I'm not big on bragging rights, but if some of those issues bother you, in my response I detailed one of the main issues to a couple of those points is a lackluster api for handling concurrent requests while also playing nice with other bits android offers (share by intent for example). You can check this, https://github.com/dskinner/AndroidWeb

A repost (yeay no edit functionality), my first real post on slashdot that needs line breaks

> *Splash screen (and side note: the tutorials I found on the web on how to make one were all horrible, involving spawning threads and making sleep calls).

Why the crap are you wasting peoples time with sleeping for a splash. If a client asks for this, make it actually do something useful. Create an activity that starts downloading relevant data. At worst, sleep for a duration and then call finish(); startActivity(...);. There's an entire activity there to do real work while.

> *Intents to just play full screen video, or audio and matching image.

And your point? I'm glad this intent fulfills your need but if you want to raise REAL android issues, lets talk about mp3 playback on 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3+ devices. Lets talk about how 2.2 devices vary in the backend hardware decoder and what kind of havoc that raises. Lets talk about having to roll our own implementation of the http live spec.

> *An Image widget that can use a resource or a URL as the source.

This could be useful as a builtin but it's stand alone. What if your caching what your app downloads? What if you're looking to share that image via intent with other applications that accept that? Let's talk about the real issue here, and that's a lack luster api for handling multiple concurrent web requests that integrate with all of the niceties android does offer. Then lets talk about a WebImageView class.

> *A wrapper around their gyroscope and accelerometer to form a compass sensor. Something they used to have (ORIENTATION_SENSOR) then deprecated.

This does suck.

> *A single function call method to get a URL as a string (or as an image, etc).

Same point as two questions ago essentially. This is a dead end that accomplishes very little. I'd be insulted by Google if this was some "improvement" announced on their dev blog.

> *A view that displays the output of the camera, and manages requesting access to the camera when the activity is paused/unpaused. Really, how the hell did they miss this?

Valid point, this along with other phone sensors are needlessly complicated to work with. The complication comes down to, in my opinion, how the api is represented. They could require we still do all of the necessary bits, just like presented as above, but create a much better api.

> *A JSON parsing library that will take JSON and an object definition and use reflection to turn the JSON into a java object.

See GSON, It's stupid easy and works great. XML is a bigger issue.

> *Splash screen (and side note: the tutorials I found on the web on how to make one were all horrible, involving spawning threads and making sleep calls). Why the crap are you wasting peoples time with sleeping for a splash. If a client asks for this, make it actually do something useful. Create an activity that starts downloading relevant data. At worst, sleep for a duration and then call finish(); startActivity(...);. There's an entire activity there to do real work while. > *Intents to just play full screen video, or audio and matching image. And your point? I'm glad this intent fulfills your need but if you want to raise REAL android issues, lets talk about mp3 playback on 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3+ devices. Lets talk about how 2.2 devices vary in the backend hardware decoder and what kind of havoc that raises. Lets talk about having to roll our own implementation of the http live spec. > *An Image widget that can use a resource or a URL as the source. This could be useful as a builtin but it's stand alone. What if your caching what your app downloads? What if you're looking to share that image via intent with other applications that accept that? Let's talk about the real issue here, and that's a lack luster api for handling multiple concurrent web requests that integrate with all of the niceties android does offer. Then lets talk about a WebImageView class. > *A wrapper around their gyroscope and accelerometer to form a compass sensor. Something they used to have (ORIENTATION_SENSOR) then deprecated. This does suck. > *A single function call method to get a URL as a string (or as an image, etc). Same point as two questions ago essentially. This is a dead end that accomplishes very little. I'd be insulted by Google if this was some "improvement" announced on their dev blog. > *A view that displays the output of the camera, and manages requesting access to the camera when the activity is paused/unpaused. Really, how the hell did they miss this? Valid point, this along with other phone sensors are needlessly complicated to work with. The complication comes down to, in my opinion, how the api is represented. They could require we still do all of the necessary bits, just like presented as above, but create a much better api. > *A JSON parsing library that will take JSON and an object definition and use reflection to turn the JSON into a java object. See GSON, It's stupid easy and works great. XML is a bigger issue.

gen-who? I vaguely recall using a distribution way back with a similar name, excited by the prospect of tinkering and thrilled by the text flying across my screen at crazy speeds. Now-a-days, these are just regression fixes and queues for grabbing some fresh coffee. Not to say I hate what I do, but love the deeper level it brought me to. People might take a lot of cracks at gentoo but I appreciate the opportunity it provided for someone without a formal education.

This reminds me of the sling box which I saw an ad for a few years back. I for one welcome the tyranny of convenience provided by our wireless overlords

eventually this old-man syndrome is going to disperse into the existential shallowness of past thought and kids are going to grow up expecting something completely different every month, week, and day while we're stuck slinging around phrases like old-dogs and new-tricks and making fun of our grandparents trudging around in the snow for 20 miles to read emily dickenson at the town barn, converted school house

Hell Im only 26 but I'll be damned if I go jacking my brain up into machine interfaces. Give me an old fashion mouse with a side of keys and stay off my lawn

anytime im presented with the Monty Hall problem, I only switch 99.99999...% of the time

I hope he listens to his father and doesn't fly to close to the sun

Human condition indeed. All I can add is, and don't let the ideals of interrogating cliches interrupt this thought, but the very thing that we as people despair over is a source for magnificent acts, and in performing these, is the very thing that makes us most vulnerable. So when we manage to achieve a high level of cognitive dissonance, lets not just go and rationalize it all away (incorrectly I might add), but let's open ourselves to something more and we might just find ourselves on the opposite side of despair. Sorry to be all magical/mystical towards the end bit there but I dont know what the right words are for my own recent experiences that are hardly unique and probably documented by someone, somewhere, already.

install console2 from sourceforge, install msysgit and have it add itself to your path, set your startupshell in console2 to the git bash, and you get all kinds of goodies including ssh utils

well at least they finally fixed having to click the cashew twice to close it after making various changes.