community issues (was: Crossroads)

[Wolfgang S. Rupprecht]

This Gogole training video showed up in slashdot a few days ago, but
might be worth reposting here.  The title is a bit on the nasty side,
but the message itself is much more positive.

Folks in other countries might want to edit the url's ".com" to point
to their regional google and get a bit faster response.  Even though
the google page has one of those an infernal *.flv files embedded, the
downloadable mp4 file (the one marked "video ipod/sony psp") plays
just fine in mplayer.

  http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4216011961522818645

As to my two cents, and I'm still not sure how a wifi hardware
selection question lead to a thread of gsm data plans (and with no
subject-line change to boot!).  Gsm data plan selection is somewhat
overwhelming for first time buyer and there is no way that someone
looking through the on-line archives is going to spot the discussion
from the subject line.  As a result the same question is going to get
asked on the list more frequently than it would otherwise.  That was
the first cent's worth of my two cents.

The second cent is that many folks here are looking at the developer's
phone as simply a way of getting the consumer's phone 6 months early.
These people obviously have never used early rev. engineering
hardware.  My experience is that it normally has plenty of hardware
bugs that can't be easily fixed by the software engineer.  Sometimes a
if the bug is simple a few blue-wires and a few trace cuts are all
that is needed, but I can't imagine it will be practical for hundreds
of phones located in the far corners of the world.  I think developers
buying the engineering samples should think of them as essentially
disposable with a shelf-life of 6 months.  Once the consumer device is
out software tends to stop supporting some of the weirder quirks of
the early engineering hardware and that hardware rev is essentially
orphaned.

-wolfgang
-- 
Wolfgang S. Rupprecht                http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/