At Google, we're actually writing more Java code than ever
So you're consolidating everything on a language managed and (as they see it) owned by a company which is currently suing you for using that language in ways they don't like?
Perhaps not the best strategy, regardless of the technical merits (or not) of Java.
1. Meetings are not for typing - if you need to 'appear to be paying attention' you shouldn't be there. 2. If you want to type (say it's your job to keep minutes), use a keyboard - a tablet does not have to replace every computer. 3. Tablets do not rep,ace other types of computer, they complement them.
Tablets excel at the sort of meetings where you show people stuff and talk about it. Many businesses have that kind of meeting.
It's funny, yet sad, how you insist that Islamist political parties that enjoy wide support from the people are some kind of aberrant handful of people who don't speak for anyone.
Oh really? Maybe you should have looked at the figures, which give the lie to your hysteria about the coming world caliphate:
Ak Parti share of the vote in Turkey: 46.6% Muslims in Turkey: 99.8%
My assertion is simply that not all muslims are islamist - the statistics for Turkey bear that out.
Many Scottish people do. Whisky snobs think you should only drink it with water, at room temperature - some people like the variation in temperature and taste that ice brings as it melts and dilutes the whisky, particularly if the weather is hot. I like it both ways, though actually adding water doesn't do much for me, I prefer it neat or with ice, does depend on the whisky though.
Some people like it with water, some with ice, some with a beer as a chaser, and some with irn bru (a good way to drink some of the poorer blended whiskies like famous grouse, if that's all you have available, much like Jack Daniels and coke) - why this should bother you I have no idea.
I'm sorry but none of this adds one shred of evidence to the assertion that all muslims are fanatics, any more so than Christians (for example). Lumping all muslims together as Islamists in some vast conspiracy to take over the world is naive and not at all useful.
Just like Christianity or Hinduism right now there are kooks and militant fanatics killing in the name of their religion and it's a mistake to take their claims of leadership or speaking for the wider community seriously.
Frankly the record of Christianity is at least as bad as Islam in last the millennia when it comes to abuse of power and slaughter in the name of religion - all fanatics should be distrusted, whatever their brand, and Islam is not special in this regard.
Turkey is nowhere near a fundamentalist society. There was a huge fuss recently about the premiere's wife wearing a headscarf, because her role is seen as secular (as I'm sure you're aware). People openly drink, Mevlevi are tolerated, saints are worshipped, birthplaces of the Christian church are open for visitors and learning about early Christianity encouraged (at least for visitors), and there are no prohibitions on women in public life (though there are traditions which westerners would see as backwards in that respect). It is nowhere close to Wahhabi, and it will be interesting to see if it does become any closer to a theocracy because of Erdogan - he hasn't actually made any moves to make it more so, and joining the EU would require the opposite. Note also that secularism is currently enshrined in the constitution. I'd say that the country stands as good proof that this assertion:
Wahhabism and Islam are basically one
Makes no sense, no matter how many fundamentalists (on both sides of what they see as *the* holy war) trumpet it.
who strive to practice it in their lives do agree with many of the problematic aspects of fundamentalist Islam. They do not believe that other religions or no religion at all should be permitted, and they want the state to silence opponents of Islam.
As an atheist, I find this passage particularly puzzling. All monotheistic religions, including Christianity (dominant in the West), require their followers to follow only one God, and discount the gods of others as false idols. Taken to an extreme they all recommend killing infidels, and even interpreted mildly they imply disrespect and disregard for the beliefs of others. How is this problematic aspect of Islam any different from similar problematic aspects of Christianity (as practiced by fundamentalists)?
What you are actually defending here (and what your friends are worried about) is secularism, which has *nothing* to do with Islam, and everything to do with opposing any one religion taking over public life.
I'm sure the citizens of Turkey, Malaysia, Morocco, Bangladesh etc etc not to mention lots of moderate muslims happily living in the west would be very surprised to hear that. It's about as convincing as equating all christians with the Spanish inquisition.
Uniforms spend a lot of their time investigating this sort of unimportant crime, it comes with the territory. Personally I'm happy with the tradeoff in time/expense if they simply talk to people like this (after all they may really be a nutcase, in which case it was worth investigating), but not happy with them spending public money taking him before a magistrate when it was simply a tasteless joke. It does seem very unlikely to be a real threat.
I sincerely doubt prosecuting him has made others do anything other than laugh at the police, but you're welcome to your opinion. I would say it's somewhat contradicted by the hundreds who have imitated him on twitter though.
I think you've missed out a few possible scenarios - how about this one:
Scenario 4) Police receive report of bomb threat on twitter, send a couple of local uniforms to chat with the guy, check his house isn't full of bomb equipment, and let him know his joke was in bad taste and freedom to say what you like in public comes with certain responsibilities. That's vastly different to what they did, and would not be a huge waste of money.
Instead they wasted lots of public money on a trivial event. I can see what they thought they were doing - public threats of death or terrorism are not acceptable even in an open society - but this was just a waste of everyone's time and money.
As to the councillor who made a tasteless joke about stoning (in response to another politician saying we had no right to comment on it, given Iraq), that's a more difficult issue as it is closer to a credible incitement/threat without context. This was obviously a joke.
Mohammed on the other hand was a paedophile, a slave owner, a warmonger and a polygamist.
By that definition of paedophile (married young girls), most men in that time were paedophiles, same goes for slave owner, warmonger, and polygamist - these were all accepted practices at the time, and not ones which Jesus specifically condemned, indeed in many parts of the Bible these practices are encouraged or at least condoned - see for example Colossians 3:22 for slavery. Your attempt to slander Muhammad for them is simply sophistry which attempts to compare modern mores with those of 1500 years ago. If you slander Muhammad in such a way, you should slander Jesus equally for condoning many acts of barbarity in the Old Testament (which he believed in literally).
The Koran says murder infidels and that is the word of god himself.
Are you really so ignorant of the contents of the Bible and the way it has been interpreted in the recent past (as the literal word of God)? Here's an excerpt from the Christian Bible which gives the lie to your attempt to slander Islam:
Deuteronomy 20:16 But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee...
The Bible advocates death to infidels, regardless of their age - even death to their animals - no living thing should be left alive in the cities of your enemy, according to the God of Deuteronomy.
I agree that Jesus was, it appears, a strongly moral man, and a very interesting thinker, though he should not be considered outside the social context and beliefs of his time, nor should one statement of his be taken out of context. The same could be said of Muhammad. Mainstream Islam is just as peace-loving as mainstream Christianity, and perhaps more forgiving of other faiths (Jesus is after all considered a prophet), and fundamentalists of both faiths are just as extreme, literal, and in my view, evil in their intolerance of others.
I agree it does seem an odd choice of vendor, however many other options (MS Google) could be just as constraining if they choose to write software for them.
Whatever hardware they use, it'd be silly to tie their systems to binaries for one platform anyway. If they serve their data using HTML it won't matter what hardware they use as they can easily change it later. Tablets could actually be a very useful tool in hospitals if used well.
Criminals carry weapons, and citizens can own them for recreation legally, so the police have armed response units in case a situation includes weapons. if you threaten people with a shotgun for example, and wait for the police to turn up, you can expect to be shot dead.
As they managed to shoot an innocent electrician on vague suspicions which turned out to be unfounded after the tube bombs, they lost some public confidence, but generally they do not over-react or shoot dead citizens without cause.
As to the comparison with al quaida of course many things kill more than terrorism as only one successful attack has been made on uk soil by AQ - cars, alcohol and probably food poisoning have killed more over the last decade.... The police in the uk do not cause many fatalities as compared with other countries, which I believe is a more sensible measure. Comparing them to a foreign terrorist group for whom we are at best a peripheral target is not very useful.
Or do you think that it's OK that your walled garden iOS product can make calls (potentially to expensive toll numbers) without any prior warning, simply by visiting a malicious website -- and that Apple doesn't think that's a problem?
Actually, it can't make real phone calls, if you try to make a call with a URL via the phone app, it does the right thing and asks the user first. This is a vulnerability in the Skype app, which should not be initiating potentially expensive actions without prompting the user first under any circumstances.
Imagine a similar case where an app allows other apps to trigger a purchase within it using some proprietary URL scheme, how would Apple sensibly prompt the user when they don't even know what the scheme does and it could change at any time? Users want to be told:
'This action will do x, do you wish to proceed?'
not
'Should the URL sheme://foobar/%202890%56745 be opened in application x'
That leaves you open to all sorts of social engineering attempts with obfuscated URLs for a start.
It's up to the application to decide if actions should happen without prompting the user or if the user should be asked first, and in this particular case I think Apple are completely correct to say that responsibility lies with Skype.
For a start, if you're using CSS, why is the logo background specified in the html doc?
a style="background-image: url(/images/swpat-logo.png);" href="/wiki/Software_patents_wiki:_home_page" title="Visit the main page"
refer to that link by the id of the element above, or give it a class/id, and set the background image in CSS, so that all your styling is in one place. Anyway, I imagine something like
would work for you, or (better), set the hover only on the links you want to go grey, by using the parent elements to select links only in the nav bar and the main content block - that way nothing else in the header, footer or anywhere else on your page can be affected. Your news item links don't even have the grey background at the moment anyway, so there is probably some conflict there to be fixed.
I'm no fan of Apple's walled garden, but this is clearly a CYA move, rather than a misguided attempt at preserving "experience".
I disagree about the motivations for this, I think it's all about control. Apple have tasted that control over developers with iOS, and found they like it. If it was simply about making sure that apps were not malicious etc, they wouldn't have such restrictive rules, just a few basic common-sense ones. Here's a sample of some of the things they're banning from their app store:
3.1 Apps with metadata that mentions the name of any other computer platform will be rejected
2.24 Apps that use deprecated or optionally installed technologies (e.g., Java, Rosetta) will be rejected
2.16 Apps that download or install additional code or resources to add functionality or change their primary purpose will be rejected
2.14 Apps must be packaged and submitted using Apple's packaging technologies included in Xcode - no third party installers allowed
7.2 Apps that create a store inside themselves for selling or distributing other software (i.e., an audio plug-in store in an audio app) will be rejected.
6.2 Apps that look similar to Apple Products or apps bundled on the Mac, including the Finder, iChat, iTunes, and Dashboard, will be rejected
Like some of the conditions for iOS, that last one could be taken to mean just about any app on the Mac platform, at the whim of the anonymous Apple reviewer. And just like iOS, these rules will constantly change as Apple wants to put down competitors (Google was rejected for 'being too similar to the built-in phone app').
These conditions are very similar to the iOS ones, perhaps even more draconian in some cases. I think they make it clear (along with moves like deprecating Java) that Apple wishes to have complete control over their platform, developers and users. That won't come in 10.7, as this is just the start, but perhaps by 10.8 they will feel bold enough to outright ban apps installed by other means, or just make it so difficult that the vast majority will never attempt it.
I'm not sure that's a world I want to be part of, which is a shame for me, as I like a lot of other aspects of their hardware and software.
That is an odd conclusion to draw considering the origins of iOS.
Sorry, what does this refer to? The quoting is a bit messed up and I can't work out what you are replying to here. iOS is of course a branch from OS X, and they're folding some features back into OS X, including the app store and some of the restrictions. I expect they'll gradually try to bring the two together again now that iPhone is no longer a secret project - looks to me like the emphasis is on moving ideas and features 'Back to the Mac', and not the other way round. That includes their restrictions on apps and tools.
No, it isn't.
Time will tell I guess. If you look at the Mac App Store guidelines, you'll see that Apple are moving very definitely in the direction of iOS in terms of control over binaries on their platform and guiding developers to use just one tool-chain. There are a lot of clauses in there (including the exclusion of Java) which are very unusual for a desktop OS.
His solution had nothing to do with engineering, it's really common sense with a few vast assumptions about the two cars behaving as perfect bodies. Perhaps some sort of basic grounding in physics is required, but that's hardly engineering.
In answer to your question, here's a few things which could go wrong:
* The truck wasn't quite going at the same angle as his van, or started to veer off as the driver slumped - both vehicles lose control as the van is pushed off course and spun in an unpredictable way * Startled driver wakes up, hits the accelerator and skids the truck and van, sliding both into the oncoming traffic * The truck is steadily accelerating, and the van brakes are not powerful enough to stop it in time
Perhaps this was a safe manoeuvre, given all the circumstances (it's impossible to say if you weren't there really, and depends on the speeds involved too), but it could easily have been deadly.
Making OSX work like iOS right now is a good deal more work than just mucking around with UI calls. You have to disable running of interpreted languages, completely sandbox each app, disable making files 'executable', and a whole slew of other things that the OS in its current design philosophy is taking for granted. It's stupid and it makes no sense to do that when iOS is already there.
And yet, that's what they're doing for Lion - adding app signing, deprecating other languages and toolchains, adding mandatory sandboxing (at present it's only the Mac Store agreement, watch it spread). A lot of those moves are technically laudable, and there are many things in there that I would welcome as a user, but the control that goes with them is not acceptable. As to changing the desktop UI - I suspect you're a lot more wedded to menu bars and windows than Jobs is.
I'm sure Apple would love to just ditch NS** and move to UI** and iOS for the desktop, and probably ditch a whole load of UI conventions too - they're clearly in love with certain purifications of the UI introduced with iOS (no menu, one window, no file system). They can't do that straight away because they need to take developers, and esp. large developers like MS and Adobe with them. Just as they did with Carbon, there will be a long period of adjustment and some smokescreens to beguile the more easily led, but it's clear what direction they are heading in, and where they want to end up.
The more important point in all this is that the attitude of Apple to their platform and developers is now one of ownership - if you don't agree with Apple's decision about what customers might want (say they class your art as pornography, or ban your dictionary app for including a swear word) or want to use a language they don't officially bless, you can go develop for something else, there is no middle road. That is what has happened to iOS, and it's being introduced on the desktop too.
There's even a clause in the Mac App Store agreement about apps which they deem too similar to their own:
Apps that look similar to Apple Products or apps bundled on the Mac, including the Finder, iChat, iTunes, and Dashboard, will be rejected
That sort of arrogance is where the platform is going, and that's why deprecating Java and banning Java from the app store is an important clue that they're headed towards iOS in spirit. They won't move straightaway to iOS and all the lock-down that comes with it for political reasons, but that's where they're headed.
Not really, no. Seriously, if they want to go more towards the iPhone, they'll port iOS to the desktop.
This is a first step - first they get developers used to travelling along only an Apple-approved track (i.e. The Mac App Store, which will accept only Apple blessed tech, no Java, no Carbon, etc). Later when developers are used to this, they release a new version of OS X which uses UIKit as its foundation, and deprecate the parts of cocoa they don't want to keep - they've already moved over lots of cocoa, and all of foundation to iOS. The name of iOS was changed for a reason, not just because of the iPad, but because they're probably planning to move to it as a toolkit long term - there's nothing in there which would make it very difficult to use on the desktop, and Steve is probably itching to reinvent UIs again and tell us we don't need overlapping windows and a menu bar after all (both integral to desktop OSs up to now).
There are clues to the eventual destination already in UIKit - it includes references to windows (presently unused in iOS), and reads like a tidy up of the older NSView code - there's nothing in there which precludes use as a desktop OS UI save a few missing features, but lots of things in cocoa that would make a transition the other way difficult.
I remember that double bridge invite to the iPhone launch, and wondering which bridge Steve was on, and what would happen to the other bridge over time. Well, now we know! The other bridge (Java, Carbon, and eventually Cocoa) ends in mid-air. While this isn't unusual in software development, for the cynical amongst us it is a familiar pattern which bears remembering, particularly when Apple insists this is one last transition; the ideal state for a platform vendor to keep their developers in is one of permanent revolution, coupled with strong lock-in - it keeps developers scrambling to keep up, and never gives them time to question the boundaries set by the vendor, look at other platforms in depth or attempt to write cross platform apps. That's why Apple so desperately want to kill Flash and are now undermining Java and jettisoning Carbon/C++. I'd like to see Flash die, but it is important to remember that the actions of corporations like this are always motivated by gain for the corporation, not any species of altruism.
Like.NET, UIKit is going to be used to shackle developers to one platform, and Apple is definitely showing controlling and sociopathic tendencies - they really have behaved very like Microsoft in this regard, and the signs are they're getting worse. Perhaps sociopathy is inevitably in an institution like a corporation as it grows over time.
These are big-budget books; failure to catch errors that are obvious on (at least my) first reading seems a significant disservice to those paying the bills.
I'm afraid these are not big-budget. They are published by a small-time science fiction publisher, not known for their quality control, they are in no sense big-budget. I've read most of the Baen books, and frankly they're at the pulp end of Science Fiction, and are probably produced on a shoe-string. This shows in the cover graphics (very low budget), internal design, the editing (or lack thereof), and even the quality of writing they accept from their authors. The quality of the editing matches the quality of the writing for the most part.
Absolutely fine for what they are, but they certainly aren't a large publishing house or a representative example of what a good publisher/editor can do for an author.
Nobody is keeping statistics EXCEPT the third party insurance providers. This is largely true in medicine as well. Unless there is a contagious factor, the only nationwide stats you will find on injuries (broken arms) is from insurance carriers. Why you choose to denigrate that fact when Apple is involved but not for heart attacks is sort of, well, suspicious.
I am quite sure Apple keep very precise statistics of all breakages reported to them, whether they agree to fix them or not, though of course they won't share them. As to consumer reports (for example), they could easily do a survey of iPhone owners, and I'd trust them a hell of a lot more than someone whose interest is in inflating figures like this to sell insurance.
As to medicine, the fact that insurance providers hold all the power in the US is an anomaly. In most other first world countries, insurers don't run the health system, and proper statistics on all types of injuries are compiled by a central body and doctors themselves, not by a party with a monetary interest. Just because it is done that way in the US doesn't mean it is normal or efficient. Here's an example:
The only source less likely to provide reliable statistics on breakages is Apple, and I wouldn't trust these statistics from anyone with a monetary interest in the results - it's too easy to lie by tweaking the figures you choose to present.
Yes. It's not a limitless revenue stream, and is limited to only 100 users unless you modify your code slightly.
You evidently have no experience of the developer program. Ad Hoc distribution is limited to 100 devices per year (not users, not per app). Once that 100 are used up, you can't get any more. In addition it is limited to the several months that a developer certificate is valid - it's definitely not a method for distribution to arbitrary users, and Apple could shut you down at any time for doing that.
Why, exactly, are experts not referenced hundreds of times by people who know nothing about the domain? Why shouldn't they be? Shouldn't be use these tools we have now to help spread that expertise? Or is it really better to just leave people who know nothing about a given expertise, but might be interested in it, in the dark?
Experts may or may not be referenced hundreds of times. More likely experts will be ignored and LOLCats will be referenced hundreds of times instead. Witness the mainly prurient comments you'll see on serious stories on this site for example.
If there's an expert who wants to post tidbits of what they're doing in the course of their practicing their expertise on Twitter, or Facebook, or MySpace, or Blogspot, so that people can catch a glimpse into their world and what makes a genius tick, why would you have a grievance with that?
Why indeed? Did I say I had a problem with that? I'm sure it happens all the time, but because some experts may be linked lots on twitter, that does not make everyone who is linked to lots on twitter an expert, far from it. It's an important distinction, unless you want to live in a world where celebrity trumps knowledge.
A more significant issue with this and any other measure of competence based on popularity is that being expert and being popular/linked to are not remotely connected.
Expert != popular Expert != well liked Expert != referenced hundreds of times by people who know nothing about the domain
Expert, at least in the old-fashioned sense, means knowledgable and skilled in a particular domain.
The reason twitter is full of twaddle is that the minds of most people, collectively, are full of twaddle, and they like it that way.
Just as slashdot attracts a certain sort of internet blow-hard pontificating on the inferiority of others, so twitter attracts those in search of trivia and light relief, mingled with the occasional interesting link. I use both sites:)
Slashdot Mirror
So you're consolidating everything on a language managed and (as they see it) owned by a company which is currently suing you for using that language in ways they don't like?
Perhaps not the best strategy, regardless of the technical merits (or not) of Java.
1. Meetings are not for typing - if you need to 'appear to be paying attention' you shouldn't be there.
2. If you want to type (say it's your job to keep minutes), use a keyboard - a tablet does not have to replace every computer.
3. Tablets do not rep,ace other types of computer, they complement them.
Tablets excel at the sort of meetings where you show people stuff and talk about it. Many businesses have that kind of meeting.
Oh really? Maybe you should have looked at the figures, which give the lie to your hysteria about the coming world caliphate:
Ak Parti share of the vote in Turkey: 46.6%
Muslims in Turkey: 99.8%
My assertion is simply that not all muslims are islamist - the statistics for Turkey bear that out.
Many Scottish people do. Whisky snobs think you should only drink it with water, at room temperature - some people like the variation in temperature and taste that ice brings as it melts and dilutes the whisky, particularly if the weather is hot. I like it both ways, though actually adding water doesn't do much for me, I prefer it neat or with ice, does depend on the whisky though.
Some people like it with water, some with ice, some with a beer as a chaser, and some with irn bru (a good way to drink some of the poorer blended whiskies like famous grouse, if that's all you have available, much like Jack Daniels and coke) - why this should bother you I have no idea.
I'm sorry but none of this adds one shred of evidence to the assertion that all muslims are fanatics, any more so than Christians (for example). Lumping all muslims together as Islamists in some vast conspiracy to take over the world is naive and not at all useful.
Just like Christianity or Hinduism right now there are kooks and militant fanatics killing in the name of their religion and it's a mistake to take their claims of leadership or speaking for the wider community seriously.
Frankly the record of Christianity is at least as bad as Islam in last the millennia when it comes to abuse of power and slaughter in the name of religion - all fanatics should be distrusted, whatever their brand, and Islam is not special in this regard.
Turkey is nowhere near a fundamentalist society. There was a huge fuss recently about the premiere's wife wearing a headscarf, because her role is seen as secular (as I'm sure you're aware). People openly drink, Mevlevi are tolerated, saints are worshipped, birthplaces of the Christian church are open for visitors and learning about early Christianity encouraged (at least for visitors), and there are no prohibitions on women in public life (though there are traditions which westerners would see as backwards in that respect). It is nowhere close to Wahhabi, and it will be interesting to see if it does become any closer to a theocracy because of Erdogan - he hasn't actually made any moves to make it more so, and joining the EU would require the opposite. Note also that secularism is currently enshrined in the constitution. I'd say that the country stands as good proof that this assertion:
Makes no sense, no matter how many fundamentalists (on both sides of what they see as *the* holy war) trumpet it.
As an atheist, I find this passage particularly puzzling. All monotheistic religions, including Christianity (dominant in the West), require their followers to follow only one God, and discount the gods of others as false idols. Taken to an extreme they all recommend killing infidels, and even interpreted mildly they imply disrespect and disregard for the beliefs of others. How is this problematic aspect of Islam any different from similar problematic aspects of Christianity (as practiced by fundamentalists)?
What you are actually defending here (and what your friends are worried about) is secularism, which has *nothing* to do with Islam, and everything to do with opposing any one religion taking over public life.
I'm sure the citizens of Turkey, Malaysia, Morocco, Bangladesh etc etc not to mention lots of moderate muslims happily living in the west would be very surprised to hear that. It's about as convincing as equating all christians with the Spanish inquisition.
Uniforms spend a lot of their time investigating this sort of unimportant crime, it comes with the territory. Personally I'm happy with the tradeoff in time/expense if they simply talk to people like this (after all they may really be a nutcase, in which case it was worth investigating), but not happy with them spending public money taking him before a magistrate when it was simply a tasteless joke. It does seem very unlikely to be a real threat.
I sincerely doubt prosecuting him has made others do anything other than laugh at the police, but you're welcome to your opinion. I would say it's somewhat contradicted by the hundreds who have imitated him on twitter though.
I think you've missed out a few possible scenarios - how about this one:
Scenario 4) Police receive report of bomb threat on twitter, send a couple of local uniforms to chat with the guy, check his house isn't full of bomb equipment, and let him know his joke was in bad taste and freedom to say what you like in public comes with certain responsibilities. That's vastly different to what they did, and would not be a huge waste of money.
Instead they wasted lots of public money on a trivial event. I can see what they thought they were doing - public threats of death or terrorism are not acceptable even in an open society - but this was just a waste of everyone's time and money.
As to the councillor who made a tasteless joke about stoning (in response to another politician saying we had no right to comment on it, given Iraq), that's a more difficult issue as it is closer to a credible incitement/threat without context. This was obviously a joke.
By that definition of paedophile (married young girls), most men in that time were paedophiles, same goes for slave owner, warmonger, and polygamist - these were all accepted practices at the time, and not ones which Jesus specifically condemned, indeed in many parts of the Bible these practices are encouraged or at least condoned - see for example Colossians 3:22 for slavery. Your attempt to slander Muhammad for them is simply sophistry which attempts to compare modern mores with those of 1500 years ago. If you slander Muhammad in such a way, you should slander Jesus equally for condoning many acts of barbarity in the Old Testament (which he believed in literally).
Are you really so ignorant of the contents of the Bible and the way it has been interpreted in the recent past (as the literal word of God)? Here's an excerpt from the Christian Bible which gives the lie to your attempt to slander Islam:
Deuteronomy 20:16
But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee...
The Bible advocates death to infidels, regardless of their age - even death to their animals - no living thing should be left alive in the cities of your enemy, according to the God of Deuteronomy.
I agree that Jesus was, it appears, a strongly moral man, and a very interesting thinker, though he should not be considered outside the social context and beliefs of his time, nor should one statement of his be taken out of context. The same could be said of Muhammad. Mainstream Islam is just as peace-loving as mainstream Christianity, and perhaps more forgiving of other faiths (Jesus is after all considered a prophet), and fundamentalists of both faiths are just as extreme, literal, and in my view, evil in their intolerance of others.
I agree it does seem an odd choice of vendor, however many other options (MS Google) could be just as constraining if they choose to write software for them.
Whatever hardware they use, it'd be silly to tie their systems to binaries for one platform anyway. If they serve their data using HTML it won't matter what hardware they use as they can easily change it later. Tablets could actually be a very useful tool in hospitals if used well.
Criminals carry weapons, and citizens can own them for recreation legally, so the police have armed response units in case a situation includes weapons. if you threaten people with a shotgun for example, and wait for the police to turn up, you can expect to be shot dead.
As they managed to shoot an innocent electrician on vague suspicions which turned out to be unfounded after the tube bombs, they lost some public confidence, but generally they do not over-react or shoot dead citizens without cause.
As to the comparison with al quaida of course many things kill more than terrorism as only one successful attack has been made on uk soil by AQ - cars, alcohol and probably food poisoning have killed more over the last decade.... The police in the uk do not cause many fatalities as compared with other countries, which I believe is a more sensible measure. Comparing them to a foreign terrorist group for whom we are at best a peripheral target is not very useful.
Actually, it can't make real phone calls, if you try to make a call with a URL via the phone app, it does the right thing and asks the user first. This is a vulnerability in the Skype app, which should not be initiating potentially expensive actions without prompting the user first under any circumstances.
Imagine a similar case where an app allows other apps to trigger a purchase within it using some proprietary URL scheme, how would Apple sensibly prompt the user when they don't even know what the scheme does and it could change at any time? Users want to be told:
'This action will do x, do you wish to proceed?'
not
'Should the URL sheme://foobar/%202890%56745 be opened in application x'
That leaves you open to all sorts of social engineering attempts with obfuscated URLs for a start.
It's up to the application to decide if actions should happen without prompting the user or if the user should be asked first, and in this particular case I think Apple are completely correct to say that responsibility lies with Skype.
For a start, if you're using CSS, why is the logo background specified in the html doc?
a style="background-image: url(/images/swpat-logo.png);" href="/wiki/Software_patents_wiki:_home_page" title="Visit the main page"
refer to that link by the id of the element above, or give it a class/id, and set the background image in CSS, so that all your styling is in one place. Anyway, I imagine something like
#p-logo a:hover {background-image: url(/images/swpat-logo.png);}
would work for you, or (better), set the hover only on the links you want to go grey, by using the parent elements to select links only in the nav bar and the main content block - that way nothing else in the header, footer or anywhere else on your page can be affected. Your news item links don't even have the grey background at the moment anyway, so there is probably some conflict there to be fixed.
I disagree about the motivations for this, I think it's all about control. Apple have tasted that control over developers with iOS, and found they like it. If it was simply about making sure that apps were not malicious etc, they wouldn't have such restrictive rules, just a few basic common-sense ones. Here's a sample of some of the things they're banning from their app store:
3.1 Apps with metadata that mentions the name of any other computer platform will be rejected
2.24 Apps that use deprecated or optionally installed technologies (e.g., Java, Rosetta) will be rejected
2.16 Apps that download or install additional code or resources to add functionality or change their primary purpose will be rejected
2.14 Apps must be packaged and submitted using Apple's packaging technologies included in Xcode - no third party installers allowed
7.2 Apps that create a store inside themselves for selling or distributing other software (i.e., an audio plug-in store in an audio app) will be rejected.
6.2 Apps that look similar to Apple Products or apps bundled on the Mac, including the Finder, iChat, iTunes, and Dashboard, will be rejected
Like some of the conditions for iOS, that last one could be taken to mean just about any app on the Mac platform, at the whim of the anonymous Apple reviewer. And just like iOS, these rules will constantly change as Apple wants to put down competitors (Google was rejected for 'being too similar to the built-in phone app').
Full list here:
http://stadium.weblogsinc.com/engadget/files/mac-app-review.pdf
These conditions are very similar to the iOS ones, perhaps even more draconian in some cases. I think they make it clear (along with moves like deprecating Java) that Apple wishes to have complete control over their platform, developers and users. That won't come in 10.7, as this is just the start, but perhaps by 10.8 they will feel bold enough to outright ban apps installed by other means, or just make it so difficult that the vast majority will never attempt it.
I'm not sure that's a world I want to be part of, which is a shame for me, as I like a lot of other aspects of their hardware and software.
Sorry, what does this refer to? The quoting is a bit messed up and I can't work out what you are replying to here. iOS is of course a branch from OS X, and they're folding some features back into OS X, including the app store and some of the restrictions. I expect they'll gradually try to bring the two together again now that iPhone is no longer a secret project - looks to me like the emphasis is on moving ideas and features 'Back to the Mac', and not the other way round. That includes their restrictions on apps and tools.
Time will tell I guess. If you look at the Mac App Store guidelines, you'll see that Apple are moving very definitely in the direction of iOS in terms of control over binaries on their platform and guiding developers to use just one tool-chain. There are a lot of clauses in there (including the exclusion of Java) which are very unusual for a desktop OS.
His solution had nothing to do with engineering, it's really common sense with a few vast assumptions about the two cars behaving as perfect bodies. Perhaps some sort of basic grounding in physics is required, but that's hardly engineering.
In answer to your question, here's a few things which could go wrong:
* The truck wasn't quite going at the same angle as his van, or started to veer off as the driver slumped - both vehicles lose control as the van is pushed off course and spun in an unpredictable way
* Startled driver wakes up, hits the accelerator and skids the truck and van, sliding both into the oncoming traffic
* The truck is steadily accelerating, and the van brakes are not powerful enough to stop it in time
Perhaps this was a safe manoeuvre, given all the circumstances (it's impossible to say if you weren't there really, and depends on the speeds involved too), but it could easily have been deadly.
And yet, that's what they're doing for Lion - adding app signing, deprecating other languages and toolchains, adding mandatory sandboxing (at present it's only the Mac Store agreement, watch it spread). A lot of those moves are technically laudable, and there are many things in there that I would welcome as a user, but the control that goes with them is not acceptable. As to changing the desktop UI - I suspect you're a lot more wedded to menu bars and windows than Jobs is.
I'm sure Apple would love to just ditch NS** and move to UI** and iOS for the desktop, and probably ditch a whole load of UI conventions too - they're clearly in love with certain purifications of the UI introduced with iOS (no menu, one window, no file system). They can't do that straight away because they need to take developers, and esp. large developers like MS and Adobe with them. Just as they did with Carbon, there will be a long period of adjustment and some smokescreens to beguile the more easily led, but it's clear what direction they are heading in, and where they want to end up.
The more important point in all this is that the attitude of Apple to their platform and developers is now one of ownership - if you don't agree with Apple's decision about what customers might want (say they class your art as pornography, or ban your dictionary app for including a swear word) or want to use a language they don't officially bless, you can go develop for something else, there is no middle road. That is what has happened to iOS, and it's being introduced on the desktop too.
There's even a clause in the Mac App Store agreement about apps which they deem too similar to their own:
That sort of arrogance is where the platform is going, and that's why deprecating Java and banning Java from the app store is an important clue that they're headed towards iOS in spirit. They won't move straightaway to iOS and all the lock-down that comes with it for political reasons, but that's where they're headed.
This is a first step - first they get developers used to travelling along only an Apple-approved track (i.e. The Mac App Store, which will accept only Apple blessed tech, no Java, no Carbon, etc). Later when developers are used to this, they release a new version of OS X which uses UIKit as its foundation, and deprecate the parts of cocoa they don't want to keep - they've already moved over lots of cocoa, and all of foundation to iOS. The name of iOS was changed for a reason, not just because of the iPad, but because they're probably planning to move to it as a toolkit long term - there's nothing in there which would make it very difficult to use on the desktop, and Steve is probably itching to reinvent UIs again and tell us we don't need overlapping windows and a menu bar after all (both integral to desktop OSs up to now).
There are clues to the eventual destination already in UIKit - it includes references to windows (presently unused in iOS), and reads like a tidy up of the older NSView code - there's nothing in there which precludes use as a desktop OS UI save a few missing features, but lots of things in cocoa that would make a transition the other way difficult.
I remember that double bridge invite to the iPhone launch, and wondering which bridge Steve was on, and what would happen to the other bridge over time. Well, now we know! The other bridge (Java, Carbon, and eventually Cocoa) ends in mid-air. While this isn't unusual in software development, for the cynical amongst us it is a familiar pattern which bears remembering, particularly when Apple insists this is one last transition; the ideal state for a platform vendor to keep their developers in is one of permanent revolution, coupled with strong lock-in - it keeps developers scrambling to keep up, and never gives them time to question the boundaries set by the vendor, look at other platforms in depth or attempt to write cross platform apps. That's why Apple so desperately want to kill Flash and are now undermining Java and jettisoning Carbon/C++. I'd like to see Flash die, but it is important to remember that the actions of corporations like this are always motivated by gain for the corporation, not any species of altruism.
Like .NET, UIKit is going to be used to shackle developers to one platform, and Apple is definitely showing controlling and sociopathic tendencies - they really have behaved very like Microsoft in this regard, and the signs are they're getting worse. Perhaps sociopathy is inevitably in an institution like a corporation as it grows over time.
On the other hand, if Apple is looking to kill Java, this is a good way to do it.
I'm afraid these are not big-budget. They are published by a small-time science fiction publisher, not known for their quality control, they are in no sense big-budget. I've read most of the Baen books, and frankly they're at the pulp end of Science Fiction, and are probably produced on a shoe-string. This shows in the cover graphics (very low budget), internal design, the editing (or lack thereof), and even the quality of writing they accept from their authors. The quality of the editing matches the quality of the writing for the most part.
Absolutely fine for what they are, but they certainly aren't a large publishing house or a representative example of what a good publisher/editor can do for an author.
I am quite sure Apple keep very precise statistics of all breakages reported to them, whether they agree to fix them or not, though of course they won't share them. As to consumer reports (for example), they could easily do a survey of iPhone owners, and I'd trust them a hell of a lot more than someone whose interest is in inflating figures like this to sell insurance.
As to medicine, the fact that insurance providers hold all the power in the US is an anomaly. In most other first world countries, insurers don't run the health system, and proper statistics on all types of injuries are compiled by a central body and doctors themselves, not by a party with a monetary interest. Just because it is done that way in the US doesn't mean it is normal or efficient. Here's an example:
http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/overall/hssh0405.pdf
The only source less likely to provide reliable statistics on breakages is Apple, and I wouldn't trust these statistics from anyone with a monetary interest in the results - it's too easy to lie by tweaking the figures you choose to present.
You evidently have no experience of the developer program. Ad Hoc distribution is limited to 100 devices per year (not users, not per app). Once that 100 are used up, you can't get any more. In addition it is limited to the several months that a developer certificate is valid - it's definitely not a method for distribution to arbitrary users, and Apple could shut you down at any time for doing that.
Experts may or may not be referenced hundreds of times. More likely experts will be ignored and LOLCats will be referenced hundreds of times instead. Witness the mainly prurient comments you'll see on serious stories on this site for example.
Why indeed? Did I say I had a problem with that? I'm sure it happens all the time, but because some experts may be linked lots on twitter, that does not make everyone who is linked to lots on twitter an expert, far from it. It's an important distinction, unless you want to live in a world where celebrity trumps knowledge.
A more significant issue with this and any other measure of competence based on popularity is that being expert and being popular/linked to are not remotely connected.
Expert != popular
Expert != well liked
Expert != referenced hundreds of times by people who know nothing about the domain
Expert, at least in the old-fashioned sense, means knowledgable and skilled in a particular domain.
The reason twitter is full of twaddle is that the minds of most people, collectively, are full of twaddle, and they like it that way.
Just as slashdot attracts a certain sort of internet blow-hard pontificating on the inferiority of others, so twitter attracts those in search of trivia and light relief, mingled with the occasional interesting link. I use both sites :)