And the reason why an ARM-based MacBook Air would run iOS rather than Mac OS X is?
There's no reason it has to, and no reason it cannot.
The reasons for replacing Mac OS X with iOS would probably be partly political (iOS is Steve's 'next big thing') and partly financial (maintaining two separate but similar operating systems takes up double the resources, without providing double the return). None of us knows of course what will happen, but it is not beyond the realm of possibility that iOS will replace Mac OS X, and certainly lots of the design decisions in iOS make no sense whatsoever if they are planning running the two in parallel indefinitely (why set up an entirely separate but substantially similar view hierarchy like UIView with a different coordinate system etc etc when NSView could have been adapted?). I imagine it'd take years to transition if they do it though, as they port stuff they need over to iOS and drag their developers kicking and screaming through yet another transition/revolution. It wouldn't necessarily make sense, and might not be popular with me personally, but they may well do it, and it is not a ridiculous suggestion - it makes a lot of financial sense for Apple, even if it would mean yet more pain for many loyal developers.
You realize, of course, that not only can you get to every directory from the Finder's "Go" menu
Yes, I use that occasionally, though I tend to use terminal to access files in etc for example. You'll find on iOS, where there is no finder, files are not exposed to the user, and the file system for each app is entirely sandboxed anyway, that this harder:) You can still view the file system if you ssh in, but for normal users, it is not exposed, and therefore not an issue.
While most denizens of slashdot would not agree with it, it is quite possible Apple will simply remove file system access for normal users from some future version of OS X, to make it more like iOS. Hiding access to the library folder behind an obscure command is a step in this direction.
Really I don't think this downgrade should have happened. While there are quite likely to be other problems for the US (spending cuts, tax increases, slow economy) it does not at all look like default is in the cards. Since bond ratings are supposed to be a rating of how likely that is, the rating seems to be incorrect. My opinion is it is politicking. The S&P people in power wanted a different deal and this is their politicking of it.
1) Ratings are a farce - that S&P rated bundled junk mortgage securities AAA was just the most recent example of their ineptitude or malice, but the US has not deserved an AAA rating for a long time. Ratings agencies are corrupt *and* incompetent - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_rating_agency#Criticism 2) Ratings make lots of people lots of money - they charge for ratings (presumably more for good ones!), and knowing a rating up or down before it comes out could of course make some people very rich. Given the incredibly light touch regulation which only catches fraud after it is exposed by a market crash, you can be sure this goes on all the time. Most of the big investment banks made huge amounts of money shortly after the last crash a few years ago and are now back in profit in a big way - ask yourself how that is.
This is not just politicking, it is all about making money by blackmailing governments into supporting their debt and currency with ever-increasing amounts of public money, and syphoning that money off to the investment banks. In the same way that Soros made billions (of today's money) by betting against the BoE and bullying them into submission, the ratings agencies and bond traders stand to make billions by bullying the US gov. into submission, and it's all in the name of a 'free' market, even if that market has been captured almost entirely by profiteers who have a monopoly on market confidence and know the outcomes well before the rest of the market.
It's time to reign in both ratings agencies, and investment banks, heavily regulate them, and separate them completely from retail banking, which means that governments don't have to care if they go bust, and can extract capital from their every transaction, instead of letting them become more powerful than governments.
The two options for developers under this scenario are:
I think you forgot the most likely option:
0) iOS
Same as Mac OS is used to produce apps for Mac OS X, iOS could be used to produce apps for iOS, so long as some decent hardware like the purported ARM MacBook Air was available. A port of Xcode to iOS would not be particularly difficult, it is already a thin skin over command line tools which would run fine on iOS.
Rather than merge the code, its more likely they would merge the concepts. Some code may well be portable (its objective c in both cases), but I doubt the merge would be trivial, or even possible in some cases.
Are you sure they won't just drop AppKit and move to UIKit by extending UIKit slightly to deal with a few more desktop concepts (those that they choose to actually keep, which from the look of Lion, will not be very many)?
Except you can only create iOS apps using OS X. OS X and actual desktop computers aren't going anywhere.
Software similar to Xcode could easily run on iOS (running on x86 or ARM doesn't matter which). The underlying tool-chain has already been ported and used to compile stuff on an iPhone. So your confidence is misplaced.
I want to see how well OSX works when the ability to run things like scripts is removed and only TrustedTM executables are allowed to be run.
It's quite possible for Apple to only allow themselves to run scripts and other runtimes, in fact they've already started doing it with the App Store, and by hiding things like the Library folder and enabling autosave (so that the user doesn't worry about the file system). I expect them to fully lock it down in the future, so that the file system just isn't exposed, and the only runtime for development is the one that Apple makes available (AppKit, or later, UIKit). OS X can easily run in that state, it's just you would't like using it - the majority of people would not care or would find it an improvement as the OS gets out of the way even more.
If we're lucky they'll allow developers some leeway on this and let them run whatever they want, otherwise quite a few people will be looking for a new platform which doesn't resemble a console, and the worst of it is that the vast majority of people will be happier with the new locked down arrangement.
Odd. Most European laws explicitly state that you may expect to have privacy. Pretty much wherever you go.
If you live in the UK, that is not true - you have a reasonable expectation of privacy in your own home or other private spaces - in public spaces you have no expectations of privacy, and a stranger can take photos of you, or look at you, without your permission, so long as they do not then try to use those photographs commercially - selling the photos is fine for editorial use (in a newspaper for example), selling your likeness to promote some product is not. This is a codification of common sense really, as it would be impossible to enforce privacy in a public space (i.e. you may expect to have privacy...pretty much wherever you go) - otherwise newspapers as we know them would cease to exist, no-one could take photos at a concert or in a public place, etc etc. Otherwise one privacy nut could ban all public photos of a place just by standing in front of it.
In other European countries I'm not sure on the law, but I doubt very much they have laws as you describe as they would make many everyday activities illegal (tourists snapping pictures of a tourist attraction for example). Also, European laws are still so diverse as to make any blanket statement about privacy laws in Europe not very useful.
OSX and iOS share a common base, but it does not mean they will merge. Apple has stated repeatedly that touch screen devices are fundamentally different than desktops/laptops. While they may borrow UI features back and forth they are never going to merge into one unified device or GUI.
I'm afraid your subject line is a better description of your post than the original speculation.
Apple has stated repeatedly all kinds of nonsense - for example originally HTML apps on iPhone were 'a really sweet solution' and the future of iOS, before iBooks was launched 'no-one reads any more', before the iPod Nano was launched 'no-one watches video on these tiny devices', Carbon was an equal partner and would always be supported, until it wasn't. etc, etc, etc. Most of their public statements are misdirection or misinformation, so if you're trying to work out what they are going to do, I wouldn't attempt to quote Apple pronouncements as if they are gospel or revealed truth. You can in fact usually see them do the exact opposite of what they claim they will. It is more instructive to look at what they have done with Lion: started to merge the UI of iOS and Mac OS.
There are two issues with merging iOS and Mac OS, neither of which are a deal-breaker:
* The two have a completely different (though substantially similar and overlapping) UI stack and set of APIs. iOS is the newer one and has been getting the most attention the last few years - draw from that what conclusions you will. * The two do not have compatible UIs, and the desktop UI would not make sense on a touch screen and would be impossible to use. The touch screen UI and conventions however, works pretty damn well on a desktop, and you'll see a lot more of it on the desktop in future, as Jobs has obviously decided that overlapping windows, saving files, hierarchical folders, and the desktop itself, are yesterday's UI.
When I open launch control on Lion, or swipe around the UI, it feels very like using my iPad - I expect that feeling to continue to grow until NSView etc are simply deprecated, and the new shiny APIs are all available both on iOS and Mac OS, and then eventually we'll get to a point where they have one OS again. From a technical point of view, it's insane for them to maintain two very similar APIs indefinitely, particularly when they are becoming more and more similar. It is quite possible for them to merge them, and you might not like it, but Apple really don't care what you think.
Personally I think they are clearly going to merge the two, or rather iOS will subsume and replace what remains of Mac OS, as Cocoa did Carbon, and Carbon did Mac OS 9 - Apple is not afraid to completely throw away the rule book, piss off third party developers yet again, or completely contradict their recent statements with their actions. That's what makes them interesting, and somewhat dangerous.
I recently moved a db to psql from mysql, in order to use the full text search (didn't want to use MyISAM for other reasons).
Setup wasn't particularly difficult, but there were one or two stumbling blocks coming from mysql. Setting up password access for the server was not hard - the user accounts thing is no big deal and you can use password auth instead if you prefer, but I was a bit puzzled by the fact it refuses to open without opening a particular database file, so if you don't have a db created for your user, you can't just log in to psql and then choose a database - that seems a bit perverse, and a google found lots of other people with the same issue. They should just auto-create that db for the user if it is the default when starting with no arguments, rather than bailing out with a cryptic message about a database which doesn't exist, when I didn't ask to open a database. No big deal though.
Otherwise it really is a snap to set up - took about 30 minutes all told to migrate from mysql, though I wasn't using any datatypes which cause issues. In spite of things I'd read to the contrary on the internet, it's using less memory than Mysql on the server to server the same site. So to anyone who is considering switching from mysql, I'd say set aside an afternoon and give it a go. It was certainly no harder or more complex than mysql in my experience.
The only problem is an apparent error in the reporting
No, the problem is that Amazon tells developers publicly that they will get 20% even on free deals in order to draw them in, tells the users that too, and then secretly sends them emails saying they will earn nothing, *and* Amazon controls their price for a few days after the offer, *and* Amazon takes 80% of sales for a few days after the offer - outrageous terms, which they hope the devs will accept because they have already put time and money into the store and are desperate for exposure. Having read this, I wouldn't go near the Amazon store - they sound like groupon.
In fact I would be ashamed of myself to admit publicly like this that I have not taken advantage of potential 100.000 customers.
Freeloaders != potential customers. Their conversation rate if they managed to up-sell somehow would probably be less than 1%, which when you take into account the costs of supporting 100,000 free users indefinitely does not make any financial sense.
Amazon have always been predatory, and I think the developer has made the right move here by dumping the Amazon store as they have concluded the costs outweigh the benefits for everyone apart from Amazon.
Why don't we just print some more money
on
Debt Deal Reached
·
· Score: 1
Afaict the majority of the US debt is denominated in US dollars and the US government can create US dollars out of thin air either directly or by ordering the fed to print them and hand them over. So really the only way for the US to default on their debt is if they "choose" to do so (in this case by refusing to raise a self-imposed "debt limit").
The US has been doing that for years, but when done to excess it has severe consequences - the US now on a trajectory where debt will become worse and worse without some magical growth wand or excessive devaluation of the currency. Devaluation is typically the easiest way out of default, but it is not without consequences, particularly for normal voters. Suddenly their life's savings are worthless, imports from abroad are twice the price, food is incredibly expensive when priced in dollars, travelling abroad is expensive, and, perhaps most importantly for the US - why would the rest of the world continue to use dollars as a reserve currency if it is constantly losing value? Now perhaps a soft default as you suggest is worth doing to escape the even worse consequence of a hard default, but it is *not* without consequences, which are often most harshly felt by those who are least to blame for the original debt. Obviously printing more money can help to some extent in extremis, but if employed too often it will backfire. QE1+2 have arguably already caused huge swings in global markets, huge food price increases for millions worldwide due to speculation on commodities, and lining the pockets of hedge funds, not any real or appreciable economic growth.
If it was as easy to devalue your way out of a squeeze as you suggest, why would the US bother borrowing money at all - after all, if they need some more, they can just print it!
Didn't RTFA, but there's a concept called "work for hire" that may apply here. I work for a software company, but I don't own the copyright on the software I write for that company. If the guy was hired to design Stormtrooper helmets, then the design of any helmets he created for Lucas' company while employed by Lucas' company would belong to Lucas' company.
Not unless he signed a contract explicitly stating that this was work for hire, otherwise, Lucas owns nothing. Turns out this guy didn't sign a contract, so it really is as simple as who made it. That's why we have contracts, and why presumably your company made you sign one saying software you create for them is work for hire.
...correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this mean that I can make 30% more per sale if I develop for some platform other than Apple?
No, you can make probably around 20% more per sale if you handle credit card processing yourself, and you are selling online - you'd pay 5-15% for credit card processing probably. If you're selling product in a brick and mortar store you can expect the store to take more than 30%.
No idea why Apple think being user-hostile is a good idea - it's going to generate a lot of hostility towards them from their customers, and eventually they'll end up in Microsoft's situation, where everyone distrusts them no matter what they do. Not a good long-term strategy, but then hubris has never been in short supply in Cupertino.
If your choice is between a pro-US Dictatorship, and a dictatorship that is anti-US, which would you choose? Sometimes the world doesn't give you fluffy bunny rabbits, sometimes it is rattlesnakes it gives you.
I would choose neither. If your chosen rattlesnake usually turns around and bites you after you feed it, shouldn't it make you think twice about playing with rattlesnakes?
The US is not obliged to go propping up and supporting dictatorships the world over, and it would be far, far better for the long-term interests of the US if they stopped fucking up countries like Pakistan with huge amounts of cash and military equipment and instead supplied only food and other strictly civilian assistance. Pakistan has been thoroughly ruined by the military dictatorship propped up by the US for decades. The world would not become a beautiful garden overnight, but good will would be engendered rather than hatred for the US, and most importantly of all, the STAGGERING amounts of money spent on military aid and military adventures could be better spent at home in the US, where the infrastructure is crumbling, debt is endemic, states are bankrupt, and you can't even afford a decent healthcare system.
I do sincerely hope Apple gets a clue from these articles and realizes that they screwed up. But I'm not holding my breath, and I'm not recommending any more Mac servers for my customers unless they have a specific need. I've always been a big Mac proponent, but I'm getting tired of apologizing. This time, I'm not going to, I'll be installing more Linux servers as it's time to replace the 10.6 servers I've installed, unless Apple fixes this mess.
I'm sure you had good reasons, but I'm not sure I would ever have chosen an Apple server, as Apple were always a bit lukewarm on enterprise support, even when they tried their hardest it was a bit half-hearted, and were never really competing well with Linux or even Windows servers for performance or available server software, though I guess they did have it all presented in a neat package with a nice admin UI. Linux is a much better choice for servers at this point, and in a few years I would expect Apple to drop even more of the server features or even drop it altogether as less and less people use it.
Apple's focus is definitely consumers now, and more specifically, gadgets, mobile and iOS. They have moved on to the next great thing (mobile, cloud), and that's great, it works well for them and the majority of their customers, but it means they have completely lost interest in many parts of their business:
* Pro software like Final Cut Pro has been redesigned to make it easier to use (not adding features, taking them away) * xCode is still a buggy mess, though it is at least getting some attention. * Mac Pro machines have not had a major upgrade in years and are quite expensive for what you get compared with consumer options * Mac OS X has become OS X, and has moved visibly closer to iOS in many ways (and in many ways improved as a consumer OS because of this)
IMHO that change of emphasis from pro to consumer is only going to increase in velocity, unless someone very different from Steve Jobs takes over.
Another option which possibly meets the requirements of the poster better is to sell a web appliance to these clients - a server box with a simple web server serving only this webapp on it which can be put inside any firewall on a local network - they just plug it in, and it serves pages on the intranet to any and all clients which need them. That would address the problem of clients without internet access, without trying to turn the web app into a desktop app and losing all the convenience of a web app. Easy to roll out updates, doesn't matter what device config is accessing it or what software runs on clients, handle all new devices automatically with no changes, central store of information which only has to be updated once, users can collaborate on data, etc, etc. All those things are much harder with a desktop client.
Otherwise when clients roll out platform x mobile phone for example which his cross platform browser app doesn't support, he's not completely out of luck, as he just deals with the server appliance, and all clients just need a web browser of some kind, not to run his specific binary. Trying to support an app which is in fact a browser *and* his software on umpteen different client platforms which are constantly changing at different clients is going to be way harder than supporting one server machine with known config which he can replace/update as necessary.
To the bystander, it sounds suspiciously like YOU were the jerk in that scenario. You just told off phone support reps who have nothing to do with the acquisitions and business policy of Oracle.
If the business policy of Oracle affects whether customers want to do business with them, it absolutely is the business of the support and sales reps to know this, so that they can report the effect on customers. How else is Oracle going to get feedback and change their behaviour?
I'm sure it was quite clear in the call that the problem was with Oracle, not with the sales rep, in which case I don't see the problem.
Seriously, how is this even remotely news? Why would Apple not approve Google+ app
Because Apple maliciously chose to block Google's previous apps (Voice, Latitude etc) due to their spat with google, abusing their power over the iOS marketplace to attempt to shut out a competitor. So they may have chosen to block Google+ with some spurious explanation too. Thus the fact that it was accepted is news as Apple may have become a bit more reasonable with their reviewing process.
For everything besides committing, Git is horrible
It would be nice to know what you had a problem with. People here could perhaps enlighten you as to why things aren't working out for you, or you could enlighten them as to why git is inferior. It has its flaws (chiefly obscure error messages), but I've found it a better fit than cvs and svn.
At least with Facebook I have control over what my information is made public.
Do you really believe this? You think the company which came up with Beacon and introduced it as on by default has any interest in giving you control over your information? Much as I don't hate Zuckerberg, he and facebook are playing you for a sucker.
You CAN change what information is public and what you want to give out.
If you trust Facebook to live up to their promises in this regard (which are pretty flimsy to start with) I have a bridge to sell you. I leave you with a verified quote from Zuckerberg about his users:
Slashdot Mirror
And the reason why an ARM-based MacBook Air would run iOS rather than Mac OS X is?
There's no reason it has to, and no reason it cannot.
The reasons for replacing Mac OS X with iOS would probably be partly political (iOS is Steve's 'next big thing') and partly financial (maintaining two separate but similar operating systems takes up double the resources, without providing double the return). None of us knows of course what will happen, but it is not beyond the realm of possibility that iOS will replace Mac OS X, and certainly lots of the design decisions in iOS make no sense whatsoever if they are planning running the two in parallel indefinitely (why set up an entirely separate but substantially similar view hierarchy like UIView with a different coordinate system etc etc when NSView could have been adapted?). I imagine it'd take years to transition if they do it though, as they port stuff they need over to iOS and drag their developers kicking and screaming through yet another transition/revolution. It wouldn't necessarily make sense, and might not be popular with me personally, but they may well do it, and it is not a ridiculous suggestion - it makes a lot of financial sense for Apple, even if it would mean yet more pain for many loyal developers.
You realize, of course, that not only can you get to every directory from the Finder's "Go" menu
Yes, I use that occasionally, though I tend to use terminal to access files in etc for example. You'll find on iOS, where there is no finder, files are not exposed to the user, and the file system for each app is entirely sandboxed anyway, that this harder :) You can still view the file system if you ssh in, but for normal users, it is not exposed, and therefore not an issue.
While most denizens of slashdot would not agree with it, it is quite possible Apple will simply remove file system access for normal users from some future version of OS X, to make it more like iOS. Hiding access to the library folder behind an obscure command is a step in this direction.
Really I don't think this downgrade should have happened. While there are quite likely to be other problems for the US (spending cuts, tax increases, slow economy) it does not at all look like default is in the cards. Since bond ratings are supposed to be a rating of how likely that is, the rating seems to be incorrect. My opinion is it is politicking. The S&P people in power wanted a different deal and this is their politicking of it.
1) Ratings are a farce - that S&P rated bundled junk mortgage securities AAA was just the most recent example of their ineptitude or malice, but the US has not deserved an AAA rating for a long time. Ratings agencies are corrupt *and* incompetent - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Credit_rating_agency#Criticism
2) Ratings make lots of people lots of money - they charge for ratings (presumably more for good ones!), and knowing a rating up or down before it comes out could of course make some people very rich. Given the incredibly light touch regulation which only catches fraud after it is exposed by a market crash, you can be sure this goes on all the time. Most of the big investment banks made huge amounts of money shortly after the last crash a few years ago and are now back in profit in a big way - ask yourself how that is.
This is not just politicking, it is all about making money by blackmailing governments into supporting their debt and currency with ever-increasing amounts of public money, and syphoning that money off to the investment banks. In the same way that Soros made billions (of today's money) by betting against the BoE and bullying them into submission, the ratings agencies and bond traders stand to make billions by bullying the US gov. into submission, and it's all in the name of a 'free' market, even if that market has been captured almost entirely by profiteers who have a monopoly on market confidence and know the outcomes well before the rest of the market.
It's time to reign in both ratings agencies, and investment banks, heavily regulate them, and separate them completely from retail banking, which means that governments don't have to care if they go bust, and can extract capital from their every transaction, instead of letting them become more powerful than governments.
The two options for developers under this scenario are:
I think you forgot the most likely option:
0) iOS
Same as Mac OS is used to produce apps for Mac OS X, iOS could be used to produce apps for iOS, so long as some decent hardware like the purported ARM MacBook Air was available. A port of Xcode to iOS would not be particularly difficult, it is already a thin skin over command line tools which would run fine on iOS.
Rather than merge the code, its more likely they would merge the concepts. Some code may well be portable (its objective c in both cases), but I doubt the merge would be trivial, or even possible in some cases.
Are you sure they won't just drop AppKit and move to UIKit by extending UIKit slightly to deal with a few more desktop concepts (those that they choose to actually keep, which from the look of Lion, will not be very many)?
If not, why not?
Except you can only create iOS apps using OS X. OS X and actual desktop computers aren't going anywhere.
Software similar to Xcode could easily run on iOS (running on x86 or ARM doesn't matter which). The underlying tool-chain has already been ported and used to compile stuff on an iPhone. So your confidence is misplaced.
I want to see how well OSX works when the ability to run things like scripts is removed and only TrustedTM executables are allowed to be run.
It's quite possible for Apple to only allow themselves to run scripts and other runtimes, in fact they've already started doing it with the App Store, and by hiding things like the Library folder and enabling autosave (so that the user doesn't worry about the file system). I expect them to fully lock it down in the future, so that the file system just isn't exposed, and the only runtime for development is the one that Apple makes available (AppKit, or later, UIKit). OS X can easily run in that state, it's just you would't like using it - the majority of people would not care or would find it an improvement as the OS gets out of the way even more.
If we're lucky they'll allow developers some leeway on this and let them run whatever they want, otherwise quite a few people will be looking for a new platform which doesn't resemble a console, and the worst of it is that the vast majority of people will be happier with the new locked down arrangement.
Odd. Most European laws explicitly state that you may expect to have privacy. Pretty much wherever you go.
If you live in the UK, that is not true - you have a reasonable expectation of privacy in your own home or other private spaces - in public spaces you have no expectations of privacy, and a stranger can take photos of you, or look at you, without your permission, so long as they do not then try to use those photographs commercially - selling the photos is fine for editorial use (in a newspaper for example), selling your likeness to promote some product is not. This is a codification of common sense really, as it would be impossible to enforce privacy in a public space (i.e. you may expect to have privacy...pretty much wherever you go) - otherwise newspapers as we know them would cease to exist, no-one could take photos at a concert or in a public place, etc etc. Otherwise one privacy nut could ban all public photos of a place just by standing in front of it.
In other European countries I'm not sure on the law, but I doubt very much they have laws as you describe as they would make many everyday activities illegal (tourists snapping pictures of a tourist attraction for example). Also, European laws are still so diverse as to make any blanket statement about privacy laws in Europe not very useful.
OSX and iOS share a common base, but it does not mean they will merge. Apple has stated repeatedly that touch screen devices are fundamentally different than desktops/laptops. While they may borrow UI features back and forth they are never going to merge into one unified device or GUI.
I'm afraid your subject line is a better description of your post than the original speculation.
Apple has stated repeatedly all kinds of nonsense - for example originally HTML apps on iPhone were 'a really sweet solution' and the future of iOS, before iBooks was launched 'no-one reads any more', before the iPod Nano was launched 'no-one watches video on these tiny devices', Carbon was an equal partner and would always be supported, until it wasn't. etc, etc, etc. Most of their public statements are misdirection or misinformation, so if you're trying to work out what they are going to do, I wouldn't attempt to quote Apple pronouncements as if they are gospel or revealed truth. You can in fact usually see them do the exact opposite of what they claim they will. It is more instructive to look at what they have done with Lion: started to merge the UI of iOS and Mac OS.
There are two issues with merging iOS and Mac OS, neither of which are a deal-breaker:
* The two have a completely different (though substantially similar and overlapping) UI stack and set of APIs. iOS is the newer one and has been getting the most attention the last few years - draw from that what conclusions you will.
* The two do not have compatible UIs, and the desktop UI would not make sense on a touch screen and would be impossible to use. The touch screen UI and conventions however, works pretty damn well on a desktop, and you'll see a lot more of it on the desktop in future, as Jobs has obviously decided that overlapping windows, saving files, hierarchical folders, and the desktop itself, are yesterday's UI.
When I open launch control on Lion, or swipe around the UI, it feels very like using my iPad - I expect that feeling to continue to grow until NSView etc are simply deprecated, and the new shiny APIs are all available both on iOS and Mac OS, and then eventually we'll get to a point where they have one OS again. From a technical point of view, it's insane for them to maintain two very similar APIs indefinitely, particularly when they are becoming more and more similar. It is quite possible for them to merge them, and you might not like it, but Apple really don't care what you think.
Personally I think they are clearly going to merge the two, or rather iOS will subsume and replace what remains of Mac OS, as Cocoa did Carbon, and Carbon did Mac OS 9 - Apple is not afraid to completely throw away the rule book, piss off third party developers yet again, or completely contradict their recent statements with their actions. That's what makes them interesting, and somewhat dangerous.
I recently moved a db to psql from mysql, in order to use the full text search (didn't want to use MyISAM for other reasons).
Setup wasn't particularly difficult, but there were one or two stumbling blocks coming from mysql. Setting up password access for the server was not hard - the user accounts thing is no big deal and you can use password auth instead if you prefer, but I was a bit puzzled by the fact it refuses to open without opening a particular database file, so if you don't have a db created for your user, you can't just log in to psql and then choose a database - that seems a bit perverse, and a google found lots of other people with the same issue. They should just auto-create that db for the user if it is the default when starting with no arguments, rather than bailing out with a cryptic message about a database which doesn't exist, when I didn't ask to open a database. No big deal though.
Otherwise it really is a snap to set up - took about 30 minutes all told to migrate from mysql, though I wasn't using any datatypes which cause issues. In spite of things I'd read to the contrary on the internet, it's using less memory than Mysql on the server to server the same site. So to anyone who is considering switching from mysql, I'd say set aside an afternoon and give it a go. It was certainly no harder or more complex than mysql in my experience.
The only problem is an apparent error in the reporting
No, the problem is that Amazon tells developers publicly that they will get 20% even on free deals in order to draw them in, tells the users that too, and then secretly sends them emails saying they will earn nothing, *and* Amazon controls their price for a few days after the offer, *and* Amazon takes 80% of sales for a few days after the offer - outrageous terms, which they hope the devs will accept because they have already put time and money into the store and are desperate for exposure. Having read this, I wouldn't go near the Amazon store - they sound like groupon.
In fact I would be ashamed of myself to admit publicly like this that I have not taken advantage of potential 100.000 customers.
Freeloaders != potential customers. Their conversation rate if they managed to up-sell somehow would probably be less than 1%, which when you take into account the costs of supporting 100,000 free users indefinitely does not make any financial sense.
Amazon have always been predatory, and I think the developer has made the right move here by dumping the Amazon store as they have concluded the costs outweigh the benefits for everyone apart from Amazon.
Afaict the majority of the US debt is denominated in US dollars and the US government can create US dollars out of thin air either directly or by ordering the fed to print them and hand them over. So really the only way for the US to default on their debt is if they "choose" to do so (in this case by refusing to raise a self-imposed "debt limit").
The US has been doing that for years, but when done to excess it has severe consequences - the US now on a trajectory where debt will become worse and worse without some magical growth wand or excessive devaluation of the currency. Devaluation is typically the easiest way out of default, but it is not without consequences, particularly for normal voters. Suddenly their life's savings are worthless, imports from abroad are twice the price, food is incredibly expensive when priced in dollars, travelling abroad is expensive, and, perhaps most importantly for the US - why would the rest of the world continue to use dollars as a reserve currency if it is constantly losing value? Now perhaps a soft default as you suggest is worth doing to escape the even worse consequence of a hard default, but it is *not* without consequences, which are often most harshly felt by those who are least to blame for the original debt. Obviously printing more money can help to some extent in extremis, but if employed too often it will backfire. QE1+2 have arguably already caused huge swings in global markets, huge food price increases for millions worldwide due to speculation on commodities, and lining the pockets of hedge funds, not any real or appreciable economic growth.
If it was as easy to devalue your way out of a squeeze as you suggest, why would the US bother borrowing money at all - after all, if they need some more, they can just print it!
Didn't RTFA, but there's a concept called "work for hire" that may apply here. I work for a software company, but I don't own the copyright on the software I write for that company. If the guy was hired to design Stormtrooper helmets, then the design of any helmets he created for Lucas' company while employed by Lucas' company would belong to Lucas' company.
Not unless he signed a contract explicitly stating that this was work for hire, otherwise, Lucas owns nothing. Turns out this guy didn't sign a contract, so it really is as simple as who made it. That's why we have contracts, and why presumably your company made you sign one saying software you create for them is work for hire.
...correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this mean that I can make 30% more per sale if I develop for some platform other than Apple?
No, you can make probably around 20% more per sale if you handle credit card processing yourself, and you are selling online - you'd pay 5-15% for credit card processing probably. If you're selling product in a brick and mortar store you can expect the store to take more than 30%.
No idea why Apple think being user-hostile is a good idea - it's going to generate a lot of hostility towards them from their customers, and eventually they'll end up in Microsoft's situation, where everyone distrusts them no matter what they do. Not a good long-term strategy, but then hubris has never been in short supply in Cupertino.
If your choice is between a pro-US Dictatorship, and a dictatorship that is anti-US, which would you choose? Sometimes the world doesn't give you fluffy bunny rabbits, sometimes it is rattlesnakes it gives you.
I would choose neither. If your chosen rattlesnake usually turns around and bites you after you feed it, shouldn't it make you think twice about playing with rattlesnakes?
The US is not obliged to go propping up and supporting dictatorships the world over, and it would be far, far better for the long-term interests of the US if they stopped fucking up countries like Pakistan with huge amounts of cash and military equipment and instead supplied only food and other strictly civilian assistance. Pakistan has been thoroughly ruined by the military dictatorship propped up by the US for decades. The world would not become a beautiful garden overnight, but good will would be engendered rather than hatred for the US, and most importantly of all, the STAGGERING amounts of money spent on military aid and military adventures could be better spent at home in the US, where the infrastructure is crumbling, debt is endemic, states are bankrupt, and you can't even afford a decent healthcare system.
I do sincerely hope Apple gets a clue from these articles and realizes that they screwed up. But I'm not holding my breath, and I'm not recommending any more Mac servers for my customers unless they have a specific need. I've always been a big Mac proponent, but I'm getting tired of apologizing. This time, I'm not going to, I'll be installing more Linux servers as it's time to replace the 10.6 servers I've installed, unless Apple fixes this mess.
I'm sure you had good reasons, but I'm not sure I would ever have chosen an Apple server, as Apple were always a bit lukewarm on enterprise support, even when they tried their hardest it was a bit half-hearted, and were never really competing well with Linux or even Windows servers for performance or available server software, though I guess they did have it all presented in a neat package with a nice admin UI. Linux is a much better choice for servers at this point, and in a few years I would expect Apple to drop even more of the server features or even drop it altogether as less and less people use it.
Apple's focus is definitely consumers now, and more specifically, gadgets, mobile and iOS. They have moved on to the next great thing (mobile, cloud), and that's great, it works well for them and the majority of their customers, but it means they have completely lost interest in many parts of their business:
* Pro software like Final Cut Pro has been redesigned to make it easier to use (not adding features, taking them away)
* xCode is still a buggy mess, though it is at least getting some attention.
* Mac Pro machines have not had a major upgrade in years and are quite expensive for what you get compared with consumer options
* Mac OS X has become OS X, and has moved visibly closer to iOS in many ways (and in many ways improved as a consumer OS because of this)
IMHO that change of emphasis from pro to consumer is only going to increase in velocity, unless someone very different from Steve Jobs takes over.
Another option which possibly meets the requirements of the poster better is to sell a web appliance to these clients - a server box with a simple web server serving only this webapp on it which can be put inside any firewall on a local network - they just plug it in, and it serves pages on the intranet to any and all clients which need them. That would address the problem of clients without internet access, without trying to turn the web app into a desktop app and losing all the convenience of a web app. Easy to roll out updates, doesn't matter what device config is accessing it or what software runs on clients, handle all new devices automatically with no changes, central store of information which only has to be updated once, users can collaborate on data, etc, etc. All those things are much harder with a desktop client.
Otherwise when clients roll out platform x mobile phone for example which his cross platform browser app doesn't support, he's not completely out of luck, as he just deals with the server appliance, and all clients just need a web browser of some kind, not to run his specific binary. Trying to support an app which is in fact a browser *and* his software on umpteen different client platforms which are constantly changing at different clients is going to be way harder than supporting one server machine with known config which he can replace/update as necessary.
How do you propose to stop an attacker who changes IP and/or MAC addresses with every new password attempt?
You certainly don't stop them by locking a legitimate account, or you are making a denial of service trivially easy.
To the bystander, it sounds suspiciously like YOU were the jerk in that scenario. You just told off phone support reps who have nothing to do with the acquisitions and business policy of Oracle.
If the business policy of Oracle affects whether customers want to do business with them, it absolutely is the business of the support and sales reps to know this, so that they can report the effect on customers. How else is Oracle going to get feedback and change their behaviour?
I'm sure it was quite clear in the call that the problem was with Oracle, not with the sales rep, in which case I don't see the problem.
Seriously, how is this even remotely news? Why would Apple not approve Google+ app
Because Apple maliciously chose to block Google's previous apps (Voice, Latitude etc) due to their spat with google, abusing their power over the iOS marketplace to attempt to shut out a competitor. So they may have chosen to block Google+ with some spurious explanation too. Thus the fact that it was accepted is news as Apple may have become a bit more reasonable with their reviewing process.
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
A riposte from the past (Voltaire) for your apocryphal quote:
A witty saying proves nothing
For everything besides committing, Git is horrible
It would be nice to know what you had a problem with. People here could perhaps enlighten you as to why things aren't working out for you, or you could enlighten them as to why git is inferior. It has its flaws (chiefly obscure error messages), but I've found it a better fit than cvs and svn.
I'm wondering if part of the explanation...
The entire explanation can be found here.
At least with Facebook I have control over what my information is made public.
Do you really believe this? You think the company which came up with Beacon and introduced it as on by default has any interest in giving you control over your information? Much as I don't hate Zuckerberg, he and facebook are playing you for a sucker.
You CAN change what information is public and what you want to give out.
If you trust Facebook to live up to their promises in this regard (which are pretty flimsy to start with) I have a bridge to sell you. I leave you with a verified quote from Zuckerberg about his users:
"They trust me — dumb fucks,"