI is just as good as a great UI as long as it gets the job done. This is the important bit, people will ignore UI to get whatever then need to get done, done. So superior functionality becomes more important. Why do you think Windows and RIM became so widely used, using XP/7 or Blackberry is a pig but its a pig that lets me do what I need to in the shortest possible time. Emphasise UI over functionality and you end up with a stillborn OS that no-one wants to use. Looks are unimportant, results matter.
Which is exactly why the Motorola Milestone/Droid, being the biggest selling Android phone uses the vanilla interface. Or why the Nexus One, also uses the vanila interface. The HTC Dream and Magic also did. Oh snap.
Sense and Motoblur are for specific purposes, especially Motoblur. The vanilla interface is for general purposes and the X10 is so far behind other Android phones it's not funny (only Sony could release an Android 1.6 phone and call it high end).
Also lose the fanboyism. WebOS was stillborn with a bad SDK, no NDK and a really really bad framework for applications. Bad marketing didn't help but Android has been making leaps and bounds without the need for hype-ridden flashy marketing campaigns (read: it advanced based on the strength of the OS). WebOS was doomed to failure, although I'm certain all 300 people in the UK who bough one would disagree with me. Especially as it was released on CDMA hardware, you couldn't even export it.
Palm needs to die, its needed to die for a long time and HP can make that happen.
Nah, all the roo's sold their guns in the buy back scheme, now they just glass their girlfriends in pubs.
The Reality Distortion Field has stopped working and now everyone has realised that Apple really is quite backwards.
Apple's been eclipsed on almost all fronts. Their MacBook's are the equivalent of A$700 Dells yet cost more then A$1400 (for A$1400 at Dell I can get a Vostro 3300 with i5, Geforce 310, 7.2K RPM 500 GB disk, 4 GB RAM and a 2 year NBD warranty).
Compared to the Iphone I have the HTC Desire, Nexus One or Motorola Milestone (not beholden to App store, far more features, don't have to pay extra for tethering).
This has always been the case but Apple has had better marketing, up until now at least. The hype effect is wearing off and people are realising that Apples been eclipsed.
On Adobe's Open Licensing program it's free (cross licensed). You of course have to pay for the media (A$150 a pop) but that's pocket change on top of the A$2,500 CS suite license. I did this when a graphic design arm started transitioning from Print to Web, 3 out of 4 Macs got replaced with PC's (1/2 the price for more powerful machines, if you're a sysadmin who doesn't know how to push Dell et al. you should turn in your sysadmin card and take up carpentry) The other Mac also got replaced with an Intel model.
There, fixed that for you.
Only an idiot cannot install Windows on a Mac. the printing industry switched to Windows based PC's almost a decade ago because Apple couldn't be relied upon for production so Adobe is reacting to the needs of its customers by focusing on Windows. Graphic designers in corporate environments have little choice in the matter and this is where Adobe gets it's cash. Most of the designers I know would happily switch to Linux if CS ran on it, most hate being beholden to Apple.
As a Linux fan, as much as I'd like it I doubt we'll see CS on Linux.
Nope, that's when he plays the security card and writes a tirade about how open source is insecure and bad. Meanwhile fanboys praise the wisdom of master Steve and forget about this tirade on openness.
You should have learned by now that the truth is whatever Apple says it is today, even if it conflicts with what Apple said yesterday.
So, this is what many of us have been saying for a long time.
Apple will never permit flash because it wants to protect Apple's revenue stream by ensuring that all customers must go through Apple to get absolutely anything.
And people are still asking why Android will eventually win. Apple has HTML 5 but Android has HTML 5 and Flash, more content will get more users. The web isn't going to automagially change from Flash to an Apple friendly implementation of HTML 5, especially when Flash across disparate platforms is consistent whilst HTML5 across different browsers is not.
BTW, I'm not a flash fan but I have to deal with it and it does do what is says it does on the tin.
This is the exact opposite of my experiences.
I've seen flash working on the HTC Hero and it's brilliant. The lower resolution displays are better suited to viewing flash videos as there is fewer artefacts (of course your still at the mercy of how the video was encoded in the first place). It may be a bit of a CPU hog but for the functionality it delivers it is well worth it. The version on the Hero was Flash 9, I cant wait to find out 10.1 works on the Milestone when it is released (I'm betting on late June).
I also give it 10 minutes after Flash is released to Android 2.1/2.2 phones before a flashblock style plugin/browser front end is released. I wouldn't be surprised if it was an inside job either. Google and Adobe know about all the issues. Android is not closed like the Iphone, problems like the one you describe are coded around very quickly.
It's not a browser, it's just a theme for Safari that ad's no extra rendering features.
/. that you cant browse /. properly on an Iphone. However on Android there doesn't seem to be any problems with it. It works better with Dolphin browser the the default browser, I can also get it working for Opera mobile and the Fennec alpha, I'm pretty sure Dolphin is a different implementation of Chrome but Fennec and Opera use different rendering engines.
It it well known here on
Don't mistake a skin for a new browser, Apple still controls the back end and will break or degrade anything it doesn't want you using.
no.
All that I and most people (read: non fanboys) remember is an over hyped consumer phone that didn't have half the functionality of smartphones of the time. Since then smartphones have come a long way due to Android and Symbian displacing WinMo and RIM at the high end.
But don't let that get in the way of your revisionist history.
Hate to break it to you son, but no-one found your comeback funny at all. In fact the only other poster above +1 called you a retard and after reading your post I'm inclined to agree.
By "not an absolute rule" I assume you sometimes mean ignored by inexperienced and just plain stupid engineers, which is how bad products are bought to market. Acceptance testing is normally the last testing you do before giving the system to a client, as a sysadmin almost all my acceptance testing involves the client, most engineers I meet tell me the same and I've only met 1 senior dev who disagreed with me.
If you're doing UAT in the beta cycle you are doing something horribly, horribly wrong. Usability testing yes but as we've established UAT is not usability testing.
Not a fan of reading, OK, just stop pretending to be an expert. The post you refer to, was taking exception to a definition of Pre-alpha, which the AC does not explicitly question. This does not prove you right in any way, shape or form. Nowhere in that article is acceptance testing mentioned. Besides you back-pedalled and said:
First rule when in a hole: stop digging.
Read the article on Acceptance Testing and tell me it belongs in beta when and I quote:
So, you'd sell beta code as a finished product? Do you work from Microsoft by any chance?
There, Fixed that for you. You could have just admitted that tiny bit of errata, perhaps even learned from it but instead you make another ignorant and wrong rant.
When did that happen.
RIM are still in the lead, as are Nokia in most of the world. 4% of sales does not make one dominant. Don't ever mistake marketing noise for actual dominance. Iphones are practically non-existent in Asia, which is the largest mobile phone market and considerably less popular in Europe (then the US) which has some of the most advanced mobile networks.
The answers you seek are in my post above you, you simply did not want to read them. The tortoise and the hare, Apple rushed ahead with an extremely hyped up marketing campaign and almost got to the end before they went to sleep while Android took the slow path developing a highly skilled user base. Now Android has eclipsed Apple, every Australian telco is fighting for exclusivity of new Android handsets yet they all get access to the Iphone. why I hear you ask, if they all have sooper dooper Iphones why fight for Android? Because even Telsrta who for two years rallied against Android in favour of Iphone has admitted they were wrong and is now pushing the HTC Desire because it is a better phone and they cant see the popularity of the Iphone lasting much longer, its entire reputation is based on "cool" and cool is a fickle mistress.
Besides this, Asia will decide who wins in the mobile phone maker and the rest of the world will follow Asia as they always have. Chip giant MTK (MeidaTek) have 90% of Asia's market and are pushing Android after positive responses in the Chinese market.
When that actually happens in real life, I'll let you know. I've had many Iphones come to me with problems like "x doesnt work", "I cant get internet" (some versions of the OS dont even let you enter your own APN) and "how do I do x" (x is a function the Iphone often lacks). I've had to knock them all back because of my experience in supporting Mac's I've vowed never to touch one of those horrid devices ever again. The "Just Works(TM)" dogma gets in the way when trying to find the cause of a problem (no error message is as useless as "an error has occurred").
Besides, if you bothered to read my post, more often I'm asked for advice on what to buy. Now to a rational person (as much as I criticise mundanes, most of them are capable of rational though when money is involved) they will seek the advice of a friend who is most experienced with such matters, hence as a geek I get asked about computers and communications, not relationships (for some reason, rebooting a relationship doesn't have the desired effect).
That's 14.5 nights with a good looking Thai prostitute or 19.8 with a Filipina.
It really comes down to preference, though it is worth noting the food in Thailand is far superior to that of the Philippines.
With Apple I get the idea that Apple's mother keeps calling every 3 days to talk about grand kids but after 34 years she still hasn't figured it out.
Here's the thing, you cant force businesses to act in an appropriate manner under a laissez faire system, they are permitted to do whatever they want which is why Libertarianism will never work. It relies on everyone thinking in the exact same way, which fails in reality.
Today, the Golman boss Lloyd Blankfein told the senate they have "no moral obligation" to investors when advising them to invest in ventures they themselves are betting against. Corporations are not good entities, this is what Libertarianism will always fail at seeing. Under laissez faire corporations have no imperative to act any different, it is as they say "anarchy for rich people".
So, the highly regulated telecommunications industries of Australia and Europe are in better shape and a lot more competitive then the poorly regulated US industry and this tells you regulation is a bad thing. I know I can go into any major Australian city and get coverage on any telco yet US telco's consider the line "fewest dropouts" to be a sign of a good network.
Their man pulls a Iphone,
Your man pulls a Nexus One,
They send their man to the App store,
you send your man to a pron site,
That's the Slashdot way!
"Sacked for flying my jumbo 20,000 feet below cruising altitude".
"Still paying off loan required to buy Ipad".
"Ipad traded to pawn shop for new bottle of rot gut".
"Cheap Ipad available for Joes pawn shop, $495. Facebook account included. Financing available".
CLUEBAT: you are permitted to buy a competitor. What you cannot do is use a dominant market position to prevent new competitors from entering the market (seeing as there is not monopoly in the mobile phone market HP/Palm may do as they please).
As did the titanic. Even with compartmentalisation you severely change the buoyancy of the vessel to make the carriers weight work against it. A large enough it would put enough stress on the keel of the ship, the last thing a ship needs is a massive redistribution of weight below the water line. This is under good sea conditions.
Which was my point about being undetected. If you start actively scanning you'll light up light up like a Christmas tree. Gaining a passive lock is quite difficult under the best of conditions.
The British are building SVTOL carriers, similar to their current Invincible class, you are of course referring to the forthcoming Queen-Elizabeth class. These are a lot smaller then current Nimitz class fleet carriers (QE class - 65,000 tonnes, Nimitz - 100,000 tonnes). France and the US are the only ones actually building fleet carriers and the French one is significantly smaller then the Gerald R Ford class (75,000 tonnes vs 100,000 tonnes). Most nations are looking at deploying S/VTOL carriers, Australia already has three under way (Canberra Class). As drone and VTOL tech increases it becomes more efficient to field smaller carriers with fewer crew, better defences and greater speed. Drones (UCAV's) will do for the carrier what the missile did for the battleship. In the end only the US fielded battleships (Iowa class) and they were only used as oversized missile cruisers (as in they did the exact same job as missile cruisers of the time). My prediction is the submarine carrier will make a comeback as a drone carrier as they don't need to be larger then existing US/Russian boomers. Plus with drones, recovery can become an optional extra.
Efficiency included economy of scale. If you want the capacity to operate 16 or 18 heavy guns it's going to be cheaper to built a battleship then several smaller cruisers.
We've heard this one before. Compared to the efficiency of an F35 equipped carrier, an FA18 equipped carrier is enormously expensive whilst providing no significant advantages. Once UCAV technology improves these will be even cheaper and provide the same impact.
Actually no, some ISP's are like that. Here in the socialist paradise of Australia (note the heavy sarcasm dear rednecks) we have already dealt with this. Regulation such as fixing wholesale leasing prices, setting minimum standards for service and punishments for false advertising have created a market where competition can enter easily and ISP's are not permitted to deceive the public. Also due to our communistic contract law, ISP's are not permitted to take away anything from my contract unless I agree and sign a new contract.
We have telco's that thrive off the uninformed users (Hellstra and OptArse) but we also have good ISP's like iinet and Internode. Now because we have truth in advertising laws ISP's are not permitted to advertise "unlimited" plans that cut you off after X number of GB so they have to advertise the service they actually offer (download quota). iinet, just yesterday expanded my quota from 30+30 GB* to 50+50 GB as their wholesale price of bandwidth dropped (bandwidth out of Australia is very expensive due to our isolation). I pay A$49.95 a month for this, iinet makes more money from it's heavy downloaders as the light downloaders go onto the A$20 plan where as if you want 100+100 GB you need to pay A$130. The more you DL, the more you are worth to your ISP. For the email crowd, DSL ISP's are competing with wireless (3G mobile) ISP's who sell 1 GB a month for A$20.
* 30+30 refers to 30 GB metered during the on peak (8 AM to 2 AM for iinet) and 30 GB metered during the off peak time (2 AM to 8 AM for iinet). After exceeding your quota your connection is shaped to 128 Kbs until your next billing period.
Forget the US DoJ, they are a paper tiger.
Now the EU on the other hand, have actually enforced rulings on MS. Not only this HTC is a Taiwanese corporation, Taiwan (republic of/province of China) has some really special rules when it comes to MS software and software in general. Taiwan is the only place where it's legal to reverse engineer MS software, also being a province of china (depends who you believe) the government may also have access to the source code.
MS has the chance to be burned by this badly. But as many other posters have pointed out HTC rules WinMo, without HTC MS is in a really wont be able to push WinMo 7.
Same here, I ran CyanogenMod on my HTC Dream and whilst it did force close occasionally it always managed to restart by itself. I haven't had any such issues using the default HTC ROM or the standard ROM on my Milestone.
Android is designed so that a crappy application cant bring down the entire system, not even crashing one of the core processes can bring down other applications, android.process.acore cannot bring down com.android.phone if it crashes.
This is just FUD bases on some early reports prior to Cupcake (1.5). Very few phones run an earlier version of Android.