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Well, that's how positive feedback loops work though -- you can start out with a little of a problem and watch feedback create a big problem. Consider even gaming or other computer use. Staying indoors a lot causes vitamin D deficiency, which may cause depression, which gives you less energy to go outdoors, and leaves you in more pain, and so you turn to the computer for pain relief, again as a positive feedback loop producing increasing dysfunction. This may be an important aspect of our current widespread social dysfunction in the industrialized world, especially the USA.

Anyway, some link to the science about vitamin D and mental illness, that is still emerging:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/depression.shtml
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/mentalIllness.shtml
"""
We propose vitamin D plays a role in mental illness based on the following five reasons:
1. Epidemiological evidence shows an association between reduced sun exposure and mental illness.
2. Mental illness is associated with low 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] levels.
3. Mental illness shows a significant comorbidity with illnesses thought to be associated with vitamin D deficiency.
4. Theoretical models (in vitro or animal evidence) exist to explain how vitamin D deficiency may play a causative role in mental illness.
5. Studies indicate vitamin D improves mental illness.
"""

Things like depression in children can often manifest themselves in various ways other than withdrawal.

But sure, you're right to be wary of oversimplifications. Here is another big part of the problem, which is more social and cultural:
"Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy" by Bruce E. Levine"
http://books.google.com/books?id=bCuC2H-6k_8C
http://www.amazon.com/Surviving-Americas-Depression-Epidemic-Community/dp/1933392711
"The rate of depression in the U.S. has increased more than tenfold in the last fifty years. By not seriously confronting societal sources of despair, American mental health institutions have become part of the problem rather than the solution. The good news is that age-old wisdom and legitimate science -- uncorrupted by the profit-margin pressures of pharmaceutical and insurance corporations -- have much to inform us about revitalizing depressed people and a depressing culture. Surviving America's Depression Epidemic provides an alternate approach that encompasses the whole of our humanity, society, and culture, and which redefines depression in a way that makes enduring transformation more likely."

Dr. Levine does not mention vitamin D though, but he does have a very tiny section on nutrition. Nutrition underlies a lot of this too. Here is one approach to dealing with resensetizing our tastes to healthier food:
http://www.healthpromoting.com/Articles/articles/PleasureTrap.htm
http://www.amazon.com/Pleasure-Trap-Mastering-Undermines-Happiness/dp/1570671508

Cure vitamin D deficiency, while also improving our society with more face-to-face interactions in healthy communities with humane values, and with everyone getting nutritious food to eat, and the world would be a much much better place for everyone. And we have more than enough resources to do that, if we did not waste them all fighting over perceived scarcity and dealing with all the craziness that comes from artificial scarcity (like an artificial scarcity of sunlight by forcing kids to be indoors all the ti

Well, that's how positive feedback loops work though -- you can start out with a little of a problem and watch feedback create a big problem. Consider even gaming or other computer use. Staying indoors a lot causes vitamin D deficiency, which may cause depression, which gives you less energy to go outdoors, and leaves you in more pain, and so you turn to the computer for pain relief, again as a positive feedback loop producing increasing dysfunction. This may be an important aspect of our current widespread social dysfunction in the industrialized world, especially the USA.

Anyway, some link to the science about vitamin D and mental illness, that is still emerging:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/depression.shtml
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/mentalIllness.shtml
"""
We propose vitamin D plays a role in mental illness based on the following five reasons:
1. Epidemiological evidence shows an association between reduced sun exposure and mental illness.
2. Mental illness is associated with low 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] levels.
3. Mental illness shows a significant comorbidity with illnesses thought to be associated with vitamin D deficiency.
4. Theoretical models (in vitro or animal evidence) exist to explain how vitamin D deficiency may play a causative role in mental illness.
5. Studies indicate vitamin D improves mental illness.
"""

Things like depression in children can often manifest themselves in various ways other than withdrawal.

But sure, you're right to be wary of oversimplifications. Here is another big part of the problem, which is more social and cultural:
"Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy" by Bruce E. Levine"
http://books.google.com/books?id=bCuC2H-6k_8C
http://www.amazon.com/Surviving-Americas-Depression-Epidemic-Community/dp/1933392711
"The rate of depression in the U.S. has increased more than tenfold in the last fifty years. By not seriously confronting societal sources of despair, American mental health institutions have become part of the problem rather than the solution. The good news is that age-old wisdom and legitimate science -- uncorrupted by the profit-margin pressures of pharmaceutical and insurance corporations -- have much to inform us about revitalizing depressed people and a depressing culture. Surviving America's Depression Epidemic provides an alternate approach that encompasses the whole of our humanity, society, and culture, and which redefines depression in a way that makes enduring transformation more likely."

Dr. Levine does not mention vitamin D though, but he does have a very tiny section on nutrition. Nutrition underlies a lot of this too. Here is one approach to dealing with resensetizing our tastes to healthier food:
http://www.healthpromoting.com/Articles/articles/PleasureTrap.htm
http://www.amazon.com/Pleasure-Trap-Mastering-Undermines-Happiness/dp/1570671508

Cure vitamin D deficiency, while also improving our society with more face-to-face interactions in healthy communities with humane values, and with everyone getting nutritious food to eat, and the world would be a much much better place for everyone. And we have more than enough resources to do that, if we did not waste them all fighting over perceived scarcity and dealing with all the craziness that comes from artificial scarcity (like an artificial scarcity of sunlight by forcing kids to be indoors all the ti

Canonical example.

A book called Socialnomics had some impressive marketing last summer. I wonder how it compares to the book above.

http://www.amazon.com/Ancestor-Novel-Scott-Sigler/dp/0307406334/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246459434&sr=8-1 Ancestor: "...scientists struggle to solve the problem of xenotransplantation -- using animal tissue to replace failing human organs. Funded by the biotech firm Genada, Dr. Claus Rhumkorrf seeks to recreate the ancestor of all mammals. By getting back to the root of our creation, Rhumkorrf hopes to create an animal with human internal organs. Rhumkorrf discovers the ancestor, but it is not the small, harmless creature he envisions. His genius gives birth to a fast-growing evil that nature eradicated 250 million years ago -- an evil now on the loose, and very, very hungry."

...but really it's like this

I also see offensive material, which again is the iPhone catchall for 'if we don't like, it won't be on the device.' I wonder if they are going to be as liberal in the active content evaluation as they are for books.

I also see offensive material, which again is the iPhone catchall for 'if we don't like, it won't be on the device.' I wonder if they are going to be as liberal in the active content evaluation as they are for books.

If there are a million people out there who are willing to pay the absurd subscription price of the NYT, then there are bound to be some who'd be willing to pay for it online because they value the product, especially if that content is available nowhere else.

The WSJ subscription though the Amazon Kindle store for $120 / year seems to be doing OK. If NYT want to be successful in this space, they'd better partner with Apple (tablet) or Amazon or some other distributer of subscribed content.... not go it alone with a paywall.

Read some of the reviews of the WSJ on the Amazon store to get an idea of how people perceive this model. Some good, Some bad. Most say better than print. http://www.amazon.com/The-Wall-Street-Journal/dp/B000FDJ0FS

Don't be the 'buggy whip manufacturer'...

LCDs dont refresh. Please let that very tired meme die.

Er, yes they do. You've misunderstood the actually quite explicit wording of the wiki article. They don't flicker due to refresh, but they sure tear/judder/blur due to refresh. Do some acid and/or shrooms and tell me you don't notice the diff between 60Hz and 120Hz. xD

However, this is not directly relevant to an e-reader, unless it is being used for video.

3) Use monster cables instead of cheap interconnect cables.

No, it's Denon. Get ur references straight. :P

/flamebait

I bought a HP laptop on Amazon for under $400 a few months back (the prices have gone up since then, but there are newer models which cost less - Amazon's price actually beat HP's employee discount at the time). I installed 64-bit Ubuntu (9.10/Karmic), and everything worked out of the box. Including the webcam and sleep/suspend.

I don't know why people expect Linux to support every piece of junk ever made, past or future. But in my experience, it supports more than windows. Try to install Windows 7 on my old AMD 5x86-based system. It still runs current Linux distros...

After we tried to turn it into a puppet state, the local population revolted and threw us out.

... as far as I remember, after throwing Batista out the revolutionaries tried very hard to ingratiate themselves with US, and accepted help from SU only after Bay of Pigs ... here http://www.amazon.com/Arrogance-Power-J-William-Fulbright/dp/0812992628 the story is well put

The West tried to the same intervention in China, and the result was the Boxer Rebellion.

... the West got deep into China only after the Boxers besieged the embassies. Before that it was only a matter of China taxing European imports so hard that only opium found a market, while Europe was dealing with a huge trade deficit.

I played D&D, AD&D well before the "One Hasbro to rule them all" era. I survived the "Mazes and Monsters" era. Nowadays, D&D et al. is just a MMOG, MMORPG anti-game shitfest with books like Dungeons and Dragons for Dummies.

i don't understand.. why is one of his books being "sold" for free then?

I am pretty sure no one has pirated this one yet:

http://www.amazon.com/Barbie-Horse-Adventures-Riding-Nintendo-Wii/dp/B001AZ7RMS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1263932887&sr=1-1

ORLY?

http://www.torrentportal.com/details/3677655/Barbie_Horse_Adventures_Riding_Camp_USA_Wii-WiiZARD.torrent

4 seeder(s), 20 leecher(s), 24 total peer(s) - Torrent Health: Health 4/5
137 downloads completed with 588.83 GB (632,247,523,773 bytes) transferred

Heh. Actually, I wasn't terribly surprised to find this.

I have a Lith-Ion cell batter right here rated for 800mAh. So with an output of 50mW. We could say 5V at 10mA for the charger, 80 hours.

Yet it wouldn't take much more power to drastically decrease that time and I am fairly confident that is possible as I'm reading this book from 1983, Chapter 14 is all about wireless energy transmission via a DIY device capable of powering a 20 watt florescent tube from several feet away.

Seems perfectly reasonable that we could achieve USB level output (500mA) from a wireless charger.

I am pretty sure no one has pirated this one yet:

http://www.amazon.com/Barbie-Horse-Adventures-Riding-Nintendo-Wii/dp/B001AZ7RMS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1263932887&sr=1-1

Any DVD enthusiast who remembers the notorious first release of the "THX certified" Highlander DVD can attest to the fact that a THX label means jack-squat to anyone but a complete sucker.

A somewhat optimistic guess is that they'll be restricted to using this defensively. Are they really going to sue Hadoop, the open-source implementation of MapReduce? Hadoop not only implements a version of MapReduce, it even uses its name, so is not at all coy about being a direct infringement of this patent. And yet, I would be surprised if Google sued them, or the many people using it. They certainly haven't said anything yet, as far as I can find--- when things like Amazon Elastic MapReduce were launched, I can't find record of Google saying, "hey, you're stealing our tech!"

Has anybody tried THIS for the 360 and MW2 yet?

I feel like I have run into a few people using these based on the way the cursor moved, and they look AMAZING.

I feel that it would be cheating though

Ever read the Book of French Military Successes? Both pages?

You mean this one?

Or maybe this one?


tl;dr = you idiot.

Ever read the Book of French Military Successes? Both pages?

You mean this one?

Or maybe this one?


tl;dr = you idiot.

The last bit seems to list a set of preconditions which, if met, do allow it.

Read this, and then you will see.

http://www.amazon.com/Republic-Letters-Correspondence-Between-Jefferson/dp/039303691X/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263914845&sr=8-3

Right, because nobody writes about stuff like that any more.

Hey man, just cause you're not reading them, doesn't mean they aren't being written. You also seem to think that writing is a zero-sum game: that the more is blogged, the less is published in a more permanent fashion. It just ain't so: today's blog is often just a more sharable and immediate addition to lab notes. The phrase is still "publish or perish", not "post or perish".

Right, because nobody writes about stuff like that any more.

Hey man, just cause you're not reading them, doesn't mean they aren't being written. You also seem to think that writing is a zero-sum game: that the more is blogged, the less is published in a more permanent fashion. It just ain't so: today's blog is often just a more sharable and immediate addition to lab notes. The phrase is still "publish or perish", not "post or perish".

Right, because nobody writes about stuff like that any more.

Hey man, just cause you're not reading them, doesn't mean they aren't being written. You also seem to think that writing is a zero-sum game: that the more is blogged, the less is published in a more permanent fashion. It just ain't so: today's blog is often just a more sharable and immediate addition to lab notes. The phrase is still "publish or perish", not "post or perish".

Right, because nobody writes about stuff like that any more.

Hey man, just cause you're not reading them, doesn't mean they aren't being written. You also seem to think that writing is a zero-sum game: that the more is blogged, the less is published in a more permanent fashion. It just ain't so: today's blog is often just a more sharable and immediate addition to lab notes. The phrase is still "publish or perish", not "post or perish".

Right, because nobody writes about stuff like that any more.

Hey man, just cause you're not reading them, doesn't mean they aren't being written. You also seem to think that writing is a zero-sum game: that the more is blogged, the less is published in a more permanent fashion. It just ain't so: today's blog is often just a more sharable and immediate addition to lab notes. The phrase is still "publish or perish", not "post or perish".

...this time. It's the same excuse folks (wrongly) use to claim that *nix-based machinery is 100% invulnerable - true to an extent, but not perfectly so, on any OS. The problem is a little something called privilege escalation. This will likely be the next big thing that the folks at Microsoft will begin to discover, much to their horror.

The folks who write IE (as well as other MS developers) are very well aware of the nature privilege escalation vulnerabilities. This is effectively the required read around here, and, while rather high-level, it does give a good overview of these kinds of attacks.

Regardless, more security layers are always better, especially when you can't guarantee the code to be absolutely, definitely 100% secure. Things like sandbox, DEP, ASLR etc are absolutely not a replacement for writing proper code, security reviews etc, but they help to limit and contain the effects of many discovered vulnerabilities, which this particular case demonstrates very well. In many cases it can mean that a discovered vulnerability is downright non-exploitable (at best you can DoS the client by crashing him). In some other cases it is exploitable, but requires a very significant amount of effort to get past all the layers; if vulnerability becomes known before an exploit is available, this buys more time to get a proper fix out.

Oh well, I just won't bother reading it then

Don't worry, you weren't missing much by skipping the New York Times these days; the paper is a pale shadow of its former self. Indeed, the New York Times has moved to the left in the past 30 years while the American mainstream has remained, largely center right. No doubt, I will be modded down by the Slashdot "enlightened ones" (who tend to lean left) for bringing this up, but it is true.

Remember that only 1/3 (to be very generous) of Americans would characterize themselves as "liberal" (in the American sense of that word, not "classically liberal" as it was and is understood in Europe). If the New York Times wants to fill that niche on the left then they have to be willing to give up a substantial portion of the "national audience" and it just isn't clear that a paper as large as the New York Times can afford to do that without diminishing in ambition and quality as compared to their glory days in the decades immediately following WWII.

Finally, if the people here on Slashdot want to understand better what it is that most Americans really want, then might I suggest the following book? Even if you don't want the same sorts of things it helps to understand the values of mainstream America so that you can more effectively get at least some of what you want (when what you want lies just a bit outside the mainstream).

A data point in this discussion is that it is traditional for Smallltalk implementations to use proportional fonts as the default for code editing. I've been programming in Smalltalk since 1985 and I think I've only encountered a couple of people who changed the default to anything but a proportional font. Some Smalltalks allow for rich text code, and then you'll see ASCII art done as a monospaced font section embedded in a larger proportional method or comment. But I've not seen it that often. Maybe I've led a sheltered life.

Another data point is the book "Human Factors and Typography for More Readable Programs" by Ronald Baecker and Aaron Marcus ( http://www.amazon.com/Human-Factors-Typography-Readable-Programs/dp/0201107457 ). In this outstanding volume they build a framework for understanding program legibility and an approach to formatting C programs that utilizes this framework. Recommended to anyone who wants to have a better understanding of the issues in this area.

It really comes down to how inept the school officials have shown themselves to be. I'm an optimistic person but stories like this make me worry.

Just take a look at United Nuclear or this book to see some serious science fair projects, and imagine how some of those would of went down for the poor kid!

you should be booted off of the internet?

The ISP is in the business of serving subscribers who pay monthly fees. As long as your billing identity affords you plausible deniability, particularly for mobile broadband accounts, the ISP would be happy to continue selling you service under a new alias. It is an unfortunate truth that ordinary citizens, due to corrupt bargains between special interests and the government, are increasingly compelled by necessity to master the techniques of intelligence operatives simply to maintain privacy and duck silly restrictions, but that is the world that we live in today. For those who are interested, I recommend the following book. After all, the lobbyists, corporations and politicians don't play be the rules; so why should we?

Yes, but does your cable provide quantum tunneling, a local global warming solution, dimensional rift preventability, or cure cancer? The Denon's 168 5-star reviews give me enough reason to pay this extra quality.

First, the US is not an empire. Empires take from their subject states, the United States gives out money, technology and protection.

There are different kinds of empires. Not all of them do their conquering as blatantly as Genghis Khan or the Spanish conquistas. The British Empire was a trade empire during it's first half, exporting technology, trading and bringing home wealth. Chinese empires have seldom attempted to expand or conquer.

Look at the Roman Empire or British Empire, they levied troops from their subject territories while ripping out the natural resources and taxing trade.

When the US entered Afghanistan, they bought war lords to help them combat the Taliban. The US doesn't tax trade but controls the rules of trade.
The US is an empire all right.

Different empires have different missions, but as imperial missions come, the American mission is pretty similar to the British and the Roman: To spread "civilization" in the name of a christian god. Look to the Spanish empire, the Chinese empires, Tsar Russia and the Soviet Union for other missions.

I really recommend reading Empires: The Logic of World Domination from Ancient Rome to the United States by Herfried Münkler, a great book which steers clear of the usual theories of imperialism and tries to go beyond, to explain the dynamics of empires, hegemonies and states.

We need to work in our local cities and communities to retrofit our urban designs so that we aren't forced into a very expensive lifestyle.
Two great sources to start:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_suburbia.html

http://www.amazon.com/Suburban-Nation-Sprawl-Decline-American/dp/0865476063/ref=sr_1_20?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263584896&sr=8-20

I just typed amazon and pressed CTRL+ENTER and I went straight to http://www.amazon.com/. Pressing just ENTER resulted in a Bing search.

Maybe they stuffed up the feature in IE7, but IE8 does exactly what you want. And I didn't even know about any reg hacks, so I certainly haven't done it on this computer.

http://www.amazon.com/How-Survive-Robot-Uprising-Defending/dp/1582345929

Disclaimer: I'm only a fan of the book. Quite funny. I'm not affiliated with the author in any way shape or form.

Will NASM let you write structured assembly, like MASM?

I picked up a used copy of Inner Loops by Rick Booth, and it intrigued me enough to consider tracking down an old version of MASM.

You're missing the valid double-Streisand play by the parent poster possibly because you overlook two things:

First, see:

http://www.amazon.com/Live-Concert-Forum-Barbra-Streisand/dp/B0000024ZL/

That has a recording of her appearing at a George McGovern ('72 Democratic presidential candidate) fund-raising event, smoking a joint between songs, saying as I recall something like - "We have to face our problems head-on!"

That entrenched her as an icon for Democrats and liberalism.

Second:

There was no internet in Nixon's day. Whoever gets there first gets it named after them - so Streisand Effect is valid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

So, no, it's not about being unfair, it's not about who invented the cover-up and having it backfire.

It's about iconography - and the parent did a bang up job with just one line.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iconography

I should add this:

Disclaimer: I am a pfSense developer, documentation writer, and co-author of pfSense: The Definitive Guide. :-)

i was under the impression that the new kindles could read out loud... interesting. http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Wireless-Reading-Device-Display/dp/B00154JDAI Read-to-Me: With the new text-to-speech feature, Kindle can read every newspaper, magazine, blog, and book out loud to you, unless the book's rights holder made the feature unavailable

"They walk on egg shells because China is the largest nuclear threat since the USSR "

That, and China can stop making our underpants.

I don't know about you, but that second threat scares me more.

http://www.amazon.com/World-Sized-Candy-Sticks-boxes/dp/B000BXSRT2/

Just over $9 for 24 boxes.

They are NOT doing a bad job of it, and they are much more skilled then "script kiddies".

When organizations like Google and people like Richard Bejtlich (who has literally written the book on network monitoring and incident detection) admit to being p0wn3d and unable to be sure the mess is cleaned up, you know you're up against a very sophisticated attacker.

What?

Like this?

It doesn't seem that anyone else commenting on the article has noticed this yet, but if you click through to the Google Docs blog it has the pricing info:

http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2010/01/upload-and-store-your-files-in-cloud.html

Instead of emailing files to yourself, which is particularly difficult with large files, you can upload to Google Docs any file up to 250 MB. You'll have 1 GB of free storage for files you don't convert into one of the Google Docs formats (i.e. Google documents, spreadsheets, and presentations), and if you need more space, you can buy additional storage for $0.25 per GB per year. This makes it easy to backup more of your key files online, from large graphics and raw photos to unedited home videos taken on your smartphone. You might even be able to replace the USB drive you reserved for those files that are too big to send over email.

Combined with shared folders, you can store, organize, and collaborate on files more easily using Google Docs. For example, if you are in a club or PTA working on large graphic files for posters or a newsletter, you can upload them to a shared folder for collaborators to view, download, and print.

Again, after the 1gb limit, that $0.25 per gb-yr. By comparison, Amazon S3 is $0.15*12=$1.80 per gb-yr, almost an order of magnitude more expensive.

I don't think you remember how bad it was.

Until what's-his-nuts cashes is in like a prime time cable news anchor (or even worse, Nancy Grace) on the suffering of others by retreading the same old bullshit ideas, then he won't hold a candle to the inferno of dumb that was, and sadly is, Jon Katz.

Thankfully he had the sense to put himself out to pasture.

The gripes are, unfortunately, mostly off target. But you can't blame a developer for having gripes. They deserve an answer. So here goes:

1. Open Source

The heart of this gripe appears to be "What's worse is Google knows how to protect valued code; Its Maps, Gmail, and Store applications aren't open source. Figuring out when it's okay to include one of those in your own application requires a crack legal team with a hotline to the EFF. "

This is a non-issue. Google hasn't released any proprietary code. Using the capabilities of these applications, or any other FOSS or proprietary applications in Android by means of their remote method interfaces or their Intent filters is OK unless the APIs require a key, as with the maps APIs. The process of getting a Google Maps API key is described here: http://code.google.com/apis/maps/signup.html and most introductory Android programming books cover it, too (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0596521472 in chapter 7). J2ME, BREW, and Symbian all require app signing and all support protected APIs.

2. The Tyranny of the Activity

Android has a unique programming model. It wasn't designed just to make a coder's life difficult. It was designed to prevent a small-screen UI from becoming a maze of hierarchical screen transition and enable re-use of functionality across applications. Android makes "shoveware" ports look bad, which is what Haseman seems to be griping about.

3. Device Debugging

This "gripe" is not really a gripe, but good-natured praise for the ease of debugging on Android.

4. Applications Never, Ever Quit

Android has an interesting and powerful application lifecycle. And, since Android is multi-tasking, more developers will notice that their application has a lifecycle.

5. The Developer Cooperative

This is a valid gripe: On the one hand, Android can manhandle your application's lifecycle, and on the other hand, it is fairly easy for applications to become battery-eaters. Google's developers could have done a better job of automatically detecting battery vampires. Use the "Battery use" in the "About phone" menu in "Settings" to find the applications and other system functions using the battery. That's a tip taken from this article: http://answers.oreilly.com/topic/862-ten-tips-for-android-application-development/

6. Java—Thanks, But I'll Take It from Here

Haseman says: "While it might speed time to market by freeing us from chasing down heap corruptions and memory leaks (two of my least favorite tasks), it can make it nearly impossible to, say, write an anti-aliased font library that renders in a reasonable amount of time. Sure, a developer can write custom libraries in C with their NDK, but now we're debugging two languages instead of one."

Java in Android runs on the Dalvik VM, which, up to now, is a pure interpreter: No precompiler, no JIT. It relies completely on the ability to mix in libraries in C via JNIs http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/guide/jni/spec/jniTOC.html and the NDK http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/1.6_r1/index.html.

Why? The short answer is it is hard to put a JIT compiler in a battery powered device. So the developer has to decide what code belongs in Java and what code belongs in C.

7. "Intents"

Here I am right with Haseman, since his gripe is having to write (http://www.amazon.com/Android-Essentials-Firstpress-Chris-Haseman/dp/1430210648/) about classes with names that lend themselves to drifting into being nouns. The Activity, Intent, and Service classes in Android twist up one's prose worse that quarks tha

The gripes are, unfortunately, mostly off target. But you can't blame a developer for having gripes. They deserve an answer. So here goes:

1. Open Source

The heart of this gripe appears to be "What's worse is Google knows how to protect valued code; Its Maps, Gmail, and Store applications aren't open source. Figuring out when it's okay to include one of those in your own application requires a crack legal team with a hotline to the EFF. "

This is a non-issue. Google hasn't released any proprietary code. Using the capabilities of these applications, or any other FOSS or proprietary applications in Android by means of their remote method interfaces or their Intent filters is OK unless the APIs require a key, as with the maps APIs. The process of getting a Google Maps API key is described here: http://code.google.com/apis/maps/signup.html and most introductory Android programming books cover it, too (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0596521472 in chapter 7). J2ME, BREW, and Symbian all require app signing and all support protected APIs.

2. The Tyranny of the Activity

Android has a unique programming model. It wasn't designed just to make a coder's life difficult. It was designed to prevent a small-screen UI from becoming a maze of hierarchical screen transition and enable re-use of functionality across applications. Android makes "shoveware" ports look bad, which is what Haseman seems to be griping about.

3. Device Debugging

This "gripe" is not really a gripe, but good-natured praise for the ease of debugging on Android.

4. Applications Never, Ever Quit

Android has an interesting and powerful application lifecycle. And, since Android is multi-tasking, more developers will notice that their application has a lifecycle.

5. The Developer Cooperative

This is a valid gripe: On the one hand, Android can manhandle your application's lifecycle, and on the other hand, it is fairly easy for applications to become battery-eaters. Google's developers could have done a better job of automatically detecting battery vampires. Use the "Battery use" in the "About phone" menu in "Settings" to find the applications and other system functions using the battery. That's a tip taken from this article: http://answers.oreilly.com/topic/862-ten-tips-for-android-application-development/

6. Java—Thanks, But I'll Take It from Here

Haseman says: "While it might speed time to market by freeing us from chasing down heap corruptions and memory leaks (two of my least favorite tasks), it can make it nearly impossible to, say, write an anti-aliased font library that renders in a reasonable amount of time. Sure, a developer can write custom libraries in C with their NDK, but now we're debugging two languages instead of one."

Java in Android runs on the Dalvik VM, which, up to now, is a pure interpreter: No precompiler, no JIT. It relies completely on the ability to mix in libraries in C via JNIs http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/guide/jni/spec/jniTOC.html and the NDK http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/1.6_r1/index.html.

Why? The short answer is it is hard to put a JIT compiler in a battery powered device. So the developer has to decide what code belongs in Java and what code belongs in C.

7. "Intents"

Here I am right with Haseman, since his gripe is having to write (http://www.amazon.com/Android-Essentials-Firstpress-Chris-Haseman/dp/1430210648/) about classes with names that lend themselves to drifting into being nouns. The Activity, Intent, and Service classes in Android twist up one's prose worse that quarks tha