If (for example) Apple did this (or even, as they in fact do, reserved the right to do it in their TOS for their app store), I'd see it as a reason to prefer a platform which allowed the user the choice of installing third-party apps without going through a store with such a term.
Since Android, unlike iOS, by default provides this choice, the issue is somewhat different.
Wow, Google pulled an Amazon here, remotely DELETED an app from users' phone... and half of the posts here are OK with it?!
Amazon did it to non-deceptive, paid-for content, without any supporting provision in the TOS under which the content was acquired.
Google did it for deceptively-labelled, free content, under TOS that permitted exactly the action taken.
While there might be legitimate reasons to object to the second as well as the first.
Isn't the big ADVANTAGE of Android is that it is YOUR phone, which you CONTROL, and that YOU decide what to put on it?
That's one big advantage, yes. One aspect of that advantage is that you have the choice to install third-party apps from an app store which, among other things, reserves the right to remotely remove them in the discretion of the store owner, and the choice to install third-party apps, instead, from alternative sources.
If you choose to exercise the former choice, that is you choice.
Now Google, not only told you they hold a REMOTE KILL switch, but actually went and DID a remote kill, and wow, half of the posters here are fine with it.
Yes, I am happy with people having a choice on the device between using acquiring apps through a venue which openly has a remote kill switch and through alternative venues, and I see no reason to be unhappy with the choice made here to use the remote kill switch Google reserved.
DId you read the article? Google yanked the apps after they had been installed. Apple restricts things on the front end, Google on the back end.
Apple actually reserves the right, in their TOS, to do it on the back end as well. The degree of control they exercise at the front end reduces the probability that they will experience a situation where they would choose to exercise that control on the back end, but they've clearly identified it as something they need to have the ability to exercise even with their front-end controls.
And, unlike iOS, Android, by default, permits third-pary applications to be installed from other app stores or the web which then are outside of the control exercised over apps acquired through the Android Market.
Have a remote nuking of malicious as a strictly opt-in feature.
It is a strictly opt-in feature. Its part of the bundle of features you opt-in to when you opt to use the Android Market instead of any of the other ways to install apps on an Android device.
The choices provided by Android include the choice to install apps by a mechanism which allows someone else to remotely uninstall them. It also includes the choice to install apps by other means.
I think that point is that if Apple did this it wouldn't just be shrugged off. The Android fanbois would be coming out of the wordwork to howl about how Apple is messing with people's phones.
Apple, with their App Store, reserves the right to do this just like Google does with Android Market. Because of the more extensive screening of apps Apple does before they get into the App Store, they are less likely to run into a surprise that would result in them exercising the right they have reserved (since they will most likely catch an app that would later get removed before it goes into the store, and deny it entry in the first place.)
Unlike Android, however, iOS users don't have the option to use alternative app stores to the one run by the OS vendors, or just to apps directly from the internet without going through an app store.
I don't want this. Not on Android. I specifically bought an Android phone to get away from the Apple control freakery. That was the only reason I wanted Android -- no big brother overseeing.
The difference between Android and iOS in this regard is that there is no requirement to use the Android Market to install apps on Android.
So, if this is your overwhelming reason for choosing Android over iOS, you should take advantage of the freedom to use apps without going through Android Market.
Otherwise, you are acting inconsistently with your own interests and have mostly yourself to blame when the results don't match your intentions.
Apple reserves the right to remove apps from your device if they are acquired through the App Store just as Google does if you acquire apps through the Android Market.
Apple requires you to use the App Store to install third-party apps, Google does not require you to use Android Market to do so.
Suppose I don't trust your app not to silently track my position but I want to test it out. I could easily deny it internet access and allow GPS and bluetooth.
And your app *does* work without GPS/internet/bluetooth. It may not be able to do everything it wants to, but it won't just crash.
Sure, but who says the app vendor is willing to make it available under those terms? The security system provides a framework for an agreement analogous to a contract between the app vendor and the user: the vendor says "I will provide you this app to use, provided you give it these permissions", and the user chooses to agree or not.
Its true, though, that you could maintain this with a more flexible security model in which the app supplier could specify both mandatory permissions and optional permissions.
Maybe you're confusing legal with right. Removing stuff from my phone without explicit permission per case (not a catch-all permission) is wrong, regardless of the legality of it.
If you believe that, why would you agree to a contract which doesn't require explicit permission per case.
It would be one thing if there was a complaint that, even given the permissions that were agreed to, this was an unreasonable use of the rights Google had reserved under the contract. But no one is making that argument.
Most likely from the fact that's what micro-payments originally meant. They started as small loans in 3rd world countries to let people start businesses there.
No, what you describe (and for which $0.05 would be much smaller than the common amount) is microcredit, which is completely different from micropayment, although a system can include both (the microcredit systems in the third world generally aren't micropayment systems, and most micropayment systems aren't microcredit systems.)
And I don't think either started in the third world, since I think the first microcredit system (which was also a micropayment system) was a community "barter credit" system instituted in a particular region (don't remember which) of Canada in the 1960s or 1970s.
It makes no sense to compare trust of "the Media" (a collection of independent institutions) to trust of Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and Twitter as individual institutions.
This is much the same mistake that is commonly made when people pretend that approval ratings of the President are directly comparable to approval ratings of the Congress, such that one can draw meaningful conclusions from the latter being less than the former at any point in time.
That anyone thinks this is newsworthy as anything other than an indictment of the professionalism of the outlet conducting and publishing the poll is a sign that critical thinking skills are desperately lacking.
There's no evidence that the degree of popularity of football in a society contributes to greater levels of violence and racism.
It is perhaps defensible that popular football provides a focus for the violence and racism already in a society, but that's a very different thing than causing violence and racism.
Has there ever been a show getting canceled that slashdot doesn't blame on the time slots and/or episode ordering?
Yes. First, "Slashdot" isn't an entity which expresses opinions of the type you describe, different groups of individual slashdot posters express such opinions, and the opinions you describe have been expressed on slashdot regarding a handful of programs that have been cancelled over a period of very many years, out of the dozens of series that are cancelled each year.
Seriously people, if the audience had been big enough and the ratings high enough, they would have moved them to prime time slots.
Showing episodes out-of-order, when they are written with a broad story arc, clearly interferes with developing an audience(the Firefly issue), as does not showing a show consistently at all (the Futurama issue, which wasn't about timeslot so much as about following NFL football and thus frequently being either cancelled entirely or joined "in progress".)
The Futurama scheduling decision is clearly the kind of thing a network does because it doesn't think a show has that much value to start with -- it is treating the show as disposable filler and isn't even pretending to try to market it effectively. It's perfectly reasonable to believe that that kind of behavior interfered with the show reaching an audience that it otherwise would have. In fact, the DVD sales which evidenced that there was such an audience that the original broadcast schedule had failed to reach is the reason the show was renewed after the first time it was cancelled, and the fact that it has remained on the air since (whether in danger of being cancelled each season or not) pretty clearly indicates that even Fox thinks that the show is viable, despite it not having appeared to be under the initial treatment Fox gave it.
As defined by DMCA, practically anyone can be an OSP and claim safe harbor:
Not true. As the excerpt you pasted makes clear, almost anyone can be an OSP. Claiming safe harbor, however, requires both being an OSP, and complying with the requirements of the safe harbor provision, which essentially only apply to content posted by those to whom the OSP provides services, where the OSP doesn't review them in advance, and where the OSP complies with the take-down provisions of the DMCA safe harbor.
Please, no one do this. Ever. HTML5 storage is for storing data. When you use it for caches
Uh, what is stored in a cache is also data.
The only difference between what it stores and what an HTTP cache stores is that an HTTP cache can only store resources that would be accessed through a URL. Of course, what resources could be accessed through a URL is purely a function of how the application is designed, so that's not really a fundamental difference.
Not really. C# is a language like any other - it's just the best known implementation is for.NET. If you wanted to, you could write a C# compiler that uses precisely zero.NET, and it'd still be a compiler for C#.
Sure, and you could write an Erlang compiler for the JVM. But, in the real world today, usable C# compilers exist only for the.NET (and Mono, which is a.NET clone), and Erlang only for the the BEAM virtual machine (well, older versions exist for a previous, equally-specific, VM.)
Plus C# is used for Mono and GTK#, neither of which are.NET.
Mono is a clone of.NET, and GTK# is a toolkit for.NET and Mono, not a separate execution environment.
So could Google - but no one seems to be bitching about Google Code.
I dunno, just about every non-Google project I've seen initially on Google Code has moved off of it to GitHub or someplace else in a fairly short time, usually after some complaints about it.
Though the complaints have been about Google reinventing the wheel and not doing it particularly well from the perspective of the projects involved, rather than about any presumed nefarious motives, most likely because Google, unlike MS, doesn't have a history of spreading scare stories about open source in general and a wide array of specific open source projects in particular.
True, that: FLOPS communicates a combination of the SI unit (1/s = Hz) with the identity of the thing being measured (floating point operations). It's like if you had KOM as an abbreviation for kilograms of milk.
Because HTML5 has better backward compatibility to existing HTML documents (and, for that matter, the model of XHTML 1.x) than does XHTML2, and adds features that are more useful to content providers and developers in delivering content and applications that are useful to end users.
XHTML2 may have had some ideas that are, in their area, superior to HTML5, but is overall inferior in terms of features. Being XML-only (unlike HTML5, which supports an XML rendition but also supports a non-XML style) is certainly an advantage in terms of static validation and ease of parsing, but its not a real significant end-user benefit.
Essentially, XHMTL2 is a more radical departure from the existing established technology in areas where that departure lacks a clear and compelling benefit, and does less in the areas where there is a clear, compelling, and easy-to-realize benefit offered.
The prices are high, but I would be willing to pay it. My problem is the overbearing DRM. Do you really think all of these ereaders are going to survive? No way. None will be around forever. One day, you will lose all the books you have bought.
That's certainly a reason to be concerned about purchases from the ebook stores run by B&N and Amazon, but both the Nook and the Kindle will read DRM-free documents in their supported formats, and there are plenty of sources for DRM-free ebooks.
Taking advantage of the hardware price war doesn't commit you to buying content from the store run by the hardware vendor. And, heck, if the hardware sells and people prefer to buy from DRM-free third party sources and not from the DRM-laden bookstores supplied by the hardware vendors, it will put pressure on the reader vendors to make DRM-free content available directly from their stores.
Thats the biggest issue I have with ebook readers. The price of the ebooks. I get a less usable book (can't really share it) for the same price as a real book.
Actually, you can "really share" the DRM-laden ebooks sold by B&N, since they have a lending feature which will transfer your copy to someone else for a set period of time and then return it to you. And, of course, you can really share DRM-free ebooks.
Additionally, ebooks (both DRM-laden from bookstores like B&N/Amazon, and DRM-free from independent sellers which can still be read on Nook or Kindle) are generally substantially less expensive than physical books, the only time they are even close to the same price is usually when you compare ebooks to mass-market paperbacks, which aren't available for many of the titles available as ebooks. And there are lots of completely-free ebooks.
Also, some people probably consider being able to carry as many books as you are likely to ever have in your library with you wherever you go without substantial space or weight as making ebooks more -- not less -- usable than paper books.
Also for those who don't know; The California state legislature throws stupid stuff like this around all the time. It never goes anywhere.
Like any legislative body, the California state legislature has lots of bills introduced, byt most of the more off-the-wall ones never get significant support and don't pass out of committee, much less out of the first house.
OTOH, this particular measure passed out of the California State Senate without objection and is now being heard by an Assembly committee, so I'm not sure its as unlikely to become law as you suggest.
Slashdot Mirror
Why should they have the right to set the conditions on which they are willing to provide something they have created and own to you?
I think the answer is pretty clear.
If (for example) Apple did this (or even, as they in fact do, reserved the right to do it in their TOS for their app store), I'd see it as a reason to prefer a platform which allowed the user the choice of installing third-party apps without going through a store with such a term.
Since Android, unlike iOS, by default provides this choice, the issue is somewhat different.
Amazon did it to non-deceptive, paid-for content, without any supporting provision in the TOS under which the content was acquired.
Google did it for deceptively-labelled, free content, under TOS that permitted exactly the action taken.
While there might be legitimate reasons to object to the second as well as the first.
That's one big advantage, yes. One aspect of that advantage is that you have the choice to install third-party apps from an app store which, among other things, reserves the right to remotely remove them in the discretion of the store owner, and the choice to install third-party apps, instead, from alternative sources.
If you choose to exercise the former choice, that is you choice.
Yes, I am happy with people having a choice on the device between using acquiring apps through a venue which openly has a remote kill switch and through alternative venues, and I see no reason to be unhappy with the choice made here to use the remote kill switch Google reserved.
Why should I be unhappy?
Apple actually reserves the right, in their TOS, to do it on the back end as well. The degree of control they exercise at the front end reduces the probability that they will experience a situation where they would choose to exercise that control on the back end, but they've clearly identified it as something they need to have the ability to exercise even with their front-end controls.
And, unlike iOS, Android, by default, permits third-pary applications to be installed from other app stores or the web which then are outside of the control exercised over apps acquired through the Android Market.
It is a strictly opt-in feature. Its part of the bundle of features you opt-in to when you opt to use the Android Market instead of any of the other ways to install apps on an Android device.
The choices provided by Android include the choice to install apps by a mechanism which allows someone else to remotely uninstall them. It also includes the choice to install apps by other means.
Apple, with their App Store, reserves the right to do this just like Google does with Android Market. Because of the more extensive screening of apps Apple does before they get into the App Store, they are less likely to run into a surprise that would result in them exercising the right they have reserved (since they will most likely catch an app that would later get removed before it goes into the store, and deny it entry in the first place.)
Unlike Android, however, iOS users don't have the option to use alternative app stores to the one run by the OS vendors, or just to apps directly from the internet without going through an app store.
The difference between Android and iOS in this regard is that there is no requirement to use the Android Market to install apps on Android.
So, if this is your overwhelming reason for choosing Android over iOS, you should take advantage of the freedom to use apps without going through Android Market.
Otherwise, you are acting inconsistently with your own interests and have mostly yourself to blame when the results don't match your intentions.
Apple reserves the right to remove apps from your device if they are acquired through the App Store just as Google does if you acquire apps through the Android Market.
Apple requires you to use the App Store to install third-party apps, Google does not require you to use Android Market to do so.
Sure, but who says the app vendor is willing to make it available under those terms? The security system provides a framework for an agreement analogous to a contract between the app vendor and the user: the vendor says "I will provide you this app to use, provided you give it these permissions", and the user chooses to agree or not.
Its true, though, that you could maintain this with a more flexible security model in which the app supplier could specify both mandatory permissions and optional permissions.
No, that's not a fact.
The fact is that it was deleted according to the permissions that Android Market users had granted to Google to do exactly that.
If you believe that, why would you agree to a contract which doesn't require explicit permission per case.
It would be one thing if there was a complaint that, even given the permissions that were agreed to, this was an unreasonable use of the rights Google had reserved under the contract. But no one is making that argument.
No, what you describe (and for which $0.05 would be much smaller than the common amount) is microcredit, which is completely different from micropayment, although a system can include both (the microcredit systems in the third world generally aren't micropayment systems, and most micropayment systems aren't microcredit systems.)
And I don't think either started in the third world, since I think the first microcredit system (which was also a micropayment system) was a community "barter credit" system instituted in a particular region (don't remember which) of Canada in the 1960s or 1970s.
It makes no sense to compare trust of "the Media" (a collection of independent institutions) to trust of Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and Twitter as individual institutions.
This is much the same mistake that is commonly made when people pretend that approval ratings of the President are directly comparable to approval ratings of the Congress, such that one can draw meaningful conclusions from the latter being less than the former at any point in time.
That anyone thinks this is newsworthy as anything other than an indictment of the professionalism of the outlet conducting and publishing the poll is a sign that critical thinking skills are desperately lacking.
There's no evidence that the degree of popularity of football in a society contributes to greater levels of violence and racism.
It is perhaps defensible that popular football provides a focus for the violence and racism already in a society, but that's a very different thing than causing violence and racism.
Yes. First, "Slashdot" isn't an entity which expresses opinions of the type you describe, different groups of individual slashdot posters express such opinions, and the opinions you describe have been expressed on slashdot regarding a handful of programs that have been cancelled over a period of very many years, out of the dozens of series that are cancelled each year.
Showing episodes out-of-order, when they are written with a broad story arc, clearly interferes with developing an audience(the Firefly issue), as does not showing a show consistently at all (the Futurama issue, which wasn't about timeslot so much as about following NFL football and thus frequently being either cancelled entirely or joined "in progress".)
The Futurama scheduling decision is clearly the kind of thing a network does because it doesn't think a show has that much value to start with -- it is treating the show as disposable filler and isn't even pretending to try to market it effectively. It's perfectly reasonable to believe that that kind of behavior interfered with the show reaching an audience that it otherwise would have. In fact, the DVD sales which evidenced that there was such an audience that the original broadcast schedule had failed to reach is the reason the show was renewed after the first time it was cancelled, and the fact that it has remained on the air since (whether in danger of being cancelled each season or not) pretty clearly indicates that even Fox thinks that the show is viable, despite it not having appeared to be under the initial treatment Fox gave it.
Not true. As the excerpt you pasted makes clear, almost anyone can be an OSP. Claiming safe harbor, however, requires both being an OSP, and complying with the requirements of the safe harbor provision, which essentially only apply to content posted by those to whom the OSP provides services, where the OSP doesn't review them in advance, and where the OSP complies with the take-down provisions of the DMCA safe harbor.
Uh, what is stored in a cache is also data.
The only difference between what it stores and what an HTTP cache stores is that an HTTP cache can only store resources that would be accessed through a URL. Of course, what resources could be accessed through a URL is purely a function of how the application is designed, so that's not really a fundamental difference.
Sure, and you could write an Erlang compiler for the JVM. But, in the real world today, usable C# compilers exist only for the .NET (and Mono, which is a .NET clone), and Erlang only for the the BEAM virtual machine (well, older versions exist for a previous, equally-specific, VM.)
Mono is a clone of .NET, and GTK# is a toolkit for .NET and Mono, not a separate execution environment.
I dunno, just about every non-Google project I've seen initially on Google Code has moved off of it to GitHub or someplace else in a fairly short time, usually after some complaints about it.
Though the complaints have been about Google reinventing the wheel and not doing it particularly well from the perspective of the projects involved, rather than about any presumed nefarious motives, most likely because Google, unlike MS, doesn't have a history of spreading scare stories about open source in general and a wide array of specific open source projects in particular.
True, that: FLOPS communicates a combination of the SI unit (1/s = Hz) with the identity of the thing being measured (floating point operations). It's like if you had KOM as an abbreviation for kilograms of milk.
Perhaps not, but he could do a better job of acquiring products (or whole companies) that are well chosen to position Microsoft in new markets.
Because HTML5 has better backward compatibility to existing HTML documents (and, for that matter, the model of XHTML 1.x) than does XHTML2, and adds features that are more useful to content providers and developers in delivering content and applications that are useful to end users.
XHTML2 may have had some ideas that are, in their area, superior to HTML5, but is overall inferior in terms of features. Being XML-only (unlike HTML5, which supports an XML rendition but also supports a non-XML style) is certainly an advantage in terms of static validation and ease of parsing, but its not a real significant end-user benefit.
Essentially, XHMTL2 is a more radical departure from the existing established technology in areas where that departure lacks a clear and compelling benefit, and does less in the areas where there is a clear, compelling, and easy-to-realize benefit offered.
That's certainly a reason to be concerned about purchases from the ebook stores run by B&N and Amazon, but both the Nook and the Kindle will read DRM-free documents in their supported formats, and there are plenty of sources for DRM-free ebooks.
Taking advantage of the hardware price war doesn't commit you to buying content from the store run by the hardware vendor. And, heck, if the hardware sells and people prefer to buy from DRM-free third party sources and not from the DRM-laden bookstores supplied by the hardware vendors, it will put pressure on the reader vendors to make DRM-free content available directly from their stores.
Actually, you can "really share" the DRM-laden ebooks sold by B&N, since they have a lending feature which will transfer your copy to someone else for a set period of time and then return it to you. And, of course, you can really share DRM-free ebooks.
Additionally, ebooks (both DRM-laden from bookstores like B&N/Amazon, and DRM-free from independent sellers which can still be read on Nook or Kindle) are generally substantially less expensive than physical books, the only time they are even close to the same price is usually when you compare ebooks to mass-market paperbacks, which aren't available for many of the titles available as ebooks. And there are lots of completely-free ebooks.
Also, some people probably consider being able to carry as many books as you are likely to ever have in your library with you wherever you go without substantial space or weight as making ebooks more -- not less -- usable than paper books.
Like any legislative body, the California state legislature has lots of bills introduced, byt most of the more off-the-wall ones never get significant support and don't pass out of committee, much less out of the first house.
OTOH, this particular measure passed out of the California State Senate without objection and is now being heard by an Assembly committee, so I'm not sure its as unlikely to become law as you suggest.