I'm sick to death of Android - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/perlow/im-sick-to-death-of-android/20242 <comment><USER2> I had an Android phone for roughly a year, after having a not-smart flip-phone for about 7 years! And even though I found real value in my old phone for 7 years, I tossed the Android for an iPhone 4S almost as soon as the new iPhone came out.

When I first bought the Android phone (HTC Hero) I thought it was amazing. It really had some neat features, and there were things the iPhone couldn't do (like totally change the home screen manager).

But it was never updated. Not once. It took just months to start seeing apps in the Android Market that only worked with newer OS versions.

I'd also discovered battery issues; it was _abundantly_ clear that the carrier, Sprint, had the phone pre-loaded with apps ( _in the ROM_ so they _could not be removed_ ). Not only did ALL of these stupid things auto-start when the phone was powered on, but they were apparently set up to _start themselves_ every hour or so because even with an app-killer I'd still see this junk back in memory sooner or later.

Say what you will about Apple, but they keep the crap off your phone. Carriers can't put a _damn_ thing on there that you don't want. I've also _already_ received 2 OS updates from Apple, which is 2 more updates than I ever received with Android.

I also realized that even though Apple doesn't let you customize as much, their UI is also _not broken_ the way Android's is. For instance, some of the default HTC Sense UI did really stupid things in my opinion. Sure I was able to "fix" problems by downloading replacement keyboards, etc. but with iOS I don't even feel the _need_ for that because Apple's UI is by default more sensible.

<comment><USER3> I haven't owned an iPhone, so I've kept myself content by keeping CyanogenMod ROMs on my phones just to keep them updated.

I do think Apple's iron grip on certain parts of the OS is a problem though. For example, I really dislike the iOS virtual keyboard. All caps all the time? Really? I love that in Android there are dozens of replacement keyboards I can use if I want. Unfortunately, I don't think Apple will ever loosen it's grip and that's the biggest thing that keeps me away from the platform.

<comment><USER4> What do you mean by 'all caps all the time'?

<comment><USER5> > What do you mean by 'all caps all the time'?

I think (he|she)'s referring to the displayed case of the graphemes on the US iPhone's on-screen keyboard; that is, all letters are always displayed in upper-case, regardless of the state of the ``shift'' key.

<comment><USER4> Fair enough.

I guess the trade off is against having a massive visual change every time you tap shift that could draw your eye away from the cursor position in the middle of typing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The main benefit of Android, in my opinion, is the large selection of hardware. I like hardware keyboards, for example, and so I at least have some choice if I want it (unlike Apple).

However, that diversity in hardware is also the biggest problem with the platform. Handset manufacturers seem to look at a device as a "sell and forget" sort of item. They make it, sell it, and then move on to the next project.

It's too expensive, in their minds, to support a handset that they've already sold. They make money by selling more handsets, not by putting large amounts of effort into supporting and updating old hardware from which there is no revenue stream.

Apple, on the other hand, actually has a significant revenue stream from existing hardware through the sales of apps, music, and books. So, by providing updates for older versions of the hardware they are improving their ability to collect additional revenue. For example, when they added in-app payments, those APIs were available to all existing iPhone users, not just the newest users and thus were able to extract more profits from those existing users.

In the Android world, a manufacturer only makes money from the original sale. So, it seems that in order for Google to encourage on-going support, they should:

1\. Participate in a revenue sharing program from app sales from the manufacturers phones that are running the most current release of the OS.

2\. Improve the situation with drivers the large variety of hardware. If the Google distribution supported a large amount of hardware (CPUs, GPUs, sensors, etc) "out of the box", perhaps it would be easier for manufacturers to get the OS running on their devices and thus take less time to get updates to market. Or perhaps I'm being naive and there's something else that's holding up updates other than technical issues with drivers/hardware compatibility.

<comment><USER6> " _Or perhaps I'm being naive and there's something else that's holding up updates other than technical issues with drivers/hardware compatibility._ "

In the United States at least, mobile firmware updates are subject to the approval of mobile carriers. Most phones that are released in both the United States and Europe are updated in the latter region before the former. American carriers are also a primary reason why most phones do not run stock Android [1].

Since some revenue sharing is already in place [2], and carriers make money regardless of what Android version their customers are on, I do not think it is the answer. Unless Google can find a way to reduce the control that carriers have (by weaning Americans off of subsidized phones, or by restricting Android software customization similar to iOS or Windows Phone), I am not sure things will change for the better.

[1]: [http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/10/2697939/motorolas- sanjay-j...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/1/10/2697939/motorolas-sanjay-jha- verizon-and-at-t-dont-want-seven-stock-android)

[2]: [http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-03-25/tech/30041935...](http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-03-25/tech/30041935_1_nexus- one-google-s-android-google-apps)

<comment><USER7> I can't find a reference for what firmware covers. Could it be as small as something like the BIOS on a PC that doesn't have to change between OS updates?

<comment><USER6> I am using firmware to reference the entire mobile operating system, from the kernel and radio interface libraries all the way to the crapware applications installed by mobile carriers.

On Android devices, the best analog to the BIOS would be the bootloader. Since most Android bootloaders are locked to prevent unsigned kernels from running, they are updated during OS updates. See [http://www.extremetech.com/computing/120771-what-is-a- bootlo...](http://www.extremetech.com/computing/120771-what-is-a-bootloader- and-why-does-verizon-want-them-locked) .

<comment><USER7> I was thinking that "subject to the approval of the carriers" was a legal requirement, along the lines of anything that could alter the operation of the radio would have to be approved. The hope being that a thin layer that deals directly with the hardware could be subject to approval, but the rest of the stack could be updated without approval. On further reflection, I suspect it's more of a contractual obligation, and that neither party is all that interested in keeping 6 month old phones up to date. It's a shame, because Android developers can't reasonably expect ICS to be widespread for at least a year or longer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One other thing, if Android/Google execs read this: _for the love of God_ go ahead and admit that there is a need for _tablet apps_. It's the first step in solving the problem - admitting you have a problem. As long as you have the attitude that phone apps work "just as well" on tablets, developers will have the exact same attitude and will not care as much. It also "helps" that you don't really want to emphasize tablet apps in their own categories, so devs have little incentive to build them.

Also, wake up and promote this heavily, before you lose the tablet market _forever_. The iPad advantage is growing by the day, and Windows 8 tablets are coming, too, and even though I'm not a fan of Windows 8, I'm almost certain Microsoft will be able to brag about having more apps for ARM tablets than Android has for tablets at the time, because I'm sure they will be just as aggressive about it as they are with WP7 apps. You simply can't afford to stay on your asses and _let apps come to you_. I know that's Google's attitude towards it right now, because it's obvious from how Andy Rubin and Eric Schmidt speak at events. Change that! Fast!

It's simply inexcusable that you've launched Honeycomb more than a year ago and all you have to show for it is a few hundred tablet apps. The Nexus tablet will not change that if it's only 7", even if it's a popular tablet. I don't think devs will bother to make "tablet apps" for a 7" tablet. They'll just leave the phone apps, which look rather well on 7", and Kindle Fire is an example of that.

So I don't know what you have to do, pay each developer, hold a _$100 million_ contest for Android tablet apps, reject their apps if they don't also make a tablet version within 6 months - whatever. Just do it and be very aggressive about it, because you've lost a lot of time with the Honeycomb launch failure, and now you only have little time before Amazon's ecosystem or Microsoft's ecosystem become bigger than Android on tablets, too. And that's without even mentioning the enormous and growing iPad ecosystem. That's why you need to start being pro-active about tablets apps like _yesterday_.

<comment><USER9> I strongly agree. I've been averse to owning a tablet for a while; generally, I prefer to have a laptop: if I want to do work on it, I can. I've recently tried a different approach: use the laptop (/tablet, now) for all my entertainment needs, and my desktop for work (in order to encourage myself to do more/better work on my desktop).

So, to facilitate that, I grabbed a cheap HP TouchPad, and flashed the (admittedly still reasonably raw) CM9 ICS build onto it. ICS itself is pleasant: the notifications system is great, the multitasking is easily on par with WebOS, and the action bar is a good step forward. The screen wasn't so great, but I knew that going in; most of the "real" Android tablets have beautiful hardware.

The state of the apps, however, is shocking. Even Facebook and Twitter haven't bothered to build tablet apps. I believe Google is somewhat stuck between a rock and a hard place here, however, and it boils down to an argument I've often thought entirely facetious - fragmentation. While they introduced decent APIs in ICS for making apps that work well on both phones and tablets, the _vast_ majority of phone hardware out there is still running Gingerbread or older. Meaning that developers can't use those new ICS APIs, because their apps will no longer run on most user's devices.

I don't know how Google can address that easily, but I'd wager it proves to be a significant impediment to those trying to target Android tablets: either they do the whole thing manually in Gingerbread, or fork their codebase into an ICS version, and a Gingerbread version. Neither is an overly pleasant solution.

(for the record, I ended up drooling over/buying an iPad 3. The apps are much better)

<comment><USER10> They actually have a compatibility package[1] to let apps use the new tablet layout classes on Android versions back to 1.6. Developers have no excuse.

[1] <http://developer.android.com/sdk/compatibility-library.html>

<comment><USER9> I wasn't aware of that; thankyou for the link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> iOS (iPod and iPad2) and Android user (Samsung Exhibit II) here.

The OP brings up many valid concerns, and asks, _as a consumer, how much is one willing to tolerate this?_

My answer: A very long time, as long as Android phones and plans continue to smoke iPhone on price and provide an "almost iOS" experience.

The Exhibit II has Android 2.3.5 installed. T-Mobile charges US$30 per month for 100 minutes of talk, unlimited messaging, and 5GB of 4G data; thereafter it reverts to slower data and 10 cents per minute of talk. I am not a heavy talker, nor do I stream video or audio (and when I do it's usually within wifi range). When I was looking for a plan, I saw a similar offer for a Virgin plan (I think it was US$35). Friends overseas tell me even cheaper Android plans are offered through local carriers.

For owners of Android handsets, using Facebook, Twitter, email, Web, and most mobile news sites is comparable to iOS. I miss Instagram, but it is coming soon to Android, and in the meantime I make do with Path. There are a few other missing Android apps, and the UX is slightly inferior, but considering it's $30/month, it's good enough.

To many people, that's the value of Android. The UX is very similar to iOS, it handles most smartphone functions, and it's a lot cheaper.

<comment><USER12> So what about WP7? Both as a user and as a developer I was completely frustrated with Android, so I went out and got myself a Lumia 800.

Here in Europe you pay about $525 for this device (off contract), and the 710 and 610 are about $330 and $260 respectively. An HTC radar goes for $380.

<comment><USER13> As another Android user looking for other options, I'd love to hear your opinion of WP7. Especially on how you're finding the selection and quality of the available apps.

<comment><USER12> It all depends on what you're using your device for. Personally I'm missing internet tethering (update coming soon, apparently) and Spotify, which exists but is so buggy I removed it and downgraded my account. I'm not too happy with the calendar app but I've been too lazy to look for a replacement. You're tied into Bing for search which I don't appreciate. File transfers over bluetooth are not supported, not sure if anyone still does this.

On the other hand, the UI is silky smooth, not at all like the Galaxy Nexus I have lying around here for development. I guess it's just a personal thing, but I really can't live with the UI lag and jitter on Android. You don't have a ton of options to play around with, but the features that are there just work without hassle.

Things like email, messaging, facebook all work great. The browser is nice and responsive too. You get Office for free so you can open Word documents on the go, and Nokia Drive 2.0 gives you free navigation with free offline maps. It works well here in the Netherlands and is a big plus for me. Skype is available as a beta which is still rough around the edges, but it's nice to be able to call my mom over Wi-Fi without wasting minutes.

So I guess it's a bit of a mixed bag. For me the positives greatly outweigh the negatives, so I'm a happy camper. Maybe you should just go play with one at a store and see if it's for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Am I the only one that's happy with their Android phone? Sure, I wish I could get cyangen mod on my phone, but oh well that I can't. I prefer the experience far over iOS and others. I like being able to change various aspects of my phone without jail breaking it. I like the user experience vastly more than iPhone's, primarily because of that back button. And, even on my old Motorola Droid, I never saw a "your phone can't support this app" problem.

<comment><USER15> What phone do you have? CM (including custom versions of it) is available for an astounding number of phones, maybe you need to dig deeper into XDA forums :-)...

<comment><USER14> Droid Bionic. I've looked. :/

<comment><USER15> Well, the phone can be rooted and there are already half-baked ports of CM floating around - shouldn't be long before the phone (which is still pretty new) is supported officially or a good unofficial CM-based ROM is released. Have patience :-)...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's the transition period from cellphones to computers. A cellphone doesn't need updates, it's a hard-coded brick that's released once and then it works until it gets broken. A computer is a platform, mostly made out of software and the freshness of the software platform is a key part of its nature: we've used to updating our linux and windows boxes for fifteen years.

Now, smartphones are still a bit in between. They're basically computers but still regarded as phones. It'll take some time for everyone to catch up to the same level, maybe some years. Apple does it already and others must follow as soon as they get the order back in their development chain.

Ideally, an Android phone would be like Ubuntu with per-device kernels. It would continuously stream new packages over the net and the kernel would handle all device specific things so that Android userspace doesn't have to. It basically works like this already, it's just the update process that hasn't been mechanized. And there are a small number of device specific tricks in the userspace too, these days, because OEMs think they can tailor Android for their product. It's as bad as an OEM that would want to sell laptops with an OEM customized Ubuntu distribution. It works one time but gets left back as soon as the real Ubuntu makes the next release.

<comment><USER17> > A cellphone doesn't need updates,

Note that security holes have been found in the dumber phones such as specially crafted SMS messages that cause grief.

In the case of a highly connected device that has a web browser (eg a "smartphone") there are guaranteed to be many security holes. That is the biggest problem with Android non-updates. It is bad enough being behind on functionality updates, but being vulnerable is even worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think we have yet another example of someone just not getting it.

The OP repeatedly laments the fate of people less technically minded than himself, how hideous the experience must be for them if someone do clued up is having such a terrible time... The fact is that those users to whom he is referring exist in a realm of blissful ignorance.

I wonder what proportion Android users out there even know what ICS is. I'm willing to bet it's a tiny fraction and I'm willing to bet that Google knows that. That's what makes the whole Android story such a cynical one IMO-the platform was (still is to a large degree) touted as the ultimate geek device. Something beautiful that google was goig to give to the techies out there... What it is is a shallow, lowest common denominator.

I had such high hopes for the 'Google phone' of 2006 but I have never owned and Android device and really do not care to.

<comment><USER19> You are right. I work in cellphones. When I say the words Ice Cream Sandwich, they laugh. Same goes for the previous versions of android. When they hold the Galaxy Nexus, they want it. Same goes with the iPhones. It's what the device does and how it looks let's an average customer decide, not the technical mumbo jumbo. And the price.

Leave this guy alone with his rant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I picked up a Galaxy S2 recently because a client asked me to do an Android port of an iOS app.

As a communication device, I think it easily trounces the iPhone, even though its only running 2.3. The Google accounts integration is a lot smoother than mail on the iPhone and the phone features are better overall. And I _never_ want to go back to pecking out text messages one letter at a time after using Swype.

However, as an apps platform it sucks for all the well known reasons. I think the reason that Android phones have sold so well is that the core features are at least as good as the iPhone. It's too bad, because I actually prefer the way they do a lot of things in the SDK (resource management, for instance). But I agree Google needs to get things under control soon.

</comment><comment><USER21> Smartphones are a commodity. I hate my Samsung Galaxy. It destroyed the Samsung and Android brands for me. When it's time for me to get a new phone, I'll definitely pick an alternative (probably an iPhone). Doesn't matter if there's a Galaxy 5 running Android 6 by then.

Same thing played out with US vs Japanese car manufacturers. People have lasting memories when they feel that they spent money on an inferior product.

<comment><USER22> I hate my iPhone 3GS, because after my PC died I couldn't sync it any more without losing my media, couldn't update the OS because I had jailbroken it (never installed pirated apps either), and because the battery life is horrible on 3G - it heats up, drops a few percentage points in a few minutes, and I often have to power off the phone.

I told myself I was running off to Android where I wouldn't have to deal with a walled garden any more, so I'm kind of like the reverse of you - going to get a non-iPhone after my bad experience with Apple.

What I'd like to know is whether Android is still worth going to. Will I be able to sync without worries, install apps as I like, and root the device easily? I keep seeing mention of CyanogenMod and I don't know if that's what I'll have to install to get the full control I want. Is installing CM what rooting (mostly) involves?

I've been meaning to pick up the Galaxy Nexus, but bad press about its camera and uncertainties about the degree of freedom it allows have been keeping me back. I was even considering getting a Galaxy S II and installing ICS. I appreciate any advice from the Android users among you.

<comment><USER4> How much of your bad experience was caused by 'Apple' and how much was because you jailbroke your device?

<comment><USER22> Most Apple, I guess? The jailbreaking prevented OS updates, but the inability to sync and battery life were most likely due to the device itself.

In the first place, I want to be able to install programs from wherever I like (which was why I needed to jailbreak - to install an important app which had no official iOS release at the time), so having to jailbreak for that capability is still a drawback (or 'failing') of Apple/iOS relative to my requirements.

I hope the Nexus won't get in the way of my needs - I don't want to have to wrangle with anything when an OS update is issued, even if I root my phone. And I also don't want 0 updates. Does any phone fit my use case?

<comment><USER4> Not being able to update may well have limited you from getting battery related bug-fixes, and jailbreaking is notorious for allowing power- inefficient mods or apps to run - indeed that's the reason many people choose to do it.

I guess my point is that you knew in advance that the device wouldn't do what you wanted, so it's not really surprising that you didn't have a great experience and I think it's hard to blame that on Apple.

Personally I think that anyone who would need to Jailbreak an iPhone would have their needs better served with a good Android phone. In this regard they are simply aimed at different customers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Rational carriers and android hardware manufacturers would understand what's at stake here. Do they really want to hand the entire mobile device market to Apple because of a few updates?

<comment><USER24> The update situation has improved quite a bit since the early days of Android. I don't see any reason to think that "all of a sudden now" the market will shift entirely to Apple. The new iPhone caused some market shift, and new Android handsets and OS version will likely cause some shift back.

Hopefully Google's new "streamlined and integrated" philosophy will continue to reduce update times and further polish and unify the interface. Only time will tell.

It _is_ nice to have a good new contender on the scene with Windows Phone though.

<comment><USER25> In regards to regular updates, Windows Phone is looking more and more like Android. Even on Microsoft's "preferred" US carrier, smaller bugfix updates are being delayed or skipped by AT&T:

[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/microsoftpri0/20178567...](http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/microsoftpri0/2017856705_att_to_offer_windows_phone_os_update_ --_just_not_y.html)

Previously, Microsoft provided exact details on when specific phones on specific carriers would be getting software updates, but this policy ended in January 2012:

[http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2012/01/microsofts- new...](http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2012/01/microsofts-newold- windows-phone-update-policy-keeps-customers-in-the-dark.ars)

<comment><USER20> Quoting from the original article:

 _I'll point them towards Apple's iOS and Microsoft's Windows Phone instead. At least with these platforms, you're guaranteed core OS updates and bugfixes for the length of your contract._

I think this just isn't true. Maybe WP is currently more homogeneous than Android but clearly MS is somewhat at the mercy of the carriers here too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm sick of Android's permissions system. As you can't reject individual permissions it suffers from permission creep. In their first versions, applications tended to request only permissions they really need. Then every update they request more and more, usually wildly different from the purpose of the application.

For example, Google Maps requires "Allows the application to call phone numbers without your intervention" since last update. I don't want to grant that (it just needs to show a map ffs), but must, or stay behind.

What would great is to be able to selectively grant permissions to applications. I've read that cyanogenmod can do that, but have been careful with reflashing my phone. Maybe I'll give that a try now...

<comment><USER27> If anyone's interested, on CyanogenMod 7.2 the relevant setting's in Settings -> CyanogenMod settings -> Application -> Permission management. After that, you can turn permissions on and off from the app manager. (As far as I can tell, this hasn't been implemented in any of the CM9 nightlies.)

<comment><USER28> The problem with this approach is that the app expects the permission and will most likely crash if rejected. One alternative which works better is the LBE Privacy Guard app, what it does is, instead of denying the app to read the contacts list for example, it simply gives it an empty one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Do phones really /need/ to be updated to new OS versions? I recently upgraded to a Galaxy Nexus, and while ICS is pretty nice, I honestly think I could have lived with Froyo or Gingerbread for another couple years.

(as an aside, as of last month, a good 45% of desktop web users were on Windows XP, an OS version that hasn't received any major updates since 2008: [http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market- share....](http://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market- share.aspx?qprid=11&qpcustomb=0) )

<comment><USER29> Of course they don't need to be updated, but when I'm paying $50+/month for essentially a luxury (I could _live_ with a prepaid dumb phone), my expectations go up. I'm paying a lot for fun/interesting technology and I want to partake now in the new whizzy things that people are raving about, not 9 months from now.

<comment><USER27> What "new whizzy things" are people raving about? I haven't seen anyone get even close to excited over a new OS feature since iOS 4's multitasking -- from the people I know, the response to iCloud, FaceTime, iMessages, Notification Center, ICS's Face Unlock, etc. has been a collective "meh". The only thing I've heard anyone seriously happy about recently was Windows Phone 7.5's ringtone manager.

<comment><USER29> Doesn't have to be a new OS feature directly. I'd like to run the new Chrome browser but can't. In any case, I'd like to decide "meh" or not for myself.

You're right that most changes have very little impact, so this is largely psychological. It hits in two ways for me: 1) the delay between the product's "release" and when I can get it, 2) the uncertainty of whether an upgrade will even come at all for my phone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> First, I know many people make a big deal about the transition to Android 4.0 being too slow, but I just think the issue is that it's a lot harder for manufacturers, and even the hacker community (hence no stable ICS ROM yet) to transition from 2.3 to 4.0, than it was to transition from 2.2 to 2.3 or from Honeycomb to ICS/4.0. I do believe/hope that the transition to 5.0 or 4.5 from 4.0 will be much faster.

Also remember that Google releases their version as soon as it's ready _for them_ , unlike Microsoft who keeps the OS from being released until at least a few manufacturers have it on their devices and ready to ship. Should Google adopt the same model and in this case keep ICS from being released until summer 2012, when all manufacturers would be ready to release devices with it at once? Perhaps, but keep in mind that this would also mean using obsolete hardware, just like with all WP7 phones, and it also means they would be way behind iPhones and iPads in terms of hardware, when they adopt a model like this.

Second, can the solution for standardization be having some kind of a "virtual hardware layer", and by that I mean more than just what the Dalvik VM currently does - more like "universal drivers" that would make Android easy to upgrade and install on any ARM phone? That would be a dream come true for any Android fan.

One thing I know for sure is that Google needs to be working on something like this - even if it takes them years to do it, whether it's because it's hard to do technically, or because they need a lot of time to set-up all the right partnerships.

This goal is well worth pursuing, until things become too complex (thousands of devices). But I'm hoping they've been working on it already, and we're only 1-2 years away from seeing it.

</comment><comment><USER15> One solution (at least to some of the problems) is to use third party ROMs - there are plenty of them out there for every phone, made by people who know this stuff better than the manufacturers themselves. Support them and use their versions of Android - latest versions, fast, sleek, free to modify however you wish - what's not to love?

I have my old Droid and I won't upgrade until it's dead - it's running CyanogenMod (Gingerbread), has a wicked custom home screen, it's overclocked, undervolted, can run OnLive games, Angry Space Birds :-), One Piece for GameBoy Advance (loved that game on my GB!), Skype on 3G, and a s*it ton more...

I'll get a Droid 3 when I upgrade, as well - I feel crippled without a dedicated keyboard...

I see smartphones (and laptops, tablets) as simple platforms to customize to your liking - obviously, networks would have a problem with that if everyone thought that way, but it's the best way...

</comment><comment><USER30> _"If someone like me who is an astute observer of the industry has to do such intense research on which Android device to buy based on the potential for ongoing support and then ends up getting burned in the process, what is the average consumer to do?"_

In a nutshell, the reason I haven't seriously considered an Android device. I was burned by my last Nokia/Symbian phone not getting any OS updates or bug fixes, and quickly decided that I wouldn't be able to predict which of the numerous Android devices would turn out to be the lucky ones that would be supported and maintained.

</comment><comment><USER31> I just ranted about this too: [https://plus.google.com/102672078908622237427/posts/GoDo6JeV...](https://plus.google.com/102672078908622237427/posts/GoDo6JeVMuW)

I was proud to call myself an Android Fan Boy and urged my friends to get one (last year I convinced about 10 friends to get an Android phone and they did). I'm now a frustrated user myself and the worse part is when those friends read article like this and ridicule me.

</comment><comment><USER32> Sick to death because he can't update to a new version of an operating system??

I know this psychological feeling of wanting the latest craze, but the reality is probably that the old versions of Android work just fine. We have somehow been trained to crave new OS versions, but that is nothing to commit suicide over.

</comment><comment><USER33> As an Android consumer, one of my biggest gripes is paid apps slowly increasing their permissions until they require _everything_.

Google has to allow downloads of previous versions if a paid app starts upping permission requirements OR providing an app by app permission blacklist for non-rooted phones.

</comment><comment><USER34> "variety of manufacturers devices with varying feature sets that gives consumers the added benefit of choosing exactly what product suits their specific needs."

Basically the recipe for a disaster.

</comment><comment><USER35> If you want an update just root it download the update. People who are wanting the latest greatest incremental release are usually a bit techie anyway, so its not that hard is it?

<comment><USER36> This is true techy people have this option, but google needs to think ourside this market. Android needs to move beyond the 18-20 year old college or college bound male demographic if it's going to grow. It needs to simple enough for your grandma run it. Your phone should update with the latest features as soon as they are available not a year down the line. It's like playing roulette when buying a phone trying to find out which OEM will update there OS on time and which will not.

<comment><USER37> _Android needs to move beyond the 18-20 year old college or college bound male demographic if it's going to grow._

Around half of all smartphones sold today run Android. I don't think there are that many 18 year olds.

 _Your phone should update with the latest features as soon as they are available not a year down the line._

Yes, it should. But most users don't really care, as long as it makes calls and can get on Facebook and run Angry Birds. Apple/MS fanboys are correct that Android geeks aren't representative. But neither are they.

 _It's like playing roulette when buying a phone trying to find out which OEM will update there OS on time and which will not._

GSM Nexus.

<comment><USER36> People don't relize that when you marker things to people like face to unlock for android that when people buy the phone that's what they want the app market is proof they want more than just angry bird they want the apps their friends are using. It would make me angry if I wasn't a techy and a bought a new with a OS not know a app could play a game on my brand new phone because it wasn't updated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> What we have to think about here is that this guy, and probably anyone reading this blog (myself included), is a nerd. The average consumer doesn't give a f __* about Ice Cream Sandwich. If their phone does what it needs to do on a daily basis they are happy. It has the same features as it did when they bought it and new apps come out every day. It's not much different with Apple, aside from a few minor features, updates are merely bug fixes. As for us nerds, the internet is crawling with custom roms and custom updates that allow us to fiddle to our heart's content. So no, I don't think Android has much to worry about.

<comment><USER4> This is simply false.

The iPhone 3GS shipped in June 2009 with iOS 3, and has continued to receive every update between then and now.

There have been literally hundreds of new features added in that time, as well as a series of whole new built-in apps.

<comment><USER38> And are any of those features not available in Gingerbread?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> That was my first reaction playing with my tablet with the Android for the first time. I am a Windows user and I could not believe how Microsoft blew this field.

</comment><comment><USER36> I think it's obvious that sometimes open is not best. Business at a certain point don't really care about customers if they aren't getting profit. They sell millions of phone if they were to let say charge $5-$10 to people in order to upgrade the OS this would solve the problem. Yes giving upgrades for free would be the right thing to do for a moral human being, but this is a company not a person. Companies have not moral compass and you can't guilt them into doing something.

<comment><USER8> That's why I think for businesses who want to go open source, the best model is the Chrome/Chromium model. Keep Chromium as open as you want, but keep Chrome - that is built on it - only for yourself, and only you can control and modify it. If only Android worked the same way...

I believe all Chromebooks even get all the updates from Google, though it remains to be seen if that can be maintained with more than a few devices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Blame the carriers. That carriers lock their phones, and customize the OS with spam. Google offers them this "free OS" they can't refuse, then they lock their phones, and don't keep up to date with anything. Why would they care, you already bought the phone, they already have your money and you are forced into a 2 year plan. You'd have to be nuts to buy into a mismanaged nightmare like this.

</comment><comment><USER41> If you're sick of Android usage you should try Android development, that would really make your day. In any case, if you're looking for an open platform try a Symbian or MeeGo. The Nokia N9 is one of the best smartphones ever made and, if you can get it, you will have a real user experience. Also, if you're a mobile developer who is not into BDSM you will be happy to hear that you don't have to write your programs in Java, although if you really want to you probably can.

Symbian and MeeGo are also getting constant OS updates although Nokia's official direction has shifted away to Windows Phone, and will continue like that for several years. As for Android, Google is treating it like an ugly retarded kid that they don't really want but are forced to take care of.

<comment><USER42> The N9 is easily worse than every other phone I have used and every phone anyone I know has used. I feel very silly for paying for it. Can you introduce me to someone who shares your opinion of it and does not have one yet?

<comment><USER41> What's wrong with your N9?

<comment><USER42> From the home screen, hitting "Music" -> "Songs" involves about 20 seconds of waiting before you can pick "Shuffle." The ssh app is significantly worse than similar apps for other OSes because it is missing important keys. Putting music on the device took a couple hours because it would repeatedly spend a great deal of time indexing the music before telling me that I did not have any music. The UI is generally less responsive than is tolerable, even when doing extremely simple things like dialing a phone number. I do not enjoy going to the phone app, hitting a few numbers and waiting a few seconds before the phone makes any sound to assure me that it knows I am hitting numbers.

The swipe gesture is really cool until a bunch of apps also want to use swipe within the app. At that point, you get to play the fun game of trying to perform a swipe that is long enough to get the app to acknowledge it without starting at the edge of your screen, because that would cause the OS to switch out of the app.

There is no option to display 24-hour time and YMD other than by setting the locale. My phone now thinks that I am Japanese because I want it to display 24-hour time and YMD, but I do not know any Japanese, so every bit of software that localizes based on my locale is somewhat difficult to read.

It took a couple days to get IMAP IDLE to work, but even once it worked it would often repeatedly attempt to download a huge amount of email, fail midway through, and start again from the beginning rather than keeping whatever portion it had finished.

It is also missing a lot of software that two other OSes have, but I at least knew that would be true before buying it.

<comment><USER41> You'll be happy to know (or sad, depending on how you look at it) that your N9 is defective. It takes me 5 seconds at most from the home screen until I can hit shuffle, with all the loading, animations and whatnot, I never have the feeling that I am waiting. I also used the included USB cable to transfer my music to the phone, can't say I have experience with the ssh app.

The fact that you hit numbers in the dialing screen and have to wait a few seconds before the phone makes any sound is another strong indicator that your phone is broken and you need to have it replaced under warranty. It is not supposed to be behaving like that.

I have not seen any swipe conflict between the applications and the phone's UI, which is basically because for the built-in gestures you swipe from the edges, whereas for the apps you swipe from inside the window. I don't see how you can get a conflict out of that. Can you give me an example of app that does that? Seem like an app fault, not phone fault.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I don't understand why I can't just install any OS on my mobile computer (phone/tablet) the same way I can install any OS on my desktop computer.

Please somebody, create a start up or two to solve this problem!

Think big, be the next Microsoft!</comment>


Depression and anxiety in women linked to male-female pay gap - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jan/07/depression-and-anxiety-in-women-linked-to-male-female-pay-gap <comment><USER2> Yeah it's almost as if when a woman gets depressed she has other people in her life who will take care of her. In my state I need to find someone else to pay my rent if I want to qualify for food stamps. I wonder if that would have and affect on my income.</comment>


Show HN: My weekend project - a baby naming app - <AUTHOR>

We were finding it hard to come up with a name for our soon to be born daughter so I decided to make an app to help us find one. Let me know what you think!<p>www.namemeababy.com <comment><USER2> A bit of feedback:

* Nice and simple design

* I can't select the "Contains" or "Ends with" fields (this may be intentional)

* I'm pretty sure it should be Boys' and Girls' rather than Boy's and Girl's

* As Ecio78 mentioned: needs to be case-insensitive

* If I type too quickly in the "Begins with" field, it only matches the first one or two letters (e.g. Begins with bor returns Byson, Byrum, Byron...)

* I could eventually select the "Contains" and "Ends with" fields after messing around with it, but then couldn't sort by "Popularity" until reloading (at which point I couldn't select the text fields again)

* It turns out that I can only select all the buttons and text fields if the browser is maximised. Looks like div#myModal is covering a number of interactive elements and preventing clicks at a certain screen height and below

* Popularity graphs are a nice touch and make it far more interesting to play around with, but I didn't realise I could view them for quite a while (thought I could only see the tooltip)

* Disappointed with the lack of "Bort"

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, the lack of Bort is due to (for privacy reasons) not having any names in the database for which fewer than 5 children have been given that name in any one year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is technically a neat app, congrats for launching it.

However, I don't think many parents look to browse names based on prefix/suffix/infix. You may wish to add additional filters (based on what sort of census data you have).

Some ideas:

* Show only popular or only unique names

* Show modern names (recently popular)

* Show traditional names (long history)

* Show names with recent rising popularity

* Show names with historical popularity (that may have fallen out of use)

* Show names with similar histories (this would allow you to add a very important feature: "I like this name, show me related names!")

Finally, your graph feature is very nice; some of my favorite baby-naming books show this. But it's not very discoverable. You could make the name look more like a link, or show some graphics in your header as a demo.

</comment><comment><USER4> You should use case insensitive matching for filtering, if I put "K" on the "begins with" it shows nothing

<comment><AUTHOR> This has been fixed!</comment></comment>


The Next iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/2009/05/the_next_iphone <comment><USER3> The iPod touch already has a 600Mhz processor in it and the user experience is pretty much the same. I wouldn't expect anything mindblowing from a 50% speed boost.

</comment><comment><USER4> 600Mhz xScale CPUs have been in PDAs for years. CPU "speed" no longer links directly with clock speed. It could very well be 600Mhz and feel worse.

If they can get rid of the UI lag, that's worth bonus points over obscure new features.

</comment><comment><USER5> The NEXT next iPhone needs to really be your "personal computer". I imagine a time when the only computer you have will be your mobile device. How this device acts will depend on what you dock it with. Maybe when you're on the couch you'll slide it into a tablet-like device and you instantly run in tablet mode, with more apps and functionality becoming available to you in that mode.

Maybe when you're in your home office you'll dock it with a keyboard, mouse, and two monitors, and use it as your workstation.

The point is, I look forward to the day when physical device size no longer really correlates to usable power or storage space, and THAT means that, barring supercomputers and servers, most people will have just their "phone". What that device acts like will be based on which I/O peripherals you plug it in to.

A guy can dream...

<comment><USER6> > The NEXT next iPhone needs to really be your "personal computer".

Would you allow your main personal computer to have such a closed system that you aren't even allow to install unapproved software on it? I agree that this device will essentially be your interface to the digital and remote world. Can you really allow a company to censor what you can do with that? The current App store model just doesn't 'scale' to this scenario. To me the only choice is to look to other platforms until Apple changes their policy.

<comment><USER7> typical mac users wouldnt know the difference between an open and closed system because they dont do anything on their device except what it comes with or is sold through official channels.

<comment><USER8> and your opinion is based on what?

I know a number of Mac users and not a single one of them fit your stereotype. I also know a much larger number of Windows users, and strangely a large percentage of them _do_ fit your stereotype.

<comment><USER7> my experience is anecdotal. the opinions about "average" computer use on this site are heavily slanted towards people who understand what a UI is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Next iphone will still be one generation behind the next crop of smartphones from HTC or other manufacturers. At about the same time they introduce video someone else will be introducing a screen close to the 1024 pixels wide. After the others catch up to their UI methods the only distinguishing feature they will have will be the app store.

<comment><USER9> Haven't we learned our lesson? The first iPhone came out with EDGE data only, while the market was just starting to see 3G handsets. Yet the iPhone absolutely trounced the sales of said handsets, and accounted for far more data usage from its users (read: people were actually _using_ the data features).

This continued worship of pointless technical specifications is why the competition has failed to catch up to Apple. Your average consumer doesn't care how much RAM it has, or how fast the CPU is, or how many pixels across the screen has (beyond "ooh that's crisp"), they just want a phone that works.

And overwhelmingly in the smartphone market, the iPhone is still the _only_ phone I would say "works". The BB comes close, and Nokia needs to hang its head in shame.

<comment><USER6> I'm surprised you don't mention Windows Mobile. I'm not is the US. Can you guys actually use WinMo phones in the US? Do you have access to something like the 'HTC Touch HD' over there? This isn't a rhetorical question I just don't know. I'm not saying it is better. The iPhone UI is better and will be for some time. But I'm surprised you don't even mention it because in terms of another platforms with numerous apps available, WinMo is the main one in my 'rest of the world' view.

Edit : ...and android

Before the iPhone pretty much all mobile devices were intended as 'business' devices. By being the first ones to really design a smartphone from the ground up as a 'person oriented' device Apple were able to get ahead. But in my view that advantage is unlikely to persist for very long. When the UI gap is closed features such as 'being able to load programs faster' or 'being able to play a more realistic game' or 'being able to view a web pages the same as on a desktop' will start to be the differentiating factor.

<comment><USER9> I didn't mention WinMo because I personally do not have much experience with them - the last time I played with a WinMo phone was very briefly, so I don't think it's wise to judge the user experience on it.

Ditto for Android, though my short few-minutes experience with it was somewhat negative, but that's mostly due to the obtuse hardware design of the G1 (recessed touchscreen?).

I do agree, though, that the UI gap is being closed at least somewhat - <USER2> is great news. It's about time that usability started being a buzzword in the tech industry and started being a real focus. Bear in mind, however, that "being able to load programs faster" and "being able to play more realistic games" are qualitative measures, which was one of the points I tried making with my original post: consumers care about qualitative things, not quantitative. The screen looks sharp? Great. Nobody cares about resolution. Likewise, the phone feels snappy? Awesome - still nobody cares about CPU speed.

<comment><USER6> I do get the point about qualitative vs quantitative. In the case of screen resolution and web browsing I think they come closer than in other cases. Most web pages are design to work on screens of 1024 so presumably this width on a phone would allow you to see the page exactly as intended. Admittedly it would be pretty small but I think of would still be a big advantage.

I'd still like for someone to let me know if you can get WinMo phones in the US? Everything in this whole crazy iPhone saga would start to fall into place for me if that was the case. I can still remember watching that first Jobs speech and wondering what all the fuss was about when the trusty imate sitting in my pocket could already run arbitrary software.

<comment><USER10> Yes, we've had WinMo phones for longer than anyone else; we had them at least as far back as 2003, but smartphones in general never really caught on anywhere except with business people, until the iPhone came around and Jobs made it sound like he had invented the smartphone...

<comment><USER6> Ok thanks. I do remember windows CE/Pocket PC phones being around from about 2003 as well.

So my notion doesn't really explain it. I just don't get why everyone thinks Jobs invented the smartphone then?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A pretty safe set of assumptions. Considering that Apple shops around for chips like all other smartphone manufacturers, and that phones like the BB Bold have had 600+Mhz CPUs for quite a while, it'd be pretty silly to bet against that.

And lord knows the iPhone needs a speed bump. That slick UI and effects comes at a price and its almost embarrassing when you want to write down someone's phone number, but you have to tell them to wait 3 seconds while the contacts app loads.

<comment><USER12> Personally, I think the speed is "good enough". If they can up that without compromizing battery life, then great. But if it's a choice between battery and cpu, I'd take battery every time.

The most irritating thing is that with 3g enabled+GPS, the battery drains ridiculously quickly, and you have to enable/disable 3g yourself manually. Why can't it just do that itself? :/

<comment><USER13> Android with the Locale app does this (lets you toggle features as a function of battery state), but I've heard that Google is actually removing the API calls for toggling GPS in Cupcake (Android v1.5). I'm not entirely sure why this is supposed to be a good thing

<comment><USER14> Supposedly, there was confusion about what exactly "turning off GPS" meant, because on the G1, you "enable" GPS, but it doesn't actually do anything unless an app queries for geolocation data -- it doesn't drain the battery just because GPS is enabled. So you'd disable it and wouldn't have to worry that there was some app running that would drain your battery because it is using GPS. But there is a UI problem, somewhat exposed with the Maps app, with when you have it disabled, the app detects that and tells you that you'll need to enable it. Except the wording isn't straightforward, and the app doesn't handle turning it on itself (which may be a good or bad thing, if you've got it disabled in the preferences). G1's GPS setting does need some work, but it's good that it's getting some attention now that location based apps are increasing in popularity.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for the clarification.

I suspect that my G1 has a bad GPS module because I find that when I have it disabled, I can get a somewhat accurate measurement of my current location via cell towers or whatever, however if I have it enabled, it can't figure out where I am at all (at least not within the amount of time that I am willing to wait for it-- 1 minute or so). So I leave it disabled pretty much all the time in an attempt to keep the battery life long.

If it were up to me (and I must admit I have not looked at how the location API works), I would have location services return an imprecise value quickly (via cell towers or wifi or whatever) and refine it as the GPS came online. Sensor fusion is still an active research topic, but there are at least some simple heuristics that could be used if it was inefficient to make a full Bayesian inference.

<comment><USER14> I seemed to have a similar problem a few months ago. I think there is also confusion as to the "location" settings -- there doesn't seem to be one setting that turns off all location querying ability, so you can have "use wireless networks" on, and "enable GPS satellites" off, and it still works, but the application calls it GPS (and the icon looks like a satellite).

I think it cleared up for me when I turned on both location settings (use wireless networks and enable GPS satellites). I have not noticed a significant drain on the battery due to having both on, but I rarely use location based apps anyway.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


California Supreme Court Moves to Make Bar Exam Easier to Pass - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/13/business/dealbook/california-bar-exam.html <comment><USER2> > Bar passage rates at Whittier, long an avenue for disadvantaged students to > become lawyers, had plunged in recent years. Its passage rate hovered in the > routine statewide range, about 68 percent a few years ago, but fell to 22 > percent on the July 2016 bar.

This is a great example of a statistic that is interesting but needs more context to be useful. Did the authors check to see whether other California law schools saw a similar decline? If so, why call out Whittier? If not, wouldn't that suggest that the problem is with Whittier and not with the bar program? What am I supposed to infer, being told only that at least one school saw a decline?

Edit: I looked it up. There apparently aren't reported numbers for Whittier because fewer than 11 of their students sat for the bar exam for the first time in 2017. So the statistic is even less useful than I suspected.

</comment><comment><USER3> Coming from a lawyer who passed Illinois in 2004 and took California's bar in 2014, I can say that for my CA test, the passage rate for attorneys barred in other states was around 20% (if I recall). California has differences in its laws that make it naturally harder than the "collective norm." Further, part of that low passage rate is because of two factors: 1) most attorneys already barred work full time, thus study time constraints; 2) what you're asked on the bar exam has very little connection to the actual practice of law. Lots of theory and hand-wringing, but neither law school nor the bar exam truly prepare you for HOW to be a lawyer.

Glad I passed both on the first try. Won't ever do it again.

<comment><USER4> Sounds like tech coding interview process.

<comment><USER5> Except after you're done, you get paid like $500 per hour

<comment><USER6> Isn't that more like "the firm you work for charges" rather than "get paid"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was surprised that this article doesn't mention that California is one of the few states that allow graduates of unaccredited law schools to sit for the bar exam. My understanding is that the bar passage rate for graduates of these programs was much lower than that of ABA-accredited institutions.

Edit: I found an article with some numbers: [http://abovethelaw.com/2016/11/californias-bar-exam- passage-...](http://abovethelaw.com/2016/11/californias-bar-exam-passage-rate- reaches-32-year-low/)

The breakout chart (towards the end) shows that ABA-accredited school graduates passed with a rate of about 60% on the first try, which seems alright, compared to a dismal 30% or less for unaccredited schools.

Edit 2: For comparison, the NY bar passed 67% of first timers, which is a little easier than California, but not dramatically so. Source: [https://www.nybarexam.org/ExamStats/2016_NY_Bar_Exam_PassRat...](https://www.nybarexam.org/ExamStats/2016_NY_Bar_Exam_PassRates.pdf)

<comment><USER8> The article itself says:

"Last year, just 62 percent of first-time test takers passed the California bar exam, compared with 83 percent in New York."

The 83% are also in your data if you focus on the ABA schools only. That means failure rates are 17% and 38%, respectively, or a factor of 2.2x.

The student populations of NY and CA are probably comparable, and in any case, as the article points out, the tests are largely identical; the differences mostly stem from differing score requirements.

I'm sure there will be many snide comments about lawyers in this thread, but most law students I've come across have appeared intelligent, serious, and conscientious. I doubt that a system that cuts half of them can be considered reasonable–though I'm not sure what the consequences are? Here in 'old Europe" there are limits on how often you can take such exams–usually 3x. If you fail the third time, you may have spent 8 years studying law and end up legally barred from ever getting any degree.

<comment><USER9> In NY, you can only take 3x. In CA, you can take it as many times as you want. This is one of the reasons that the "repeat taker rate" and the "aggregate rate" in CA are much worse than in NY. CA simply has a different proportion of first-time takers, since repeat takers are not cut off at any point.

When I took the bar in 2007, there was a guy who blogged about taking the bar. After learning he had failed, he continued blogging [1] about his repeat- taking experience. In all, he took the bar 11 times over 6 years before finally passing. It struck me that by the time he was a newly-minted attorney, I was a senior associate. I can't imagine how much time and money he spent on that process, and I do wonder whether the system should allow people to do this. On the other hand, he obviously really wanted it, and there's something to be said for that.

1: [http://californiagbx0707.blogspot.com/](http://californiagbx0707.blogspot.com/)

<comment><USER10> Reminds me of the joke "what do you call the guy who got LAST PLACE in medical school"

Doctor

If you set a standard, the last place guy is just as much a part of it as the first place guy. Now it might not look so good on resumes, but he is legal.

<comment><USER11> It's a pointless joke. For a high enough standard, last place is plenty good. The fact that someone is in last place says nothing about how difficult the cutoff is.

To reverse the joke: you know what they call last place in the award ceremony? Bronze medalist.

<comment><USER10> Or to go along further,

Do you know what they call the guy who got last place at the 100m dash in the olympics? Last place / slowest / loser

Despite being the 8th fastest person on the planet.

<comment><USER11> Then why do you make the joke? It's misleading.

<comment><USER10> Its an interesting thought line.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Bar passage rates are falling because law schools have become increasingly theoretical. Many law professors have never had actual clients who pay them for legal work, or have worked as lawyers in the real world for less than five years. These profs are producing interesting academic scholarship but they are increasingly isolated from the legal profession. Law school classes, perhaps as result, tend not to teach what bar exams test: the elements of crimes and torts, how many witnesses are required for a will to be valid, the elements of a valid contact, and so on. These are exactly the things that Californians need their lawyers to know. If too many people are failing the bar exam, the problem isn't the exam, but the prep.

<comment><USER13> I wonder how many Computer Science professors out there used to be real "in- the-weeds" practicing software engineers.

<comment><USER14> Computer Science isn't Software Engineering...

<comment><USER15> Not sure why you're getting down-voted, you're absoluteley right.

<comment><USER16> Probably because it's pedantic. At most schools, if you want to major in computer stuff, you major in some sort of computer science major. In some universities, it's in the engineering school. In others, it's associated with other science programs, math in particular. There are various historic reasons for this.

People who then go to build software systems are at least hopefully applying at least some engineering principles. Software arguably often doesn't follow as well-established engineering principles as some other types of engineering. But arguing there's some great separation between computer science and engineering really is pedantic.

<comment><USER14> Is it pedantic? I think Computer Science should be taught by Computer Scientists, which is a different set of people than Software Engineers. I say this AS a Software Engineer.

<comment><USER16> Every branch of engineering and science has more theoretical and more practical aspects. Look at physics. The people who do the theory and those who design the detectors have pretty different jobs.

And universities, at least the more elite ones, always tend toward the theoretical side in all fields. Which is mostly a good thing so long as it doesn't over-rotate. Whatever language you learn is probably going to be yesterday's news in 10 years. (Unless it's COBOL :-))

[And I say this as an engineer with degrees in non-SW fields.]

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > _Only 51 percent of the graduates of the University of California Hastings > College of the Law passed the state's exam in July 2016._

As a former lawyer, I was shocked by this number. Hastings is a pretty good school, and I would have guessed that the rate would be around 70%.

But it makes sense in the current economic climate. After the bust of 2008, tons of people went to law school, thinking they'd ride out the recession. But that didn't work because (1) the recession lasted too long (in the legal field, at least); (2) many people had the same idea, so there was a glut of new lawyers; and (3) big legal clients realized they had been paying too much for young associate labor. The legal market has been permanently altered in a way that makes young associates much less attractive to firms (they were previously cash cows).

Add to this the fact that tuition has skyrocketed at the UC law schools, and it's no surprise they can't attract the same quality student as before. When I attended UCLA Law a decade ago, tuition was around $20k. It has doubled since then, and interest rates are much higher. As a fellow UC, Hastings has seen similarly sharp increases.

So while my knee-jerk reaction was that this was "too low" a pass rate for Hastings, it may be that in the current economic climate this is just the new normal for Hastings. They are, I believe, the lowest-rated UC law school, having been surpassed by the new UC Irvine.

<comment><USER17> I just can't see going to law school without have a very clear career plan starting immediately on graduation. If you can do well at one of the top 5 schools or have family connections that definitely lead somewhere, that kind of thing. The risk/reward is just out of whack otherwise.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, my general advice is do not go to law school unless (1) you get into a top 3 school; (2) you get a half-scholarship to a top 10 school; or (3) you get a full scholarship to a top 20 school. And even then — don't go unless you want to be a lawyer for at least 5 years.

Starting salaries are basically the same as they were a decade ago, but tuition, cost of living, and interest rates have kept growing. As a result, the payback period has gone from ~3 years to ~6 years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is speculative (and similar to other comments), but I would think this is mostly about the schools holding a vested interest in being able to advertise attractive bar passage rates. I doubt it has much to do with disadvantaged students or expanding access to the profession, if you dig into it, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if it had something to do with school administrators worrying about keeping the applications, student loan money, alumni donations, etc. coming in, and the school rankings up.

If you're familiar with the legal market in California, if anything, the exam should be made more difficult. I personally thought it was overdue when Whittier shut down - put it that way.

</comment><comment><USER19> Because the schools are passing/producing more bad grads than ever, probably, regardless of total enrollment numbers. There are two rough ways to take this:

A. The bar is needlessly high, its just gatekeeping credentialism

B. The median school output (the median grad) is increasingly worse.

I think the actual issue is B. I think its worse than most people want to admit. It stuck out to me when I was doing a little reading about why CS enrollment seems so low[1]. Quoting my own findings here:

> What supports this theory? Can we prove aptitude is flat? Kinda. In 1970s > 1-in-2 college grads aced Wordsum test. Today 1-in-6 do.[2] Using that as a > proxy for IQ of the median college grad, in the 70's it was ~112, now its > ~100.

> In other words we have more people going to college than ever, but the > "average grad" is less intelligent than ever. Degrees are increasingly > diluted yet expensive. You can pay more money than ever to show that you are > of average intelligence.

And California State is trying to push more grads through than ever, so I wonder just how comparable the pool of talent is vs other states.

> With the CSU remedial overhaul they are redefining "college readiness" as > "willingness to pay the cash". They are giving college credit for courses > that 8th graders could complete. This is the most provable reduction in > academic rigor I've seen, and it's happening in the largest college system > in the US. If anyone can explain why we shouldn't be unhappy with a future > of thousands of college grads with 8th grade reading skills, I'm all ears > for the optimism.

> What's weirder, their stated reasons for doing this are to "raise graduation > rates." That's it. More dollars in the door, more college grads with 8th > grade reading levels out.

Source for I'm talking about: [https://edsource.org/2017/csu-to-overhaul- remedial-education...](https://edsource.org/2017/csu-to-overhaul-remedial- education-replace-no-credit-with-credit-bearing-classes/579081/579081)

I hope I'm totally wrong but I _suspect_ the dumbing down of the bar is another bad sign. Don't take it lightly IMO.

See also blatherard's comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14772630](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14772630)

<comment>

So: Why now?

From the Boston Globe[3] in 2014:

> Much of the flight from law school reflects the brutal reality of the > employment market for lawyers. The National Association for Law Placement > reports that fewer than half of lawyers graduating in 2011 eventually landed > jobs in a law firm. Only 65 percent found positions requiring passage of the > bar exam. At a time when many law school graduates are shouldering student- > loan debts of $125,000 or more, compensation has declined painfully — the > median starting salary for new lawyers in 2012 was just $61,000. And quite a > few can't find any work at all: Nine months after receiving their law > degrees, 11.2 percent of the class of 2013 was unemployed.

In light of this, why is declining enrollment bad precisely, as the deans of law schools suggest in the NYT? Anything other than vested interest?

[1] (My theory is that CS enrollment is about flat because aptitude is about flat, and that rising college enrollment numbers don't represent the production of more smart people at all, they are totally masked by issues like this. CS is flat because its hard and not easy to fake your way through. More about the educational decline here: [https://email@example.com/why-is- computer-science-enr...](https://email@example.com/why-is-computer- science-enrollment-so-low-dea064c2f7f0))

[2] I'm using the data here: [http://sda.berkeley.edu/cgi- bin/hsda?harcsda+gss16](http://sda.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/hsda?harcsda+gss16)

[3] [https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2014/05/09/the-lawyer- bu...](https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2014/05/09/the-lawyer-bubble-pops- not-moment-too-soon/qAYzQ823qpfi4GQl2OiPZM/story.html)

<comment><USER20> Yes it's B, read law school scam blogs to get the full impact.

<comment><USER21> What do you mean by scam? Do you have any links to support this assertion?

<comment><USER20> [http://insidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/?m=1](http://insidethelawschoolscam.blogspot.com/?m=1)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> As a lawyer who took and passed the California bar exam on the first attempt, I think that this move by the California Supreme Court was absolutely necessary. I have seen too many of my qualified peers fail this exam for no reason. These individuals end up passing on their second and third attempts and all that this exam did is cost them more time and money that they could have been using to become better lawyers. I'm happy to see that there is some accountability on the state bar examiners to make sure the test is graded fairly.

</comment><comment><USER23> This will hopefully create a more inexpensive option for lawyers that just need to file paperwork and look over documents, etc. It may make fighting patents cheaper.

</comment><comment><USER9> For breakdowns by type of school (ABA accredited, CA accredited, etc.) and by race/gender, see: [http://www.calbar.ca.gov/Portals/0/documents/admissions/Stat...](http://www.calbar.ca.gov/Portals/0/documents/admissions/Statistics/JULY2016STATS120716_R.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER24> I do wish the article mentioned if passing rates were dropping till now or they've been the same and this is the breaking point. A specific school's plunge in recent years does make me think this is not entirely good, but doesn't represent the state as a whole.

</comment><comment><USER6> As someone not from the US - do all lawyers in the US have to pass a bar exam or just those who want to appear in court?

In the UK only specialised court lawyers (barristers and advocates) are called to the bar.

<comment><USER25> In the US there is also a large class of legal workers called paralegals that don't need to pass the bar. They usually (always?) work under a lawyer, though. The paralegal is generally responsible for running the day-to-day part of some specific aspect of a legal practice. They are analogous to nurses or physician's assistant in a medical practice, but for the legal profession. So they are not layers, exactly, but often do the same kind of things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> It seems odd to me the state supreme court would be managing this sort of thing. Seems more appropriate for the legislature to do so.

</comment><comment><USER27> they're literally lowering the bar, ha!

</comment><comment><USER28> ABA Standard 501(b) states that "A law school shall not admit an applicant who does not appear capable of satisfactorily completing its program of legal education and being admitted to the bar."

If passing %s are falling while the cutoff is unchanged, the solution is not to change the cutoff. Also, the school for "disadvantaged students" being singled out in the article is hilarious.

</comment><comment><USER29> > The move follows a sometimes furious debate in California legal circles over > whether the state's passing score, or "cut score" — 144 — was unrealistic.

If the passing score were unrealistic, there would be no lawyers in CA. Since there are lawyers in CA, the passing score is both realistic and achievable.

I'm not an attorney in CA, but I imagine the score measures both intelligence and knowledge in the field. Why shouldn't a prospective attorney be required to score 100% on knowledge? That seems reasonable to me, at least for the area of law they will practice.

<comment><USER30> My calc 3 professor once said that he could make a test where everyone got a 100% or where everyone got a 0%, but neither test would tell him anything about the classes skill.

The bar exam isn't designed for people to get 100%. They pick 10-20 different topics and test you on them. Virtually nobody knows all the answers. And nobody needs to know all the answers. Most attorneys will use maybe 1-3 of those topics on a daily basis. And you don't operate without reference materials in the real world. At one point I memorized what the requirements for a legal cheque, but I'd look it up in a book if I needed to know now.

If you actually made of test of basic legal principles that all lawyers should know, it would probably be an easier test. The hardest part of the bar exam is the scope of the material.

I think a high barrier for becoming a lawyer is a good thing. But the bar exam is the wrong time to make the cut. The person already spent 3 years and maybe hundreds of thousand of dollars.

If California wants to make sure their lawyers are smart, they should just require an LSAT score of 155+ to get barred. There is a very high LSAT / Bar exam correlation and you weed people out before they waste 7% of their career.

<comment><USER31> > The person already spent 3 years and maybe hundreds of thousand of dollars.

The rest of your post seems well argued to me (I have no experience with law school), but surely this part is irrelevant. If someone, after spending howsoever much time and money, isn't qualified to be a lawyer, then he or she shouldn't be a lawyer; there shouldn't be any certification by the state just for effort, or financial expenditure.

(The rest of your post seems to pursue the alternate argument that the CA cut- off is too high, giving many false negatives, and _that_ is an argument that appeals to my selfishness: if I can't find a lawyer at a reasonable price because the state has, intentionally or not, stifled competition among potentially competent lawyers, then my interests have not been served.)

<comment><USER32> Read the sentences around that one:

> I think a high barrier for becoming a lawyer is a good thing. But the bar > exam is the wrong time to make the cut. The person already spent 3 years and > maybe hundreds of thousand of dollars.

> If California wants to make sure their lawyers are smart, they should just > require an LSAT score of 155+ to get barred.

To rephrase: we can predict a person's bar exam score with very high accuracy from their LSAT score. (This is an example of the general principle "all IQ tests are closely related to each other".) It's a stupid idea to have them spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on an education they're doomed to fail when we could tell them in advance that they shouldn't bother.

The fact that this process is incredibly wasteful seems relevant to the argument, no? If you took the bar exam after spending twenty minutes and fifty bucks, it wouldn't really matter that it didn't provide any more information on the testees than their LSAT scores had already provided.

<comment><USER31> > To rephrase: we can predict a person's bar exam score with very high > accuracy from their LSAT score. (This is an example of the general principle > "all IQ tests are closely related to each other".) It's a stupid idea to > have them spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on an education they're > doomed to fail when we could tell them in advance that they shouldn't > bother.

That seems like an argument for not having the bar exam, which is (at least in my state of ignorance about the subject) a reasonable thing to argue. However, that does not seem to be the position of the sentence you quoted, immediately before the one I quoted:

> But the bar exam is the wrong time to make the cut.

If there _is_ a bar exam, then when it is taken is, I think, exactly the _right_ time to make the cut.

Even with those sentences quoted as context, I still think that the time and money spent in the study of law is irrelevant to whether someone should be accredited, by whatever process. (That doesn't mean that I think that it is irrelevant full stop; I agree that it is deeply relevant to the student, and probably to society as a whole.) Nonetheless, I meant in my original post to argue literally only with the one sentence that I quoted, which is why I did not give the context, and not to argue with the rest of the post, which seemed eminently sound and which I agree should probably be interpreted as you have done.

<comment><USER32> > That seems like an argument for not having the bar exam, which is (at least > in my state of ignorance about the subject) a reasonable thing to argue. > However, that does not seem to be the position of the sentence you quoted, > immediately before the one I quoted

It is the position of the sentence I quoted, as you can see by following my quotation all the way through to:

>> If California wants to make sure their lawyers are smart, they should just require an LSAT score of 155+ to get barred.

It seems like there might be a confusion over the concepts "bar exam", meaning "any exam that allows or prohibits the practice of law by a testee", and "bar exam", meaning "the test given to law school graduates who wish to practice law, under the American legal education system".

A bar exam in the first sense makes the cut by definition -- it is the cut, and therefore the cut cannot be made at any other time. But the bar exam in the first sense does not occur at any particular time. rhino369 has made a perfectly coherent argument that the bar exam in the _second_ sense, the real bar exam as it occurs in American practice, which _is_ given at a particular time, is given at the _wrong_ time, that it should be given _before_ students go to law school and in fact should really just be replaced by the LSAT (already given at the appropriate time) because it isn't informative taken in addition to the LSAT anyway.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Drug-Sniffing Dogs Reflect Police Bias - <AUTHOR> http://www.erowid.org/freedom/police/police_article1.shtml

<comment><USER2> This reminds me of the story from about ten years ago about a racist police dog in Pittsburgh that would attack bystanders: [http://www.oocities.org/ericsquire/articles/dogs/wtae030425....](http://www.oocities.org/ericsquire/articles/dogs/wtae030425.htm) and [http://web.archive.org/web/20080503212841/http://dir.salon.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/20080503212841/http://dir.salon.com/story/mwt/wire/2004/02/03/dog/index.html)

Tangent: I'm extremely frustrated at how ephemeral web pages are. I googled the story to provide a reference, and the most reputable sources for the story are dead. I found 404s on Salon.com, Fox News, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and PBS.org. Sadly, I found some of these links on a racist forum. It sucks that Storm Front keeps bytes around longer than these other sites.

Anyway, I just donated $25 to archive.org to support what they're doing. I've been using the Wayback Machine for years and always took it for granted. I'm not sure what made things different about tonight's frustration at broken links, but for the first time I just became worried about the preservation of history.

<comment><USER3> I'm a little surprised that there wasn't a valid google cache still kicking around for any of those dead links.

<comment><USER4> Google is for-profit organization. They're not interested in keeping stuff unless it makes them money.

<comment><USER5> Making money is not the only goal of a for profit organization. Being public certainly doesn't help but if "don't be evil" is still ingrained in Google's culture, I would expect them to support archive.org's effort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Huh? Dogs are brought so that the police can then do the search themselves. The police signal the dog to bark, and because of the barking justify their search. Not sure what the news here is.

<comment><USER7> Your cynicism has accurately predicted the gist of this article, but it may be news for others who see dogs as objective sensors.

<comment><USER8> Including, specifically and problematically, the law.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is video of stoned ex-drug cop Barry Cooper explaining how police can make their dogs false alert:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J41K2XHpNnE>

And this is video of a cop doing it:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hkw8KgZ_LhU>

</comment><comment><USER10> Barry Cooper, a former narcotics officer, explains in pretty great detail how they train with alert dogs:

<http://youtu.be/F9pGylTSDj0>

A lot of the video isn't particularly relevant, but he does discuss how the officers are trained to incite the dog to alert and how the desire for the ball is a prey drive.

</comment><comment><USER11> In NSW, police with dogs are greatly disliked: <http://www.nswccl.org.au/issues/sniffer_dogs.php>

tl;dr: Dogs weren't effective, people were harassed, records say ineffective, ombudsman called on government to withdraw the abusive powers.

</comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if repeated handler bias leads to a prejudiced dog. Then the animal would no longer need cues from the handler to perpetuate to unequal protection under the law.

I'm regularly embarrassed by my own little dog who for 10 years has been an incorrigible racist. She came as a puppy from the breeder with a deep seated hatred of black men, men in hats, and anyone on a bicycle which we have been unable to train out or even suppress. We just pretend she barks at everyone.

<comment><USER13> It's incredibly deep seated. We had a dog that we got through an animal shelter, and we knew that it hadn't been treated well by its former owner, but didn't really notice much for the best part of a year.

Then winter came, and one day I took him out while I was removing snow from the driveway. The instant I put on gloves he totally changed. He started circling me at high speed (he was built to run _fast_ ) and would snarl and try to bite my hands. Took the gloves off, and he'd instantly turn back into the most loveable dog ever. Back on, and the process was repeated.

This being in Norway, getting aggressive towards people with gloves on during winter was a bit of an issue, but at least once we knew we could keep a extra solid grip on the leash while walking him at winter. Thankfully he'd need to be quite close to someone before it was an issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I won't trust my dog alone with my slippers, but the government and enough of the populace trust dogs to the point they gave dogs the power to revoke our civil rights.

<comment><USER15> No they gave the police that power by letting them use dogs. I think at some point it was understood that the subjectivity of a dog's signaling interpretation can be used as a backdoor for searches. It is a clever trick and it works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Cited research: <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3078300/>

</comment><comment><USER17> There are false positives when using eyes to discover things as well. So the fact that dogs are biased and make mistakes doesn't concern me. Law enforcement is not a perfect weapon.

I'm more concerned that that weapon is pointed at your civil liberties. What you put into your body or do with consenting adults is of no proper concern of government.

</comment><comment><USER8> Assuming this is corroborated by more studies, I wonder how long this would take to result in a change in the acceptance of dog sniffs as probable cause. Does anyone know of any precedent or previous situation where such a change happened?

<comment><USER18> It would require a court to change the precedence since probable is determined by the courts. It could happen fairly quickly if the right case was argued in the right court. Best case would still take years. I personally think it will take decades. Courts don't move quickly without pressure to change and police don't like to give up the powers they have.

<comment><USER8> Yes, presumably. I guess I'm wondering what level of evidence/studies courts typically want in these situations before overturning precedent. Obviously it varies from court to court, though :)

<comment><USER18> Not sure. I would imagine one good expert witness with a good lawyer and a few studies could make headway if there was sufficient public pressure. Court cases don't happen in a vacuum. :)

<comment><USER19> Right. If one expert can make a compelling case to a jury, that jury will set a precedent for future defense lawyers. In fact, I'd be surprised if it isn't already the case in some jurisdictions.

<comment><USER20> Juries don't set precedents.

The precedent affects the directions given to the jury by the judge, and can generally only be changed by an appellate court ("the direction given by the judge in x case was incorrect and therefore the conviction should be overturned/the case retried").

Regardless of the direction given, juries are generally entitled to return whatever verdict they want (see jury nullification). If a judge (correctly) directs them that a sniffer dog alert constitutes cause for a search they may still acquit.

<comment><USER19> I think you're confusing legal "precedent" with the colloquial meaning of the word.

Isn't it obvious that I meant "precedent" in the sense of "a jury found this expert's testimony to be credible once, and therefore is likely to do so again"?

Seems like the "for future defense lawyers" should have been enough of a clue to head off the pedantic hair-splitting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> [EDIT: this isn't getting the (positive) karma I expected it to. Anyone has a hint?]

This article isn't nearly as convincing as the author hopes. (S)he mainly argues that drug dogs catch too many innocents to allow them to be used as "probable cause" for searches. However,

"The [extensive] review [of the Austrialian New South Wales Ombudsman] found that illegal drugs were found in only 26% of all searches that were initiated after a handler indicated that a dog alerted on the subject."

If there were a cheap-ish test that detected bombs with this accuracy, wouldn't we want to use it? Even if a few innocents would be unjustly searched?

I also agree with the author that we should look more closely at methodological issues of drug dogs; but this article is only convincing if you support the underlying premise that drugs aren't (all that) bad. (I do.)

(The article speculates that police dogs could be trained by their handlers to alert e.g. on blacks, but doesn't show that this actually happens, or that police dogs are more racist than police officers. The article also argues that dog-based evidence is not very strong, but only cites a case where it was thrown out; and "probable cause" is far weaker than "sufficient evidence to convict" anyway.)

<comment><USER22> Let's look at the quote you present:

"26% of all searches found drugs"

I think everything afterwards goes downhill:

\- 'cheapish test to detect _BOMBS_'

How did we end up with bombs now? A second ago we were talking about (recreational?) drugs. Are you pulling the 'War on Terror' card here?

\- '_cheapish_'

Backed up by what? What are the costs of training and keeping (feeding, medical treatment, housing) the dogs? Bringing the officers to search in the first place? What are the costs of the individuals being searched, who probably had to stop right there for quite a while and to sit back and wait.

\- 'a _few_ innocents would be unjustly searched'

74 out of 100. 740 out of 1000. 7400 out of 10000. If 3/4 are 'few', where's 'half' and 'most' located on that scale?

<comment><USER21> Thanks for the explanation. Don't get me wrong, I think the War on Terror is even worse than the War on Drugs. I'll try to be clearer next time.

"Bombs" is intended to mean "something that we can all agree is really bad". I intended to say "the costs seem acceptable if they stop something really bad" (exaggerating for effect, "nobody who's not already in favour of legalisation is going to buy this argument"). Remember that many think that drugs are _really bad_.

(Some of the data you requested, although I don't think it helps much: <http://people.howstuffworks.com/police-dog2.htm> suggests that a police dog costs $8500 to acquire. Housing a dog in a shelter costs ~$3000 over the dog's lifetime, IIRC; so $15000 seems a reasonable guess at a dog's lifetime cost. I didn't find the number of active dogs or the cost of officer training, which would be required to calculate cost/successful search.

From <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs>: "In 2008, 1.5 million Americans were arrested for drug offenses. 500,000 were imprisoned." Even if we assume that this corresponds to 1.5 million successful searches after a dog alerted, you'd get 6 million searches per year, or about one search every fifty years per American. Of course, that assumes those searches will be randomly distributed; but still, if I felt that drugs were _really bad_ and could be stopped by repression, I'd consider that a reasonable price to pay.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Please help keep this site about hacking and startups and articles that are actually intellectually interesting, rather than some sort of advocacy/"internet getting its dander up" by flagging articles like these. Thanks!</comment>


Spirograph: Circles on circles rotating in opposite directions - <AUTHOR> http://www.techendo.co/posts/spirograph-circles-on-circles-rotating-in-opposite-directions

<comment><USER2> Go to the real link and try it out: [http://jsxgraph.uni- bayreuth.de/wiki/index.php/Circles_on_ci...](http://jsxgraph.uni- bayreuth.de/wiki/index.php/Circles_on_circles_rotating_in_opposite_directions)</comment>