I got featured at the Dolphin Browser blog: dolphin-browser.com/2013/01/fan-shout-out-geff :D

Hey, congrats! Nice reading that :)

Besides: Why is everybody changing nicks here? Did I miss something, Geff?

I never knew you could change nicks. I tried, after Al.

Thought so. He's giving a bad example it seems XD

I've changed mine name plenty of times ;)

It's quite bad - it's really simple to get around the 30 day wait period...

@Izzy ^^

I can't believe my Nexus rooting guide only got 3 up votes :(

@LiamW just wait a little. It's strange sometimes -- I also never know how much votes an answer will get. Sometimes those where I expect at least 5 upvotes get only a single one, and those I'm afraid could be downvoted by some "special people" get 7 upvotes within the first day...

The bad things with the nick changes are at least two: 1) you've get trouble to find someone, and 2) all the relations in comments like "@LiamW wrote..." lose their connection, so they get hard to follow...

@LiamW I just got awarded the "Popular Question" (1000 views) badge on ServerFault for a question and answer pair that have NO votes at all. Unfortunatfely your answers aren't always useful to the regular members here, sometimes its the drive-by Google visitors that use your answer most, and many of them never vote

Hmm

I noticed that with Geoff. SE should automatically change comment @s when a username is changed.

That might imply a lot of load. The system needed to do a full-text search on its entire database to figure out where the nick was used in answers, comments, chat, meta, other sites the user has accounts... Then parse the results, do a text sarch-and-replace, and mass-update everything back to the database. Guess that's simply not practical.

@Izzy It's not not a "Why" question just because it's an OS question :P

@MatthewRead about the /proc question you just closed (while I was composing an answer): The easiest explanation are apps requiring a list of running processes, isn't it?

Please correct me if I'm wrong (and I promise to read our FAQ again very carefully): "Why" questions are not off topic, are they?

@Izzy I'm not familiar with what info is available there. Are such apps allowed as user apps?

It's about understanding the Android system. And not being afraid of something looking like a "security hole".

Sure they are. Think of OS Monitor.

Or of the evil guys named "task killer"

They all read /proc/<pid> to get a list of processes.

And then the information "below" for details.

The problem is about speculation. "Why" is about purpose. Unless it's in the Android developer docs (and thus a dev question) we can come up with potential uses but not the intended ones

And think of a display of available/used/total memory. Guess where those information comes from?

Task killers don't require root?

Nope.

That seems like a bad idea lol

They require some special permission (I can look that up for you if you want)

In any case if you have an answer and feel this strongly about it I will re-open

Why? Even on Windows, you can open the task manager when logged in as unprivileged user.

But I don't think the question is a good one for our site

It is a Android user question. And I can name you at least 2 or 3 related questions right ahead.

Like "Somethings eating my memory..."

My answer there (straight from a user's perspective) uses things reading from there.

I'd say it's perfectly valid. But of course, you are the diamond :)

If there's a problem X, "How can I fix X?" is a good question. Not "Why is X happening?"

From that perspective, yes. But as I said: How often do you read about vulnerabilities in the system -- real ones and fakes?

Often enough that I don't invent my own issues and then ask about them lol

So people get nervous. Then they see something they think is a security hole. I think it's good then to show them this is perfectly fine.

I don't think this is "dangerous to leak sys info" as the asker says

Exactly. And now I'll go and give proof -- thanks for re-opening :)

sure thing

later ;)

@MatthewRead OK, take a look :)

If you think I missed something, or left anything unclear, let me know. I didn't go very deep (as I said, "from a user's perspective" this should be enough for the "Why"). And in one point I have to agree with you: Mostly the user accesses these rather indirectly (via the monitoring apps etc.) -- but for troubleshooting, it can be very useful to investigate here with a terminal app or via adb shell.

Btw: Thanks for removing the comment -- I would not have been able to re-edit it :)

@Izzy Where is the question you two were talking about?

@Flow here

@Flow Sorry, was busy on another desk (3rd edition of my first book coming soon -- work, work, work, as the @Zuul would say :D)