It makes me so very sad to see such fantastic projects that people put countless hours into get dumped onto sites like Rapidshare not just because they suck, are often temporary links that disappear, your customers have to go through ridiculous captchas and waits and download and speed limits, but also largely because these companies benefit commercially (ads and selling premium accounts) from your work probably more, I'd wager, than you benefit from donations from people who use your work and manage to give you a few bucks (wild guess).
I don't want to be sad anymore. Just so happens I've got space and bandwidth to spare. If you want me to mirror your Raphael rom, just ask (though I may ask you first) and I'll give you a deep link to post which will look like this -- http://mirror.blownfuze.org/[the rom's filename]
People click it, up pops the download dialog, Save, bam the thing downloads fast with no ads, no donation requests, no nothing. And if you get curious I can let you see how many people download your rom relative to the other roms I'm hosting and where these people are coming from geographically. That's icing on the cake; my primary purpose is to give back to the community without using paypal.
Three prerequisites -- it's gotta be intended for the Raphael, in English and you're a senior member.
Shoot me a message.
I second this motion!!
d0ugie gets it!
Rapidshare drives me nutz...
PS. Thanks Doug.
No offense meant but the problem with mirrors is that they don't last long. At least rapidshare is always there. Its a major PITA when a mirror site goes unavailable.
A BitTorrent pool might be a better option. But that would be dependent on people staying active as well.
i agree...rapidshare is bull$hit!!! and PayPal is a joke as well...help a brother out...
Paypal? Where did that come from?
I forgot to mention that I thought the thread title was a threat when I first read it...I read:
"Stop using rapidshare!! I'll mirror your MOM."
@d0ugie
Great idea though it ONLY makes sense if your mirror is stable.
Hope you know what you are buying into it?!
I have no bandwidth problem either and mirrored 2 Tilt and 2 Raph ROMeOS's... counts go up easy in the 100s of Gigabit/month (almost like on a xxx-site).
Just wanted to make you aware.
Sleuth255 said:
No offense meant but the problem with mirrors is that they don't last long. At least rapidshare is always there. Its a major PITA when a mirror site goes unavailable.
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Hey, a bit of topic but is there any chance there will be any public roms from you sleuth? i id love to see what you've been up to since the kaiser roms =)
+1, Informative
tyguy said:
@d0ugie
Great idea though it ONLY makes sense if your mirror is stable.
Hope you know what you are buying into it?!
I have no bandwidth problem either and mirrored 2 Tilt and 2 Raph ROMeOS's... counts go up easy in the 100s of Gigabit/month (almost like on a xxx-site).
Just wanted to make you aware.
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Click to collapse
Hmm. 100Gb/month for romeos links, huh.
Well here's the setup: My own server (blownfuze.org) has a modest link to my ISP. The server and its connection are very stable and sturdy; I know what I'm doing with Linux machines and I've had the link for years without any interruption that I was aware of. On one of the ISP's servers I have a shell account with a 2GB quota and no explicit bandwidth quota, speed or cumulative. The cabs I host on my server and even in peak hours it has not been out of control, not enough that the people I serve websites for with the same machine have said anything regarding latency -- even with HostnameLookups turned on. The radios and roms however I put on my shell and when someone downloads a rom or radio from my server my server redirects them with a meta refresh file to the file on the ISP's server. Based on my trial run over the past month or whatever with my site, guaging how much traffic I'd sting the ISP with on their server with these rom mirrors, I think it's a safe bet my ISP won't object. I'm a good customer, we have a good relationship and they're a strong enough outfit to handle a customer giving out files for people to mess with their phones.
So yes there are now two points of failure, my server and the ISP cutting me off, but I can dodge both problems by, if my server fails, changing the A record on my mirror host on my domain to my office server (we have a ton of bandwidth we don't need) or if the shell thing becomes a dealbreaking issue I can just change the refresh tags on my server to point at my office.
I believe there is a "within reason" understanding in terms of the shell bandwidth usage as this ISP is connected to multiple bluechip telcos and even pumping out dozens of gigabytes a month wouldn't piss them off -- in my estimation. Again I've been a good and profitable customer of theirs for a long time (several years?) and doubt they'd just pull the plug on me but if they did I'd simply redirect those meta refreshes to the server in my office until I negotiated something either with my ISP or another company and would not leave rom authors just hanging. So by having the links go to my server I have control over where they are directed and I also enjoy the bliss of datamining my Apache logs to see whose rom is getting downloaded by how many people and from where those people are located. That's fun to me.
In light of your own experience however it would be prudent of me to have a chat with my ISP to make sure they're cool with this so that I don't make major commitments to XDA folk and then fail them suddenly -- even though I take the basic measures to keep my pages from being googled and botted and can get aggressive with mod rewrites and other Apache tricks to enforce only letting XDA people (not ppcgeeks and strangers from search engines and such), hits with xda in the initial referrer entry, download anything from my server (which triggers the fast shell download).
Nevertheless, for now, I am going to continue to proceed with caution, contact the ISP soon, and take it from there.
Thanks tyguy.
As long as no one uploads on rapidshare, then i'm good. 15 minutes between downloads is KILLER =(
Just wanted to make you aware of the issue d0ugie.
I too have no problems with my host and bandwidth and you seem to have some internet / web hosting experience but as example when i hosted ROMeOS2_150_5_ENG_20759_041208_conFUZEd.zip which was a pre-final it was downloaded 190 times during one day with a file size of 78.78 MB on the server, looking at the start and exit counts assumes some used download managers. Just be careful and get the ducks in line up front.
Let me give you some help to calculate:
Just use Windows "Start" - "Run" - "Calc", take the thumb of your left hand and pick your nose with the index finger of the right hand and make a good gestimate of popular ROM and theme demands and go from there.
Some help, that chickensh*t <essentials> packed behind my "ATT Fuze NOOBs only - Little setup guide. " started 14-12-2008, 05:02 PM is 20.20 MB was downloaded 276 times while the thread was viewed 2,179 times. Not sure if you always can gestimate 10% download ratio over views but ...
Don't wanna be a nerd but don't like get others burned as well.
How about a Bittorrent pool like someone suggested? That is the best idea IMHO. Torrents are always fast and worth it.
That was my first thought but P1Tator didn't take kindly to my post on the subject. Though when a major release gets going there could be added layers of redundancies with multiple trackers, you gotta have someone who knows what they're doing to start this, you got to have people maintain this, you need trackers on a reliable server like xda's and when you do that there must be some careful monitoring over what torrents are hosted by XDA-connected (or even just loosely-afiliated) trackers, who has access to it, which authors are trusted not to include anything sketchy so that an old copy of WMWifirouter or a cracked version of BeeLineGPS doesn't slip its way through the cracks. Not easy to delete an in-the-wild bittorrent share as you can delete a thread.
The word bittorrent itself starts fires. XDA needs to keep a low profile when it comes to its members behaving themselves and when you've got people messing with Microsoft's software and rebranding it as their own and then distributing it over a notorious method it could get ugly.
From a practical standpoint, a bittorrent download takes a while to get warmed up; a direct link from a solid mirror does not. Users have to have an additional client installed. A lot of us do already and those who don't can figure it out but we'd need more how-tos. From the serving standpoint or an additional more complicated database thing you'd find on other bittorrenting sites it just doesn't sound feasible especially when you have some people out there like me who can donate bandwidth (I'm vetting myself to make sure I can do this reliably). We're talking what, 70-100MB files here that people put a ton of time into and people who use these files shell out several hundered bucks for their phone and another hundred a month for their bill. Bandwidth is cheap and if we get people fired up a bit we can figure out how to host our own files without Rapidshare and friends or bittorrent.
Though I still like the idea. Certainly more than rapidshare.
I wrote my ISP a thoughtful letter to see how much is too much in terms of giving out bandwidth for mirroring. When they get back to me I'll get back to you all. If they say yeah sure go ahead, at least for the Raphael forums, problem solved. Mostly.
Kraize said:
How about a Bittorrent pool like someone suggested? That is the best idea IMHO. Torrents are always fast and worth it.
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d0ugie said:
That was my first thought but P1Tator didn't take kindly to my post on the subject.
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P1Tater not P1Tator.
All kidding aside. You have actually hit the nail on the head. Bit Torrents are frowned upon due to the large amount of publicity these create. Noone has ever said this but think about it. We strip shipped roms and tear them to shreds. We also take shipped apps not meant for "all" devices and port them to God knows what. We even have ported other OS to a WM device never meant for anything but WM. Plus, having a cooked rom come up in a torrent search/finder beside WAREZ and other files with virus' inside is not the publicity XDA is looking for. Not trying to come off all high and mighty, just want to keep XDA smooth and as trouble free as possible so we can continue to rip apps, port roms to other devices, and have our wonder developers continue to devlop apps for our devices without having to go to some sort of "store" (cough cough iStore) and buy every app that we want to install on our phones. Please understand, I just want to keep XDA as smooth and as trouble free as I possibly can without any "negative" publicity. That's all.
P1Tater said:
P1Tater not P1Tator.
All kidding aside. You have actually hit the nail on the head. Bit Torrents are frowned upon due to the large amount of publicity these create. Noone has ever said this but think about it. We strip shipped roms and tear them to shreds. We also take shipped apps not meant for "all" devices and port them to God knows what. We even have ported other OS to a WM device never meant for anything but WM. Plus, having a cooked rom come up in a torrent search/finder beside WAREZ and other files with virus' inside is not the publicity XDA is looking for. Not trying to come off all high and mighty, just want to keep XDA smooth and as trouble free as possible so we can continue to rip apps, port roms to other devices, and have our wonder developers continue to devlop apps for our devices without having to go to some sort of "store" (cough cough iStore) and buy every app that we want to install on our phones. Please understand, I just want to keep XDA as smooth and as trouble free as I possibly can without any "negative" publicity. That's all.
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Sleuth255 said:
No offense meant but the problem with mirrors is that they don't last long. At least rapidshare is always there. Its a major PITA when a mirror site goes unavailable.
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Well said and I agree with both of you. Rapidshare may not be for everyone but it does trick for right now.
I understand the hesitation with torrents and not wanting too much attention, but let's face it...Microsoft knows about this site, HTC knows about this site. Torrents aren't going to be any more negative publicity than it's gotten in the past about the FTP, and that was mostly because the files were directly linked to the site.
Hey I hear you with the c'mon argument.
Yes Microsoft and HTC know about us. I've gotten hundreds of hits from proxy server hosts under .microsoft.com downloading everything on my site and HTC has gotten plenty of love letters from us as well as petition websites brewed by XDA people. We don't really pose a threat to Microsoft though one could argue we have a tepidly adversarial relationship with HTC for our criticism of them and our attempts to generate negative publicity against them as well as our attempts to pressure them to do business differently (like with the Kaiser video driver saga). Though XDA may be some server in the Netherlands, we comprise XDA as we are clumped together in the minds of The Man when we do something The Man doesn't like so we, thanks to the likes of P1Tater and other volunteers, have to spend an enormous amount of time cleaning up not just spam and dumb threads but making sure no one posted Skyfire when it was recently in private beta and so on. We're on self-warez-patrol, defcon 1.
You add extracted and redesigned software with different branding artwork, possibly copyrighted software, operating systems, leaked or hacked drivers etc on top of that and you have a large happy community such as ours that is operating in the gray area. We're more good to MS and HTC than we are bad but if they so choose to exercise it they have power over XDA, power to kill XDA, and we must act accordingly. People can post cabs and links but there is some vague protection for XDA, sort of like Slashdot but with attachments, as those are posted by individuals and are therefore sort of owned by the poster not XDA and XDA with their moderators tries to operate in a manner that projects an air of good faith /in addition to/ helping Microsoft and HTC as we are a resource for ways they can produce better products. We're pretty harlmess -- why would HTC care if someone else cleans up after them with GPS driver fixes? Cheapest thing for them to do is copy /our/ work.
In the event of Microsoft or HTC or Opera or whoever developing a major grievance with something that goes down here and sends XDA a cease and decist letter that XDA cannot afford to defend themselves against and must comply with, demanding XDA to take down threads containing *, when you've got bittorrent in the mix as you're suggesting XDA loses the ability to comply swiftly and effectively with such a demand to the satisfaction of these potentially litigous companies if satisfying them includes pulling the plug fully on a proliferation of a file that made its debut here if it's floating around in bittorrent and making its way to the high traficked torrent portals with traces back to XDA.
No one cares about FTP and for these purposes no one even knows what FTP is. Rapidshare (or good samaritan mirror operations like mine) is not on the MPAA's hitlist either. But the reputation of bittorrent, even though those who defend bittorrent adamantly cite that it's great for kosher stuff too like Linux (and us), makes it not an option for XDA as XDA does, again, to some extent operate in a gray area and does not have the resources to do so with the audacity of providing bittorrent solutions in the event it needs to pay legal bills. XDA may not even know how gray our gray area is, doubt we have a lawyer on retainer. I doubt most lawyers would know the answers anyway. Unchartered territory (but gray territory). So XDA has to assume an MO of paranoia. Blending in bittorrent to XDA either with an XDA-sanctioned and maintained portal/tracker or just encouraging users with wikis and such on how to set up their own tracker when they release their own rom, given that there are other options, is bad for business. Now me I am not even going to bother researching how legal these roms are; I am cool with my ISP and I'll assume the risk by putting them on hosts directly connected to me and my identity but you won't find these roms on XDA's ftp server probably not just because their more than 1MB but because they are sketchy in nature. XDA can barely pay for bandwidth with these banners ads that most of us don't see with adblock and the small stream of donations. Where's XDA going to get $20K one day if **** hits the fan? Nowhere. Just because we've got thousands of members here, often extremely talented and good-hearted people, does not make us immune from total destruction and bittorrent gives that doomsday scenerio an elevetated probability.
XDA's doomed at best to walk on eggshells. Bittorrent is a four letter word. XDA cannot, in my estimation, live with it; certainly not when XDA can live without it.
motionmind said:
I understand the hesitation with torrents and not wanting too much attention, but let's face it...Microsoft knows about this site, HTC knows about this site. Torrents aren't going to be any more negative publicity than it's gotten in the past about the FTP, and that was mostly because the files were directly linked to the site.
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d0ugie said:
No one cares about FTP and for these purposes no one even knows what FTP is
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All of the rom files used to be hosted on the FTP, that's all I mentioned that for...were you around for that? Just don't remember how long ago that debacle was.
Also, I know there are invite-only networks and we already have to be a member of xda-dev to download locally hosted files, so what about a private p2p setup?
jonteponte said:
Hey, a bit of topic but is there any chance there will be any public roms from you sleuth? i id love to see what you've been up to since the kaiser roms =)
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Yeah same here.
Is there like a record for the longest written post in a forum?
I decided to make this app out of necessity as I (as I'm sure some of you do as well) work a job where my hours vary from pay to pay. I created this program to estimate how much my paycheck is going to be. Once your information is entered all you will need to do is enter in the amount of hours and it will give you a break down of everything that should be on your paycheck.
This app is in it early beta stages and it will have some bugs which I'll note below. I figured I'd release this to you guys to see how many people are interested and see if I should continue development and also get some feedback from you guys.
Instructions:
Install the cab file.
Run Winpayday.
Menu >> Settings
Enter in your data:
Pay period- How often your paid
Pay Rate- The amount per hour
Overtime rate- How much your paid for overtime(ex 1.5 = Time and a half)
Enter your taxes withheld Percentages. A good way to get these are to take a recent paycheck and divide the amount taken out for each by the Gross Pay. Then obviously move the decimal two places to the right. I understand these numbers will change from week to week depending on how much you make, tax rates, etc. but this will get us as close to the actual amount for next weeks paycheck. I leave mine based on a 40 hour work week and its never off more than a dollar each way.
Mark if your benefits are taken out before taxes (Most are).
Mark if you have Medical, Dental, or any other amount taken out. Then enter in the amount taken out per pay.
After this is all set up there should be no reason to have to come back into the settings screen (Unless we get a raise which would be nice). Everything is saved in settings.xml in the application folder under Program Files where ever it was installed. You can copy this to your SD card to make a backup in case you need to reinstall/reflash.
I know it doesn't look pretty but I needed something that was functional and easy on the eyes and I see no reason to skin this app but if there is an interest I'll take suggestions.
Again this is my first released app so please if you have any problems list them here and I'll try to address them as fast as I can. Any other comments/questions/suggestions please feel free to post, Thanks guys.
Disclaimer- The Default Values that come preloaded in the application do not represent anyones actual salary, including my own, nor do they represent what I think you should be making, so back off, lol. This application does not connect to the Internet in anyway and all the personal financial data you enter stays in the settings.xml file and is not shared with anyone, including myself.
Too early for feedback but I will say this at a glance looks very handy for myself...
For this being in beta stages it seems pretty darn good...
Thx for sharing
Will report any mishaps
This seems to be a very good application, will post feedback asap.
I'll also write an article about it.
EC
Thank
Thanks guys, hope you enjoy it. I'm working on a debug application and error catching for the main app right now and will update it when I can. Thanks for the article as well!
That's pretty cool. Will save me a lot of pen and paper when i'm figuring up bills for the week.
edit: Just compared it today with my actual paycheck, extremely accurate. Would be nice to figure in 401k as a percentage instead of a dollar amount.
Skinning
Working on adding some skinning and new control type functionality, stay tuned!
Don t forget to post up your experiences or any issues you guys have!
it worked ok but wouldn't work when monthly is selected in settings
Thanks for the feedback guys
Thanks for the feedback guys. Ill work on adding a 401k percentage and making the other deduction either flat or a percentage. as for the monthly Ill have to look into that as I dont remember if I tested it, my apologies on that one should have a new release with the fixes soon. Glad to hear it was very accurate for you. Ill update the posting soon. thanks guys!
Compiling an updated version right now. Please keep an eye on the Opening post. Thanks for all the feedback guys!
thanks...i need it a program like this..is there any updates..i saw u just released one for android
Unfortunatly the developer I gave this project to quit and took my source code with him. As of now I dont have a windows mobile phone to test with and I'll have to rewrite the app from the ground up. If I get the new one for android stable I'll be sure to reserect the original version for your guys. My apologies. I'm looking through file backups tonight to try to hopefully find the source code. Thanks for all the support.
not sure if someone could or would do this but iwould be willing to pay money for a rom based on MMA...
Now i know from previous posts i have made about mma it would be a huge hit a wildy popular..
if you are willing to make one...just lemmie know and we can setup something
( and by mma i do not mean straight ufc...i mean MMA....)(Pride...strikeforece..bellator..ufc..etc)
post here or pm me
depending on the quality/functionality of rom (Maby even just a complete kickass theme)
we'll determin amout paid to you
dang figured if i posted somethin about payments it would get noticed real quick lol
3rd times the charm?
Sent from my Nexus S 4G
lol yea i totlay forgot they could just move the thread to this section....me and my dumbass =p
Not being a ****, but three posts and still no takers... maybe you should let it go.
or
Recommendation: Start deving
Also, coming on here as a member that has just joined with <20 posts and not saying how much you will pay will keep interested parties far away. Who is to say that when they do come up with a kickass theme/ROM for you and then all you do is through a 1 dollar donation?
...lol because unlike some of you people i keep my word...and all i wanted were some screenies to see it tested out...so if i gave a 1 donation..they could not give it to me or w.e ( make you happy )...
o and fyi ive been browsing this forum for a good bit now..and just b/c ive just recently signed up and only have 20 post doest meant anything really...just sayin
( i could go post 500 stupid a** periods on people forums...would that make you happy or something??
Firstly, all you need is a theme, not a ROM.
Secondly, there are plenty of theme "kitchens" for you to be able to make your own theme for any given ROM.
Thirdly, if you still don't want to make your own theme and are really willing to pay try putting down an actual number. Keep in mind there are themes in the market (CM7 theme engine) that are $1-$4 and have thousands of downloads.
thats the thing idk how much people want thats why i said pm me and we'll talk
price
Actually,this is a share.mf2112 came up with this brilliant idea in order to clean up xda,removing old and useless attachments.They never serve any purpose and just results in confusion among users(Which file should i download,this or that? ).So,here goes the original post
mf2112 said:
Here is something easy everyone can do to make XDA run faster and better. No, it is not donating to XDA, or buying the XDA premium app, although I highly recommend those things if you have a little extra money. Nor is it complaining to the admins, satisfying as that might feel sometimes, it doesn't really help.
Please clean up your old attachments. Simple. Easy. I had accumulated quite a bit more than I realized, and I was quickly able to remove over 50% of the stuff that was taking up 90% of the space.
So please, everyone who reads this, take a few minutes and do your best to clear out anything old that is no longer needed, or move things that could be hosted off of the XDA servers. Pictures from old posts, mods for old versions of software or roms, cumulatively they add up to a lot of files for the XDA servers to store.
Be a part of the solution and feel the speed increase. Hopefully this can also have a positive impact on reducing some of the recent downtime we have seen.
If anyone wants to repost this in their favorite device General or Q&A forum, feel free to do so. Copy as much as you like or change it as you like, no attribution needed. No one likes taking the trash out, but we all appreciate the people who make it a clean place.
Thank you!
One other quick thing, if you have ever started a thread which is no longer needed or you do not plan to update, please notify one of the mods for that forum and ask for them to delete it. Thanks for helping!
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Howdy folks,
I used to be very active with the HP touchpad shenanigans so I'm not a complete noob but I'm certainly out of the loop. This is my first android phone though and I have ten days for my love to blossom with it. I really want to like it but as I assume all IOS losers say, android is mighty overwhelming! Still, I've spent the past couple days lurking the forums and am fully rooted so my questions probably won't be the most stupid you've ever heard.
Anyone out there want to take a bit of time on skype and give me a rundown about what they like, cool tricks, their favorite app options, where the unicorns are, and such?
If you do well I'll order silvermine to your house or something and if my questions are the stupidest you've ever heard I'll even throw in a brownie.... I also promise to wear pants, no weird chat roulette bogus
what do you want to know? the beauty of android is the endless possibilities of tweaking and customization but it will take some time to master and find whats out there.
skinsfanbdh said:
what do you want to know? the beauty of android is the endless possibilities of tweaking and customization but it will take some time to master and find whats out there.
Click to expand...
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Mainly I just want to ask opinions about common things, I know better than to ask "what is the best launcher" but I'd like to have a verbal (IRC isn't my favorite) conversation about their various advantages with someone who has tried most of them in the past few months. I've read so much about all these questions but finding up to date info is exhausting since Android has so much history. I've spent the last two hours just researching music syncing but most comparisons are at least a year old so I end up cross referencing complaints with change logs to see what has been fixed, but that's a slow way to learn...
My main questions probably fall into these categories which I'll keep updated, if anyone simply wants to wildly throw out their opinions below rather than taking me up on a chat feel free!
Merits of various ways to sync music with itunes or WM player, preferably where I can control the bitrate - Went with tunesync, feedback?
Merits of various launchers and UI tweaks - Grabbed Apex before I realized it would cost me blinkfeed which I want to give a chance, none of my reading warned me that launchers would replace that...
Merits of various keyboards - Swiftkey is so hot, so hot right now, so I grabbed it. Won't sync with my facebook though, typical?
Merits of various roms/merits of tmobile bloatware - Trying stock rom/kernal for now but I hate all the extra apps I can't get rid of. Tomorrow I'll look for a "poof" app before investigating kernals more and we'll see what roms are available when I'm bored with stock, MIUI looks awesome but very distant for an official release
Tricks for typing one handed on large screens - littering and...?
What spiffy things could I do/What has really wowed you - Droidsheep has been fun, what else is out there?
If you were a starving college student who had 20$ left in his budget after buying a 600$ phone what apps would you start with? - I've spent that 20 and a bit of next weeks food budget too, but I'm always taking suggestions.
Friends on hackforums have given me interesting apps with "questionable uses", any other forums(besides here) where it would be worth building some rep? - Still hunting.
I rooted my phone and my cat threw up on the rug, should I expect my cat to do that every time I re-root and should I just get a parrot? Looking into rooting parrots out of cats, missing SU...
Perhaps most important, since I loathe the power button position, it would be a new kernal which would add swipe to wake, right? Like the blackberry trick where swiping from one side of the bezel to another wakes up the phone. I want that like fat kids want acceptance...
The usual noob questions but wrapped into a conversation with someone who has the time to try a lot of the latest updates so we can go off on tangents and I can absorb as much of your wisdom as possible