I see your Android slam and raise you a truth

I have a friend that is a die hard Apple guy.  He loves their products.  He has one of everything and champions them to no end.   I never used any of their products until I got an iPhone.  I spent two years with it and liked it a lot,  I had the 3G and up until the Evo launched it was the best phone on the market (well platform since the #Gs was marginally better than the 3G).  I always had problems with the restrictions on the phone,   but more and more I began to hate their censorship of content.  He and I of course go back and forth busting balls about which is the better system,  Android and the Evo or iOS and the iPhone.

This post is about an article my friend (the mighty Iron Crow) sent me.   On the surface it really makes Android look bad,  almost evil.  But once you pick it apart,  well it becomes pure PR bullshit from the fucked up mind of a fanboy.

Source Link:  http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/08/02/piracy_problems_undermine_androids_growth_against_iphone.html

According to a report by Jay Yarow of Silicon Alley Insider, a developer of one of Android’s top ten apps is seeing 97 percent of players in Asia using an illegal copy, 70 percent in Europe, and 43 percent in North America.

These figures are very general,  so attacking them is tough.  I will say that PC piracy stats could rival this.  You know the PC (Personal Computer not just Windows) where you can go to a torrent site and download pirated apps.  Microsoft and Apple do not get blamed for piracy on their systems,  but let’s blame Google for piracy on their system.

Does Apple’s App Store system help prevent piracy?  Yes.   But like all things it comes at a cost.  To build an app for the iOS you need a Mac that meets some minimum specs,  you need to use their approved development system, and to distribute the application you have to submit it to Apple, pay them to put it in their store, and hope it sells.

To develop for Android you need a free SDK that is available for Mac, Windows and Linux.  To distribute the app you need an email address, website,  or some other method of getting a single file to an Android device.  This is very similar to the PC method of app development.  You can pay to have the app on the Android Market but that is  your decision.  If you want to attack Android for the way it does business you need to attack the PC method as well.

Piracy largely prevented mobile software from ever being viable prior to Apple’s App Store.

Tell that to the Palm, WinMo, and various Java developers.  Was it a batshit crazy 10 different fart apps world?  No.  I think plenty of people made plenty of money off mobile apps.  Don’t fucking rewrite history.  Apple made things more user friendly,  but most study’s say indy developers are barely if ever breaking even.  It is probably easier to do on Android though because you can control your costs for distribution.

In addition to its limited reach globally, Google’s Android Market has also come under assault from top Android developers for allowing widespread copyright infringement, sloppy policies regarding app approval, poor security for users’ data, and allowing developers to collect inappropriate information from users without their consent.

While the Android Market is only available in 13 countries I can distribute my app all over the world (not just 90 markets like Apple).  Sure the market is where most people get their apps,  but if I want to market the same way people market for the PC I can.  Let’s look at it a bit further though.  Most developers in the United States are making English language apps,  so having them be available in non-English speaking countries is of limited value.  Same goes for something that uses Korean or Japanese characters.  There are limiting factors that both sides choose to ignore.

Nothing on my phone can get my information without consent.  I know what areas the application can access on my phone.  It tells me.  I read what it has access to and I decide if I want to install it.  At the point I install it I give consent for it to access the areas it tells me it is going to access.  To my knowledge there is no application that has access to my contacts that does not tell me at the install stage it is going to access them.

The one thing people have pegged is the copyright infringement.  It needs to be handled.  Google needs to clean the market of anything infringing.  It is tough to do,  but start with the app names and go from there.  Chances are Kayne West did not authorize 100 apps for ringtones.  If someone wants to infringe make them do it via a different distribution method.  They are leaving them in there for use in the numbers game.

The part of the article talks about the PDF exploit in the iOS.  Accessing a single file can help you jailbreak your phone, or let someone have access your phone without your knowledge.  Same thing happens on other systems,  I hope Apple fixes it soon,  maybe they have a bumper for it.

So a Priest, a Rabbi, a Muslim Cleric and a Pagan walk into an island…

I watched every episode of LOST.  I came in late,  I had to watch season one and two on DVD,  and since then I have watched it real time.  If I missed an episode I watched it the next day online.  Last night I watched the last 105 minutes of the show.  For those wondering, those 105 minutes were surrounded by 45 minutes of commercials.  I did like the Target commercial.. the first time,  the second time I wanted to cock punch it.

I thought it weird that they announced the extra time a few months back.  I think I read that the producers were happy that ABC gave them an extra 30 minutes to wrap things up.  By my count a normal one hour drama runs for about 43 minutes,  meaning 17 minutes of commercial breaks per hour long show.  So the producers got some extra time,  but under 20 minutes,  in return, we got excessive commercials.

What did that extra time buy for me?  Not much.

LOST started out as a mystery,  and most people think it is fine that it ended a mystery.  Those people cried at the end,  with every sweet little moment that revealed dead characters connections to each other in their past life.  Yeah,  sounds douchey to me too.  I keep reading and hearing comments such as “If you did not cry you did not get it”  or “It is what life is really about.”

Fucktards you all!  This is not life,  this is a TV show.  I came closer to crying when BA got shot on the A-Team then I did last night watching LOST.  I have no problem with someone telling me they liked the show,  it was well acted, the dialogue was good and it had some nice moments.  The problem lay in the overall storytelling and the comments made by the shows creators.

LOST started out as a great Sci-fi mystery.  While not quite reality it was grounded in reality it allowed for speculation as to what was happening.  I was one of the people that said “It is purgatory,  they are dead and they are making their choices for the afterlife.”  The writers and creators discounted that theory.   When they said it was not purgatory I shifted to watching it with the belief that while there was a religious and spiritual element,  the story itself was more straightforward.

Last night the writers farted in my general direction by bending this little comment and making the  flash sideways purgatory.  Jesus.. err Christian Shepard, told us all about it.  That the people in the church were all dead, some of them died before Jack,  some of them after.  They all met there though,   to move on together, because what happened on the island was meaningful to them,  the island was the only thing that mattered.

So how did the creators lie?  The island was not purgatory,   the island was a real place,  what happened there was the reality of the characters,  the flash sideways was purgatory and not a literal world. From the LOST website on ABC:

A flash sideways is not a flashback, flash-forward or an alternate timeline. It posits what would have happened if Oceanic flight 815 didn’t crash on the island but instead landed in Los Angeles.

Interesting.  They said it is what would happen if the flight did not crash.  So this spiritual world was somehow effected by the bomb going off?

In this article we find out that season six  is:

…about the implications, the aftermath, and the causality of trying to change the past. But the idea of continuing to do paradoxical storytelling is not what we’re interested in this year.

This means the bomb went off and season 6 is about the consequence of setting off that bomb.  If the bomb went off everyone on the island died at that moment,  which would explain the landing in LA storyline.  It does not explain anything else.

Let’s say seasons one through five show what  really happened on the island.  Time travel,  hatches, and smoke monsters.  Season six’s island does not exist.  Those characters are dead from the “real world”.  The season six island is as much of a purgatory as the safe landing world.  This means that early on,  when the creators said it was not purgatory they were being honest, but the only way for them to get to the place they wanted to be was to turn it into one.

If I had watched the show with never having seen or read an interview with the creative talent behind the show I would have had a different outlook on the show,   however I did see and read interviews.  There was a LOST mania and you could not escape it if you were mildly interested in the show.

The final season dumped it’s sci-fi world and took on a philosophical and religious one.  I cannot view this season as anything other than two different takes on life after death.  One of them about resurrection and redemption and one of them about good verses evil.

The island in the spiritual world appears to have been the Garden of Eden in some form.  While the story of Cain and Abel is there in Smokey and Jacob,  they twisted it and simplified it.  Smokey was not doomed to wander the Earth for eternity,  but instead to only wander the island, the one place he despised.  He wanted to leave,  but was not able to,  his punishment for killing his mother.  There is a failure here,  in that he was released from the island in the end.  His death was a release from his prison,  which is why in the Bible the whole “visited upon them seven times” thing came in to effect.  Congrats Jack and crew,  you released the monster from his prison.

Anyways,  they are all dead.  The show is over.  Fade to black.  Shake the snow globe.  Have BJ Hunnicutt spell out “goodbye”.

Raleigh Music Fail

It is reported that Raleigh Downtown Live is not happening this year (http://www.newraleigh.com/articles/archive/raleigh-downtown-live-not-happening-in-summer-2010/) .  I had been wondering what was going on, and figured they had canceled it because of the new amphitheater downtown and as it turns out I was right.

For those that do not know what Downtown live was, it was a free concert series in Moore Square.  It featured 1-2 name bands (usually from the 90′s or earlier) along with regional and lesser known bands.  It was normally pop rock that appealed to a few generations.  It was always popular so much that last year just walking around became impossible.  I only went for about 10 minutes of a Joan Jett show before we decided to say “fuck this” and went for drinks at Havana.

I always had a love hate relationship with the event.  I liked that it was free.  The security was pretty good, in that I never saw anything major go down and I never saw security being assholes.  The event was sponsored by Budweiser so you could drink,  although it was pricey at something like $8 for a 12oz beer.  I usually liked a few of the bands each year,  they were one hit (or two hit) wonders but it was fun.

The hate came when I tried to take my dSLR in for a show.  I wanted to snap some pictures of the Spin Doctors (I think).  I was told I could not bring it in.  They would not allow cameras with a  removable lens.  Point and shoot was fine.  I took my camera back to the car,  and we went in.  I did research and others had the same problem.  The story went that artists did not want professionals (because only professionals have SLRs) taking pictures and selling them on the Internet.  Let me tell you how many times I have heard of the black market pictures of one hit wonders outselling the legal pictures of one hit wonders on E-Bay.  I fired off an email to the sponsors and decided I would not attend the event anymore.

I think the Joan Jett show was the only one I went to after the camera issue (friends were going and my resolve was weakening).  That show was so full that I was miserable, as were most of the people I was with.  The summer in NC is not a time that you want to be jammed into a park with people.  The sweat and smell factor begin to really suck.

When I heard that they were putting in the new amphitheater I was excited.  I figured in between big name bands they would open it up to events like this.  Budweiser would still sponsor it,  Deep South Promotions would book and promote it,  it would be great.  But then evil, in the form of Live Nation, entered my field of vision.

The city built the theater and in my opinion handed it to Live Nation.  Of the events they have planned,  the cheapest ticket I have found (with fees), is $31.50.  I am sure the shows I saw will draw people.  I guess people still like the Backstreet Boys.  Teegan and Sara have an audience.  There is some metal and even a Legalize It event with Cypress Hill.  Yawn.

My issue is this,  unless they have a band I really want to see why would I go?  Parking is probably going to suck.  There is a parking deck next door but I am guessing it will cost money and getting out of packed parking decks suck worse then flat lots.  I am paying a ticket agency I don’t like (Ticketmaster) and a promoter I don’t like (Live Nation) which just merged into a bigger company I don’t like.  I am not a fan of Deep South (Local to NC) but they are far less evil in my book.  If I want to deal with Ticketmaster/Live Nation I will drive the 5 minutes to Walnut Creek Amphitheater for free parking and the ability to tailgate.

If the event were free, I would go check it out.  I would buy some food from the vendors, maybe a beer or two.  I might pay for parking or go someplace for dinner and then take the R line.  It would draw me downtown, which is the whole idea of the venue in the first place.  $30 for a band I have not heard of does not do that, did I mention the $30 ticket was for a band named O.A.R.  who had a song peak at 36 on the billboard chart 2 years ago.  If you want the A list talent like Tegan and Sara you have to pay $36 for the cheap seats, to be fair that $36 also gets you Paramore.  That will be of great help for Downtown,  the kids can see that show and then whip out the fake IDs to get into the bars afterward.

For me it comes down to the city fucking over the people.  They took away a free concert series,  that while flawed, was FREE.  I went to it, never paid for parking, never was forced to buy anything and for a few years had a good time.  The city then had some free public land, took some tax money,  built an amphitheater and handed it to the worlds largest concert company.  They say that in 5 years the venue will be paid for.  They promised acts like you might see at the Durham Performing Arts Center,   but so far nothing has come close to the first rate talent DPAC lined up.  Seems that the top tier acts are still 10 miles from downtown at

Counting Jobs

On the 440 beltline around Raleigh,  on about mile stretch from Yonkers Road to New Bern Ave, there are by my count 3 billboards advertising jobs for the Census.  Two of these billboards face the same way and are within a quarter mile,  if I get a chance I will take a picture of it this weekend.

This demonstrates two things to me.  The $45 (probably more) that each citizen is charged for the Census is not being spent well and that people in need of jobs and on unemployment need to step up.  There is not a reason in the world these two things should not be tied together.

The government feels it needs to keep extending unemployment benefits.  I will not get into the insanity of those extensions except to say that anyone accepting them should be drafted into the Census.  They don’t have to do it,  but if they want to get paid, they will.  I would guess that this would cut down on the need for these billboards and give people a break from job hunting and watching The Wendy Williams show,  hell they might learn something or stumble across a job they might not have known about.

To me the advertising for census jobs is a useless expense when so many people are out of jobs.  I will not say it is as big of a waste as the millions of dollars worth of signs telling us that a project is funded by TARP money,  but it is close.

Wicky, wicky Wild West

Starbucks is somehow in the center of the gun debate,  and they don’t want to be.  It is refreshing to see a company say “leave us the fuck alone” instead of bowing to one side of an issue or another.  This time the issue is the ability to carry a gun in plain sight.

Currently it is legal in most states,  in North Carolina only Cary and Chapel Hill have restrictions on this.  This is not surprising to me as these places like to flex their muscles, and by that I mean suck the fun and freedom out of everything.  I really fucking hate those places and avoid them at all costs.  I went to Cary last year and I am still recovering from that.

I am not a gun nut.  I do not own a gun and have no plans to ever own one.  I feel that the only reason to have a handgun is if you want to knock over a liquor store or shoot someone.  This does not mean I think they should be made illegal,  people like them,  you can technically hunt with them and they give you street cred.

Larger arms I understand,  when I was looking at something for home defense I thought about getting a shotgun modified for home defense (and for taking to Transmitter sites in the middle of the night).  In the end I decided I did not need it.  I 100% support people hunting,  I am not a hunter but support peoples right to provide revenue to the state in the form of licenses to go out and kill Bambi.  Bambi by the way is mighty tastey.

I am all for people being able to carry their penis replacements in the open in public.  The people that have licenses, are mentally stable and respect the gun laws are the ones you are going to see carrying them.  Most people about to commit a crime are not going to have a gun in a holster or visible,  it kind of takes the surprise out of the moment for the people you are going to rob or kill.

The only reason I oppose getting rid of the open carry law is because it would not do anything.  People will go out and get concealed weapons permits.  Guns will still be in the hands of people that use them to commit crimes.  I really see no positive to this, instead I see the waste.  If the people fighting these laws spent their time doing useful things (like writing blogs read by a dozen people) they might get something done with real meaning.