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Not everybody is pants-wearer either.

But if you app fails the Apples check do we really want your app?

Last time I checked, iOS contained no public API to enumerate nearby Wi-Fi access points' SSIDs. This means Mozilla Stumbler, an application to help build an open location service by trilaterating from nearby SSIDs, can't be distributed in Apple's App Store, and similar programs such as WiFi-Where were pulled because they used APIs that Apple deemed private. Or are you claiming that nobody wants to help build an open location service?

I've made a list of other checks that Apple performs not for quality but for forbidden functionality.

I should know; I've programmed for that platform. But there are a few kinds of game that can't easily be adapted to it. One is games where you need to see farther away than 4 to 8 player heights. Those typically need a 3D GPU to draw a behind-the-player perspective.

and you can say good buy to.

your email app from being able to see any office files.

When you drag from the file manager or Office to your e-mail program, the operating system would make a read-only view of the file in the e-mail program's space.

no more flash , java , quicktime and more on the web.

Three words: good fcuking riddance.

adobe apps can't work with each other

Having been published under the same private key (that of Adobe Systems) would let them run in the same sandbox, if the model you envision is anything like the model of Android.

no more visual pinball working with pinmame (at least both are open source and can have both join to one app)

They could join through more structured data sharing mechanisms, such as local sockets set up by firing an intent.

IDE / codeing apps may be come hard to do.

Console gamers and iOS fans would say "good riddance". But they could work the same way AIDE does on Android.

No more NV or ATI driver apps

Again, having been published under the same private key (that of NVIDIA or AMD) would let them run in the same sandbox.

games can't have mods or map editors.

Console gamers and iOS fans would say "good riddance", as I described in another article, because modding helps cheating. But a mod could be installable through the same share mechanism I mentioned above.

Yeah, I'm aware of what the 6502 can do, having programmed a few games for a 6502-based platform. I just never got into the Z80, so I'm not sure how much the plethora of extra registers (AF BC DE HL IX IY) made up for the lack of indirect addressing modes like (d),Y.

DV certs are incredibly cheap.

But the certificate is not the only cost of upgrading from HTTP to HTTPS, as not all browsers still in use support Server Name Indication. Without SNI, a browser can see only the first certificate associated with port 443 of a given IP address, which requires your domain to have its own IP address as opposed to name-based virtual hosting. In the era of IPv4 address exhaustion, some hosts have started charging $60 per year for a dedicated IPv4 address (source: godaddy.com). The leading SNI-ignorant browsers are probably Internet Explorer on Windows XP and Android Browser on Android 2.x. But if you can get through to Roulette without a certificate error, your browser is capable of SNI and has StartSSL.

On the other hand, you probably shouldn't be sending anything sensitive over the Internet to IE/XP anyway because XP isn't getting patches anymore. So depending on browser usage share in your audience's countries, it might be time to bite the bullet and upgrade small sites from HTTP to HTTPS+SNI.

I may not be able to go pick up a linux laptop from the local store but I can order one on the dell website.

If I order online, how can I verify before purchase that the keyboard and screen will fit my hands and eyes?

I can go to the local store and buy levi's jeans but not every fit and color levi's I have to order some of those online too.

How do you make sure you get the right size when buying clothes online?

Just like all news media outlets are property of their respective government.

It's the other way around. Government is property of the media, as the news media have power to make or break a candidate for public office. And with major movie studios owning most of the news media...

Maybe I'm missing some thing here but it seems like a edit to a local hosts file could resolve this.

You're not the only one who uses hosts files like this. When Flash ads first appeared on Slashdot, I started blocking servers that send Flash ads. (I'll never buy Splunk because it was the first thing I ever saw advertised in a Flash ad.) I've since switched to click-to-play plug-ins for that, but I have written a few thoughts on how to make hosts file parsing more efficient than it currently is.

Alex P. Kowalski (APK) has long been an advocate of using hosts files for DNS blacklisting and acceleration, and his tool for Windows aggregates multiple sources over a million lines long. It also looks up the IP addresses for commonly accessed sites and caches them locally. He claims that his tool is more efficient than DNS because the operating system's hosts file parser allegedly runs in kernel space (fewer context switches) and the most commonly accessed sites (good or bad) are at the top of the list.

But lately, Windows Defender has been reverting the hosts file so that malware can't use the hosts file to redirect Facebook and the major webmails and "steal" users' credentials that way. You have to opt out of hosts file protection if you want to continue using APKware.

[The disproof of Turing completeness using Russian roulette is] a joke right?

Sort of. I've been trying to describe the rules of a few different games, and it turned out that Russian roulette and Hi Ho! Cherry-O are in the same family. I made a Russian roulette homebrew game for the NES as a quick-and-dirty test for reading the trigger switch on an NES Zapper. It lets the player pull the trigger to roll a virtual d6 and be eliminated on a roll of 1. The development process inspired me to make a pencil drawing of six figures gambling with a toy gun.

Someone else on the NESdev forum ported an NES emulator for Mac called "Macifom" to iOS so that the developer of an NES homebrew game can sell the game on the App Store by including it with Macifom in an app. My thought process might have been as follows: "Would Russian Roulette in Macifom be rejected? If so, why? What would need to be cut out? And what useful theorems can I prove from this in order to make points on Slashdot about iOS not being for everyone?" I guess the question becomes how much like Russian roulette a game would have to be in order to get rejected for violating Guideline 15.5.

[The disproof of Turing completeness using Russian roulette is] a joke right?

Sort of. I've been trying to describe the rules of a few different games, and it turned out that Russian roulette and Hi Ho! Cherry-O are in the same family. I made a Russian roulette homebrew game for the NES as a quick-and-dirty test for reading the trigger switch on an NES Zapper. It lets the player pull the trigger to roll a virtual d6 and be eliminated on a roll of 1. The development process inspired me to make a pencil drawing of six figures gambling with a toy gun.

Someone else on the NESdev forum ported an NES emulator for Mac called "Macifom" to iOS so that the developer of an NES homebrew game can sell the game on the App Store by including it with Macifom in an app. My thought process might have been as follows: "Would Russian Roulette in Macifom be rejected? If so, why? What would need to be cut out? And what useful theorems can I prove from this in order to make points on Slashdot about iOS not being for everyone?" I guess the question becomes how much like Russian roulette a game would have to be in order to get rejected for violating Guideline 15.5.

[The disproof of Turing completeness using Russian roulette is] a joke right?

Sort of. I've been trying to describe the rules of a few different games, and it turned out that Russian roulette and Hi Ho! Cherry-O are in the same family. I made a Russian roulette homebrew game for the NES as a quick-and-dirty test for reading the trigger switch on an NES Zapper. It lets the player pull the trigger to roll a virtual d6 and be eliminated on a roll of 1. The development process inspired me to make a pencil drawing of six figures gambling with a toy gun.

Someone else on the NESdev forum ported an NES emulator for Mac called "Macifom" to iOS so that the developer of an NES homebrew game can sell the game on the App Store by including it with Macifom in an app. My thought process might have been as follows: "Would Russian Roulette in Macifom be rejected? If so, why? What would need to be cut out? And what useful theorems can I prove from this in order to make points on Slashdot about iOS not being for everyone?" I guess the question becomes how much like Russian roulette a game would have to be in order to get rejected for violating Guideline 15.5.

If you want to regain support for big honkin' APK hosts files on Windows, you could try writing your own DNS server that runs on localhost and enforces your hosts file before passing other queries off to 8.8.4.4 and 8.8.8.8. I've written a few notes on efficient hosts file processing.

Why does Slashdot constantly rehash the "reasons Apple rejects apps" topic?

To help certain iOS fans who frequent Slashdot (BB, SK, etc.) understand why not all apps are ported to iOS and why some people choose devices that run something other than iOS. The featured article states that most applications that Apple rejects are broken in some important way. But conspicuous by omission are apps that aren't broken but which Apple rejects for other reasons.

They've published detailed guidelines on this for years.

Only very recently (a few months ago) has Apple made the guidelines available to the public. Previously you had to sign up for the paid iOS Developer Program just to see them. That hurt people who bought a Mac and an iOS device to start developing, only to learn that the application's concept was in a category of applications that Apple completely rejects. That's entire sections of the market that Apple has made a business decision to decline to serve.

I think this slightly disqualifies you from commenting on things regarding fashion:

http://pineight.com/mw/index.p...

Proper Zapper support relies on the 15.7 kHz flicker of the horizontal retrace. To play Duck Hunt, Operation Wolf, To the Earth, or ZapPing without an emulator, you will need either a CRT or another display that can flicker individual lines at that rate.

For Zapper games, you may need a PowerPak or EverDrive and an IPS patch that lets you use a mouse. I've developed an NES game that uses a Super NES Mouse through an easy-to-build adapter.

It’s not the same thing with a mouse.

For Zapper games, you may need a PowerPak or EverDrive and an IPS patch that lets you use a mouse. I've developed an NES game that uses a Super NES Mouse through an easy-to-build adapter.

But how many are they actually selling?

Ahead of the big marketing push? Not many, I'll admit.

The only reason you're so gung ho on the PC now is because you can't get a console dev kit

In part. But I can see which way things are going. People currently buy consoles because they're easy despite the lack of flexibility, and I understand this. People used to want America Online service for the same reason. But eventually, commodity Internet service won out. And with current-generation "hardcore" consoles switching to what's essentially laptop PC hardware and operating systems derived from PC operating systems (*BSD and Windows), it'll become a lot easier for major developers to include at least AMD-powered PCs as an optimization target. This has already led and will continue to lead to more PS4/PC and Xbox One/PC multi-platform releases of games from major third parties.

So can cyclists use this to proceed through an intersection with miscalibrated vehicle sensors without having to wait several minutes for a motor vehicle to pull up behind? I don't know about other countries, but not every US state has a dead red law allowing one to proceed with caution through a malfunctioning signal.

I understand that. I have in the past made a combinatorial argument that only 105 million distinct 8-note melodic hooks exist, and I currently maintain a list of similar-sounding musical compositions. I just wonder what steps a visual artist, songwriter, or any other author should take to reduce his legal exposure.

On top of that, the subject matter is questionable. It's a "furry's vs human's" game

Would it be any better if it were a "furries vs. dwarfs vs. congenital amputees" game like RHDE?

There is a finite number of note combinations ("chords"), a finite number of chord progressions with a reasonable number of steps (say, 6 or less), and, while both are objectively large sets, only a small subset of both would sound pleasing to the human ear.

The figure I usually quote is 105 million theoretical combinations for a melodic hook of 7 intervals ("8 notes"). Western music uses 7 pitch classes times two duration classes (long or short), raised to the 7th power for 7 intervals. Then I go on to compare that to the size of BMI and ASCAP repertories at the time. So with a polarized, do-nothing Congress and a huge entertainment lobby with dispropotionate influence on elections, how would one go about getting a broken federal law fixed?

Music, like science, is a whole lot of standing on the shoulders of your predecessors.

Except science leaps forward every twenty years, while music inches forward at life plus 70.

and yes Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" sounds like Madonna's "Express Yourself"

Specifically in the part of the latter that begins "So if you want it right now".

but pretty much every other song we've ever heard is, like, spooky close to some prior song if we look hard enough.

On that I agree. Would you like to contribute to my wiki?

I'm not sure how anyone could ever "subconsciously" insert the actual audio from another song into their own

Imperfect audio isolation in a home recording studio picking up the television or radio program that the housemate is blaring two rooms away. The result might end up sounding like the end of "I Am the Walrus" by the Beatles, which contains a snippet of a BBC Radio 3 broadcast of King Lear. If you turn it up at the end you hear Edgar (Philip Guard) in Act IV scene 6: "Sit you down, father; rest you."

They are the eggmen...

There is a finite number of note combinations ("chords"), a finite number of chord progressions with a reasonable number of steps (say, 6 or less), and, while both are objectively large sets, only a small subset of both would sound pleasing to the human ear.

The figure I usually quote is 105 million theoretical combinations for a melodic hook of 7 intervals ("8 notes"). Western music uses 7 pitch classes times two duration classes (long or short), raised to the 7th power for 7 intervals. Then I go on to compare that to the size of BMI and ASCAP repertories at the time. So with a polarized, do-nothing Congress and a huge entertainment lobby with dispropotionate influence on elections, how would one go about getting a broken federal law fixed?

Music, like science, is a whole lot of standing on the shoulders of your predecessors.

Except science leaps forward every twenty years, while music inches forward at life plus 70.

and yes Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" sounds like Madonna's "Express Yourself"

Specifically in the part of the latter that begins "So if you want it right now".

but pretty much every other song we've ever heard is, like, spooky close to some prior song if we look hard enough.

On that I agree. Would you like to contribute to my wiki?

I'm not sure how anyone could ever "subconsciously" insert the actual audio from another song into their own

Imperfect audio isolation in a home recording studio picking up the television or radio program that the housemate is blaring two rooms away. The result might end up sounding like the end of "I Am the Walrus" by the Beatles, which contains a snippet of a BBC Radio 3 broadcast of King Lear. If you turn it up at the end you hear Edgar (Philip Guard) in Act IV scene 6: "Sit you down, father; rest you."

They are the eggmen...

Re: going free and open source, the main advantage is that you no longer need to use expensive, limiting, privacy invasive apps when there are free and open source alternatives.

A lot of applications that people use daily have no comparable free alternative. Let me know when there's a free alternative to these.

There are plenty of FOSS P2P IM, VoIP and other apps and almost all of them use open web standards that are interoperable (unlike Skype).

Which doesn't help if most of your contacts have been sucked into the network effect of relying on proprietary communication software. Do you want prospective employers and the like to view you as "that guy" who refuses to use what is the de facto standard despite being undocumented?

I understand some people actually want a lack of selection. Those who do could always carry a Nintendo 3DS or PlayStation Vita instead of an iPod touch.

Why doesn't C++ have in language support for memory allocation?

C++ has the new and delete operators, whose low-level operation a class can customize. Could you clarify what you're asking for?

If you don't add it C# and Java with their GC awfulness will continue to eat C++'s lunch.

The problem with tracing garbage collection as implemented in Java, C#, and the like is that it tends to break the Resource Acquisition Is Initialization (RAII) idiom seen in C++, where an object's destructor is responsible for freeing non-memory resources held by the object, and the language supports calling this destructor automatically in many cases. Instead, GC languages have what I call "viral disposability": a conventional name for an explicit destructor method that an object's owner must remember to call, and anything holding a disposable object must also be disposable.

The general consensus as I understand it is that the <iostream> wing of the C++ standard library is hairy, convoluted, time inefficient, and space inefficient in implementation. What's the better solution? <cstdio>? Is Boost.Format, as shutdown -p now suggested, any good?

On video game consoles, it is the custom not to "allow general computation". The console maker uses cryptographic means to block the execution of unapproved computer programs for two reasons: to ensure to console buyers a baseline level quality across all software published on the platform, and to ensure a royalty to the console maker. A lot of people are willing to pay for the convenience of being able to choose software without having to worry about extremely low quality.

StartSSL and SNI work out of the box for the majority. Or if this site gives you certificate errors, which browser are you using?

SSL requires a dedicated IP

Only if your clients include Android 2.x or Internet Explorer on Windows XP. Every other browser that matters supports Server Name Indication (SNI), which allows name-based virtual hosting to work through TLS. As of today, if you can see my site without certificate errors, your browser supports SNI.

and an extra charge

StartSSL issues certificates to individuals without charge.

Is there really a privacy concern if my visit to a weather site, a dictionary, or other factual content site is not encrypted?

Yes. Someone could copy and replay the session ID linked to your user account on the site and gain your privileges.

Then there's the bandwidth issue. Sites that go SSlL will use more bandwidth

What in TLS introduces this substantial extra overhead? And how much overhead is it, really? I do know of a common misconception that HTTPS isn't cacheable. In fact, a document delivered through HTTPS is cached on the client the same way anything else is cached on the client. It just isn't cached on an intermediate transparent proxy, which hurts if your ISP is using such a proxy to cut down on its own upstream.

How is it piracy to run any of these games?

Jailbreaking does "improve Internet security" by letting a device's owner install a DNS blacklist.

Why do you need root access? What are you trying to install that isn't already there?

I have compiled a list of such apps. For example, MozStumbler could never be ported to iOS because Apple refuses to make available any public API for enumerating nearby SSIDs.

Why shouldn't they code for PC instead?

Because apart from Hairyfeet, most people don't have the PC next to the TV or any other monitor big enough for 4 people to fit around.

Then perhaps you might want to try a Sims-inspired RTS for the NES.

• 10.2.2.: original piano ambient composition
• Onderheynah: original rhythmic noise composition
• Dam Dam Baby Baram, Lodeamari Bombacy, Messimizer, Overplayed, and Zodinubis: mash-ups of similar-sounding songs from video games
• Balloon Fever and Birdo's Theme: remixes of NES games' music
• Butterfly and Maxx Unlimited: covers of DDR songs using hardware limits of the NES
• Gymnopedie 1: beginning of a cover of an Erik Satie piece in the musical style of a Kirby game

• 10.2.2.: original piano ambient composition
• Onderheynah: original rhythmic noise composition
• Dam Dam Baby Baram, Lodeamari Bombacy, Messimizer, Overplayed, and Zodinubis: mash-ups of similar-sounding songs from video games
• Balloon Fever and Birdo's Theme: remixes of NES games' music
• Butterfly and Maxx Unlimited: covers of DDR songs using hardware limits of the NES
• Gymnopedie 1: beginning of a cover of an Erik Satie piece in the musical style of a Kirby game

• 10.2.2.: original piano ambient composition
• Onderheynah: original rhythmic noise composition
• Dam Dam Baby Baram, Lodeamari Bombacy, Messimizer, Overplayed, and Zodinubis: mash-ups of similar-sounding songs from video games
• Balloon Fever and Birdo's Theme: remixes of NES games' music
• Butterfly and Maxx Unlimited: covers of DDR songs using hardware limits of the NES
• Gymnopedie 1: beginning of a cover of an Erik Satie piece in the musical style of a Kirby game

• 10.2.2.: original piano ambient composition
• Onderheynah: original rhythmic noise composition
• Dam Dam Baby Baram, Lodeamari Bombacy, Messimizer, Overplayed, and Zodinubis: mash-ups of similar-sounding songs from video games
• Balloon Fever and Birdo's Theme: remixes of NES games' music
• Butterfly and Maxx Unlimited: covers of DDR songs using hardware limits of the NES
• Gymnopedie 1: beginning of a cover of an Erik Satie piece in the musical style of a Kirby game

• 10.2.2.: original piano ambient composition
• Onderheynah: original rhythmic noise composition
• Dam Dam Baby Baram, Lodeamari Bombacy, Messimizer, Overplayed, and Zodinubis: mash-ups of similar-sounding songs from video games
• Balloon Fever and Birdo's Theme: remixes of NES games' music
• Butterfly and Maxx Unlimited: covers of DDR songs using hardware limits of the NES
• Gymnopedie 1: beginning of a cover of an Erik Satie piece in the musical style of a Kirby game

• 10.2.2.: original piano ambient composition
• Onderheynah: original rhythmic noise composition
• Dam Dam Baby Baram, Lodeamari Bombacy, Messimizer, Overplayed, and Zodinubis: mash-ups of similar-sounding songs from video games
• Balloon Fever and Birdo's Theme: remixes of NES games' music
• Butterfly and Maxx Unlimited: covers of DDR songs using hardware limits of the NES
• Gymnopedie 1: beginning of a cover of an Erik Satie piece in the musical style of a Kirby game

• 10.2.2.: original piano ambient composition
• Onderheynah: original rhythmic noise composition
• Dam Dam Baby Baram, Lodeamari Bombacy, Messimizer, Overplayed, and Zodinubis: mash-ups of similar-sounding songs from video games
• Balloon Fever and Birdo's Theme: remixes of NES games' music
• Butterfly and Maxx Unlimited: covers of DDR songs using hardware limits of the NES
• Gymnopedie 1: beginning of a cover of an Erik Satie piece in the musical style of a Kirby game

• 10.2.2.: original piano ambient composition
• Onderheynah: original rhythmic noise composition
• Dam Dam Baby Baram, Lodeamari Bombacy, Messimizer, Overplayed, and Zodinubis: mash-ups of similar-sounding songs from video games
• Balloon Fever and Birdo's Theme: remixes of NES games' music
• Butterfly and Maxx Unlimited: covers of DDR songs using hardware limits of the NES
• Gymnopedie 1: beginning of a cover of an Erik Satie piece in the musical style of a Kirby game

• 10.2.2.: original piano ambient composition
• Onderheynah: original rhythmic noise composition
• Dam Dam Baby Baram, Lodeamari Bombacy, Messimizer, Overplayed, and Zodinubis: mash-ups of similar-sounding songs from video games
• Balloon Fever and Birdo's Theme: remixes of NES games' music
• Butterfly and Maxx Unlimited: covers of DDR songs using hardware limits of the NES
• Gymnopedie 1: beginning of a cover of an Erik Satie piece in the musical style of a Kirby game

• 10.2.2.: original piano ambient composition
• Onderheynah: original rhythmic noise composition
• Dam Dam Baby Baram, Lodeamari Bombacy, Messimizer, Overplayed, and Zodinubis: mash-ups of similar-sounding songs from video games
• Balloon Fever and Birdo's Theme: remixes of NES games' music
• Butterfly and Maxx Unlimited: covers of DDR songs using hardware limits of the NES
• Gymnopedie 1: beginning of a cover of an Erik Satie piece in the musical style of a Kirby game

• 10.2.2.: original piano ambient composition
• Onderheynah: original rhythmic noise composition
• Dam Dam Baby Baram, Lodeamari Bombacy, Messimizer, Overplayed, and Zodinubis: mash-ups of similar-sounding songs from video games
• Balloon Fever and Birdo's Theme: remixes of NES games' music
• Butterfly and Maxx Unlimited: covers of DDR songs using hardware limits of the NES
• Gymnopedie 1: beginning of a cover of an Erik Satie piece in the musical style of a Kirby game

• 10.2.2.: original piano ambient composition
• Onderheynah: original rhythmic noise composition
• Dam Dam Baby Baram, Lodeamari Bombacy, Messimizer, Overplayed, and Zodinubis: mash-ups of similar-sounding songs from video games
• Balloon Fever and Birdo's Theme: remixes of NES games' music
• Butterfly and Maxx Unlimited: covers of DDR songs using hardware limits of the NES
• Gymnopedie 1: beginning of a cover of an Erik Satie piece in the musical style of a Kirby game

By "him" do you mean me? I didn't think so.

DDR stands for Deutsche Demokratische Republik (German Democratic Republic), leading to the European version of Dance Dance Revolution being called Dancing Stage for the first few mixes, and some people called DDR machines "East German disco bars". It also stands for "double data rate SDRAM", leading to bad jokes like "My PlayStation has 700 megs of DDR" in the early 2000s or "My PC has 4 gigs of DDR" as StepMania became popular in the mid-2000s.

But do people from East Germany hug the bar more?