Talk about Android's fragmentation, not only consumers have different versions of modified Android OS being slapped to them by smartphone makers and carriers, now you have few different App Stores or Market place to choose from with different sets of rules. With Amazon's App Store, you could possibly have the same application say "Angry Bird" for example which could be selling at $4.99 at Android's own Marketplace, while Amazon's might be offering a discount of $0.99. This will ensure a bloody price war not only for smartphone makers, but also the same application as well. Is like having your right hand slapping your left. The biggest departure from the mobile app stores we’ve grown accustomed to involves pricing. Unlike Apple’s App Store and Android Market, where developers can set their price to whatever they’d like, Amazon retains full control over how it wants to price your application. The setup is a bit confusing: upon submitting your application, you can set a ‘List Price’, which is the price you’d normally sell it at. Amazon will use a variety of market factors to determine what price it wants to use, and you get a 70% cut of the proceeds of each sale (which is the industry standard). In the event that Amazon steeply discounts your application, or offers it for free, you’re guaranteed to get 20% of the List Price. |
Android reminds me of the Windows Mobile domination throughout the '90s. Multiple carriers, lots of different phone manufacturers, one OS with so many different flavors. End result is End Users get screwed by low quality devices, manufacturers get screwed by forcing themselves to drive the profit margin down and developers get screwed by having to handle their apps to different flavor of the same OS. Say what you will about the iPhone/AT&T deal, it’s clear that Apple is in control there. And say what you will about Apple — at least they’re not the carriers. With Android, it’s a different story. That’s why the “open” argument is such a bullshit red herring. Android is so open that it gives the carriers (and now apparently the government) freedom to screw us — openly. |
While the US complains about the inhumane treatment of prisoners of other countries and vilified countries such as Malaysia's Internal Security Act (ISA) for detention without trial, look what are they doing now. Is like the pot calling the kettle black. Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old U.S. Army Private accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, has never been convicted of that crime, nor of any other crime. Despite that, he has been detained at the U.S. Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia for five months -- and for two months before that in a military jail in Kuwait -- under conditions that constitute cruel and inhumane treatment and, by the standards of many nations, even torture. Interviews with several people directly familiar with the conditions of Manning's detention, ultimately including a Quantico brig official (Lt. Brian Villiard) who confirmed much of what they conveyed, establishes that the accused leaker is subjected to detention conditions likely to create long-term psychological injuries. |
Not only is the OS fragmented across different platforms, but also the hardware. Different manufacturers will have different screen sizes and not to mention the buttons are placed differently.
Here you have the US Secretary of State preaching about the ideas of freedom of speech and the right to all information and at the same time the same principle does not applies to WikiLeak where not only they are trying to censure him but applying pressure to companies like PayPal and Amazon to cut them out.
Worst of all some politicians even call for hunting Assange down like a terrorist and indirectly call for his assassination. And all these words comes from those hypocrites who not only preaches the value of democracy but basically asserting force to other countries to have the same values.
On their own, new technologies do not take sides in the
struggle for freedom and progress. But the United States does. We stand for a
single internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas. And
we recognize that the world's information infrastructure will become what we
and others make of it.
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This challenge may be new, but our responsibility to help
ensure the free exchange of ideas goes back to the birth of our republic. The
words of the First Amendment to the Constitution are carved in 50 tons of
Tennessee marble on the front of this building. And every generation of
Americans has worked to protect the values etched in that stone.
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We are reinvigorating the Global Internet Freedom Task
Force as a forum for addressing threats to internet freedom around the world, and
urging U.S. media companies to take a proactive role in challenging foreign
governments' demands for censorship and surveillance. The private sector has a
shared responsibility to help safeguard free expression. And when their
business dealings threaten to undermine this freedom, they need to consider
what's right, not simply the prospect of quick profits.
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Not according to Supreme Court ruling when NYT published a set of "Pentagon Papers" that changed the American's opinion of the Vietnam War. So how could this Wikileaks be any different than NYT? The Espionage Act makes it a crime to interfere with military recruitment or to convey information dealing with national defense. Since its passage in 1917 (Red Scare, anyone?), the law has been challenged a number of times in the courts, most notably with regards to the Pentagon Papers when the Supreme Court ruled that The New York Times was within its rights to publish the leaked information. "Conveying" government secrets is a crime; "publishing" them is not. It is protected by the First Amendment, and for the government to intervene to prevent that from happening is unconstitutional. |
Do they even mean what they preach? The United States is pleased to announce that it will host UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day event in 2011, from May 1 - May 3 in Washington, D.C. UNESCO is the only UN agency with the mandate to promote freedom of expression and its corollary, freedom of the press. Read more at www.state.gov |
Becareful when you are in Sweden. If you are having sex without wearing a condom, you are a rapist Apparently having consensual sex in Sweden without a condom is punishable by a term of imprisonment of a minimum of two years for rape. That is the basis for a reinstitution of rape charges against WikiLeaks figurehead Julian Assange that is destined to make Sweden and its justice system the laughing stock of the world and dramatically damage its reputation as a model of modernity. |
No doubt Google is going to launch a new netbook running on Chrome OS, but the question is why? Why bother with Chrome OS when they can pour their resources into Android for the tablet form factor.
Google is slowly becoming the Microsoft of the past. A company too big and is becoming Jack of all trades, Master of none. Look at Google's current product lines such as Wave and Buzz, both overlapping in functionality trying to compete with establish social network platform such as facebook and twitter and they fail miserably.
Google today is just trying to compete with other players rather than innovating new ideas.
What is your take on this? Is Julian Assange a "High Tech Terrorist" as depicted by Sen. Mitch McConnell and should be "hunted down like a Taliban" according to "well informed" Sarah Palin or is he the defender of Human Right abuse and someone who fights for the right to the freedom of information?
You decide. Without someone like him, government and big corporates will operate without transparency and most probably Kenyan government will still have the same leadership that continue massacring its innocence citizens. It is dispiriting and
upsetting for anyone who cares about the American tradition of a free
press to see Eric Holder, Hillary Clinton and Robert Gibbs turn into
H.R. Haldeman, John Erlichman and John Dean. We can only pray that we
won't soon be hit with secret White House tapes of Obama drinking scotch
and slurring his words while calling Assange bad names. The truly scandalous and shocking
response to the Wikileaks documents has been that of other journalists,
who make the Obama Administration sound like the ACLU. |
The
true importance of Wikileaks -- and the key to understanding the
motivations and behavior of its founder -- lies not in the contents of
the latest document dump but in the technology that made it possible,
which has already shown itself to be a potent weapon to undermine
official lies and defend human rights. Since 1997, Assange has devoted a
great deal of his time to inventing encryption systems that make it
possible for human rights workers and others to protect and upload
sensitive data. The importance of Assange's efforts to human rights
workers in the field were recognized last year by Amnesty International,
which gave him its Media Award for the Wikileaks investigation The
Cry of Blood - Extra Judicial Killings and Disappearances, which
documented the killing and disappearance of 500 young men in Kenya by
the police, with the apparent connivance of the country's political
leadership. |
In a memorandum entitled "Transparency and Open Government" addressed to the heads of Federal departments and agencies and posted on WhiteHouse.gov, President Obama instructed that "Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing." The Administration would be wise to heed his words -- and to remember how badly the vindictive prosecution of Daniel Ellsberg ended for the Nixon Administration. And American reporters, Pulitzer Prizes and all, should be ashamed for joining in the outraged chorus that defends a burgeoning secret world whose existence is a threat to democracy. |
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