Why cant we s-off without that app? No Bashing! Just a Question - One (M9) Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

So its been a while since i had an htc.
The last one i had was so easy to root s-off super cid.
when it wasnt, i always loved the challenge.
If i recall you had to extract a file called mmcblk0p4 and modify it. Or just modify it with a hex editor right on your phone and place it back with a root explorer. actually i still have it in an old folder.
What is the problem here? How did htc fix that exploit? Why cant we figure it out?
Not that i dont appreciate an awesome app that does it for you. But i always loved doing it myself.
Not trying to bash or start a debate over moralities. Just an interesting and informative convo.

where there is a will there is a way!

Well actually I guess because the people who were discovering the exploits actually created sunshine and are distributing methods via this app only.

There's nobody that can use the app to figure out how the actual app does it?
Maybe I am thinking its more simple than it is. I know i sure as hell cant.

myphonesbetter said:
There's nobody that can use the app to figure out how the actual app does it?
Maybe I am thinking its more simple than it is. I know i sure as hell cant.
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It's an old discussion, but if you look up the Sunshine app thread you'll come across the explanation of why they decided to charge and what went into achieving S-OFF. Short answer: it's really hard.

Been about a year since i logged in apparently.
computerslayer said:
It's an old discussion, but if you look up the Sunshine app thread you'll come across the explanation of why they decided to charge and what went into achieving S-OFF. Short answer: it's really hard.
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Click to collapse
That is the perfect answer. it really hard.
its because some people are lazy and others are greedy thats why.
Honestly paying for an app to just do everything takes the fun out of it. Im not a coder or anything but most of what i have learned is from flashing phones and modding video games lol. Just dont have quite enough of an obsessive personality to be a full on mr robot.
I can see making a payed version that does the work for you and takes away the risk of bricking your phone. for the people who just want want want.
This im sure would make more than enough to cover costs. especially if the dev was in india or something.
Used phones with cracked screens or broken headphone jacks are a dime a dozen.
Or how about someone just reverse engineer the sunshine app. Or FIND AN EXPLOIT. and release it to the forums.
FAIR GAME right?
This team spent 100s of dollars and 100s accumulative hours to exploit something that costs 100's of millions of dollars and who knows how many hours to create and distribute.
The development thread seems so commercial now. Wouldn't be surprised if most of them were making money data mining selling info to advertisers.
Isnt that where the real money is these days.
I cant pay for it for the same reason i cant pay money for the better gun in a video game. Just pay to win. doesn't feel the same.
Also android is open source and free.
It blows my mind that only this one group of people can figure out how to do this.
Seems like the fact that there is money to be made would encourage more guy fawkes' to create some friendly compotish.
Plus if more "exploiters" could start from there then eventually it could end up so much more refined. Just like everything else on these forums.
Anyways sunshine is free and along with water gives life to the entire planet. I think they got the name wrong.
walmart mod group. buy out all other "developers" (hackers) and charge the people that keep this whole thing going.
I can appreciate and even envy the business sense and intelligence it takes to do what they do. cant say if i was in their shoes i wouldnt do everything i could to monetize it. But its just sad to the the community go down the toilet. This forum used to be so much more exciting. it seems like it used to create developers now you just pick a rom and move on. mother ****ing sad face.

You do realize, if it was trivial and cheap to do, the dozens of people who come complain would have done it sometime in the last three years.
We even publish detailed write ups, and source code snippets to parts of sunshine, including vulnerabilities and exploits. We get people 90% of the way there.
Even with use giving away critical parts of the project, people still don't release free versions. Why? because it isn't easy, and it isn't cheap. You are going to ruin a lot of phones along the way, and your work on the "cheap ones" doesn't apply to the new expensive ones, you are starting over from scratch with each generation, often with each firmware release.
We don't sell data to anyone, no ads on our sites or apps, even the numerous free apps like weaksauce and depixel8 have no ads, nor do their associated websites (not counting the thieves that rehost them with ads, thats not us).
We bought out no one, we pay no one to develop for us. We reinvest funds into more phone and equipment, sometimes some booze, and often into charity. Even google called us out for our charity work on their VRP blog.
Good luck on your endeavors, I encourage you to make a free alternative, to invest the money and time we did out of your own pocket. Neither of us are educated in security or computer scienece, we picked it up along the way when trying to hack on phones. No excuses! Anyone complaining should be working on an alternative. Don't expect much donations, or if you put a price on it don't expect much money from it, it isn't there.
myphonesbetter said:
Been about a year since i logged in apparently.
That is the perfect answer. it really hard.
its because some people are lazy and others are greedy thats why.
Honestly paying for an app to just do everything takes the fun out of it. Im not a coder or anything but most of what i have learned is from flashing phones and modding video games lol. Just dont have quite enough of an obsessive personality to be a full on mr robot.
I can see making a payed version that does the work for you and takes away the risk of bricking your phone. for the people who just want want want.
This im sure would make more than enough to cover costs. especially if the dev was in india or something.
Used phones with cracked screens or broken headphone jacks are a dime a dozen.
Or how about someone just reverse engineer the sunshine app. Or FIND AN EXPLOIT. and release it to the forums.
FAIR GAME right?
This team spent 100s of dollars and 100s accumulative hours to exploit something that costs 100's of millions of dollars and who knows how many hours to create and distribute.
The development thread seems so commercial now. Wouldn't be surprised if most of them were making money data mining selling info to advertisers.
Isnt that where the real money is these days.
I cant pay for it for the same reason i cant pay money for the better gun in a video game. Just pay to win. doesn't feel the same.
Also android is open source and free.
It blows my mind that only this one group of people can figure out how to do this.
Seems like the fact that there is money to be made would encourage more guy fawkes' to create some friendly compotish.
Plus if more "exploiters" could start from there then eventually it could end up so much more refined. Just like everything else on these forums.
Anyways sunshine is free and along with water gives life to the entire planet. I think they got the name wrong.
walmart mod group. buy out all other "developers" (hackers) and charge the people that keep this whole thing going.
I can appreciate and even envy the business sense and intelligence it takes to do what they do. cant say if i was in their shoes i wouldnt do everything i could to monetize it. But its just sad to the the community go down the toilet. This forum used to be so much more exciting. it seems like it used to create developers now you just pick a rom and move on. mother ****ing sad face.
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Click to collapse

Sunshine has been about since the HTC One M7 days, I paid and used it on my M7 and M8 and about to use it on 2 x M9's, me personally, I really dont have a problem paying the $25 for it to do what it does, personally I think its dead cheap for what these guys did to get around HTCs so called fixes.
Now on to why it even costs in the first place, imagine whilst developing an app to this level, how many phones you had to buy and destroy along the way, this app isnt just for pretty much every HTC made since the M7, of course you are going to want some of it back, if you didnt, you'd be bankrupt in 2 days, with every release of firmware or every new phone release, the app needs to be modified and updated, Hell, you pay $200 for Microsoft Windows for the same reasons.

jcase said:
You do realize, if it was trivial and cheap to do, the dozens of people who come complain would have done it sometime in the last three years.
We even publish detailed write ups, and source code snippets to parts of sunshine, including vulnerabilities and exploits. We get people 90% of the way there.
Even with use giving away critical parts of the project, people still don't release free versions. Why? because it isn't easy, and it isn't cheap. You are going to ruin a lot of phones along the way, and your work on the "cheap ones" doesn't apply to the new expensive ones, you are starting over from scratch with each generation, often with each firmware release.
We don't sell data to anyone, no ads on our sites or apps, even the numerous free apps like weaksauce and depixel8 have no ads, nor do their associated websites (not counting the thieves that rehost them with ads, thats not us).
We bought out no one, we pay no one to develop for us. We reinvest funds into more phone and equipment, sometimes some booze, and often into charity. Even google called us out for our charity work on their VRP blog.
Good luck on your endeavors, I encourage you to make a free alternative, to invest the money and time we did out of your own pocket. Neither of us are educated in security or computer scienece, we picked it up along the way when trying to hack on phones. No excuses! Anyone complaining should be working on an alternative. Don't expect much donations, or if you put a price on it don't expect much money from it, it isn't there.
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thanks for the response. It would be nice to get a response on the actual q i posted lol. (different thread)
I guess its easier when its trivial.
Its good to hear you guys donate some of it. and that youve release the majority of the code. i guess people are just lazy.
Honestly you dont need s-off. The main reason i would want it is incase i need to go back to stock for warranty reasons. In which case the money would be worth it. still more fun do follow a write and learn about what i am doing in the process.
As far as data mining im talking about some of the more popular roms and apps out there. not just in the htc forum. Just a thought. why wouldn't they.
And the question isn't why its $25. I get that. It is totally worth it. Its so easy to use. I used to spend hours troubleshooting to get my phones s-off'd and running smooth on all the roms. now you can do it in seconds. these days i just pick one that works better than stock and stick with it. seems like stock updates kill the phones now.
Its why hasn't anybody exploited sunshine or made a completely different app that does the same thing. Or even better a write up on how to do it yourself.
To say its expensive on the older phones is a stretch and to say its too hard is eh.
I couldn't do it but you guys did (very quickly). so that means there is some 8 year old that could do it in his sleep.
And to say its out of pocket is a stretch when its a payed service. Most business endeavors or charities require some sort of investment.
And you can make a large chunk of the money back selling a bricked phone for parts. especially if its the latest model.
Why don't you guys release the code for free when you once you pay yourselves back. If more people started out where you left off (much like how you guys started) then the next generation would take no effort. If there were a thousand people testing and communicating and working together then the cost and time would be nothing.
There is nowhere to start anymore. there used to be all kinds of write ups that forced you to learn more about how everything works. then naturally some people figure out what they are actually doing are inspired to improve on it (sunshine for example). but now its just seems so overwhelming. Like nobody is there to help out when you get stuck.
I guess it dragged a little deeper than i wanted. But every time someone asks these questions it turns into insult matches or just the copy pasted comment of i don't think $25 is too much. if you cant afford that then blah blah . then all credibility is lost and people are persuaded to think as the majority of commenters think. Mouthbreathers will be mouthbreathers. But they are the ones that make this consumer based economy function properly.
Again, not trying to bash the people that put their time into this. More so trying to spark thoughts in people's minds who would normally just follow suit. Highlight different perspectives.

myphonesbetter said:
Its why hasn't anybody exploited sunshine or made a completely different app that does the same thing. Or even better a write up on how to do it yourself.
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Many people have tried to crack sunshine, I'm unaware of anyone being successful. It is actually pretty funny seeing how many hours people put into cracking SunShine, it is an worthless endeavor considering that most of the calculations are done server side, cracking the app doesn't get you anything as it is done server side. They would need to hack our WAN facing server, proxy through it and then hack the "offline" box we do the work on. This would be a felony on many levels. I like to think most people are honest, and don't go committing felony violations of CFAA over the fact that an app isn't free.
As far as a different app, it is hard, it is expensive, and most people with the skillset or drive, are tackling bigger problems.
Far as a writeup, we make plenty of them, where are your technical write ups?
myphonesbetter said:
To say its expensive on the older phones is a stretch and to say its too hard is eh.
I couldn't do it but you guys did (very quickly). so that means there is some 8 year old that could do it in his sleep.
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Click to collapse
None of this is "very fast", it all has years of research behind it. Research we did, we put the time and money into. Yes even on old phones it is expensive, the software we use (IDA Pro and Jeb) alone are $1000s a year in licensing fees. Considering each person needs a license, its very costly. And yes, we are not thieves, we actually have licenses in our names. Many models we have spent money on, never sell more than a couple licenses. So the more popular models also fund the work done on models that don't make any sales. Sure we could just not add support for oddball models sold in only one country, but what fun is that.
myphonesbetter said:
And to say its out of pocket is a stretch when its a payed service. Most business endeavors or charities require some sort of investment.
And you can make a large chunk of the money back selling a bricked phone for parts. especially if its the latest model.
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Click to collapse
The investment would be the out of pocket part, money to start projects doesnt just magically show up. New HTC u11 is what $600 bucks? One we fried the soc and mmc on? What $50 if we are selling it honestly (cause that thing wont EVER be repaired, and screen is about the only part re-usable)? Plus we run the risk of our debug builds leaking if someone is able to extract memory from the device, no thanks, not reselling a burned phone for $50(or even $300) and risk losing everything we have worked on for the last few years.
myphonesbetter said:
Why don't you guys release the code for free when you once you pay yourselves back. If more people started out where you left off (much like how you guys started) then the next generation would take no effort. If there were a thousand people testing and communicating and working together then the cost and time would be nothing.
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Click to collapse
We have released plenty of free training material, white papers and example source code for people to start off of. Those resources would be much better than starting off with SunShine source code. As we have said, when SunShine is done, we will open source it. Considering no one does anything with what we do release, I have doubts anyone would do anything with everything we don't release. We were sure we would get 0 sales on Droid Turbo after publishing that write up, we thought someone would have a free exploit written that day. It has been years, nothing so far.
myphonesbetter said:
If there were a thousand people testing and communicating and working together then the cost and time would be nothing.
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LOL. People don't contribute to most mobile OSS projects, go look at copperhead, look at their commit history. I'm even guilty of it, my contributions besides projects I helped started are minimal (even my commits to AOSP are few).
myphonesbetter said:
There is nowhere to start anymore. there used to be all kinds of write ups that forced you to learn more about how everything works. then naturally some people figure out what they are actually doing are inspired to improve on it (sunshine for example). but now its just seems so overwhelming. Like nobody is there to help out when you get stuck.
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All of our write ups are still up, and we still publish more each year, I don't know what the heck you are going on about here. Please take the time to look rather than just make such claims.
myphonesbetter said:
Again, not trying to bash the people that put their time into this. More so trying to spark thoughts in people's minds who would normally just follow suit. Highlight different perspectives.
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Again, feel free to use the free resources we have and continue to provide to the community for free to build your own. We DO NOT discourage people from doing so, we actively encourage it by publishing a fair bit of our work for free. I even traveled on my own dime (not sunshine money, not someone else's money, but from my paycheck) without reimbursement to Las Vegas with Tim Strazzere and Caleb Fenton to provide trading FOR FREE. We over filled the maximum occupancy for the room. We were not allowed to take any more people.
In reality, and not to be insulting, it is pretty obvious you didn't properly research all of this.

Related

Any lawyer's out there. Please read.

Ok I know when you buy a computer and if say you don't want Windows on it and its preinstalled you can deny the terms and conditions, and Microsoft will refund you the amount of money that windows cost.
Now using that same theory if I wright a letter to HTC saying I don't agree to there terms and conditions, than wouldn't they then have to either supply me with a stock Android Rom minus there software, or provide me with a way to remove there software, by either giving me a way to load my own Rom built from source, or give me access to system partition to remove the said software.(see were I am going with this)
Anyway if someone with some legal knowledge could school me a little bit that would be great. Thanks.
Yes this will work. This is great..... FOR ME TO POOP ON!
binny1007 said:
Ok I know when you buy a computer and if say you don't want Windows on it and its preinstalled you can deny the terms and conditions, and Microsoft will refund you the amount of money that windows cost.
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Click to collapse
Ummm, no? Did you dream this? Does Microsoft sell computers?
Ummm..... that is not true maybe you should not post if have nothing relevant to say, by the way here is some reading for you.
Http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_refund
Now back on topic
Calling in the Suits
Does the Incredible have an EULA on first boot? I am still waiting for mine so I cannot say, but I would assume when you sign up with Verizon, such rights are waved (esp. after the 30-day return period). I would assume the most they would do for you would be similar to Microsoft and give you a rebate in exchange for the device.
However, these are all assumptions on my part. I am friends with a lawyer who used to represent Olga.net (On-line Guitar Archives) when I worked with them. He managed to fend off the NMPA (kind of the music version of the MPAA) and MPA (a sister organization to the RIAA; focuses on publishing rights) for many years. Really the only reason OLGA is not running now is the admin providing the resources was told by his employer that they were no longer going to support the site once the take-down notices started to flood in and the words "possible lawsuit" were whispered.
I'll get in contact with him and post (possibly PM only) his reply, but you might also want to try and get in contact with someone at the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation), as this sounds right up their alley.
Yes on first boot you are asked to accept the EULA.
I think you are out of luck.
The phone is a phone first, a computer second. You can't buy the phone without the OS in it because Verizon won't allow a phone device that has not been approved on their network.
You didn't buy the phone from HTC, you bought it from Verizon. So any dispute with what you purchased is with Verizon, not HTC (Ie you can't buy the phone from HTC direct).
If you don't like Sense UI, don't buy a phone that comes with it. Your recourse which you had from the very beginning was to return the phone.
Not a lawyer...
I love sense but I'm just looking for some options.
I'll give you $1,000,000 if you actually do this. Why? Because it will never happen. No offense, but are you truly serious or are you really really high? Do you think if I bought a video game, I could decline the license agreement and demand they provide me the source code or something? Krelvin is trying to talk some sense into you, so listen to him. Just be patient and wait for root. It will happen soon enough.
Why didn't you just buy a phone with an android os without sense. ??
Verizon will just tell you to **** off. HTC isn't going to give you root access just because you deny the terms of service... Give it a shot though!
Just wait for Root...or return the phone and get a different one.
There, done deal.
binny1007 said:
I love sense but I'm just looking for some options.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just installed Launcher2 from Cyanogen 5.0.7 and said bye bye sense
binny1007 said:
Ok I know when you buy a computer and if say you don't want Windows on it and its preinstalled you can deny the terms and conditions, and Microsoft will refund you the amount of money that windows cost.
Now using that same theory if I wright a letter to HTC saying I don't agree to there terms and conditions, than wouldn't they then have to either supply me with a stock Android Rom minus there software, or provide me with a way to remove there software, by either giving me a way to load my own Rom built from source, or give me access to system partition to remove the said software.(see were I am going with this)
Anyway if someone with some legal knowledge could school me a little bit that would be great. Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
flash your own rom. nobody stopped you.
Come on guys, give binny a little bit of respect on this, he isn't a n00b to the Android world and he doesn't dislike HTC or Sense, he is just thinking of possible ways for us Incredible users to get root. I did run this by my lawyer friend though and he basically repeated the line a few people have come up with (that it's really Verizon that you would have to deal with and it's highly unlikely that for any reason you would be able to force their hand).
However if you still want to pursue this, I am still recommending the EFF. To start a new "action" you can sign up here.
Didn't mean to come off as such an a-hole as I was kinda irritated that day ahha.
but anyways, if he can accomplish this (which is highly unlikely), I'll give him all kinds of props.
If he's willing to go through with it, by all means do it...but like others have stated, Verizon will most likely be quite unwilling...
DeeBG said:
Come on guys, give binny a little bit of respect on this, he isn't a n00b to the Android world and he doesn't dislike HTC or Sense, he is just thinking of possible ways for us Incredible users to get root. I did run this by my lawyer friend though and he basically repeated the line a few people have come up with (that it's really Verizon that you would have to deal with and it's highly unlikely that for any reason you would be able to force their hand).
However if you still want to pursue this, I am still recommending the EFF. To start a new "action" you can sign up here.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm not being disrespectful. I am being real. Binny is in dreamland if he thinks this will help/work/not be a waste of time. And no offense, but your lawyer friend didn't do that website much good as they are still shutdown, and if he successfully "fended" anyone off the website would be up and running, not shutdown with a notice about legal issues.
binny1007 said:
Ok I know when you buy a computer and if say you don't want Windows on it and its preinstalled you can deny the terms and conditions, and Microsoft will refund you the amount of money that windows cost.
Now using that same theory if I wright a letter to HTC saying I don't agree to there terms and conditions, than wouldn't they then have to either supply me with a stock Android Rom minus there software, or provide me with a way to remove there software, by either giving me a way to load my own Rom built from source, or give me access to system partition to remove the said software.(see were I am going with this)
Anyway if someone with some legal knowledge could school me a little bit that would be great. Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's just that... figure this out before worrying about taking on EULA laws and the like.
there is not there, it is their, as well as than is not than it is then
I'm too uninterested to correct the rest of your grammar.
Thank you so much for correcting my grammar it was soooooo nice of you.
And I will make this clear my complaint would not be with VZW as they had no hand in anything software wise. I'm not going to feed into the trolls here. So please I ask if you have nothing productive to say than don't say it. There are 3 licenses that you are accepting, HTC's, Google's, and the open source licensing, if you accept the two of them and not HTC's than you should still be able to use you phone. That's the point I am trying to make here but thanks to everyone who felt the need to comment on this, and had nothing useful to say.
5377henry said:
It's just that... figure this out before worrying about taking on EULA laws and the like.
there is not there, it is their, as well as than is not than it is then
I'm too uninterested to correct the rest of your grammar.
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Click to collapse
WOW! your first post just to act like a butt.
seriously whats with all the snarly remarks people? binny asked a very straight forward question. to all those saying "get a different phone" verizon doesn't offer comparable android phone without sense, or "flash you're (thats for you 5377henry) own rom" we don't have root, hence the whole point of the question/thread.
anywho, i did not even know you could do that with windows, thanks for the info binny.
i have a feeling we would attain root before something like this could be played out through htc. i am baffled that they cut the option to go to regular android. not that i hate sense, i just like options...
MrGoodCat said:
WOW! your first post just to act like a butt.
seriously whats with all the snarly remarks people? binny asked a very straight forward question. to all those saying "get a different phone" verizon doesn't offer comparable android phone without sense, or "flash you're (thats for you 5377henry) own rom" we don't have root, hence the whole point of the question/thread.
anywho, i did not even know you could do that with windows, thanks for the info binny.
i have a feeling we would attain root before something like this could be played out through htc. i am baffled that they cut the option to go to regular android. not that i hate sense, i just like options...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Lots of people don't know that you can do that with Windows. Witch is why I thought I would ask. I just don't know the legal aspect of it.

Money Pledge Thread for a OTA Froyo Root of 2.2 [Now Up to $280 US] is OVER.

****Last Day*****
Since money motivates some I'm starting a pledge thread for the DEV who roots an OTA stock version of Froyo on the EVO. For folks who are going to pledge here, please be serious and adhere to giving in the dollar or euro amount you are pledging. Understand these folks are doing this stuff on their free-time and with the money being offered we are hoping it will put a little more focus on getting this initiative completed sooner rather then later.
At minimum I am hoping for:
hboot.93 hack
Root Stock OTA Froyo 2.2 with Super User
Wifi Tether working
Everything else can stay the same in the ROM.
Once a Developer produces such an image with install instructions and is verified working, then those who pledge will insert funds to to the developer's Paypal account within 24 hours. Should be pretty simple. Again if you pledge, be a man or woman or your word and give this person what they earned.
I'm STARTING out with my pledge of $50 U.S. Dollars. Good luck!
**** Based on a Suggestion Going to include a deadline of 8/20 for the project to be completed to be eligible for the funds ***
Finally should a DEVELOPER decide they don't want the money, whatever is pledged here will be given to the XDA website donation link. And Please keep this to pledge donation amount replies.
(To admin, please make a sticky if possible)
Well it was a good attempt. I want to thank all of those who actually "PLEDGED" money and did not come to this thread to complain about the reasons why we put this pledge together.
For those that are stuck, I think it's time we face the music and consider one of two options:
Continue to Wait. (It's been 17 days since the release of OTA Froyo and no known exploit has been found)
Start looking at another device
I've decided to cut my looses and pre-order on an EPIC. It has been a pleasure being on the EVO side of the XDA forums. I wish the best of luck to everyone here and I hope one day root is achieved and that new bootloader is defeated.
Cheers
Never mind, the other thread is for an updated PRI for rooted phones.
By all means start a new thread.
I thought about starting a similar thread. Many developers have already put a lot of effort into solving this without monetary motivation. The only way I see this helping is if an HTC/Sprint person with access we don't have, helps out. The brightest minds in this community (dare I say anywhere) are already working hard on it. That, or maybe a non-Evo developer will start, but prob doubtful. Either way, $25 to support this. Save me from my stupidity/nonroot hell!
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
Since I am chronically impatient and therefore Dl'd the OTA I will throw down $10. Sorry I can't contribute more, new father here.
I can scrape together another $25 for the effort.
the price of one months tether
$30
So then are you guys planning on paying unrevoked tonight?
edufur said:
So then are you guys planning on paying unrevoked tonight?
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Click to collapse
maybe you should go read again. you need to have a rooted phone already.
Somehow, I don't think that it's the lack of a monetary award that’s keeping the 2.2 root from happening. Normally, bounties are used for issues that nobody’s really working on, or for issues that have been worked on for some time, but are exceedingly difficult. What you’re doing here is setting a precedent where devs will be racing against each other to be first out the door with something that they’re all already working on, to win a monetary reward. I don’t know if that kind of precedent is a good idea.
2.2 root will happen, just be patient.
BTW, I’m no dev, so I can't speak for them, I'm just a member of the xda community. It just makes me a bit uncomfortable to see these kinds of threads. And that’s also not to say that the devs don’t deserve every dollar – they do! They kick ass in every way, shape and form. So maybe when they do root 2.2, send them a donation. But the reason I’ve been coming here since way back when I had the HTC Kaiser (although I only joined up when I got my Evo, I've been lurking here for years), is for the community and the people. Specifically people helping people, just to be helpful, and because they can, because they have the knowledge, and to show what can be done when the corporate locks are removed from a device so that it's capabilities are only limited to the coding skills of the dev, and the imagination of the community. Not for the money. To be frank, I think that if we keep going down this direction, we’ll all be worse off, and xda may change – and not for the better.
Just my $0.02, so take it for what it's worth.
And get off my lawn! Sorry - the above came out with a much more doom and gloom attitude than what I had intended. Didn’t mean to rain on anyone’s parade. ;-)
fachadick said:
Somehow, I don't think that it's the lack of a monetary award that’s keeping the 2.2 root from happening. Normally, bounties are used for issues that nobody’s really working on, or for issues that have been worked on for some time, but are exceedingly difficult. What you’re doing here is setting a precedent where devs will be racing against each other to be first out the door with something that they’re all already working on, to win a monetary reward. I don’t know if that kind of precedent is a good idea.
2.2 root will happen, just be patient.
BTW, I’m no dev, so I can't speak for them, I'm just a member of the xda community. It just makes me a bit uncomfortable to see these kinds of threads. And that’s also not to say that the devs don’t deserve every dollar – they do! They kick ass in every way, shape and form. So maybe when they do root 2.2, send them a donation. But the reason I’ve been coming here since way back when I had the HTC Kaiser (although I only joined up when I got my Evo, I've been lurking here for years), is for the community and the people. Specifically people helping people, just to be helpful, and because they can, because they have the knowledge, and to show what can be done when the corporate locks are removed from a device so that it's capabilities are only limited to the coding skills of the dev, and the imagination of the community. Not for the money. To be frank, I think that if we keep going down this direction, we’ll all be worse off, and xda may change – and not for the better.
Just my $0.02, so take it for what it's worth.
And get off my lawn! Sorry - the above came out with a much more doom and gloom attitude than what I had intended. Didn’t mean to rain on anyone’s parade. ;-)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
*******
I totally respect your view and agree that it should not be a money race. Open source is a beautiful thing and that is what I love about this platform. Developers craft their skill and share with others because they have a passion for what they do and not because they want to make money.
Once in a while though we should honor them for what it is they do and since the release of Froyo, it saddens me to read postings from individuals who are mocking people who upgraded their phone via OTA though there were warnings about it, lets face it, Froyo is an enticing update and unfortunately some folks jumped on it. But I also believe that there are a fare amount of people here who either recently purchased the phone or was in the middle of a warranty issue that ended up with an OTA'd Froyo and because these individuals want to mock and make these assumptions, it could be perceived that the only people who are begging for a root are the ones who OTA'd by choice. Regardless on how everyone got to OTA Froyo, we are here now and are patiently waiting for a workaround.
So in the hopes of offering in incentive not only to the fine work of developers here at XDA, but to help those of us who are stuck in limbo, I started this pledge to help get this initiative going.
fachadick said:
Somehow, I don't think that it's the lack of a monetary award that’s keeping the 2.2 root from happening. ~snip~ Didn’t mean to rain on anyone’s parade. ;-)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agreed, so consider my contribution a donation to whoever roots this beast.
You can put me down for $20.00. Im in a slightly different boat than everyone else. My phone already had 2.2 on it when I picked it up. I dont know if it was that way out of the box or if one of the nice Sprint employees was kind enough to upgrade it for me. I paid for the phone/service when the store opened but didnt come back for the phone until after lunch because they needed to port the number, paperwork, etc and I didnt have time to wait.
That being said, I bought a bunch of software for my N1 which is now useless as I dont have root and Id really like to have that stuff back working again.
it's unfortunate that an open-source community, where devs work with free software, needs to resort to money to motivate people. i understand that there are devs out there who will do this for free because they enjoy doing it for free (so not all devs need money for motivation), but lets be real. you're promoting an environment where open source also means "but not for free".
there's no doubt that there are very very very talented devs here and maybe they do deserve some money. but what happens when they start thinking, "hmmm, if people are willing to pay just for root, I wonder what they'll pay for my services?"
cnstarz said:
you're promoting an environment where open source also means "but not for free".[/I]"
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Click to collapse
Open Source doesn't mean the devs are working for free. If they want to sell their services then only those willing to pay shall receive such services. It is totally up to the devs.
jedwardmiller said:
Open Source doesn't mean the devs are working for free. If they want to sell their services then only those willing to pay shall receive such services. It is totally up to the devs.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1
Also, just because people are offering a bounty, doesn't mean that's why the devs are doing it. Like I said before, bounty or no bounty, someone will find a way to root froyo, and when that happens, I doubt that they'll have done it for the money.
Sent from my blah blah blah blah
bump..................................
Ok much better...
Should a developer decide that they don't want the money for their work, then what ever funds we have collected here, we'll donate it to the XDA forum paypal account to keep to site running. In either case the money will go to a good cause.
There needs to be a deadline tho. If not..it means it can be a year from now and still collect. I'd say by next Friday. A simple root will do, we can hold off for nand unlock. Atleast with simple root we can still tether which is what we mostly want.
Put me down for $20! I'm a newb with all this. Came over from the jailbreak world just last week. Can someone give me a heads up on how I donate the money once the root is released? Do these devs usually have pay pal donation function on there sites?
sent from my evo

Apps - A Coordinated Effort?

We all know one of the biggest gripes about Windows Phone is the lack of a few key apps. I know that I frequently contact a few companies to let them know that I am looking forward to a Windows Phone version of their existing apps and I’m sure others do as well. So companies get a smattering of requests from some users here and there.
Just wondering if perhaps we focus on one or a few particular apps at a time with many people emailing, tweeting, comments on Facebook etc in a sustained way to let them see that there is actual interest from a large number of users in the Windows Phone community. Who knows, maybe if there is enough noise, some of them will rethink their stand.
Not sure if this is the right place for this, but seemed like good place to see what people think.
Thoughts?
Bad idea. Software business works by different way. No one cares about your tweets or fb posts or forum noise - it's just a children game.
I agree that it may not make a difference, however companies often do actually listen to what people are saying. If it sounds like there is a demand, some companies who have been on the fence, may well pull the trigger and make something happen.
I've had luck getting companies to do things when I ask publicly that they wouldn't do when I asked privately. So it seems like getting more people asking publicly may well help in some instances.
willp2 said:
I agree that it may not make a difference, however companies often do actually listen to what people are saying. If it sounds like there is a demand, some companies who have been on the fence, may well pull the trigger and make something happen.
I've had luck getting companies to do things when I ask publicly that they wouldn't do when I asked privately. So it seems like getting more people asking publicly may well help in some instances.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Other than XDA, if you also post this on WPCentral forum, you will get much much much better and enthusiastic response for such requests. There is a list of app-requests somwhere in this forum too, if you wanted a place to pick apps-in-demand from.
I'm afraid you are mistaken. Companies are "listening" their marketing stuff, investors and personal CEO/chairman opinions. Neither facebook posts nor tweets can change company budget, marketing strategy or development roadmap. In fact, the most companies are controlled by the intelligent and informed people, so you may be sure they already knew about WP7 platform
P.S. Let me guess: you've never worked in software industry, don't you?
Thanks for the comments on WPCentral forum, good point. More regular users over there.
sensboston - You made my point exactly. Companies are listening to marketing staff, investors and personal CEO/chairman opinions. Those people, especially the marketing types pay attention to what the outside world is saying. If they see noise about a particular topic, it gets their attention.
For instance, if that company releases a new version of an app that has big problems, they'll hear about it first from all those social sources and they will generally try to react quickly to quite down the noise.
Not that it matters or even relevant to what I'm talking about here, but I've been in the software industry for over 20 years.
willp2 said:
For instance, if that company releases a new version of an app that has big problems, they'll hear about it first from all those social sources and they will generally try to react quickly to quite down the noise.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's a completely different case. Yes, I agree - huge noise/rumors about critical bug in popular app/software can push (some) companies to force fix or workaround immediately (good example is a Nokia representatives, who's - I believe - are monitoring XDA forums daily)
But porting app to the different platform (especially to WP7!) is very complicated. Most primary titles are written on C++ and uses native code/API calls. "Porting" C++ code to C#/Silverlight isn't just "porting"; it's much more close to complete rewrite. Also WP7 platform support means an additional tier of Q&A and etc. and so on (if you are really worked more than 20 years in industry you can easily extend these requirements).
100 or even 1000 facebook posts and forum requests can't show you a real app demand but statistics can. Unfortunately WP7 market share currently is too small (at the end of 2011 it was about 2%).
I thought there was a similar thread already, but if not then perhaps we can do that. I heard a company saying, they'll port it to windows phone if they enough demands.
I do get that it's not a trivial task.
Again I was really just getting at the many companies who are already considering moving to Windows Phone but are on the fence.
As we know more and more apps are being ported every week so many companies already have been thinking about, planning or are already doing it. In some cases a little public pressure may at least confirm to them that people are interested and perhaps move things along.
lamborg - sorry if someone else already brought this up in another thread, I did search around first.
willp2 said:
I do get that it's not a trivial task.
Again I was really just getting at the many companies who are already considering moving to Windows Phone but are on the fence.
As we know more and more apps are being ported every week so many companies already have been thinking about, planning or are already doing it. In some cases a little public pressure may at least confirm to them that people are interested and perhaps move things along.
lamborg - sorry if someone else already brought this up in another thread, I did search around first.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am not sure either but I think I have seen a similar thread, Anyway, if that cannot be found.
BTW it was I think Draw Something which said about the enough demand.
Maybe try crowd funding
Maybe this is an area where crowd funding could help.
I mean, people can make noise about want for a particular WP7 app as much as they like, but at the end of the day somebody has to pay for development, in some way, either directly or indirectly.
A successful crowd funding campaign for an app would probably prove much more that there really is demand than just so many Facebook postings.
Of course there is also the danger that such a campaign fails miserably and shows that there isn't real demand, just a very vocal but small minority wanting the app...
rbrunner7 said:
Maybe this is an area where crowd funding could help.
I mean, people can make noise about want for a particular WP7 app as much as they like, but at the end of the day somebody has to pay for development, in some way, either directly or indirectly.
A successful crowd funding campaign for an app would probably prove much more that there really is demand than just so many Facebook postings.
Of course there is also the danger that such a campaign fails miserably and shows that there isn't real demand, just a very vocal but small minority wanting the app...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Guarantee this would not get noticed. Most users on the site don't even donate to the devs that post apps here that they use, let alone donate to some fund for the possibility of an app being ported.
Standard contractor rates for a software engineer are about $100 to $150 per hour. Salaried devs make less, but the cost is close to the same for companies because of benefits packages. So, 1 day of dev time for 1 developer is going to cost around $1000. My guess is a crowd fund would not even reach $100. But even if $10000 were collected, that would only cover a team of 5 for 2 days. And, 5 days for 20 business days would cost $100000. And this is is exactly why companies have been slow to bring apps over. It's expensive.
The other aspect is that although the syntax is similar in C#, Java, and C++; there are enough differences to make it less than a simple task to just switch over. Most devs with experience have been doing either C# or Java or C++. Most have not been doing all 3. This means paying money and taking time to get the existing devs trained or hire additional devs and transfering domain knowledge to them. Both have costs. (Note: iPhone is Objective C, which is different, but also has similarities. Same issues though)
Many companies just don't have the resources to spend when the return on investment is not short term. Long term as more consumers buy Windows Phones, it will be more economically viable for companies to invest in porting the applications.
JVH3 said:
Guarantee this would not get noticed. Most users on the site don't even donate to the devs that post apps here that they use
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
He-he... Most users on the site are too lazy, greedy and irresponsible not even for donation but just for vote and review published here on XDA apps And some are so ungrateful that they forget just to say "Thanks"... Don't tell me about donations: I've collected money for Cotulla, for the Samsung's first freedom ROM for WP7... From hundreds of Focus owners here only 13 or 14 people are donated.
As for your arguments: it's 100% true for an adult professionals but of course not for 12-14 years old teens who "has over 20 years of software industry experience"
Yeah, I am myself a professional developer at day time, and I know how much it costs my company to employ me
But still, I think not all hope is lost. Some people may read this thread and just maybe change their attitude against devs that offer "free" things a little to the better - good that we talked about it, then!
And as I program in my free time anyway, just for fun, even a crowdsourced 1000 dollars could nudge me in a direction that I would not take otherwise, and people get the app they like. Of course only if the right APIs and server permissions are there to build it in the first place which of course is not always the case - many apps can only be built by the companies who own the corresponding server infrastructure.
rbrunner7 said:
Yeah, I am myself a professional developer at day time, and I know how much it costs my company to employ me
But still, I think not all hope is lost. Some people may read this thread and just maybe change their attitude against devs that offer "free" things a little to the better - good that we talked about it, then!
And as I program in my free time anyway, just for fun, even a crowdsourced 1000 dollars could nudge me in a direction that I would not take otherwise, and people get the app they like. Of course only if the right APIs and server permissions are there to build it in the first place which of course is not always the case - many apps can only be built by the companies who own the corresponding server infrastructure.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not to be discouraging, but it is pretty unlikely to get $1000 in donation from users here. It you look at the weather city editor that I wrote (link to thread in signature) for Windows Mobile, I got maybe close to $500 in donations from the time I created it through the entire time I worked on it, supported it, and enhanced it. I created it because I needed it and turned it into more than I needed so others could easily use it. The donations came from maybe 20 to 30 users. It was downloaded by well over 10000 users.
If looking for money as the reward, you are much better off paying Microsoft the $100 and putting the app on the marketplace and charging a dollar or making it be ad supported.
You'll still get respect for making cool things and posting them here, but it's not going to make you rich. It's a great place to learn and get some experience making apps though. Lots of people are willing to help if you get stuck on something.
It's a nice thought but, in reality it wont work
I thought about doing this too...
If you got everyone to attempt to do it, it might but, if you only get 50 people to do it(and that would be a lot in a fourm to request something they might not be interested in) that is a little bit compared to their marketplace with iOS or Android.
I personally really want Cut the Rope but, after posting a handfull of times on their facebook page and even emailing customer service, no luck

How much does the ads-developers site make every year

Hello,
I just want to know since there was a set of prizes worth $4 million that I think was being sponsored by Samsung how much does XT a development make every year? Obviously you are under no obligation to tell me since it's probably a private firm or maybe ohm by a larger firm. I only ask because most of the money this page because the developers store their hard earned software here and the forms that relate to them and they publish the results of their builds to these forums.
If I don't have quite right please still free to correct me. Please send a no circumstances at defensively and trying to lose your cool. We live in the capitalistic country thank God at least for now until socialism tries to take over. Or continues to try to take over.
Great Darlas I just wondered if any of the money was shared with the developers make the site possible. Are any or all of the developers actually paid by the proceeds from the site? Is any type of compensation whatsoever to the developers for their hard work that make some money that is generated by ADS that the owners of the site profit from? With just for now a set of $4 million in prizes I would think that the amount of money that the site generates is astronomical. By the way where do I sign up for these prizes see in all the videos?
If the developers are not making any money from this, G is the way that they can be made possible?
This is a perfect site for making money because of all the ads in the fact that people come here almost every day for a new set of operating systems to put on the phone, and that the source code from one phone can be used for many phones in general, well at least 60 to 80% or more. Feel free to correct my figures.
Go
Btw your friends does not work very well with voice dictation
Especially with the program called Swype. Example if I
say period it's supposed to put a dot, if I say question mark it should put a?
I wouldn't complain except that you need your text boxes are extremely hard because we're you touch is not where the cursor goes. This makes editing impossible especially at the end of the line. As such ask for your patience because I'm highly disabled list nerve damage and it's very difficult to work your forums. It's not just with this keyboard software it is with others as well. Could you try to fix us as soon as possible
heartspeace said:
Hello,
I just want to know since there was a set of prizes worth $4 million that I think was being sponsored by Samsung how much does XT a development make every year? Obviously you are under no obligation to tell me since it's probably a private firm or maybe ohm by a larger firm. I only ask because most of the money this page because the developers store their hard earned software here and the forms that relate to them and they publish the results of their builds to these forums.
If I don't have quite right please still free to correct me. Please send a no circumstances at defensively and trying to lose your cool. We live in the capitalistic country thank God at least for now until socialism tries to take over. Or continues to try to take over.
Great Darlas I just wondered if any of the money was shared with the developers make the site possible. Are any or all of the developers actually paid by the proceeds from the site? Is any type of compensation whatsoever to the developers for their hard work that make some money that is generated by ADS that the owners of the site profit from? With just for now a set of $4 million in prizes I would think that the amount of money that the site generates is astronomical. By the way where do I sign up for these prizes see in all the videos?
If the developers are not making any money from this, G is the way that they can be made possible?
This is a perfect site for making money because of all the ads in the fact that people come here almost every day for a new set of operating systems to put on the phone, and that the source code from one phone can be used for many phones in general, well at least 60 to 80% or more. Feel free to correct my figures.
Go
Btw your friends does not work very well with voice dictation
Especially with the program called Swype. Example if I
say period it's supposed to put a dot, if I say question mark it should put a?
I wouldn't complain except that you need your text boxes are extremely hard because we're you touch is not where the cursor goes. This makes editing impossible especially at the end of the line. As such ask for your patience because I'm highly disabled list nerve damage and it's very difficult to work your forums. It's not just with this keyboard software it is with others as well. Could you try to fix us as soon as possible
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think you have failed to understand exactly WHY this site exists. Tip, it is not for the money....
mf2112 said:
I think you have failed to understand exactly WHY this site exists. Tip, it is not for the money....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I do understand why this site exists period and I wouldn't be surprised that you actually make a lot of money orange that you barely break even . I am just curious to to know whether you make a lot of money are you barely breakeven. I only ask us because there was a set of $4 million in prizes being given away . Maybe that was just to third parties companies generosity. Does it hurt at all to ask these questions? /Can /will you answer them?
Also can you answer how I can sign up for the prizes?
heartspeace said:
I do understand why this site exists period and I wouldn't be surprised that you actually make a lot of money orange that you barely break even . I am just curious to to know whether you make a lot of money are you barely breakeven. I only ask us because there was a set of $4 million in prizes being given away . Maybe that was just to third parties companies generosity. Does it hurt at all to ask these questions? /Can /will you answer them?
Also can you answer how I can sign up for the prizes?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Never heard about the prize so I am not sure. It doesn't hurt to ask although I am not sure this is the proper forum for it, and I am not sure why you felt the need to inject a political message into it, that tends to be frowned upon here as the site is about mobile phones and mobile phones aren't political.
As for your other questions, you might PM svetius. You certainly won't get an answer about finances posted back on a public thread, and frankly I doubt you will get an answer to it at all since you don't need to know it. I apologize if that seems rude, but this is a business like any other and is under no obligation or duty to show anybody anything with regards to finances except the owners.
mf2112 said:
Never heard about the prize so I am not sure. It doesn't hurt to ask although I am not sure this is the proper forum for it, and I am not sure why you felt the need to inject a political message into it, that tends to be frowned upon here as the site is about mobile phones and mobile phones aren't political.
As for your other questions, you might PM svetius. You certainly won't get an answer about finances posted back on a public thread, and frankly I doubt you will get an answer to it at all since you don't need to know it. I apologize if that seems rude, but this is a business like any other and is under no obligation or duty to show anybody anything with regards to finances except the owners.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Those are the only two questions I'm really asking. Is this a for profit business? And that's a subquestion of that I wondered if the developers work for this business or if they work as a volunteer project? I know that if this is a for profit business it would not exist except for the developers putting up their ROMs and other support here for the many users. I think it would be good if it is a for-profit business Khala that perhaps the business gives some support monetarily to the developers. Is there is a 4 1/2 million dollar set of prizes as it said in the videos, I would love to be signed up for that and I wonder where I can?
I just think sites that are built upon the developers backs or other people's efforts should give back to those people more then just hosting in their software if and only if the company is profitable. On this page alone I see there are three ads. The other side is if this is a business and it needs help because it's not profitable and we can help it then maybe we can give donations? As this is a very valuable resource it to be nice to know what condition it send financially so it
doesn't fail to disappear like so many thousands of other business over the last few years.
HP
mf2112 said:
I think you have failed to understand exactly WHY this site exists. Tip, it is not for the money....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree.
I agree too
Sent from my MT11i using xda premium
The prizes in that competition are provided entirely by Samsung.
If it's the same competition I think you are referring to, you would need to publish an app on Samsung's store, and the most popular apps on a given date win...
Regarding developers, we have introduced a program recently to give a small number of developers phones and tablets to develop with. This is still a relatively small program, but I'm sure with time it will expand a bit, in a controlled manner
heartspeace said:
Hello,
I just want to know since there was a set of prizes worth $4 million that I think was being sponsored by Samsung how much does XT a development make every year? Obviously you are under no obligation to tell me since it's probably a private firm or maybe ohm by a larger firm. I only ask because most of the money this page because the developers store their hard earned software here and the forms that relate to them and they publish the results of their builds to these forums.
If I don't have quite right please still free to correct me. Please send a no circumstances at defensively and trying to lose your cool. We live in the capitalistic country thank God at least for now until socialism tries to take over. Or continues to try to take over.
Great Darlas I just wondered if any of the money was shared with the developers make the site possible. Are any or all of the developers actually paid by the proceeds from the site? Is any type of compensation whatsoever to the developers for their hard work that make some money that is generated by ADS that the owners of the site profit from? With just for now a set of $4 million in prizes I would think that the amount of money that the site generates is astronomical. By the way where do I sign up for these prizes see in all the videos?
If the developers are not making any money from this, G is the way that they can be made possible?
This is a perfect site for making money because of all the ads in the fact that people come here almost every day for a new set of operating systems to put on the phone, and that the source code from one phone can be used for many phones in general, well at least 60 to 80% or more. Feel free to correct my figures.
Go
Btw your friends does not work very well with voice dictation
Especially with the program called Swype. Example if I
say period it's supposed to put a dot, if I say question mark it should put a?
I wouldn't complain except that you need your text boxes are extremely hard because we're you touch is not where the cursor goes. This makes editing impossible especially at the end of the line. As such ask for your patience because I'm highly disabled list nerve damage and it's very difficult to work your forums. It's not just with this keyboard software it is with others as well. Could you try to fix us as soon as possible
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
BTW for typing via swype, have you considered trying the XDA app or Tapatalk? Much easier to use, as it's a native android app...
For the punctuation, I think that is a restriction of the voice to text software used within Swype, which I think is provided by Nuance.
I suggest you start typing your posts like everyone else if possible. Your voice dictated ones are horrible. They remind me of the kind of garbled messages spammers send or the garbage that results when lazy spammers scrap content and put it through an article spinner. Either that or get some decent voice dictation software.
BretonGirl said:
I suggest you start typing your posts like everyone else if possible. Your voice dictated ones are horrible. They remind me of the kind of garbled messages spammers send or the garbage that results when lazy spammers scrap content and put it through an article spinner. Either that or get some decent voice dictation software.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm curious were you in a bad mood when you posted that, or were you just lacking enough charity to have any responsible foresight?
I use voice dictation because I had a bad operation which left me with severe nerve damage and muscle damage and muscle atrophy throughout my upper body; I am in moderate to severe pain about 24 hours a day even while undergoing pain management treatment. I used to run a worldwide software development organization with world-class developers for governmental programs. Forgive me if voice dictation is being my arms for now, and most likely rest my life.
But please if you can recommend voice dictation software better than Nuance on Android please do tell me about it. Google is still a large leap behind. I do not know of any others, do you? Perhaps this is a calling for you to write one to help many without the ability to type. What languages do you know? How proficient are you at programing? What is your background and education? I'm sure I can touch base with some of my old research buddies in the government who would love your donated time for such a project, if you have any programming skills or development background or even research background in linguistics, speech algorithms, or other related technologies.
hp
I suspect she is a teenager. There are quite a few here.
I don't know of any other voice dictation software, sorry. Never had a good opportunity to use it so I never investigated any of the available packages out there personally beyond a guick google once. Actually your posts were not any worse than many of the ones I read by the teenagers here with their abbreviations. :-/

[Q] Another way to S-OFF, without Sunshine?

OMG. I unlocked and rooted my Lollipop M8 today, but i only see Sunshine for making S-OFF, and it isnt free. Another way to get S-OFF one m8?
Man WTF the 25$?! I can live 5 days with 25$, so bull****.
And if there's no way, what i lose stuck on S-ON? I have international M8.
*sigh*
No, Sunshine is the only way
turko9999 said:
OMG. I unlocked and rooted my Lollipop M8 today, but i only see Sunshine for making S-OFF, and it isnt free. Another way to get S-OFF one m8?
Man WTF the 25$?! I can live 5 days with 25$, so bull****.
And if there's no way, what i lose stuck on S-ON? I have international M8.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
$25 is nothing compared to how much it cost the creators of sunshine, they destroyed loads of phones whist creating sunshine, obviously you need to test it before you release it to the public, and in the beginning it didn't always work, each phone at $500+ a pop isn't cheap, and they didn't all survive testing, so $25 is nothing.
You loose the ability to back flash, convert your phone to another version, jump around with firmware, s-on allows only current firmware flash and next step up, HBOOT flashing, modified firmware flashes, radio flashing, CID and MID changes, all sorts, I cant live without s-off myself.
you can pretty much rest assured that now you've rooted and possibly flashed a custom recovery, unlocked and flashed a custom rom, you've lost the ability to get any further updates from HTC, unless there is an RUU about for your phone to return it to full stock condition, it possible with s-on, but can be a nightmare.
Before you do anything with your phone, first learn how to fix it.
Sell the device for 500, and live for another 100 days
But thats of course not how we should see it !? Weird world we live in.........
Seanie280672 said:
you can pretty much rest assured that now you've rooted and possibly flashed a custom recovery, unlocked and flashed a custom rom, you've lost the ability to get any further updates from HTC, unless there is an RUU about for your phone to return it to full stock condition, it possible with s-on, but can be a nightmare.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Disagree for a bit on this, there are many stock backups here in the M8 forum. The general section has a topic about that stickied and there is also a thread here in the Q&A section that holds lots of them.
Even the owners own stock backup is more than enough. Restore the stock nandroid and flash the stock recovery from the new ota, apply the update and voila.....stock updated. I'm not sure why many people always want to rely on RUU's ?
haha, the only reason I needed S off was to sim unlock...was way too easy to just Call T-mobile and get my code!!!
I can't believe threads like this are getting closed left and right on XDA. I think Sunshine charging $25 is a very important topic to discuss on XDA, and there should be a proper place to discuss it.
I have seen root-ninja say he is willing to PM people his expenses to S-Off which were in the few thousands. So what... the number of people that have S-Offed is multiple hundreds easy if not 1000's, and he is making $25 off each of them. That means he has earned his money back and a few years worth of salary on top of that, all for 1 weeks work and a $2000 investment. Great for him, as an individual developer I am happy to see him get some cash. I wish he would realize how he is severely hurting/violating the spirit of hacking.
This is software, hacking software. It should be free and open-source with a donation link. This is a place of learning, so please, teach how it was done. If more devs go down this road it will be very sad for XDA and the entire phone-hacking scene. Less devs will learn, all things will be kept secret and cost money, instead of turning to XDA because we cannot trust carriers and mfgs, we will not be able to trust XDA.
Sad days ahead if we don't as a group complain, boycott, and chastise this sort of bad behavior.
PS: Is anyone at all concerned about the list of permissions the app uses. Sure it is "needed" for hacking, but what else could it be used for???
if i could pay the twenty five dollars i would....
im 16
i dont have a credit card and my parents aren't exactly the most willing to allow me to use twenty five dollars on sunshine.....
im pretty sure the devs who worked on sunshine have got their money back and more...
this is a great place of learning. it hurts when some of us cant do anything about this.
its been a year since ive been hoping they drop the payment or they add a free method for s-off.
so far none.
this only slows down dev work and hurts dev culture
leaving things open source would help everyone.....
secrets have their costs......
Just think about what happens when they stop the development on s-off, i dont think anybody else comes along and get it done for free. Because there is still up till now no other dev who dared to gain s-off.
Nobody ever complained when s-off was free ...... of course not it was FREE ! But now they ask for a price. Yes for some a big amount. But people who complain about that should not even think about s-off. S-off is not even needed to flash custom roms or run custom kernels.
And then the complaint about the 2000 investment , also nonsense because they messed up many devices. Not only the M8 ! Think about that before saying things like that. The team behind s-off goes many years back already. I frankly doubt that a year salary would make up for it !!!
And the rights and permissions s-off needs.....if you are scared or worried ? DON'T USE IT
Nobody is forcing anybody to use it. Stay safe.....stay stock
This all has nothing to do with xda, xda has no rights whatsoever on s-off + the involved development
Take it or leave it ! Right @beaups !!!
rpmccormick said:
I can't believe threads like this are getting closed left and right on XDA. I think Sunshine charging $25 is a very important topic to discuss on XDA, and there should be a proper place to discuss it.
I have seen root-ninja say he is willing to PM people his expenses to S-Off which were in the few thousands. So what... the number of people that have S-Offed is multiple hundreds easy if not 1000's, and he is making $25 off each of them. That means he has earned his money back and a few years worth of salary on top of that, all for 1 weeks work and a $2000 investment. Great for him, as an individual developer I am happy to see him get some cash. I wish he would realize how he is severely hurting/violating the spirit of hacking.
This is software, hacking software. It should be free and open-source with a donation link. This is a place of learning, so please, teach how it was done. If more devs go down this road it will be very sad for XDA and the entire phone-hacking scene. Less devs will learn, all things will be kept secret and cost money, instead of turning to XDA because we cannot trust carriers and mfgs, we will not be able to trust XDA.
Sad days ahead if we don't as a group complain, boycott, and chastise this sort of bad behavior.
PS: Is anyone at all concerned about the list of permissions the app uses. Sure it is "needed" for hacking, but what else could it be used for???
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1.) Permissions are declared for fun, and as a learning experience for users. For you, as a "developer", you should know that as a root exploit we can get whatever permissions we want without declarations.
2.) We've covered the costs and our pricing strategy time and time again. If you think the price is unfair, don't buy it. If you think it should be free, and everything on XDA should be free, then spend the time yourself and develop another solution, and then provide it and support it for free. It should only take you a week, right?
These things take a lot of time, and money. a LOT of time. How many unlocks are being released for other devices lately? Where can I paid or free Samsung bootloader unlock on a blocked device? How about Motorola? LG? Sony?.....
The simple fact is this: f we weren't able to charge for SunShine, we would not have been able to dedicate the resources to develop it., and you'd have no s-off today.
Sorry no, you are telling half truths, and flat out lies. I have no idea why you would do this.
No, I offered to let someone take over the financial responsibility and re-release for free, I didn't offer to PM expenses of a "few thousands". Few thousand is what was spent in the first week of April. Few weeks? SunShine has been in development for well over a year .Few years of salary, your kidding.
Taking your word that you are a developer, you should know very well something like this doesn't magically appear in one week. As a developer, you are well aware that a root app does not need to really declare any permissions. I could add them on the fly, I mean the app is running as root. So why all the permissions, just to raise awareness of permissions. Do you want me to remove all permissions and just add them on the fly without alerting you? Its a pretty trivial thing to do, and you would never know.
We are far from the only ones doing this, we are just the cheapest, and safest, yet we are the only ones attacked over it.
Offer still stands, commit to taking over full financial requirements of our development, and we can re-release for free.
rpmccormick said:
I can't believe threads like this are getting closed left and right on XDA. I think Sunshine charging $25 is a very important topic to discuss on XDA, and there should be a proper place to discuss it.
I have seen root-ninja say he is willing to PM people his expenses to S-Off which were in the few thousands. So what... the number of people that have S-Offed is multiple hundreds easy if not 1000's, and he is making $25 off each of them. That means he has earned his money back and a few years worth of salary on top of that, all for 1 weeks work and a $2000 investment. Great for him, as an individual developer I am happy to see him get some cash. I wish he would realize how he is severely hurting/violating the spirit of hacking.
This is software, hacking software. It should be free and open-source with a donation link. This is a place of learning, so please, teach how it was done. If more devs go down this road it will be very sad for XDA and the entire phone-hacking scene. Less devs will learn, all things will be kept secret and cost money, instead of turning to XDA because we cannot trust carriers and mfgs, we will not be able to trust XDA.
Sad days ahead if we don't as a group complain, boycott, and chastise this sort of bad behavior.
PS: Is anyone at all concerned about the list of permissions the app uses. Sure it is "needed" for hacking, but what else could it be used for???
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am coming from the perspective of M9, not M8... I posted here because the M9 thread was closed.
You said yourself you bought 4 M9's and I thought you said you had S-Off in a week, no? I am a dev, hardware and software, but not a super-star like you, and though I truly believe I could get S-off, it would probably take me a year of my life that I cannot devote.
I have great respect for you man, and for the XDA community at large. The core of me truly believes that forcing a charge on modders is wrong. Well, if you want to charge for your do it all for you app that is not wrong, but you should also post clear instructions on what your app does so that others could easily do the same, themselves, for free. Knowledge should be free. You are hoarding your knowledge in order to increase profits for your app. I do not mean to offend, just to share my opinion, which is that your tactics are immoral. Please take that statement with a grain of salt, as I do not mean to offend, I am sure you do not believe they are immoral, and I also believe that paying for any form of Knowledge or Art is immoral. I do realize I am in the minority there.
EDIT: Are there others doing it for more money? Who? Do you really just make enough to keep up with your dev-expenses? or if 1% of the people that paid donated, would that cover your dev expenses and the other 99% is just cash on top? Maybe my scales-of-economy are way off here, but it seems to me by the number of people with S-Offed M8's and M9's, that you should be rolling in it at $25/head, no?
rpmccormick said:
I am coming from the perspective of M9, not M8... I posted here because the M9 thread was closed.
You said yourself you bought 4 M9's and I thought you said you had S-Off in a week, no? I am a dev, hardware and software, but not a super-star like you, and though I truly believe I could get S-off, it would probably take me a year of my life that I cannot devote.
I have great respect for you man, and for the XDA community at large. The core of me truly believes that forcing a charge on modders is wrong. Well, if you want to charge for your do it all for you app that is not wrong, but you should also post clear instructions on what your app does so that others could easily do the same, themselves, for free. Knowledge should be free. You are hoarding your knowledge in order to increase profits for your app. I do not mean to offend, just to share my opinion, which is that your tactics are immoral. Please take that statement with a grain of salt, as I do not mean to offend, I am sure you do not believe they are immoral, and I also believe that paying for any form of Knowledge or Art is immoral. I do realize I am in the minority there.
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Click to collapse
It took 24hours once the device was in hand, that doesn't mean we didnt buy other ARM64 devices over the last year, nor that we haven't spent months learning the architecture, nor changes in Android 5.x, nor writing new tools.
We don't force a charge, nor do we hold a monopoly on the subject, yet we are the only ones facing personal attacks for it.
Knowledge does not come to us for free, we invest heavily into gaining that knowledge. I do find it ironic that you are lecturing me on this, considering I have open sourced more Android exploits than any other person, and that I've posted my training material (from a $3500 per person session) for free online. Why should I have to pay for all these things, but you shouldn't? This kind of attitude and attack makes me regret contributing as much as I have, and still do.
Please don't regret, I am trying to have a discussion, not attack you. I have great respect for you.
EDIT: Great point on root apps and permissions. I am a sheep like the rest of them, I take risks and I even paid you against my own morals, but honestly the entire community needs to change their way of thinking... no one should ever run any root app that is not open source.
PS: I have open-sourced much in my life as well, but I am sure not half as much, as good, or as important as you have. I truly do not mean to disrespect you, just change the way the community thinks about ALL non-OS things.
PPS: It is mfgs/big4 that are immoral by not giving us all the option to S-Off, to carrier unlock, to flash a non-branded RUU, and to change the HBOOT logo. You are our greatest soldiers against their oppression. Keep up the good work, and make it easy for others to learn how to do the same. Thank you.
jcase said:
It took 24hours once the device was in hand, that doesn't mean we didnt buy other ARM64 devices over the last year, nor that we haven't spent months learning the architecture, nor changes in Android 5.x, nor writing new tools.
We don't force a charge, nor do we hold a monopoly on the subject, yet we are the only ones facing personal attacks for it.
Knowledge does not come to us for free, we invest heavily into gaining that knowledge. I do find it ironic that you are lecturing me on this, considering I have open sourced more Android exploits than any other person, and that I've posted my training material (from a $3500 per person session) for free online. Why should I have to pay for all these things, but you shouldn't? This kind of attitude and attack makes me regret contributing as much as I have, and still do.
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Click to collapse
Jcase, don't listen to the haters. Everyone in the world thinks they are entitled to everything. If they can't afford it then they should either work harder so they can afford it or find their own way. I say congrats for coming up with a niche product and making some money on it. This world would be a better place if people spent less time complaining and more time working hard to make a better life for them and their families.
Sent from my HTC One_M8 using XDA Free mobile app
I really wish people would knock it off with this mess. There are few phones left that can be made truly open, and it's only because of Sunshine that the HTC One M7/8/9 phones are on that list. What do people want? No phones that can be turned into developer phones?
Seriously guys, the next time you are thinking of whining about $25, consider that for many phones, there is no solution. Want to do anything more than root a Samsung Galaxy S6? Good luck with that.
Maybe we need to add a section with pricing for JTAG services or S-off SD-cards. I recall for a while there was a pool of people who went in to buy one of those factory service cards for well over $1000, and split the cost between them. I wonder what that worked out to per S-off.
At $25, Sunshine is a steal. Even if you get unlucky, and up shelling out $50, it's a good deal. If you are truly stupid, and shell out $75, you still at least have a developer phone.
I just hope jcase and beaups don't get tired of the crap and decide to go do something else with their time, as I have really enjoyed my M8 with S-off, and I would like to think they will still be around when the M10 comes out.
Wow, a while since I've posted in here and cannot believe the attitude of a so called dev on another dev.
It's deeply ungrateful and uncalled for to attack a handful of devs that, aside from the money, have obviously put a lot of time and effort into bringing such an exploit to the masses. Not just for this one thing, but also for gaining the knowledge to do it.
Anyone who declares he/she is a dev, should understand the time and effort that goes into these things.
I myself do understand as I have developed a few projects myself.
What's wrong with charging a perfectly reasonable sum? Do people complain to the networks when they have to pay for unlock codes?
What about paid apps on Google play, should they all be free?
No they shouldn't because at the end of the day it's up to the user if they want to pay or not. Nobody forces anyone's hand in their pocket.
So what if what has been recouped is so many times the cost? Does it matter if they made a dollar or a million? It just goes to show how many people desperately wanted it if that is the case.
The other alternative is nothing then there would be bountys flying about begging for someone to do it.
These guys took it upon themselves to provide a product, laid it on the table and said take it or leave it.
Don't get upset about it, don't moan about the cost, don't attack the provider of the product.
Quite simply sit back, think of the value it will bring to you, if you don't think its worth it, leave it alone and go and find an alternative solution.
Good day.
jshamlet said:
I really wish people would knock it off with this mess. There are few phones left that can be made truly open, and it's only because of Sunshine that the HTC One M7/8/9 phones are on that list. What do people want? No phones that can be turned into developer phones?
Seriously guys, the next time you are thinking of whining about $25, consider that for many phones, there is no solution. Want to do anything more than root a Samsung Galaxy S6? Good luck with that.
Maybe we need to add a section with pricing for JTAG services or S-off SD-cards. I recall for a while there was a pool of people who went in to buy one of those factory service cards for well over $1000, and split the cost between them. I wonder what that worked out to per S-off.
At $25, Sunshine is a steal. Even if you get unlucky, and up shelling out $50, it's a good deal. If you are truly stupid, and shell out $75, you still at least have a developer phone.
I just hope jcase and beaups don't get tired of the crap and decide to go do something else with their time, as I have really enjoyed my M8 with S-off, and I would like to think they will still be around when the M10 comes out.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1 on this
I dare anyone of these guys complaining, to go and try and create an s-off tool, see how many 1000's of dollars of phones you destory before you get it right and all of your time spent on it, then give it away for free ????? really, I wouldnt.
When I was using my M7, and firewater was still alive, it used to fail, no matter what combination of rom's and kernals I used, now this was before sunshine was created, I used a shop in the UK based in sheffield, thankfully, an area I visit on a regular basis, they s-off HTC phones by java card for a price of £15 GBP, funny enough thats $25 ish http://www.fonefunshop.co.uk/Unlocking/htc_s-off_service.htm
the day I got home with my new M8, about 2 months ago, I unlocked it, flashed a custom recovery, rooted it, this was all before its first ever boot, I then booted it for the first time and ran sunshine through it, the stock rom and stock firmware never stood a chance.
Stop your complaining or live with s-on.
Seanie280672 said:
$25 is nothing compared to how much it cost the creators of sunshine, they destroyed loads of phones whist creating sunshine, obviously you need to test it before you release it to the public, and in the beginning it didn't always work, each phone at $500+ a pop isn't cheap, and they didn't all survive testing, so $25 is nothing.
You loose the ability to back flash, convert your phone to another version, jump around with firmware, s-on allows only current firmware flash and next step up, HBOOT flashing, modified firmware flashes, radio flashing, CID and MID changes, all sorts, I cant live without s-off myself.
you can pretty much rest assured that now you've rooted and possibly flashed a custom recovery, unlocked and flashed a custom rom, you've lost the ability to get any further updates from HTC, unless there is an RUU about for your phone to return it to full stock condition, it possible with s-on, but can be a nightmare.
Before you do anything with your phone, first learn how to fix it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I understand but i believe they have made greater amounts of profit than just getting back the money for the phones they wasted. Not saying that it should be free but 25$ is a bit a lot for the ones living in the third world countries and the developers of sunshine overlooked that completely when deciding the cost.
shad0wboss said:
I understand but i believe they have made greater amounts of profit than just getting back the money for the phones they wasted. Not saying that it should be free but 25$ is a bit a lot for the ones living in the third world countries and the developers of sunshine overlooked that completely when deciding the cost.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
ok I understand, so lets say they gave it away for free now, how do you think all the people that paid would react ? id be P*VIST, its a no win situation, and developoment on it is continuious with each new release of a new version of android. ie Lollipop, it took a couple of weeks for sunshine to work on the newer HBOOT 1.61, before that sunshine only supported upto HBOOT 1.57.
Seanie280672 said:
ok I understand, so lets say they gave it away for free now, how do you think all the people that paid would react ? id be P*VIST, its a no win situation, and developoment on it is continuious with each new release of a new version of android. ie Lollipop, it took a couple of weeks for sunshine to work on the newer HBOOT 1.61, before that sunshine only supported upto HBOOT 1.57.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
THat's why I said it shouldn't be "free" but the price should be reduced. This tool shouldn't only be for the people from the west but for everyone around the world. The price has been unfairly defined for this product for everyone. And for the people who paid 25$, they did because they could, so it doesn't sound "unfair" to me.

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