Daniel14

Motorola?

> WEP is completely broken. Even if you do everything right, it's trivial fot an attacker yo access a WEP-protected network.

Can you elaborate on this? I'm genuinly curious.

The problem with Android being open source is that Google hasn't really got much control over what happens with it. Everyone can tweak it for the better or worse, and lately its mostly been for the worse.

However, if you don't want to root or get a nexus, I've found that simply installing one of the many launchers available for free mostly does the trick of cleaning up your phone (touchwiz, blur etc get removed and you can hide apps completely if you like). Also, this seems worst in the US, where the carrier situation is -forgive me- completely fucked up. I haven't had issues anywhere similar with bloatware here in europe.

I can only hope, but if capitalism works and people don't like scins and crapware on their phone, the cunts in charge right now will eventually realize it's smarter to leave Android as it is because more people will buy it. I'm still waiting though.

You could say that about almost anything. "How can you justify commenting on HN, when the money earned in the equivalent amount of time wasted here could save n Nigerians from starvation?" You can't, not really. But Jonathan's card still is one of the more ethical ways of spending money, so I'm all for it.

Android pays for itself, in lots of different ways, among them and by far most importantly: Being the default search provider on 550k additional phones/day. That's worth a billion $ to Google any day.

I already feel rather uncomfortable about all the information apps can gather about me without me ever having to do anything. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't it be very easy to restrict that, and only let my friends have access to <i>my</i> personal data? I added my friends, I don't mind them having access to my data, including my email address. But apps my friends use are a very different matter.

From the same quote: "Google Contacts syncs with Orkut, so users can export their Orkut friends’ email addresses from Google Contacts", so it's technically wrong that Google didn't let you export your friend's mail addresses anymore. They just made it more difficult, ie didn't bundle it with the Orkut csv file people used to import everything into facebook.

And I think that's actually Google's point: They feel Facebook should offer reciprocity; if people can switch from Google to fb easily, fb should be willing to provide the same feature to their users.

Personally, I also don't agree with your point: I doubt the option to export your friends' email addresses in a useful file format would get abused, as it's only your friends that have access to it. You willingly added them, and thus gave them access to your email address. If you voluntarily tell a friend your email address, shouldn't he be able to remember it regardless of what social network he currently uses?

Well, if you care about a locked bootloader and similar restrictions (99% don't), but didn't put the effort into googling your phone to find out about them, you can always root your phone and put on the the newest version - If you didn't get a Nexus in the first place, that is. Also, you'd have to live in the US for it to matter, the vast majority of carriers actually deliver Android updates pretty timely.

I agree Android isn't anywhere near a perfect linux dream of open hard- and software, but it isn't as awful as you depict it either imho.

Of course, but what I think the author meant to say, was that owning those patents should have been worth more than $4.5 billion to Google, as they are crucial to Android's success.

And deplorably, I think he's right.

I agree with most of your points - However, I think the author's main complaint was that if you do anything somehow objectionable on any Google service, then all of them get blocked. I don't see why that's the case, but as long as it continues, his point is valid - Facebook won't also ban your email for posting nudity. They can only smash one egg, not your entire internet basket.

I feel like the author already knows the answer to this problem: "you either keep your content clean, or host [it] elsewhere." I agree there could be border-line issues with the legal system, but that mostly is about Google not getting sued, and having to comply with the law they operate in. (Still, Google should have a hotline.)

The author listed almost every complaint people have against Google since its founding, but the main point remains this: Google is an extremely successful company, and if you choose to use the best products, those are often owned by Google (Chrome, Google Search, Gmail etc.). However, you don't have to. If you don't like what Google does, there's always an alternative you can easily switch to - and that, imho, is the big distinction between Google and a monopoly.

(I might have to add that I see a lot of the author's sentiments being pretty wide-spread, at least here in Europe Google is considered a pretty evil, privacy-invading company they don't want to give any more personal information.)