This is exactly how Nokia is making money of their NIT.
Get used to it.

1. I doubt they've made any amount of meaningful 'money' off NIT.

2. I don't have to.

I end up doing database design every once in a while, so I'm actually interested if you have a good reason for this?

Or did you perhaps mean NEVER EVER in user interface?

I often end up using id as secondary sort term, I find it a practical way to make sure that the order of items is consistent across queries when primary sort term happens to be same...

Guys this is simply Old Media and New Media ... Maemo seems to be a make work type project. Also Nokia is a company who for intents and purposes doesn't know how to talk to the community even though you have employees showing up from time to time. Showing up to not share information is counter-intuitive to the whole openness mantra. Nokia has no follow through, like someone who you've gone used to letting you down repeatedly.

Like I've said before and if their are Shareholders amongst the forum users, demand OPK to resign and also fire the entire top brass ... heads must roll before the entire company loses whatever remaining credibility currently exists.

jeeze i find it as unacceptable as EVEYRONE - i hate nokia because i bought the n900 for its internet/multimedia tablet premise. Of course, no flash 10.1, and I am pissed off as I am sold down the river.

But the fact is, Nokia doesnt even READ these forums. Nokia doesnt CARE. Nokia has manoevered the community here into acting as free tech support for the n900, and like ALL tech support when confronted with "average" users, they get abused and hence the bad feeling around this forum now. Ari Jaaski doesnt even bother defending the n900 on his blog anymore.

Fact is, you can shout yourself horse and you will STILL get no response. You ahve no legal recourse (unless you really are prepared to sue them, are you ?) and as I stated the community while it provides excep[tional support, is not OBLIGED to help you.

I find it ironic ppl will accuse me of being a fanboy hahaa - but the fact is you have NO recourse except the market place. Go to another company, buy their phone and tell EVERYONE in your network not to buy Nokia. Only when Nokia sees a huge dent in sales will it change.

Any other suggestion or otherwise (i.e. "to be patient") is just a temporary fix. Nokia will NOT care until its sales get dented.

And yes, if Nokia does not change, the company will die - and the companies that DO give a crap survive. This is how the world works.

Wow. You have strong feelings about stuff. I have no idea what you are talking about, but nice to see that things matter to you.

Nokia didn't let me down at all. They stuck a 'mobile computer' on the shelf in the form of an N900 and I bought one. I love it. It does exactly what they said it would do. Couple of minor bugs here and there, but it has an operating system that allows me to talk to all the hardware. I don't recall Nokia ever saying they would provide nice little GUI's to drive it all, but the hooks are there in the SDK if you want to roll something on your own.

It's NOT a phone, try to keep that in mind. Not only that, but many of you are complaining about things that Nokia have absolutely no control over - Flash 10.1 for example - get in touch with Adobe, Nokia aren't to blame. Pointing fingers in the wrong direction there.

Unfortunately you're in minority here.
I'm sick of all there people whining on false premises and hopes they have etc. N900 is what it is and Nokia is acting as usual.

P.S. Don't mind the bashing for saying "it's not a phone", that will follow in next posts I'm sure.
If you paint a horse in black-white stripes it does not become a zebra. Same for NIT stickered with phone application.

People who raise "fanboy" card are quite often people who have really big problems with understanding context and what is being said. Like e.g. people who raise "pedophile" card against you when you try to criticizes chilprn blocking methods that just clean up stuff under carpet but do not do anything to main problem or people who raise "nazism"- or "racisms"-card when you try to have constructive conversation about integration and multiculturalisms problems. It´s just quite often end closure where someone with these cards shows how he/she has just problems to listen/read and doesn't even want to listen or try to understand your point. Same thing happened in kindergarten when some people put fingers in their ears and started yelling but this "card" sht happens between grownups :|

Okay, a little bit oftopic. I will try to keep it short.

It's okay as a secondary sort item. It's also okay when there is never a scenario when you need to insert data between 2 others. At example import during a sync data from a other source. Like a stack of cards in a poker game. This will fail if you use ID's as the one and only sort item (like the SMS application does). Your Data is viewed in a order you have never thought about during the desing.
A ID in a recordset is per definition a unique identifier. This is the reason it exists. It's indexed by default. If you have only data fields with a fixed lenth the engine can find it very fast if you "Select Text From Table Where ID = 6;".
In many scenarios more than a single programm or task is accessing a database. The same happens at the N900.

Lets keep the SMS storage as example. I don't really know how it works internally. I guess how it works simply by my own knowledge and because of that what I can see as a user from outside. My example is very simplified:

You have the Conversations application, the SMS Messages are sort by ID instead of receiving time. You begin to write a SMS, close the programm and your text is stored as draft in the database. The Conversation has only to store the ID somewhere to know it is draft and the next time you will open the application it has to show up your unsent draft. Lets take the number "521" as ID for this message.
Now you start a sync with a other application, import old messages. To show it in the correct order (receiving time) you have to reorder the ID's and insert several Numbers before the number 521. You have to twist the engine only because your view does someting strange. In the most databases this is not trivial. Its not designated to change a ID of a recordset. Its forbidden. You have to make a copy of the table with new IDs, delete the original and rename the new Table.
Now the user opens the Conversation application. This program doesn't know anything about the reconstruction. It only knows "continue with Message 521" - in the best case it will open the wrong message... but it can also end in a crash because there is suddenly a receiving date of a unsend message, or a sending date in a draft. It can end up in a loop or in many rendering bugs and a broken layout because there are many messages after the draft shown. Many things and bugs can happend the programmer has never thought about. And actually he has not to care. HIS part of the programm worked just fine. He have not broken the rules.

A SMS storage database is not soooo important... but try to imagine what could happen when you build such a scenarion with a coustomer database and a billing system. Not with the reason to assign new IDs because of sorting... imagine it because you misuse the ID as a customer number. And now your management assimilate a competitor and you have to merge the customer database. (leave the country as fast as you can)

Conclusion: Never change a ID and never built a scenario it could requires to change a ID some day in the future. The maemo programmer are aware of this. Because of this there is also a warning at the Bug report #7512. When you do something like this, reboot the device immediately!

But the Bugfix is still not on scedule despite it's very easy to do: Order by receiving date or "storage_time" instead of the ID. And to compensate the application slowdown index the "storage_time". It's simple to change a "storage_time" by a other application to fix the ordering and get it how it should be. Its a datafield like many else. But changing a ID is a reason to sell your degree on ebay.

Hehehehe, yeah I am passionate as I have been a Nokia consumer for such a long time, since the 5190's. Now this isn't about rank or who came first, but rather an expectation of good products from Nokia. Lately all I have seen from Nokia is alright products, to sub-par. I'm seeing the pattern the Nokia as a company is very short-sighted and doesn't really get behind good ideas. Nokia N-Gage and the ability to game on phones was a Nokia thing ... now EA and the likes have games coming out for the iPhone ... difference is that a company like Apple as much as they say they are clever, are rather more willing to risk it all on a product they believe for that they are visionaries not because they were the first. I see the N900 model being what the iPhone will be at 3-4 iterations from now, running a more PC like OS ... MeeGo is a restart of what Maemo5 already achieved what gives? Also with Symbian lurking around and not being fully banished to the nethers of cheap smartphones (ie. not N-Series) it doesn't convey a message of fully getting behind MeeGo. Yes it is not a phone but a mobile desktop, exactly why it should be eligible for a OS update. Phones get specs enforced on them, not mobile desktops ... think about that Nokia.

I am just wondering what is happening with Nokia. It is cautious, slow to release (Apple says this is the new phone, next week 600k should be ready in the mail, Nokia you wait 6months to 8), they are not as open as they proclaim, their communications/ PR is atrocious. They will support 4-5 mobile OS's ... kind of stretching themselves thin. The leadership must be crazy to put a giant like Nokia in this position.