And back to mobiles

[Tamsyn Michael]

Yeah, I really like HTC phones.  Thought about trying Cyanogenmod on your Samsung?  A good clean slate.

On 11/03/2013 8:02 PM, "Ken" <k...@waggies.net> wrote:

Hey, I have a breadmaker, and use it regularly.
I like sandwiches, and I don't like shop bread.
(But I admit many breadmakers languish in cupboards.)

I'm having a bit of my time taken up 'adapting' to my new Samsung Galaxy S phone.
Amazing how some 'features' can raise the blood pressure.
Who would invent a predictive text system that mostly swaps one's perfectly good words for totally different ones?
And why wouldn't an up-market Android phone come with swype built in, instead of a bad soft keyboard.  Don't they know that commas are used as much as full stops?

My conclusion:  HTC do a better human interface than Samsung.
Grumble grumble. 

Ken.

On 11 March 2013 19:53, Andrew Helgeson <cyber...@gmail.com> wrote:

The "highlights" were-

Seeing that wankers AR-15 fall apart on him.

"$2000 for the printer, $8000 for the ink".

"They'll be like bread makers, we'll all buy them and never use them"

Andrew

On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 7:47 PM, Tamsyn Michael <tamsyn.j...@gmail.com> wrote:

Yeah, it was a little disappointing.  The ad looked promising, but they didn't go beyond the headlines.

On 11/03/2013 7:34 PM, "Ken" <k...@waggies.net> wrote:

Good, cos I missed it.
By the time I googled to find out what "The Project" is, turned on the TV, I was in time to see a bunch of ads.

Ken.

On 11 March 2013 19:26, Andrew Helgeson <cyber...@gmail.com> wrote:

What a load of shit that was...

Andrew

On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 7:23 PM, Tamsyn Michael <tamsyn.j...@gmail.com> wrote:

On now.

On 11/03/2013 6:32 PM, "Tamsyn Michael" <tamsyn.j...@gmail.com> wrote:

As above.  Interesting to see the mainstream Aussie take.  Watching now.

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[Ken]

And blow the warranty 5 minutes after I've bought it?  No thanks.
I'm not into rooting my phone.  Life is too short to worry about bugs from hackers, and continually manually updating.
The XDA forums on the various ROMs are full of lists of things that don't work, bugs, bugs fixed etc etc.
That said, a guy at work ran cyanogen happily until his phone got the jellybean update.

Ken.

[Thomas Sprinkmeier]

On 11/03/13 20:26, Ken wrote:
> And blow the warranty 5 minutes after I've bought it? No thanks.
> I'm not into rooting my phone. Life is too short to worry about bugs from
> hackers, and continually manually updating.

Much better to go with the Telco's software.
No problems about updates ('cos there usually aren't any) or bugs
('cos they're don't exist, don't affect you and/or can't be fixed
anyway :-)

I have 2 phones, one cyanogen one vanilla (because I didn't want to
risk bricking a phone at the start of a 2yr contract)
Personally I much prefer Cyanogen; no nu-installable shovelware, and
stability is about equal (YMMV of course).

It'd be nice if there was a low-risk way to try cyanogen, sorta like
booting a PC into $DISTRO from DVD.



Thomas

[Ken]

I'm in the middle ground, Thomas.
I have a non-telco phone.  So it doesn't have any of the Optus crap on it that was on my HTC one X.  (My wife inherits that.)
I don't know how updates will go, but as soon as I got the phone set up, it loaded a firmware update from Samsung.  So it will probably be OK for the updates that matter.
Ken.

[Dale H]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Tue, 12 Mar 2013 09:26:28 +1030
Ken <k...@waggies.net> wrote:

> I'm in the middle ground, Thomas.
> I have a non-telco phone. So it doesn't have any of the Optus crap on it
> that was on my HTC one X. (My wife inherits that.)
> I don't know how updates will go, but as soon as I got the phone set up, it
> loaded a firmware update from Samsung. So it will probably be OK for the
> updates that matter.
> Ken.
>

Hi All

I have a Samsung Galaxy SIII LTE and I was so happy to help bug test
the Cyanogen rom for it, it will never make it into CyanogenMod site
unless someone willing to maintain it. It has a couple quirks but what
the hey they very minor in the big scheme of things.

I am a big Cyanogen fan and have been for a long time, it is a great
alternative firmware if you like me and hate the bloatware that is
include with most telco phones theses days and also not to forget the
possibility of spyware/trackware embedded into the telco provided rom.

I guess each to there own, and this just my 2 cents worth

- --
Best Regards
Dale

MB: 0488 932 022
WWW: http://dale.id.au/
Blog: http://blog.dale.id.au/
PGP/GPG Key ID: 0x58BD7FCE
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[Ken]

At the risk of continuing a thread that isn't really about hacking per se, but hey, we are geeks who own phones, right?

Dale, I take your point about spyware.
I'm resigned to Google and Samsung taking everything but my first born, via the phone.
At least Optus aren't now, but I could live with that too.

Reality is, the phone software has all got so complex that we really don't know what secrets are being squirted up.
And... with Google at least, unless you agree to ALL their permissions, you lose a lot of functionality (eg navigation).

What I do take exception to, is apps which are effectively spyware.
Why would an application that turns on and off the flash LED to give a very useful torch, need to read contacts, accounts details, phone details, have full network communications etc?
I loaded one which doesn't ask for any of those, but very popular flashlight apps do seek all those permissions, and one has over 1M downloads.
It is why I haven't yet loaded a swype app.  All the ones I looked at want to access everything on my phone (or so it seems).

Ken.

[Ryan Leach]

Swype does NEED a few perms like reading contacts for auto complete names, and some of them sound hideous, but most input software will have them because as far as android is concerned an input app is practically a key logger...

[Thomas Sprinkmeier]

On 12 March 2013 10:32, Ken <k...@waggies.net> wrote:

At the risk of continuing a thread that isn't really about hacking per se, but hey, we are geeks who own phones, right?

Dale, I take your point about spyware.
I'm resigned to Google and Samsung taking everything but my first born, via the phone.
At least Optus aren't now, but I could live with that too.

Reality is, the phone software has all got so complex that we really don't know what secrets are being squirted up.
And... with Google at least, unless you agree to ALL their permissions, you lose a lot of functionality (eg navigation).

What I do take exception to, is apps which are effectively spyware.
Why would an application that turns on and off the flash LED to give a very useful torch, need to read contacts, accounts details, phone details, have full network communications etc?

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
    Hanlon's razor

It might be as simple as a developer cut-and-pasting a sample app that asks for all those permissions.

"Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice."
"Sufficiently advanced malice is indistinguishable from incompetence."
    me

or there might be some dark evil plot afoot...

Most 'free' apps need "full network access" to download adds, but I agree that a flashlight app that needs to read contacts is .... interesting.

Thomas

--
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

[Dale H]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Tue, 12 Mar 2013 10:32:23 +1030
Ken <k...@waggies.net> wrote:

> At the risk of continuing a thread that isn't really about hacking per se,
> but hey, we are geeks who own phones, right?
>
> Dale, I take your point about spyware.
> I'm resigned to Google and Samsung taking everything but my first born, via
> the phone.
> At least Optus aren't now, but I could live with that too.
>
> Reality is, the phone software has all got so complex that we really don't
> know what secrets are being squirted up.
> And... with Google at least, unless you agree to ALL their permissions, you
> lose a lot of functionality (eg navigation).
>
> What I do take exception to, is apps which are effectively spyware.
> Why would an application that turns on and off the flash LED to give a very
> useful torch, need to read contacts, accounts details, phone details, have
> full network communications etc?
> I loaded one which doesn't ask for any of those, but very popular
> flashlight apps do seek all those permissions, and one has over 1M
> downloads.
> It is why I haven't yet loaded a swype app. All the ones I looked at want
> to access everything on my phone (or so it seems).
>
> Ken.
>

That is an interesting one, why would a flash light need permissions
for contacts. tongue in cheek perhaps it for morse coding your friend
down the road.

yes I must admit there is some apps out there that need the strangest
permissions, most them I avoid if can.

Also another good place to find apps is http://f-droid.org/ it a FOSS
Android repository, it worth checking out if your wanting to keep away
Google a bit more.

- --
Best Regards
Dale

MB: 0488 932 022
WWW: http://dale.id.au/
Blog: http://blog.dale.id.au/
PGP/GPG Key ID: 0x58BD7FCE
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[Damien P]

On Tuesday, March 12, 2013 10:32:23 AM UTC+10:30, Ken wrote:

Why would an application that turns on and off the flash LED to give a very useful torch, need to read contacts, accounts details, phone details, have full network communications etc?

I suspect it fills a hole in their business model...

1. Make simple but useful application
2. ?
3. Profit

[Andrew Helgeson]

how about it being part of the API and a lazzy programmer doing "cut and paste" development.

Andrew

[Ken]

I'm a goose.
Last night I talked to a friend with a Samsung Galaxy S3.
It does have swype built in.
1. Enable Samsung  keyboard.  (Wasn't the default.)
2. Turn on slide feature.

I'd downloaded an alternate keyboard which was friendlier, but of course that too didn't give swype.

So I don't need to go looking for a spyware-free swype app.
Phew.

-Just thought I'd make the admission, and set the record straight.

Ken.