7-inch Google Tablet Coming From ASUS 151
First time accepted submitter Sez Zero writes "Google and ASUS have been collaborating on a co-branded 7-inch Android tablet, with a launch as early as May, according to sources, challenging low-cost rivals and the iPad with a $199-249 price tag. The fruits of the partnership, whispered to the runes readers at DigiTimes by industry sources, will take on the NOOK Tablet and the Kindle Fire, with ASUS selected for its willingness to flex to Google's requirements."
Google is going for low price (Score:2, Insightful)
Which hurts the quality of the product and hardware. This has been a huge problem with Android - customers don't really know if they get a good product or not. When they get iPad or iPhone they know exactly that they will love the experience. Android ecosystem is a complete mess.
Re:Google is going for low price (Score:5, Funny)
Are you insane? First, a 50" tablet is way too big to carry around. Second, the battery life would be absolutely terrible. Third, I like surround-sound.
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Not replace for watching that same content, but by using more time up. Instead of sitting there passively watching... whatever, I've noticed my wife can't sit there and just have the TV on. She'll have the ipad on her lap, browsing Facebook, playing some daft word game. The shows change but it's more background noise than actual watching. THAT'S how tablets are.. not replacing for now, supplementing is probably fairer to say.
If you used to spend (x) amount of time watching TV, how much time do you use a
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She's watching the wrong kind of stuff on TV, then. I'll have my laptop out if I'm watching the news or my roommate has a game on, but when Breaking Bad or SoA is on, I'm glued to that screen.
Re:Google is going for low price (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually I'll call bullshit on this and for a good reason: I recently purchased an Asus Zenbook UX21. Up untill this point I have never purchased Asus gear and have always gone for Toshiba and Fujitsu notebooks which have never let me down. But this Zenbook was preposteriously inexepensive, exactly the form factor I needed, and immediately available so I went for it. I'm so glad I did - I love the thing. It's well constructed and has killer hardware, the screen is nice, the keyboard is nice, it even looks nice. There are some small complaints about it sure but they are negligable unless I want to spend twice the price for a Toshiba Ultrabook (which looks fantastic, but basically the same specs + some minor polish and a few bells and whistles at 2x the price).
If anyone can pull off a great Android tablet on a budget it's Asus.
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I think I agree. I bought two Asus netbooks (different generations) and both have been nothing but flawless in every aspect.
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True. I'd never bothered with Asus before either, but seeing how well made the EEE Transformer is, and how they're pushing the designs for newer tablets/laptops AND how they're supporting their equipment with updates, I'll be looking at them for future purchases. I know they've been around for ages, but looks like they're really stepping up and taking a spot in the usual line up of machines.
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Now if ONLY Asus could meet its current commitments - I'm still waiting for a Transformer Prime.
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Your stance is exactly why Apple can charge so outrageous prices for their products and get away with it.
Seriously, most Android phones are excellent, are fast enough for their purpose and are well built. How many have you tried?
When people compare Android phones to iPhones they often compare the CHEAPEST model to to the most expensive phone on the market! FAIL - try comparing a midrange price Android to an iPhone... most like 1/3 to 1/2 the price of the iPhone. Believe me, that phone just works.
Go away, Ap
It's about the software (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually it's quite the opposite. Every device Google has had a personal hand in designing has been one perfect experience after the other. It is typically the handset manufacturers who are unable to code decent software, then the carriers who load the devices up with junk that ruin the experience.
I have an ancient phone, yet I run CM9 on it. It is far smoother than phones twice as expensive, rather new, and spouting features like dual core processors depending on who had a hand in making the software.
I for one am excited about what google can come up with in this partnership.
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Re:Google is going for low price (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh yeah, Android is horribly fragmented into camps that like physical keyboards or not, HD cams or no, front facing cams or not, items in pink, blue or prints.
Android vendors have better margins even than Apple, and that's saying something. I enjoy choosing, so I like the mess that Android is.
Re:Google is going for low price (Score:5, Insightful)
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consumers like choice
Consumers like small choices and dislike big choices. Give them a choice of five they'll be happy, give them a choice of 50 they'll be unhappy.
consumers have spoke and continue to speak to the tune of 850,000 activations a day.
The current success of Android is largely down two groups:
1) Want's a cheap phone. There are cheap Androids available. They are not getting a phone that is as good as an iPhone or a top of the range Android. But they are getting a cheap one.
2) Doesn't know what they want. Walks into a mobile phone store and asks for advice, or may have some idea but allows the salesm
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Consumers like small choices and dislike big choices. Give them a choice of five they'll be happy, give them a choice of 50 they'll be unhappy.
By that logic the iDevices are just more choice. What would you suggest we do? Take them off the market?
The current success of Android is largely down two groups:
Believe whatever you need to feel better about your own choice. Its your delusion. Normal people will continue getting what they want and ignoring the platform zealots like yourself.
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By that logic the iDevices are just more choice. What would you suggest we do? Take them off the market?
I'm not suggesting anything. I just like to correct the blanket statement that consumers like choice, or choice is good.
Believe whatever you need to feel better about your own choice. Its your delusion. Normal people will continue getting what they want and ignoring the platform zealots like yourself.
i.e. you have no counter argument. If there's any delusion, it's yours. The point about most Android owners not wanting to buy another in future is fact. Thus "continue to get what they want" will be bad news for Android.
http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-08-01/tech/29974966_1_android-iphone-owners-gene-munster [businessinsider.com]
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i.e. you have no counter argument. If there's any delusion, it's yours
Actually your talking points have been so thoroughly debunked ad nauseum that I let my sibling have it this time. Don't think so highly of yourself. your arguments aren't new. You didn't think of any of it and better men than you that actually did come up with that stuff have already been slapped down. Now go lick your wounds and hunt around on hacker news and engadget for a new playbook.
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LOL! How childish are you? What next? "You're rubber, I'm glue"? Stick your tongue out at me?
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i.e. you have no counter argument. If there's any delusion, it's yours. The point about most Android owners not wanting to buy another in future is fact. Thus "continue to get what they want" will be bad news for Android. http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-08-01/tech/29974966_1_android-iphone-owners-gene-munster [businessinsider.com]
Your article is based on a semi-formal survey of 217 smartphone users in Minneapolis.
This article:
http://allthingsd.com/20111212/youth-is-wasted-on-the-young-and-so-are-consumer-electronics/
is based on a proper, randomized survey of 2000 households nationwide. The numbers of "loyal" users for Apple (83%) and Android (81%) are statically the same, because they're within the margin of error of the study, and both are very high.
To put it another way, your cite is crap. Both Apple and Android users ar
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You must have dug deep for that one. iPhones consistently top the customer satisfaction ratings by a huge margin.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=iphone+android+customer+satisfaction [lmgtfy.com]
As your link is an outlier, with no primary source available, most probably it's a mis-quote of the survey. Or the survey wasn't a real one in the first place.
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This is untrue (Score:2)
It's rarely about preferring Android phones. And even where it is, it's mostly an uneducated preference. When Android owners are asked whether they will buy another Android in future, most say no. Amongst iPhone owners, most say they will buy another iPhone.
This is just not true.
"83 percent of current iPhone users intend to buy an iPhone again this holiday season; 81 percent of Android OS users said the same."
Source:
http://allthingsd.com/20111212/youth-is-wasted-on-the-young-and-so-are-consumer-electronics/ [allthingsd.com]
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Price is a pretty major selling factor. That is called good capitalist practice.
There are a number of things I want out of a tablet
1. Not Apple
2. Sensible price (as in #1)
3. Configurable (as in #1)
4. Not from a company that sees legal action as the prime means of dealing with competition (as in #1)
5. Powerful
6. Well made
Why is number 1 there? I don't want something that is seen by some as an essential fashion accessory. I would rather do without. By a long way, not everyone who buys from Appl
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Anyone who buys a tablet that needs to be jailbroken or rooted is a sucker. What's special about a tablet that makes people think its okay to own only 90% of what you paid for?
That people have to scour forums for how-to instructions and downloads to get really basic shit running on devices they *PAID* for is ridiculous, and watching people drool over the opportunity to do so is depressing. Idiocracy becoming reality right in front of us.
If you can't install *ANY* OS you want natively, don't buy it.
Fanboys
Re:Google is going for low price (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't want something that is seen by some as an essential fashion accessory. I would rather do without.
So, you're allowing your choice to be influenced by what others think of the brand. You might think that's anti-fashion, but actually, that's fashion.
I just to not want to be associated with that group that does.
You are following the fashion, every bit as much as punks who said their choice was about not wanting to be associated with glam rockers.
Your list is just a way of justifying the fashion choice you've made. Just as a punk might have listed everything they found wrong with glam rock.
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Nobody in a developed society can avoid being affected by fashion. A lot of people out of it are as well. I am wearing what I like - jeans, trainers and a rugby shirt (haven't played in decades). This is all affected by fashion. I avoid wearing certain types of fashion because they fit my self image and even beliefs and preferences. (It is a Scotland rugby shirt for example.)
None of them are "fashionable" though. There is a difference.
My fashion choice, as you style it, is to be different from people
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Your choice to not buy something (regardless of what it can do) simply because other people buy it is just as irrational as people who do buy it because other people do.
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I never claimed my choice was completely rational. Wanting to not be associated with a particular group can be, at least partly, an emotional preference.
Some of my other reasons are considered and rational though.
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So you're a hipster. Well fucking done!
Just because you can attach some trendy label (see what I did ) to someone doesn't make there opinion invalid. If you have a rational rebuttal then give it but insulting him just makes you look like a bully. And if you can't rebut him then either he is just giving his opinion which he's entitled to or he's giving facts in which case why are you arguing anyway? Maybe you need to crack open that Blue Ribbon.
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No, but using "there" instead of "their" does.
I'm typing this on a tablet with auto correct but apparently not a grammar checker. Being a spelling/grammar nazi is about a half step above "your mom" in a debate, btw.
Except the reply was pointing out that the person in question was every bit as fashion concious as the very people he was putting down, only the OP felt that they wanted something "different".
Just like every other hipster.
So? Did a Hipster fart in your Cheereos this morning? And since you so gleefully point out my errors, learn to spell conscious.
The person replying is also entitled to their opinion. Not all opinions are valid and some are downright hypocritical.
Like the OP.
The opinion that boils down to basically "my opinion is basically that your opinion is wrong" is one of the exceptions to the all opinions being equally valid rule.
Calm down dear, it's only a forum.
You should definitely take your own advice.
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As usual Dilbert has is right.
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2012-02-23/ [dilbert.com]
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What they need is a good viral advertising campaign.
7 inches... it's coming.
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It can't take on the iPad with Fire-like specifications.
Actually it can and for two reasons. First of all, it isn't competing in the same price range as the iPad and judging from the success of the Fire and Nook, there are millions of budget conscious tablet buyers and there are likely many millions more. Secondly the specs of the Fire are fine. It's just loaded down with Amazon's UI gunk and an older build of Android that doesn't have the modern features of Ice Cream Sandwich and soon to be released Jelly Bean. The biggest issue being lack of video acceleratio
Already a failure (Score:2, Interesting)
Android needs Horsepower and memory. 1 gig ram, dual core 1.2ghz processor, and at LEAST a 1024x768 screen res to be any real competition.
If this does not have all of those, it is a failure as I can buy one of the other android tablets from a better company name, you can get the Samsung or Motorola tablets at Staples for $299-$399 right now and I know that hardware is better than ASUS.
Come on ASUS, you guys used to know what you were doing. Now it's a year late and a processor core short.
Re:Already a failure (Score:5, Informative)
you can get the Samsung or Motorola tablets at Staples for $299-$399 right now and I know that hardware is better than ASUS.
Sure the hardware is better, but it won't run anywhere near as well. If Samsung and Motorola have shown just one thing it's that they lack any competent programmers. I really did enjoy watching the dramas with RobustFS that Samsung released on their phones. You know you could quadruple and then some the I/O performance on the Galaxy S simply by converting the partition to ext4?
Yes at the time the Galaxy S was quite mean hardware. Yet the version of Eclair they shipped was about the only version of Android that I have seen which would force close apps because they were taking too long to load due to the OS overhead. The only good thing Samsung ever did was not lock down the bootloader on their devices. Although I'm not sure they did this out of kindness but rather their engineers were too dumb to figure out how.
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Yes. RFS is "Robust" in that it is FAT16 with journaling and permissions shoehorned into it.
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I guess you have not been keeping up with developments on the GS. Since Gingerbread the performance boost from converting to ext4 has been pretty marginal because the phone is damn fast anyway. Not quite as fast as a vanilla Nexus S, I'll grant you, but very smooth and responsive. Samsung got their shit together.
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Ha. Sorry yes they did fix *SOME* things, but overall the experience still pales in comparison to CM7 of the time.
Mind you what you're saying is not much of a defence. If it takes 2 MAJOR operating system releases spanned across 2 years to fix something that the hobby community solved within a few weeks it doesn't paint a shining example of "having their shit together".
That and I've had a play with their honeycomb tablets too which given the hardware also seem to be very poor in performance where it matters
Re:Already a failure (Score:4, Informative)
Come on ASUS, you guys used to know what you were doing. Now it's a year late and a processor core short.
Not sure where you're getting your hardware specs from as tfa says the hardware is unconfirmed at this point.
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Then the opposite of that is true as well, that you cannot pronounce it as a success either.
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Well, TFA says 1280x800. And 1.2 ghz processor is pretty much a given, there's almost nothing they could equip it with these days slower than that. 1.5 or 1.8 is more likely. 1 gig ram seems pretty likely too. So it seems this device has pretty good odds of delivering what you want.
Android vs Linux performance? (Score:2)
Has anyone seen an Android vs Linux performance comparison?
Android on tablets may actually be a nice sneak gate to native Linux usage on tablets.
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By what metric? Given that Android uses a Linux kernel and similar drivers there are many parts of the system which should be equal in speed (thinking file system performance). But then there's also parts of Android that would be majorly let down in performance terms (such as UI rendering on pre ICS models which didn't support hardware acceleration nor give the UI a high thread priority).
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Not true:
https://plus.google.com/105051985738280261832/posts/2FXDCz8x93s [google.com]
https://plus.google.com/105051985738280261832/posts/XAZ4CeVP6DC [google.com]
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How is posting links which talk about how much has been changed and added to UI rendering in ICS / Honeycomb, and that the UI runs in a default priority in any way evidence that what I said is "Not True?"
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A) The UI is hardware accelerated where appropriate
B) There isn't a UI thread in the same way as iOS has one because it doesn't make sense in a multi-tasking environment, so his statement doesn't make sense. The display is a composite of windows anyway.
GPS? (Score:2)
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"And am I mistaken, or would adding GPS add no more than perhaps $2 to the marginal cost of each tablet these days?"
Don't know about the costs, but all gps enabled devices I have seem to have the GPS and 3G "glued together" on 1 chip. I guess it's to get AGPS to work. Adding a standalone GPS might be cheap, but it will take ages to get a fix.
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To be honest, you're right. Not to mention most tablets have horrible battery life anyway.
I'd love to see someone add an extra 1/4 or even 1/2 inches to the thickness of a given device and cover the thing with another 20aH of capacity. Enough to run apps for several days if not a week or more!
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I don't consider 10 hours horrible battery life. Then again, I've never used an android tablet for longer than 15 minutes at a time, and can only speak for the ipad series.
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GPS costs a bit more than $2. But the big problem is that it's slow. You can get around that by putting in a cellular radio too, but that costs even more.
You CAN get your map if you want. Either buy a tablet with a 3G radio and a GPS, or buy one without and a GPS tracker with a bluetooth connection.
Finally; Hopefully Google and Asus Delivers (Score:4, Interesting)
Android OEMs have struggled by themselves but with Google's help and Asus' engineering they could come up with something really great at a price point that is easily palatable by people not well off enough to afford 4 and 5 hundred dollar plus devices.The naysayers should wait until something is delivered before throwing irrational hate at a piece of circuitry and glass they've never even touched.
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I have a Xoom and an iPad. When the Xoom had HC on it the iPad got a lot of use as Honeycomb was a little too raw. But the day ICS as installed on this device the iPad was sat down and hasn't been picked up since. The experience has been wonderful. Even this tegra2 flies with Android 4.0 on it.
While this is all anecdotal, I've had exactly the same experience with Asus Transformer - nice form factor but software was consistently underwhelming when it was Honeycomb. With ICS, it's like it's a completely different device.
Part of me wonders... (Score:1)
no one wants low res tablets (Score:2)
Apple got one thing right on ipad3 ... high res. High enough for movie playback to have acceptable quality at last. Manufacturers figure it out: there is a large segment of the population waiting for tablets that do at least 1080p natively so they can be used to watch movies.
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The bulk of the population will spend money on phones and big screen TVs, then a notebook and then on everything else other than a tablet. Unless that tablet is throw away cheap.
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It's easy to tell the difference because the scaling artifacts suck. It's not about the pixel density, it's about matching the native resolution so you don't scale.
The Perfect Shitty Size (Score:2)
Too small for useful use and too large to be portable. Awesome.
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I 100% disagree. From experience. In my view, smart phones are too small to be useful, and many are too large to be a good phone. 10" is definitely too large to be portable (might as well haul around a smallish laptop at that point), too heavy and awkward to hold comfortably. 7" can fit into a purse, pocket (jeans or suit, even with a case on it), backpack, or whatever you want while still having plenty of space to do everything I could want. It's also a convenient size for holding with one hand.
But, r
Why ASUS? (Score:1)
...with ASUS selected for its willingness to flex to Google's requirements.
Maybe I'm missing something here but didn't google purchase Motorola not so long ago?
Does Motorola not make tablets themselves?
How can ASUS be more willing to flex to Google's requirements over Motorola?
Unless perhaps Google has others plans for Motorola?
I wish the article had said something in regards to this.
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> ...didn't google purchase Motorola...
No.
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They haven't yet sealed the deal, and who knows what antitrust issues might be involved as well.
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Google is buying Motorola. It has not yet completed.
Presumably, the reason has more to do with brand cohesion, specifically things like BLUR. Everyone already has expectations of what to expect with a Motorola Android device. These expectations will be broken (for better or for worse) on a "Nexus" device. Since ASUS is largely unknown to U.S. consumers, there is little in the way of expectations.
Alternatively, it should be noted that Pegatron, which is a spinoff from ASUS (and is still their primary ODM
Digitimes (Score:1)
Digitimes Digitimes Digitimes
Such an accurate source.
Yep. (Score:5, Insightful)
Count me in for four at least for my own house, and as many for gifts for Christmas.
I'm ot sure where you're going with that 1984 rhetoric though. This stuff works for us, it delivers modern innovation - and yet it lets us do with it what we will. That's not the same thing at all as the dystopian vision you portend.
Have you some credible source, some study or even some analyst to call dire outcomes? Surely you must. Your fear, show me it.
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Count me in for four at least for my own house
Same here, I've been waiting for some kind of incentive to buy one to my parents - this might be it.
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That's not the same thing at all as the dystopian vision you portend.
Yes, I agree: it is a completely different dystopian version, as is anything less than The Happy Hunting Grounds- but if you carry any tablet there, you 'll be laughed at at the door. By mountain Lions.
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What are you waiting for? You can get the Novo 7 advanced II for $130, or the Ramos W6HD for $144 right now. Both have capacative 7" touch screens with multitouch. Both run Android 4 Ice cream sandwich. The only difference with the Asus one is the brand name and the slightly-higher resolution screen compared with the Ramos. $200-$250 is "I gotta think about it" money. Under $150 falls into "compulsive buy" for some
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What are you on about? He knows it's got a 7-inch display, he knows about how much it costs, he knows what software it runs. Does it really matter if the processor is 1.4GHz vs. 1GHz, or it has two cameras instead of one? You'll be able to use it to read books and watch videos either way.
And if he needs four of them, the difference between $800 vs. $2000 for 4 x iPad3 is $1200. That is no small amount of cash. You could use it as half the 20% down payment on a house [npr.org] for crying out loud. (Or you could get a
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What are you on about?
Satire, my friend. Satire.
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You suck because you drive a Ford. My dad drives a Chevy and it's the best!
WTF. Are you guys all 14 years old or what?
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Obvious troll is obvious. You might want to look up the difference between "can't afford it" and "worse value for money."
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If those are the actual effects _on_you_, I strongly recommend suicide as you are wasting useful oxygen.
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If those are the actual effects _on_you_, I strongly recommend suicide as you are wasting useful oxygen.
He's not wasting useful oxygen, he's converting it into much more useful CO2.
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Well... If that's your problem, you have bigger ones...
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Nice scare attempt but from your own link:
The malware is installed from a compromised system after cracking a SSH server's root password, in the path /etc/.xsyslog
If somebody cracks into a ssh root shell, this trojan is the least of your concerns. Anyway, I believe nobody is letting ssh root logins nowadays. Also, what does this have to do with TFA?
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Mod parent up. If you've lost root, well, erm, whoever has the password has full control, why bother installing a trojan?
Seems silly to me - just install whatever payload you need, customize it to the compromized box.
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Don't bother replying to him. There's a reason why he gets modded into oblivion every time on Slashdot.
He's off his meds again.
--
BMO
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Or they can stop irritating me. Its all about me.
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Choices can be good in concept, but a market flood of them just dilutes things and you end up with a lot of crap with nothing being of any real value.
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Maybe 2-8 choices are cool, but a flooded market is a nightmare to navigate.
You must go apoplectic in the cereal aisle.
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It's not about android, that's been around for a while and lots here use it. It's the android fanbois on top of the idea that... It's an Asus hardware. I mean, seriously... We all see their quality and flare for superior hardware design, right? (/tongue-in-cheek humor)