This order sounds right.
For those of us who know what we're doing, sure this is offensive.
For those who decide that spending 99cents on Justin Bieber wall papers that also snoop on their private conversations, that's a different story.
See, no vision, this is the problem in america. If you really want to snoop people's private conversation, you make the wallpaper free!
I don't get it: everyone bashed Apple when its iPhone lacked certain features (multitasking, cut and paste, enterprise security) but not one peep when Android or Windows Mobile lacks these very same features.
What? Android *does* have excellent multitasking, as well as decent cut and paste. I'm not sure about enterprise security, but I think people have blasted Android for not having it, if it doesn't.
What the fuck are you talking about?
A majority of academics are in the pursuit of knowledge and furthering their respective fields. When you are working for a company a majority of the time you are doing something that does not further the field of science and knowledge.
Agreed. Even if you *were* doing useful research, you likely would not be allowed to share it, ever. You have patents and copyright terms and by the end of them its not like companies just open up their records. They'd stay hidden forever. Patents give some insight but not all.
-Taylor
Perhaps some of the knowledge broadcast has a negative value, so the absolute value of the knowledge broadcast is high, but the net information distributed is much smaller?
Carl Sagan addressed this in Cosmos. He said there was more data broadcast in TV programs every day than the combined written works of all of history.
But, as he said, "not all bits have equal value."
A quote I had laser engraved on the back of my Nexus One.
-Taylor
The US accounts for 46% of all world military spending. China, for comparison, accounts for 6% (assuming the numbers are accurate).
Check out this graph:
http://cdn1.globalissues.org/i/military/10/country-distribution-2009.png
From
http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spending
Our military spending is INSANE.
Another chart (I found these all via google. I cannot vouch for their accuracy. But they seem legit) shows the proportion of spending for various things.
http://www.federalbudget.com/
All this stuff shows me is that we could cut every other program in *half* excluding the last 4, and we'd barely make a dent.
People want to cut science and research and all the things that will make our future better, but we keep throwing away all our money on all this other crap!
People want to cut "pork" in these little programs that amount to 0.1% of our budget, but no one is willing to tackle the big ones. I'm so fucking sick of it.
-Taylor
You forget about this: http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/11/01/19/2322215/Motorola-Sticks-To-Guns-On-Locking-Down-Android
Think again - Motorola said that post was basically BS, and they are working to possibly make installing custom roms easier.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/21/motorola-ready-to-make-sweet-love-to-rom-devs-and-rooters/
-Taylor
What about all the people that "just need a computer" so they can go on Facebook or whatever?
I suspect that this is where the tablet market will find its biggest demographic...
Well, I agree with that. But we're not there yet (soon!). I would still appreciate it if PC makers didn't put crapware on machines in the meantime. For my mom's sake. Though I'll probably get her an iPad once the next one comes out. After I get myself a Xoom.
-Taylor
The first thing I do with a new PC is blow the HDD and rebuild. Yeah, all this bloatware is inconvenient for my parents and relatives (and thus me), but even that is only occasionally bothersome. I fail to see why the majority of the
The article isn't talking about doing this for the sake of Slashdot users, its talking about doing it to keep Joe Consumer happy, which is for the sake of the PC industry. Which is indirectly for the sake of the Slashdot user. Also, it means slashdot users don't have to fix our parents computers as soon as they buy them.
Honestly people hate how slow their computers are, and there will be plenty of people who leave PCs for Macs for just this reason, I bet.
-Taylor
Eh. Buy the business versions of computers instead. They're comparable in price to their home equivalents, and lack the trialware.
I still remember when I got my first computer though. There were some demos preinstalled, but there were also full versions of software as well on CDs - a few games, Encarta, etc. Plus, it came with a thick book with detailed technical descriptions of the computer (keep in mind this was a "home user" system) that was comparable to a textbook. Good stuff.
That requires informed consumers. What about all the people that "just need a computer" so they can go on Facebook or whatever? Although they aren't savvy enough to know they should get the business PC, they still hate how slow their new computer is, and it upsets them.
Sure, slashdot users know how to get around the bloatware, but the article is talking about getting rid of it for everyone, for the sake of the PC industry. And its a worthy suggestion I think.
went out of business in '94...
You know how when you pick a flower you've effectively killed it, but it still looks alive and continues to function for a while?
That's what happened to AOL in '94. Its time will come.
-Taylor
If they waited another year it would have been Huffington Post buying AOL.
Actually that's what I first thought it was when I very tiredly saw the headlines this morning.
Except that if such information is stored with the photo, it can by definition be altered when the photo is altered.
Yeah, but I imagine you could use some kind of encryption so that even if you can alter that information, you can't easily make it appear original.
But I don't know anything about that stuff.
Ah, well *that* is a good argument then. The lemmings one, not so much. A couple apps that are bad - that is a problem. 642 bullshit apps from one dev - there is clearly something lame going on.
For what its worth, I've used Android for years and have never noticed too much spam. But then I'm not searching for "sexy" apps either. Or at least not after the first time I looked and it was all crap.
For the most part, the Android Market is fine if you either just download things other people recommend, or you browse the popular apps. If you're trying to find something out of the blue, then yeah, its crap. Not sure if the iOS app store is any better, but I did have an original iPhone back in the day and I remember that it was nice that you could browse for apps in iTunes.
Android has long needed some kind of desktop companion (even if its browser based), and if there was one, it would probably help with app discovery.
So yeah, app discovery is the issue that I think you're actually struggling with. How do I find the good apps when there is so much crap? Eliminating some of the crap would help, but ultimately, blind searches are not the best way to find good apps. Google is working on that by recommending more apps that are good, and now showing "related apps" in the new market they rolled out a few months ago.
And I do know that people complain about app discovery in iOS too. Its a big problem for developers.
And although this isn't a solution to the problem (since google needs to fix it themselves) gizmodo often posts lists of good apps. If you didn't see it, you might like this, which was just posted today:
http://gizmodo.com/5739420/the-best-android-apps?skyline=true&s=i
-Taylor
Because some people are idiots.....turns out that the previous reviews were right on the money
Okay...
I'm not seeing the issue. Many reviews said the app was garbage. You downloaded the app. It was garbage. Do you really think something about that needs to be fixed?
If you searched for Lemmings and a garbage app was displayed in search results above a good app, I'd say there is an issue. If you were browsing popular apps and a garbage app was shown, I'd say there was an issue.
But once you start searching for something and there just *isn't* a good app, does it really matter if you get back results with bad apps or no apps? As long as the bad apps are clearly labeled, I just don't see how removing them would help. But it would discourage developers, which is the exact opposite of what you want to do in that situation. If there aren't good apps in a certain category, scaring away the only people that did cater to that category will get you nowhere. You should increase incentives to app developers (like get payments working in more foreign countries) and also encourage new developers to enter that category, to increase competition.
But banning bad apps won't do anything positive, and will hurt things.
-Taylor
Over the weekend, I attempted two different "Lemmings" apps
Then why did you download them?
If google starts pulling peoples apps because they have bad reviews... well, that's just going to piss off devs to spent time on their apps. If they write a bad app and get bad reviews, maybe they'll try harder and write something better.
As a consumer, I just check the reviews. If they're bad, I don't bother. If I search for something and nothing is available with good reviews, I'll basically chock it up to Android's lower app count and not bother wasting my time with bad apps.
I signed up for Android knowing full well that I can't find every app that iOS might have (its a younger platform, thats how it goes), so I don't frustrate myself by pretending an app with bad reviews is still worth downloading.
The app review system works great. I trust it and if you actually listen to it, you won't be frustrated at all, aside from the low app count overall. So yeah, you won't find everything you need, but that doesn't mean google should pull apps - it means they should get more apps to increase the chances of there being a good one. Which is exactly what they're doing.
-Taylor
BYTE editors are people who separate the wheat from the chaff, and then carefully print the chaff.
