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"Recent? You are linking to one that's 18 months ago, and one that's 2 years ago. Both dealt with permanently soon after discovery."

Of course they were. Any company worth its salt deals with malware right away. That's no guarantee that there isn't more of the same still out there. Odds are overwhelming that there is.

To assert that "there is no malware" in iOS is just ridiculous. There isn't a sane security researcher on the planet who would agree with that. Yet AGAIN, just recently, somebody got a trojan through the app approval process. Big deal, you say? Well, it is in a way because it is the same same basic technique used by one of those guys you were talking about from two years ago.

I repeat: I like Apple products. But one thing I am not is a fanboi. I am realistic about capabilities of the products. And I do my research. Yes, iOS has some safeguards that Android does not. BUT... whether those minor differences really equal "security" is a matter for debate.

iOS is nice if you like handholding and don't want to bother to deal with security yourself. But I don't like handholding, I am a tinkerer, and I don't have any qualms about taking care of my own security.

One of the companies was apparently Google. I guess we won't trust those idiots again.

Manymoon started out as free, which is probably where the 50k number came from. After being acquired, the plan was to keep giving it away while selling it to people who wanted to buy whatever premium services it added. How ridiculous is 50k companies/users on a free application which stayed near the top of Google Apps and LinkedIn apps lists?

The release announcement, when Manymoon became Do.com is worth a read for anyone who wants to register an informed opinion.

From all accounts, it was a decent way to get stuff done while on the go, even if "on the go" means being physically in the same place as other people, just not talking to them at the moment.

So downgrade to iOS 6 and quit whining. Nobody forced you to upgrade to iOS 7 in the first place.

Apparently, you can't.

This one: http://readwrite.com/2010/02/10/facebook_wants_to_be_your_one_true_login And AFAICT the search term was "facebook login".

NOTE: if you want to take information about me from someone else I gave my information to, then ASK ME. It will be under the same conditions as the other person: consideration for the use and/or the data remains mine, not yours.

Microsoft Disagrees.

In an open letter to Microsoft sent January 15, 2013, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner questioned whether Microsoft was really committed to privacy, based on a series of privacy summits the company organized last November. Specifically, the OAIC expressed "reservations" about one of the "discussion topics" Microsoft encouraged attendees to discuss.

The meetings proposed rewriting the so-called "Collection Limitation Principle," which states: "There should be limits to the collection of personal data and any such data should be obtained by lawful and fair means and, where appropriate, with the knowledge or consent of the data subject."

The report published by Microsoft states this "discussion version" was used:

"Data should be obtained by lawful and fair means and in a transparent manner. Data should not be collected in a manner likely to cause unjustified harm to the individual unless required by law. 'Harm' may include more than physical injury."

The OAIC worried that the revised discussion version placed no limitations on the collection of personal data. And the report said as much:

"[T]he requirement in the original OECD principle that data be collected, 'when appropriate,' with the 'knowledge or consent of the data subject,' seems to ignore the reality of the extraordinary volume of data that is generated today through routine activities and transactions and near-ubiquitous sensors (such as surveillance cameras, location monitoring by smart phones, and embedded computers in cars and other devices). Often, knowledge or consent of data collection in these situations is either nonexistent or likely to be so vague as to be meaningless. No one suggested that knowledge is not important, or that consent may not be appropriate in some settings, but there seems a real risk that the 'where appropriate' exception could swallow the entire principle, given today’s technology landscape."

http://readwrite.com/2013/01/23/microsoft-crows-about-its-privacy-program-but-australia-has-deep-concerns#awesm=~oed5BqlgbBHZTp

EVE sounds like a great advert for never using Python for anything even remotely performance sensitive.

I'm a huge Python fan, but I'll straight up tell you: Python code is about 50x slower than C. (If you write your own FFT function in pure Python, it will be painfully slow.)

On the other hand, Python can be used to "wrap" libraries, and much of the internals of Python is fast C code. So, properly written Python code is actually pretty fast. (If you use the FFT function provided in the NumPy library, you are using compiled C or maybe Fortran code. It's fast.)

It's all a tradeoff. If they wrote the whole game in lovingly hand-optimized C, the performance would be very high but developer productivity would be much lower. By writing the game in Python they had excellent productivity.

So, if there was a magical language that is as fast as C but as conducive to productivity as Python, they should have used that, I guess. (That's the cue for the LISP guys to jump in, isn't it!)

Don't forget, not only were there 4000 ships, but the ships had drones, the ships had railguns shooting projectiles, in short there were tens of thousands of entities at any given moment during the peak of the battle.

I'll bet that most of the load on the server was on the networking stack, which is pure C library code. If I'm correct, then Python was only responsible for a fraction of the total load on the computer, and Python slowness wouldn't contribute that much to overall slowness.

P.S. Twitter had to drop Ruby, but EVE Online hasn't had to drop Stackless Python. That ought to count for something!

http://readwrite.com/2011/04/11/twitter-drops-ruby-for-java

It's perhaps not so surprising that a Twitter staffer suggested this—they more or less killed off all third-party clients to ensure their audience would be captive to promoted spam on mobile.

Saw this story from a dissatisfied Pebble backer just today:

Why I Cancelled My Pebble Smartwatch Order

For one thing, he didn't like them going straight to Best Buy (which was not a smooth launch either apparently) while backers were still waiting.

I've used svn for years. Still do. I've have not used git. Not really on topic, but there's SourceForge Enterprise which is free for up to 5 users (I think?). Good for a very small team of developers. It turns out git has an enterprise edition too http://readwrite.com/2011/11/01/github-launches-enterprise-can#awesm=~o9dDRS2KGzeDLJ . Has anyone used git's enterprise vcs? How is it?

Red Hat is the sole, most significant contributor or one of the main contributors to to an awful lot of those 'other open source projects':

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Red_Hat_contributions (and that's massively incomplete)

It's a core principle of RH work that as much work as possible is done or pushed upstream, and that RH products should be 100% F/OSS (the exception to this is when we acquire proprietary software and spend a couple of years doing the legal and engineering spadework to make it 100% F/OSS, which is just a terrible thing for us to do, I know).

All of the source for RHEL is publicly available - http://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/enterprise/6Server/en/os/SRPMS/ (and other paths on that server), go knock yourself out. (This is not minimal legal compliance, BTW; minimal legal compliance would be providing only copyleft sources, and providing them only to customers. We don't have to put the entire SRPM set up for public download on our own servers). You can get an evaluation version of RHEL 6 for free at https://ca.redhat.com/products/enterprise-linux/server/download.html - where 'evaluation' just means 'you only get updates for X days'. You can buy the RHEL Developer Suite - https://www.redhat.com/apps/store/developers/rhel_developer_suite.html - which includes RHEL with every single add-on, and access to all updates, just like having a commercial support contract only without the commercial support - for a measly $99. Or you can just go download CentOS or Scientific Linux, which projects RH does nothing whatsoever to impede.

RH is the single leading contributor to upstream OpenStack: http://readwrite.com/2013/04/16/will-red-hats-openstack-contributions-turn-to-gold

Name me a company that manages to run a sustainable business while contributing more to F/OSS development. One company.

Such as
causing injury to criminals,

Contrary to the Samsung marketing you seem to have believed, iOS is not your mom's smartphone OS. Android is.

http://readwrite.com/2012/10/08/sorry-samsung-iphone-is-not-your-mothers-smartphone

Not on ARM you can't. http://readwrite.com/2012/01/13/microsoft-says-no-to-disabling

The phone for your parents? Samsung has certainly been trying to convince people this is true with their ads, but shockingly it turns out that advertising and reality don't match up.

It turns out that Android skews towards older users, not iOS.

There is no shortage of these lists.
International Buisness Times http://www.ibtimes.com/biggest-tech-flops-2012-top-5-failures-facebook-ipo-microsoft-surface-977488
Think Digit http://www.thinkdigit.com/General/The-5-biggest-tech-failures-of-2012_11866.html
Read Write http://readwrite.com/2012/12/14/top-10-epic-tech-gadget-failures ...
Why pick the one that is designed for a tablet..or one that doesn't mention Windows 8; Windows Phone 8...or Surface.

http://readwrite.com/2012/06/05/5-ways-to-tell-which-programming-lanugages-are-most-popular seems C# is one of the most popular languages in use at the moment. how would you put C# down as a flop?

and yet somehow the inability to roll in the Lightning port to a product that was begun before Apple even acknowledged it exists is "doomed".

Why would they bother developing yet another USB charging hub? The entire point of this project centered around not needing to carry around 27 different dongles to all do effectively the same task at the same Li-ion-friendly voltage. Ironically enogh, we shouldn't even have a need for this, since Apple promised (and lied to) the EU to switch to a unified charging standard. Did they break the letter of the law? Apparently not. But does their latest proprietary CashGrab-enabled CopperInPlastic(tm) technology serve any purpose (to the end user) at all?

No. No, it does not. So yeah, Fuck Apple.


I wonder, what's to stop iPhone 5 users from plugging in a Lightning cable into one of the powered USB ports on this device? Nothing? So why the need to cancel it?

Just $20. Though I have no doubt, if they could make these things teleport nickels and dimes straight to Cupertino, they would have gone with that approach per-use instead.

Citation Needed.

Citation given.

Citation given.

Citation given.

Citation given.

It's even better. There is a "like" after death.

Don't pretend the US administration, donkey or elephant regardless, doesn't want this.

Okay, I won't pretend. They don't want this.

The primary reason is that it's simply bad for business. Secondarily, they simply don't want Internet governance to become a matter of political and diplomatic negotiation with countries that don't love them. Tertiarily: There's a reason the EU, Canada, Japan and Australia are all lined up against these proposals: They actually do occasionally give a shit about human rights. I know it's not au fait to think so, but it's true.

And regarding delegates' stupidity: Judge for yourself whether the US Ambassador to this event sounds stupid or not.

Design is for the average user. The average user doesn't have a Thermaltake Xaser case, they have a HP, Compaq or Dell. They don't use Intel's wireless display outside of work

There is no such thing as "an average user". Every user uses the system slightly differently, has a different physical setup, cares about different things.

While not everyone uses a case like mine, the point is ease of access. People I know have their box in a closet, others use wireless keyboard/mouse with a projector, my father uses the Intel wireless display so the computer can sit upstairs and he can access it on the living room TV, sometimes it's just pushed back so far under the desk it's a pain to get to. None of these people are techies, these are all just family/friends that I end up having to support because I'm the techie.

honestly they don't care about the charm bar.

Half of them can't figure out it's there (even with on screen instruction), the other half even if they know it's there they find it confusing and annoying. Here are just a sample of your so called average user complaints so far (paraphrasing):

  - "I'm trying to follow instructions on x website, but the search covers them up when I start to type in what it says to. When I switch back to see the rest of what I need to type, the search is gone and I have to start over"
  - "I want to close x program, but whenever I go to the X this thing shows up with a bunch of pictures on it and then I can't close the program" - [this happens when you move the mouse to the top corner, then down a bit or bottom corner then up a bit]
  - [this one is mine] Same sort of thing for moving the mouse out of the way: the off screen gutter for the mouse has always been on the right of the side, Vista and Win7 bottom right went to desktop peek so I got used to pushing the mouse to the upper right to hide the mouse. Now both corners are the harm bar and there's just a hidden show desktop button (only visible as a button when you click it) which you can right click to enable the peek option. So you want to do a quick desktop peek to check your schedule, you can, but the harm bar comes up as well and covers half of it. Move away to get rid of the harm bar? Oh, you lose your peek too. @#@#$%
  - "How do I turn off the computer?" - from a person who's anal about not wasting energy (you know, the type who actually unplug the powerbar to conserve phantom loads)
  - "Sometimes this thing shows up on the side and has a big clock, what's it for? and why does it show up randomly?
  - "I open up that thingy on the side but when I try to move down to click on the button it goes away - how do I keep it there?"
  - "I'm trying to watch a movie but there's these 5 icons that won't go away" (from the person with the projector setup)

People care about interfaces - a lot. Just take a look at digg.com http://readwrite.com/2010/09/23/digg_redesign_tanks_traffic_down_26 (it's why I left digg and came here, which I'm sure you'll have a snippy retort to). Facebook too - I left after their major re-design 3-4 years ago and it's only gotten worse since then.

The fact is that users want options and they want to have things their way. Forcing something on them that pisses them off, even if it does have it's benefits, is just going to drive away customers.

The news is the Microsoft astroturfing trolls that have so flooded slashdot are not just on slashdot, they are everywhere.
Anyone that watches Oprah will believe anything, even that Microsoft products are worth buying.

Microsoft tends to spend its time and money in places where the grown-ups hang out.

The shortest answer is ''It's a digital notebook,'' but that just leads to the question, ''And why would I want a digital notebook?'' The better answer is that it's a powerful, versatile tool for organizing just about anything. It's the application you turn to for jotting down to-do lists, capturing notes during a presentation, or recording the random ideas that run through your head so you can refer to them later after your brain has erased all traces of the original thought. You can store, organize, and search text, audio, video, photos, and handwriting.

OneNote has been one of my favorite applications since Microsoft began bundling it with Microsoft Office. I like that it syncs my data through SkyDrive so my notes and information are available from just about anywhere. Microsoft has also developed native apps for the iPhone, iPad, Windows Phone, and Android devices--making OneNote one of the most accessible, cross-platform tools Microsoft has.

My single favorite feature of the new OneNote, though, is unique to OneNote MX--the Metro-ized app version of OneNote designed for Windows 8. Tapping the radial menu button opens a circle containing different formatting options. On some options an arrow is available that lets you dive deeper and access more options. At any point, you can click the back arrow in the center of the radial menu to go back to the previous menu.

The radial menu is brilliant. It is an innovative approach to working with information on a touchscreen mobile device, and I hope the radial menu is also a staple of the Office apps that come with Windows 8 RT, and/or that Microsoft extends the radial menu concept to the rest of the Office suite soon.

Microsoft OneNote MX Has a Secret Weapon

Are Radial Menus The Future Of Office?

So nice to read a decent post about the original topic and not another who-to-blame-in-the-middle-east piece. Let's discuss.

I can count the number of serious players in large-scale cyberwar on one hand. Anonymous isn't one of them--and Israel is. Defacing websites and conducting DDoS is something you do to make a point--not make a difference in full-scale military conflict or subversive operations.

One of the things I am most amused by is the explicit reference to Israel's threat to cut off Palestinian internet access as the trigger for their actions. The death of multitudes of innocents on both sides isn't enough reason to take action, but if a Palestinian can't check his email, it's war! That, combined with the stance they took and the targets they are choosing, is a pretty clear indicator of their scope and level of maturity.

I would add one more interesting note worthy of a Slashdot post: In the constant P.R. war that is the Israel-vs.-Palestine conflict, Israel has converted their live blog of events into some sort of a web-based achievement game. They're getting a lot of flack, and it's fair to say it lacks taste, but to me it seems more of a P.R. failure and less an indication of eeeevil. Don't think I'll be trying to grind my Level 11 IDF Rifleman any time soon.

Compare and contrast:

http://readwrite.com/2012/10/23/readwriteweb-deathwatch-one-laptop-per-child-olpc

Funny how that one didn't make Slashdot.