Tag Archives: android

Delayed GPL Compliance?

Posted by on March 16, 2012 4 comments

In the Android world, it’s quite common that a lot of vendors don’t comply with the GNU GPLv2. There’s a (probably outdated) list of Android Tablets that fail to comply, and even a couple of articles on the topic, and even a statement from HTC about intentionally delaying the Source Code for 120 days.

Samsung just shipped their official “Ice Cream Sandwich” ROM for the Galaxy S2, and it includes the Linux 3.0 kernel. I registered on their “Open Source Release Center” and sent them a Request for source 48 hours ago. No reply from them, so I sent another a few hours ago. At this point, I don’t expect a response from Samsung, until they feel like actually complying…

Is there any way, other than through legal action, to force a company to comply with the license? What’s the point of having a license that states that you must also give the source, if you can just intentionally delay giving out the source, or not give it out at all?

*Shrug*

-Nushio
Update: Samsung released the source code for the Kernel 3.0 used in their Ice Cream Sandwich release. :-)

KDE Dolphin’s Service Menus

Posted by on July 23, 2011 7 comments

While it is well known that I’m a huge Gnome (classic) fan, I recently dipped into KDE grounds, again.

Because Dropbox continues to ignore the Dolphin File Manager, I decided to give SparkleShare a try, and following Mairin‘s most excellent How-To, I set up sparkle.k3rnel.net for my public files. (As a note, you need to chmod +x the post-receive git hook, otherwise it won’t work.)

My favorite Dropbox usage was dropping a file onto the Public folder, and right clicking it on Nautilus to get a Public Link. Sparkleshare doesn’t have a way to do this, but since I mounted my Public Sparkle folder, I wanted needed a way to get the public link.

I ended up investigating on KDE’s Service Menus, and created this Service Menu for the purpose. You need to place it in your ~/.kde/share/kde4/services/ServiceMenus/ folder, modify ‘your.site.here’ and possibly killall dolphin if it doesn’t load at first.

Now, there are some serious flaws on my script (I’m new here, have some patience). For starters, the menu entry will show up in all folders, rather than just your Public Sparkleshare folder. The way I envisioned this is that it should detect if there’s a “.public” file in the folder, read its contents (something like http://your.site.here) and append that to the filename, otherwise, don’t show the entry.

The other flaw I have is that if you create public folders, and try to get a file from within a public folder, it’ll ignore the folder and end up with your.site.here/file.txt instead of your.site.here/folder/file.txt.

Finally, the other issue I have is that files with spaces need %20. It currently gives you the link with spaces, and it isn’t clickable in most cases.  If someone could help me with the script, I’d really appreciate the help.

I created one other script, this one’s much simpler. It’s an Android ADB Push Menu. If you’ve got adb set up, it pushes any file to your phone’s /sdcard. It’ll fail if you have 2 or more devices hooked up at once, but I haven’t had time to investigate on how to display submenus for each adb device.

Anyway, I’m liking KDE so far. I love how easy it is to create the Service Menus and I thought I’d share.

Hello, Beautiful

Posted by on July 16, 2011 2 comments

image

I finally got my G1 back. I sent it for repair about 6 months ago, due to a busted touchscreen.

Now, 60 bucks, 6 months and 100 emails and tweets later, I finally have it back, as broken as it was when I first sent it.

Update: Not only did he not fix my touchscreen, he wrecked the Antenna and now the phone can’t even make or receive calls. Great.

Measuring Android’s Fail Points

Posted by on June 12, 2011 11 comments

Based on Tom Callaway’s “Fail Scale” and inspired by a recent tweet by Ryan Rix I decided to measure just how much Fail does Android have in its project.
Read more »

Why this Freetard sides with Android

Posted by on May 31, 2011 4 comments

This is a reply to Ryan’s Why I’m a Bad Freetard — Or the Quest for a New Phone.

It’s no secret that I’m an Android Fanboy, I really like the platform, and the idea of an “open” cellphone, but I’m well aware of its flaws.

For starters… Google has yet to ship Honeycomb’s source code, to which I say “What Honeycomb?”.

I’m sticking to CyanogenMod (Gingerbread / 2.3.4) whose code I can recompile (And have recompiled in several occasions), and I won’t migrate to Honeycomb until I can actually build it. Sure, I’m not smart enough to port Android or rebuilt without using a wiki, but I’m also not recompiling my KDE packages or my Kernel and yet I still manage to use my laptop.

And to say that there’s no community of Android enthusiasts is just wrong. There is a real community of both Android users and Android developers.

CyanogenMod is the closest we can get of an “Android Distro”. There’s others, but I’m proud to say that I’ve contributed one thing to CyanogenMod: Trackball Answer.

Sure, my contribution will never be accepted by Upstream (Google), but then again, I also never considered BlueBubble to be accepted by Fedora either, and that’s not stopping me from trying to help others.

And Android also has its fair share of Users. There’s a Facebook-like site dedicated around them, an awesome online store and even its own kind of hat. Hell, a bunch of Android Users got together to have an awesome Barbecue last year (And are planning on repeating it), and even managed to get about 1000 bucks towards a Cancer Research. Sorry, but I’ve never seen Apple fans do any of this.

Yes, Carriers are really screwing over their customers. Yeah, some hardware manufacturers really hate Freedom. Yes, Google is evil and is trying to datamine our every move. Yes, Android doesn’t follow The Open Source Way. Yes, you have to “root” the phone to make it kick-ass.

I’ve seen a lot of people complain about having to “Jailbreak” iPhones or “rooting” Androids to make’em awesome. I had to do the same with my laptop.
It came with Windows 7, and there’s no way I would’ve bought it if I couldn’t replace it with Fedora. And it wasn’t “Stock Windows 7″ either. It came with a lot of annoying crapware, and trialware too, so this isn’t something that’s exclusive to Android.

Would I have rather bought a laptop that came with no Windows? Hell yes I would’ve. But they’re so hard to find, I might as well just pick one I can wipe, and move on. The same logic applies to my phones, tablets, etc.  I won’t purchase an Android device that I can’t easily root.

I guess there’s a huge difference between Fedora and Android, and that’s fine. At the end of the day, my cellphone, like my laptop, is just a tool I use to do stuff. And I’ll pick the best damned tool I can get to do it.

CyanogenMod Emulator Update

Posted by on May 16, 2011 10 comments

One of the main reasons people visit this site is to get the latest CyanogenMod-based Android Emulator.

While I can’t say performance has gotten any better (The Android Emulator for Android 2.0 and above sucks, with 3.0 sucking hardcore), I updated the unofficial CyangenMod emulator images to a CyanogenMod 7.1.0 nightly build (Which is based on Android 2.3.4).

You can grab’em at http://nushio.fedorapeople.org/cyanogenmod/repository.xml and if you’ve already set it up, just go to the Android SDK Manager, and check your User Add-ons. It should display the updated package there.

As I’ve said before, this project is entirely unofficial, comes with no support, and will probably haunt you while you sleep. Use at your own comfort.

30 day geek challenge – Day 19: Favorite Gadget

Posted by on April 16, 2011 Comments Off

Missed the list? I’m doing a 30 day geek challenge, and It’s almost done…

The Google Nexus One is my favorite gadget. It’s extremely moddable, and mine’s currently running CyanogenMod 7, which adds a plethora of features that Google should’ve built-in. 

F…ragment you, Google!

Posted by on April 13, 2011 2 comments

Google likes to shove its head in the sand and pretend there’s no such thing as “fragmentation” in Android, then goes and does something like this.

You’d think that buying an App in the Android Market would mean that you’d be able to use it on any Android device, and you’d be wrong.

30 day geek challenge – Day 8: Favorite hat/shirt/shoes

Posted by on April 5, 2011 Comments Off

Missed the list? I’m doing a 30 day geek challenge.

Everyone’s got a favorite jacket, shirt, shoes or hat. Here’s mine:

I really like my Android Beanie. There’s a *lot* of different colors and models, but I really like mine: CyanogenMod-colored.

This is how I (t)roll

Posted by on March 24, 2011 1 comment

It’s been well known that “Ultimate Droid” steals from CyanogenMod, and in fact, a summary of previous… confrontations… has already been documented, however I couldn’t help but notice that their rom seems to be using my Trackball Answer code, and doesn’t state anywhere that I’m the author.

I thought that removing the Credits List was an mistake, so I decided to file a bug report:

He then tried to impersonate me on his own system, which apparently is smarter than him:

UltimateDroid has since taken down the entire Bugzilla interface, while he figures out how to delete my bug, I guess.