The issue is that those numbers only tell a tiny portion of the story.. you cannot write an app for example to the 2.1 version of android and expect it to A) run on all 2.1 equipped devices or B) downgrade gracefully on 2.2 devices..

If you split out the 4 major percentage share holders to just the most basic differences you will rapidly discover that within 2.1 you have:

Standard with Google apps no custom UI devices
With Google apps and a custom UI devices
No google apps no custom UI devices
No Google apps custom UI devices..

Further you can break down the "with google apps + a custom UI to include at least the following:

MotoBlur
Sense
Misc tiny marketshare customized versions..

And finally you have to take into account every single library change that was done by either the carrier for apps they have custom done to run on their version of a handset, as well as library changes done at the handset maker level..

Sure some of these devices will run apps coded to the 1.5 api flawlessly.. some however will definately not...

Sure you can segment within the android market based on whatever criteria you want as a developer.. but at that point you are not really creating "android" apps but rather you are creating Motorola Droid X or HTC Incredible apps.. which is a very different story than creating just an android app..

Keep in mind one of the "great benefits" of android was supposed to be to make life easier than "the way it was before" which was coding to specific API on specific carrier with various hurdles to jump through...

The general problem to sum this all up is.. you cannot have it both ways (and its just as true of windows and every other multiple device/multi manufacturer OS) "Android" being succesful can either be measured by how many devices it sells that are just as different from each other as the iphone is from a winphone7 or android phone (from a developer perspective) OR Google can attempt to reign in the versions and lock down what must exist to be called an android X.X device.. Else we are just comparing apples to oranges.. (just as having apple TV and iPad in the iOS numbers does not tell the real story, neither does lumping the G1 and the Samsung Behold in with the Droid and calling them all "android")

Because your on a bandwidth quota? or a slow connection? as the person you replied to stated?

Say its a 4.7gb ISO of Debian.. you have gotten 4.2gb of it.. by using his method you can download 500megs rather than starting over with a 4.7gig image?

That said this rarely if ever works since most of the images of ISO you will find are "different" in some way to the other attempted DL... or unavailable at all..

You have it.. Local Peers ..

For example.. we have a 4 member computer network Member 1 downloads a wow patch via the net over torrent.. when member 2,3 and 4 come online and try to grab patch.. it will seed from member 1s machine at local lan speed to the 3 other machines..

Local Peers solve most of that (in the article they discuss patches for operating systems etc) for example in a company of a hundred computers.. once a computer on the network has a chunk of a file, every PC on that local network will be sharing it internally, rather than grabbing from an external site..

The biggest issue/obstacle facing using bittorrent like technology is the asymetric bandwidth on the majority of internet connections.. even then however local peers can be used within a subnetwork for example tampa roadrunner users could in theory download from or give preference to nodes within that particular ISP's network..

Linux switching to torrent based patching would likely not be enough of a reason for big ISP to "unthrottle" or "lift restrictions" on p2p protocols/traffic.. if however MS where to do so .. could go a long way toward lifting the stigma of P2P type downloading..

However as a USER, it already drives me to distraction that Activision/Blizzard essentially prints money on demand via WoW, the end users are the ones paying for the patching bandwidth

There is a reason your tagged flamebait, and it has alot to do with ignorance and inability to read and comprehend.

but Lemme spell it out for you so you can be educated..

P.O.D.S. is the actual branding for that company, it is an acronym for Portable On Demand Storage..

The Logo and Service Mark are eseentially the 4 letters done in block format white on red background.. which is all designed to reinforce the fact that this is in fact an acronym and not a word.

So yah despite your apparent inability to read lemme give you some links to basic info on the various subjects presented:

Trademark http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark

The pertinent issue here is summed up as follows :

That was taken from the wikipedia article referenced above.. if you cannot comprehend that.. I suggest the library or a lawyer to discuss the various details involving Trademarks and how they differ from patents etc.

Doesn't matter when it was incepted, this is *not* about patents or creation date.. this is about trademark/service marks.. which are by definition generic terms that are attached to specific products and marketed (the company using them creates the value attached to them)

But yes apparently the videopod has been in development for the last 12 years which predates the release and marketing of iPod..

Of course there are cases where people cannot use their own name due to it being trademarked (in some cases 30-50 years prior to their birth heh)

Its also written into law that if you do not "rigorously defend" trademarks/service marks, they can be ruled in the public domain ..

You also to pass a reasonability test... first off PODS storage is *not* actually called or branded as such, they are an acronym for Portable On Demand Storage (a side business of Public Storage iirc).. secondly its not "pod" as a unique name, its about Pod as part of a name in context of consumer electronics devices..

Regardless of how long the video pod device has been in gestation or internally named as such, the fact of the matter is that Apple has spent billions promoting the iPod in that market, and as such any newcomer to market has to adapt.. not the other way around..

For case studies on Copyright/Trademark defense you should look up Kleenex, Xerox, Lexis-Nexis vs Toyota(Lexus), Infinity vs Nissan (Infinity branded cars) for some of the history (from both sides of the argument as well as "equal vs equal" battles in the case of the Infinity trademark.

Its *reasonable* to state that a consumer seeing a VideoPod in a consumer electronics store would assume it to be related to iPods in some way.. that same reasonable assumption cannot be said regarding Pipeline management, Moving supplies or seeds (though I think you are reaching very firmly into ludicrous land when you grabbed at that one)

its not again about seeing "any use of the generic syllable pod in a product name.. " but rather the appending of pod to a product name in such a way that it implies a relationship to iPod/etc

Your guess is very wrong, the defendant in this suit is coming out with a product 10 years after billions of advertising have been spent on ipod/ipad/etc and trying to ride coat tails.. and using this as "free advertising" for a product that has not made it to market despite 12 years of work on it.. remember naming is not like patents.. even if he had INTERNALLY named the product VideoPod years before apple filed its first use of the iPod trademark.. the fact that he was not in fact using it in any way and had not defended it means he loses it

It was actually atari 2600 with first lockout system ... Though it was not hardware but rather contract based.. they went to court against Activision who was formed with the intent of defrauding Atari out of cartridge royalties by producing carts without buying them through Atari.. this (and the lawsuit that was lost by Atari over the Honor System they went by) is the reason why Nintendo put the "is this a real cartridge" check in the Famicom/NES.

Except that the truck was already there unless you live seriously outside the norm the major carriers all move through every street in america every single day they operate.. you can say they waste time/energy/gas stopping the truck getting out and waiting for you to answer the door..

its not a "special 20 mile trip out of the distribution center just for your package" its just one more stop on the endless route that they do every day..

The reason for the requirement for signature/delivery to the billing address is not the shippers its the sellers/credit card companies who used to get hammered with mass fraud..

It presumes a set of criteria that are illogical and impossible in the real world.. and is an effort to stem the tide of avoiding high street overcharging by shopping online where there is significantly more competition.

This info would only be partially true if delivery vehicles where dispatched from the distribution center to your house/office for ONLY your orders.. and not as is actual practice running routes that include not just your order from shop a, but in many cases hundreds of individual orders from hundreds of shops every single time the lorry leaves the distribution center.

Granted rural locations are likely not seeing 4-5 different delivery firms making full routes of the entire streetmap every single day.. but even so.. they seem to be comparing *cost of a normal vehicle for a family or individual" vs "cost of running a delivery lorry with nothing but 1 package on it" but even then the fact of the matter is that if a single car has to drive 30 km round trip and that takes a liter of petrol.. to purchase an ipod... it would have to cost the delivery service that same liter of petrol to deliver that single package to you.. which clearly it does not.. even if a lorry is only getting 10km per liter its likely delivering far more packages per liter than any personal vehicle is likely to accomplish.

In short this report is a paid for by city center/high street shopping interests who wish to maintain high margins by stemming the flow of sales away from online back to their high priced and highly inefficient retail locations.

Get one of the little 200-300$ book sized atom/ion devices such as the revo or one of the Zotac boxes throw ubuntu and xbmc on it and call it a day. (alternatively you could also pickup a last gen AppleTV and install boxee/xbmc on it via thumbdrive)

Just because your using a oversized/overpowered device to run xbmc, does not mean that xbmc is not the right tool for the job :P

Except that if you follow that logic the system makes no sense.. clearly they believe that *most* of the names they have are real valid names, or theres no point in the system existing *at all*

Lets see 19.99 retail wow box Check
Free email account with one of the myriad providers.. check
Gamecards at any online or brick and mortar retailer check
OR
Disposable prepaid "gift card" from just about anywhere Check

BTW you also have never been required to have name on account match name on credit card for wow.. and the only way to actually PROVE that you are you would require not credit card matching but rather submitting your government issued ID card #.. which even blizzard is not likely to try to do.

Completely false assumption, that is commonly made re internet behavior..

Anonymity by itself does *not* make people any more or less likely to post something.. its the person in question complete and utter lack of people skills.. IE yes they would say that sitting in church with mom.

Better still though is this scenario:

You refuse to participate in the "realid" forums.. but you have 30~ doppelgangers playing wow who all SHARE your real name..

So now some random basement dweller goes on a tirade about how much he or she wants to

Next day at work, your boss lets you know that you services are no longer required, and when you search for a new job, you cannot get past the "reference check" phase due to the extensive use of "googling real names" that is part of the recruitment process these days.

Now that we have that out of the way.. consider the following..

You have *never* had to have a REAL name to make a battle.net account , nor use a credit card for the account.. so for the low low price of buying wow retail box version @19.99$ you too can go on a posting spree in persona.

Now consider that due to the overlap in "real names" there is no real "community" around these realid names in terms of forums anyhow, since there are going to be duplicates for just about everyone..

What exactly does this system buy us? nothing.. what does it buy blizzard? A huge can of legal issues, and less stress on forum servers (at the start) go team?

The point is that while it would allow them to isolate whether the *drive* itself in the macbook air is somehow immune to the issue, or if its something to do with the operating system/file system preventing the issue to occur.

IE if You do the tests in OS X, rezero the drive install windows xp/vista run them again (in NTFS on the mac's ssd), then finally install windows 7 also to a clean drive under NTFS and run the tests a final time (this last test would have trim enabled of course)

Chances are that what is happening is that the OS X has an artificial limit in speed (for whatever reason) masking the problem.. If that theory is correct then installing windows 7 to a freshly zero'd drive on the air, should result in significantly faster initial performance than measured under OS X, with a dropoff to roughly the levels measured under OS X over time.