The US is fucked up this way. Try cashing a travellers cheque for example and you have to put your thumbprint on the cheque. That's even if you produce your passport to show who you are. I'm sure the rationale is that they'll only use it in case of fraud, but that's not the point. The point is they assume you're committing a crime by default.
The same goes with fingerprinting and photographing everyone who enters the US. Part of me hopes their system collapses under the weight of false positives.
But then Fry's does have one advantage. If you go into their store to look at an item, you may just end up buying it there rather than wait days for an identical item for the sake of a few dollars.
As on occasional visitor to the US, I have to say Frys seems much cheaper than our local counterparts. The prices might be a bit higher than mail order, but not so outrageous as to put you off entirely. Compared to European stores, some items are a positive bargain. I bought a laptop mouse for $15 which sells for 45 euros in PC World.
In fact PC World should be renamed Daylight Robbery. The markup is often 30+% with certain items like peripherals and media being the worst. The line of PCs they sell can be best summarised as expensive and shit. But for all that they still get queues of clueless people buying their computers there. The funniest part of PC World is they also run a service centre where they charge a small fortune to remove spyware, viruses etc. That should tell you the type of customer they cater for. The only benefit is they sometimes catch paedophiles like Gary Glitter who stupidly bring their kiddy porn laden machines in for repair.
Re:No. $500 for ADC membership that comes with ext
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It's strange - I logged on before making this comment about XCode 1.5 and I swear it wasn't listed in the Download Software section. What was listed was XCode 1.5 for $20 and a note that it was free in the premier, select and student ADCs.
I'm glad to say that I was mistaken. However, I still reckon there is a good chance that XCode will become a standalone product.
Oh come off it. The number of people who own a modchip and who go to the effort of downloading and burning a 4gb image is miniscule. It wouldn't even register as background noise it is that small.
Now there is a wider problem with piracy in the far east for example, but if it concerned games companies that much, perhaps they should start selling games in those countries at prices people can afford. Sell the game for $5. It might not be much of a profit, but it's surely more than $0 they get from the pirate version. Such copies could pose a simple question written in Thai / Mandarin / Malay / Korean / Indonesian at the start of the game to prevent it being sold outside of the regions it was intended for.
I doubt they're okay with piracy at all. People who download 10.4 for free are denying Apple $125 of revenue. It's that simple. The days of OS X unencumbered by serial numbers / registration are not going to last.
Re:No. $500 for ADC membership that comes with ext
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If you want to stop non-developers, all you have to do is slap a nominal $25 fee on shipping. Or just mailshot the CDs to everyone signed up to ADC already. Microsoft do this sort of thing - I got a DevStudio beta in the post one time.
Requiring people to fork out $500 for a beta, an ADC account, non-specific discounts on hardware and a release of 10.4 when it eventually appears seems like rather a lot. In fact it appears more like a revenue stream than as a way to keep the unwashed masses away. Perhaps if you were an Apple shop it might be worth it for the development lead in, but I don't see any reason for individual programmers to bother.
That is of course if the ADC weren't being changed too. XCode used to be a free download but since 1.5 not any more. I would not be surprised if 10.4 shipped without XCode 2.0 at all.
But getting back to 10.4 beta... if non-developers want an unstable, timebombed OS then let them. If it breaks it is their own tough shit. It's not like this thing won't be floating around the P2P networks within days of appearing anyway.
Oh I got used to it alright, it was just that first week. I experienced a sense of elation when I finally got something going in it. It's not so much a learning curve as a brick wall. I don't think there is anything intractably bad about Cocoa+XCode, it's just that the tools are not as good as they could be.
It's hard to say what environment I'm most comfortable with. It's probably VC98 because it's so uncluttered yet practical. I'm also partial to Eclipse, but the visual editing component (VE) has some way to go. A major hurdle for Java coding is that Swing has evil layout model making bloody difficult to visually design anything. Microsoft has the right idea there - ship an XY model first and stick the box / grid etc models in later.
Don't be facetious. Any programmer unfamiliar with the interface builder would sit there boggling at the screen for minutes in total incomprehension. I've used all kinds of UI development tools over the years running the gamut from horrible to sublime. XCode definitely falls near the bottom. Certainly not as bad as trying to visually design a Swing app but close.
Interface builder is not intuitive, it's not even discoverable. Joining objects residing in two separate windows with lines doesn't even make sense from a usability perspective. Even when you eventually figure out how to create classes and join them up to buttons, it is non-obvious how that maps onto actual code. On top of these problems you have to learn a new language just to be able to get your UI to do anything. If the documentation & help system were up to snuff it might shorten the learning curve but they're not - it takes seconds to do a search on MSDN, so why does it takes minutes on OS X?
Thus, the new programmer is faced with an unfamiliar language, an unfamiliar metaphor for UI building, and an unfamiliar framework with bad documentation. I haven't seen such an uncompromising and steep learning curve for a long time. And all that to programme a supposedly user friendly OS.
So yes I do think it is non obvious. In my case it was the first time I actually had to buy a book ("Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X") before I could even figure out what was happening. I haven't seen XCode 2.0 it has to be said, but I sure hope they intend to make it easier to use. Even a few wizards with common design patterns might help somewhat.
Most OS X apps use Cocoa & Objective-C for their front-end. Whether this is through choice, or because XCode compells you to do this is a matter for debate.
Personally I think the tools that ship in XCode / Project Builder for constructing UIs are (ironically) the most user-unfriendly and unintuitive I've ever encountered. Part of the blame falls squarely on the interactive help which is awful compared to the MSDN for example.
That's not to say I don't think Objective-C is elegant but I'd still prefer C++ and a conventional GUI editor for all the alleged 'pain' that would entail.
Why should you pay a premium though? The Zaurus is neat to be sure, but what does it do that justifies it's high price?
Running Linux is not a feature as far as most people are concerned. They want a PDA first and foremost - the PDA is no good if the handwriting recognition sucks, or the planner is junk, or the thing has crappy sync software, or it requires two taps when one would do, or if it crashes all the time, or if it is too big, or the battery life is measured in minutes. I'm not saying the Zaurus does those things, just that they are the criteria for most people. They want a PIM to keep appointments, names & addresses, do a little light work (e.g. write an email, a little browsing etc.) and maybe a few little games.
Any Pocket PC by Dell or HP can do this stuff. Why should someone pay nearly double for a Zaurus? A Zaurus doesn't even do wireless without an extra card. If they were relying on geeks to buy these things, it's no wonder they dropped out of the market.
To be sure, I'd love a Linux PDA, but it would have to be a good PDA that happens to run Linux, rather than being a sucky PDA running on Linux. At the end of the day, the underlying OS can't be the deciding factor.
With that said, the Pocket PC API has a fairly complete implementation of Win32. It doesn't do the more hairy things like security, but there's enough there that you could port huge chunks of existing code with no problems. It also has MFC & ATL. Therefore from a programming perspective it would be easier to write a Pocket PC app than a Palm app because the concepts are familiar and you can reuse the code.
But you're right you shouldn't care what the OS is as an end user. If the PIM software stinks, so does the PDA irrespective of what is running on it. I never cared that my Palm Vx had some sucky OS running underneath - the PDA functionality was fantastic. Conversely, I now own an iPaq 4150 and I think the PDA functionality is poor. A checklist comparison might say it does more, but I swear it takes several more taps to do the same tasks that the Palm could do with one. I've also been trained to reboot the device every few days when it goes a bit strange - something the Palm did rarely if ever.
That's not to say the iPaq isn't more advanced in other ways such as multimedia or Wifi, but the sophistication of the underlying OS in terms of multitasking etc. is no guarantee that it is a good PDA.
In a few years time, I expect I'll have a new PDA At that point I expect that the OS on my iPaq will matter. I might install Linux for the hell of it. I haven't tried GPE or QTopia but somehow I doubt their PDA functionality is remotely comparable to Palm / Pocket PC. But by then it won't matter as it won't be my PDA. It would just be very nice to give the iPaq a new lease of life by having it run Linux. I'd probably tinker with it to see if I could get it to be a decent browser (unlike Pocket IE), or perhaps even get it running MAME.
Services for Unix is a BSD port. I'm speaking specifically of something which claims to run Linux software under XP. i.e. it works much like the Linux compatibility layer (lxrun) on SCO / Solaris.
Such a thing is hardly insurmountable to do either, but I suspect if it ever did appear it would be buggered up beyond recognition (e.g. not supporting the LSB properly). I base my experiences on the SFU which is traumatic to install and lacklustre to run in equal measure. Cygwin beats the living crap out of it.
Of course if Microsoft had a clue about doing this properly, they'd try to make User Mode Linux working on top of XP. Done properly it would be less traumatic to install, would be self contained, would be as-near-as-dammit a true Linux environment and might earn them a few brownie points in the process.
Half-baked port of.NET to Linux w/ large licence costs. Half-baked port of various network management protocols such as WBEM, to allow Linux to be a node in network managed by XP. Re-animated mouldy, half-baked IE for Unix. New 'Services for Linux', half-baked Linux layer for NT. Ad Nauseum.
All of the above will receive scant support and will be axed after one release. A MS spokesman will cite 'no interest' for the reason even though the half-baked, shitty software and uncertain future has more to do with it.
I'm referring to something comparable to an iPaq - with built-in bluetooth & 802.11b, without the thumb board and without the miniscule screen of the Tungsten C. Those are pretty severe compromises just to get wireless support. Even using the SD slot on a regular Tungsten is unacceptable since I should have to pay extra and I use a 128Mb SD card to hold my e-books.
I would have upgraded my Vx to another Palm if one had a comparable feature set, but none does.
Linux doesn't have ActiveX, but Firefox has extensions. An extension is a zipped up XPI package containing JavaScript (with the power of God), some XML and any native executables the XPI wants to install too. For all the complaints about ActiveX, extensions are potentially even worse.
Once installed an extension can do anything the user can do. Normally that might be to stick a button onto the browser, but there's nothing to stop the extension searching your drive and uploading data, acting as spyware or installing a root kit etc.
Just like ActiveX, XPI files are meant to be signed so you can establish trust. But no one digitally signs their Firefox extensions! Therefore users are 'trained' to install untrusted XPI extensions. Untrusted means you have no idea who wrote it, or if it's been tampered with.
Firefox 1.0pr1 has introduced a small band-aid. Now have to indicate you 'trust' a site before you can install an XPI from it. It's better than nothing but it still won't authenticate or repudiate the XPI as being from that site - someone could have replaced the genuine XPI with a malicious one, or intercepted the entire site entirely.
The XPI model either needs to enforce certs and give contributors a way to get them conveniently and cheaply. Or it should move over to PGP signatures and a web of trust model. In some ways the latter is more beneficial since people don't have to fork out ludicrous sums to Verisign to authenticate that they wrote the extension.
In any case, I'm just indicating that a naive user could install something on Linux that they would later regret.
And don't forget it will cost twice as much as the comparable Palm / Pocket PC device.
I was shopping for a PDA recently and I seriously considered a Zaurus. But the lack of wireless, the high price and the lack of sales / support in Europe put me right off the idea.
I bought an iPaq (which I don't like for other reasons), but it cost half the price of a Zaurus and does bluetooth and wireless. I even expect to be able to make it run Linux one day. But first and foremost it is my PDA, which includes doing wireless, if for no other reason than to sync up with Avantgo.
Frankly wireless should be a standard feature. Palm and Sharp have really dropped the ball by not including it.
Firework rockets usually consist of gunpowder propellant (to get them into the air), an explosive charge (i.e. more gunpowder tightly wrapped) and pellets containing various metallic compounds for the colourful 'starburst'. If you removed the pellets and packed it with your pathogen of choice it would have the desired effect. I imagine some thick cardboard would insulate the contents sufficiently for most of it to survive.
I was landing at San Jose airport once and there were fireworks were exploding all around the plane. I have no idea why, and I doubt a tiny cracker would harm a jet, but it didn't seem like a good thing to me.
Still, if I were a terrorist I wouldn't be looking to buy some proper rocket system. Over the counter fireworks seem like a great way to dump anthrax spores over a wide area. Do it at an event like bonfire night, July 4, New Years Eve etc. and you'd probably have a nice crowd of people standing underneath to infect too.
The reason is simple - x86 hardware is a nightmare to support. Just look at the hundreds (with dozens of clones/variants each) of devices the Linux kernel supports. And the chances are high that any PC config you care to mention contains at least one esoteric chipset or device that OS X would have to support to make it viable.
Then there is the dearth of software for your second-tier port. You only have to look at BeOS to see the problems a new OS faces. Who's going to bother with a new OS when it offers no compelling reason for software companies to write software for it? And BeOS shipped with a toolchain and still failed.
Besides, there is nothing in it for Apple to make it work - they don't sell x86 hardware and a ubiquitous run-anywhere OS X dilutes any reason to buy a Mac. There is a second reason which is OS X works off a subscription model - $130 upgrades every 12-18 months - with older releases becoming rapidly obsoelete. It would be a unusual for new software to runs on anything below 10.2 for example. A subscription model might work when you have a captive audience, trained (and expecting) to upgrade their OS every year. It wouldn't work on x86 where five years or more are the norm. Even MS have tried and given up on the idea.
Of course Linux users upgrade a lot, but what reason would they have to switch? Apple could ship a Linux compatibility layer (just like Solaris / SCO) I suppose, but that's even more work for them.
The closest you're ever likely to get to OS X on x86 is probably Linux running GNOME 2.8, an Aqua theme and X server with XDamage/XComposite. Give it a year or two and the resemblance might even be passable.
Sorry, but there is nothing fantastically good about it at all. Hospitals already have ways to track patients that work just fine without injecting electronics under your skin.
What's wrong with the 'old fashioned' way of just slapping a plastic bracelet on the wrist of someone? It's cheap and it works.
Besides, what if a clerical error means my RFID gets transcribed with someone elses? It seems to me that a bracelet offers a greater chance of detecting the errors (especially when a relative holding my hand might notice my name is not right) than the RFID.
I sure that the other guy isn't getting his nuts cut off that day.
It works in Europe just fine (where I am right now). My Irish phone has no problem roaming to Belgium or Germany and picking up networks whether they are affiliated or not. For example if I take my Vodafone Ireland mobile to the UK, it will prefer Vodafone UK, but I can use O2, Orange or T-Mobile too. The phone is preprogrammed with networks it prefers and if they're not found it will pick whatever network will have it.
However networks in the same country might stop customers from competing networks inadvertantly roaming onto their own. I doubt this is out of malice, but is seen as way to prevent the hell that would result from millions of phones winking in and out of each other's networks and furious calls to customer service.
But even so, networks do allow roaming for "Emergency calls only". Your phone will say as much when it can't find it's own network. In other words, you can still dial an ambulance.
I'm not au fait with GSM protocols but I assume that the network says what services it supports when you establish the link, with emergency (outgoing calls) service being the most basic. I also expect that very few GSM operators block any mobile user from this service. Even a deactivated SIM in an old phone can often make emergency calls - something worth trying out before tossing a phone.
So I don't see any issues here. The phone's regular network might be missing (because it is jammed), but the phone will see the "cinema" network and it will start using it. The phone is unlikely to not work when the only network it can find offers some service even if it is emergency calls only.
It could mean setting up your own "emergency calls only" cell in the cinema and blocking all other frequencies. If this were the case, your phone would 'roam' to the cinema network and patrons would make emergency calls through that. It would be very expensive for the cinema to shoulder the cost and possibly have some interesting legal repercussions.
Calling unsafe modules is straightforward to do in Java. Okay, so JNI isn't as immediate but it's fairly trivial boilerplate - define an interface with native methods, generate a header, implement the methods the header emits and compile. In other words if you have to do it, it's there.
Anyway, it is arguable that making it easy to call unmanaged code is an extremely bad thing to do. Call me a cynic, but I reckon MS is delighted to see people use unmanaged DLLs, COM interop and other unportable stuff since it locks them into MS Windows. What was the point of coding with.NET again?
Other points. Java as multidimensional arrays - I used one today in fact. Also, declaring exceptions is a good thing. It might be a minor pain to declare that your method throws an exception, but it sure beats calling something and having no idea whatsoever if it throws an exception.
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The same goes with fingerprinting and photographing everyone who enters the US. Part of me hopes their system collapses under the weight of false positives.
As on occasional visitor to the US, I have to say Frys seems much cheaper than our local counterparts. The prices might be a bit higher than mail order, but not so outrageous as to put you off entirely. Compared to European stores, some items are a positive bargain. I bought a laptop mouse for $15 which sells for 45 euros in PC World.
In fact PC World should be renamed Daylight Robbery. The markup is often 30+% with certain items like peripherals and media being the worst. The line of PCs they sell can be best summarised as expensive and shit. But for all that they still get queues of clueless people buying their computers there. The funniest part of PC World is they also run a service centre where they charge a small fortune to remove spyware, viruses etc. That should tell you the type of customer they cater for. The only benefit is they sometimes catch paedophiles like Gary Glitter who stupidly bring their kiddy porn laden machines in for repair.
I'm glad to say that I was mistaken. However, I still reckon there is a good chance that XCode will become a standalone product.
Now there is a wider problem with piracy in the far east for example, but if it concerned games companies that much, perhaps they should start selling games in those countries at prices people can afford. Sell the game for $5. It might not be much of a profit, but it's surely more than $0 they get from the pirate version. Such copies could pose a simple question written in Thai / Mandarin / Malay / Korean / Indonesian at the start of the game to prevent it being sold outside of the regions it was intended for.
I doubt they're okay with piracy at all. People who download 10.4 for free are denying Apple $125 of revenue. It's that simple. The days of OS X unencumbered by serial numbers / registration are not going to last.
Requiring people to fork out $500 for a beta, an ADC account, non-specific discounts on hardware and a release of 10.4 when it eventually appears seems like rather a lot. In fact it appears more like a revenue stream than as a way to keep the unwashed masses away. Perhaps if you were an Apple shop it might be worth it for the development lead in, but I don't see any reason for individual programmers to bother.
That is of course if the ADC weren't being changed too. XCode used to be a free download but since 1.5 not any more. I would not be surprised if 10.4 shipped without XCode 2.0 at all.
But getting back to 10.4 beta... if non-developers want an unstable, timebombed OS then let them. If it breaks it is their own tough shit. It's not like this thing won't be floating around the P2P networks within days of appearing anyway.
It's hard to say what environment I'm most comfortable with. It's probably VC98 because it's so uncluttered yet practical. I'm also partial to Eclipse, but the visual editing component (VE) has some way to go. A major hurdle for Java coding is that Swing has evil layout model making bloody difficult to visually design anything. Microsoft has the right idea there - ship an XY model first and stick the box / grid etc models in later.
Interface builder is not intuitive, it's not even discoverable. Joining objects residing in two separate windows with lines doesn't even make sense from a usability perspective. Even when you eventually figure out how to create classes and join them up to buttons, it is non-obvious how that maps onto actual code. On top of these problems you have to learn a new language just to be able to get your UI to do anything. If the documentation & help system were up to snuff it might shorten the learning curve but they're not - it takes seconds to do a search on MSDN, so why does it takes minutes on OS X?
Thus, the new programmer is faced with an unfamiliar language, an unfamiliar metaphor for UI building, and an unfamiliar framework with bad documentation. I haven't seen such an uncompromising and steep learning curve for a long time. And all that to programme a supposedly user friendly OS.
So yes I do think it is non obvious. In my case it was the first time I actually had to buy a book ("Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X") before I could even figure out what was happening. I haven't seen XCode 2.0 it has to be said, but I sure hope they intend to make it easier to use. Even a few wizards with common design patterns might help somewhat.
Personally I think the tools that ship in XCode / Project Builder for constructing UIs are (ironically) the most user-unfriendly and unintuitive I've ever encountered. Part of the blame falls squarely on the interactive help which is awful compared to the MSDN for example.
That's not to say I don't think Objective-C is elegant but I'd still prefer C++ and a conventional GUI editor for all the alleged 'pain' that would entail.
Running Linux is not a feature as far as most people are concerned. They want a PDA first and foremost - the PDA is no good if the handwriting recognition sucks, or the planner is junk, or the thing has crappy sync software, or it requires two taps when one would do, or if it crashes all the time, or if it is too big, or the battery life is measured in minutes. I'm not saying the Zaurus does those things, just that they are the criteria for most people. They want a PIM to keep appointments, names & addresses, do a little light work (e.g. write an email, a little browsing etc.) and maybe a few little games.
Any Pocket PC by Dell or HP can do this stuff. Why should someone pay nearly double for a Zaurus? A Zaurus doesn't even do wireless without an extra card. If they were relying on geeks to buy these things, it's no wonder they dropped out of the market.
To be sure, I'd love a Linux PDA, but it would have to be a good PDA that happens to run Linux, rather than being a sucky PDA running on Linux. At the end of the day, the underlying OS can't be the deciding factor.
But you're right you shouldn't care what the OS is as an end user. If the PIM software stinks, so does the PDA irrespective of what is running on it. I never cared that my Palm Vx had some sucky OS running underneath - the PDA functionality was fantastic. Conversely, I now own an iPaq 4150 and I think the PDA functionality is poor. A checklist comparison might say it does more, but I swear it takes several more taps to do the same tasks that the Palm could do with one. I've also been trained to reboot the device every few days when it goes a bit strange - something the Palm did rarely if ever.
That's not to say the iPaq isn't more advanced in other ways such as multimedia or Wifi, but the sophistication of the underlying OS in terms of multitasking etc. is no guarantee that it is a good PDA.
In a few years time, I expect I'll have a new PDA At that point I expect that the OS on my iPaq will matter. I might install Linux for the hell of it. I haven't tried GPE or QTopia but somehow I doubt their PDA functionality is remotely comparable to Palm / Pocket PC. But by then it won't matter as it won't be my PDA. It would just be very nice to give the iPaq a new lease of life by having it run Linux. I'd probably tinker with it to see if I could get it to be a decent browser (unlike Pocket IE), or perhaps even get it running MAME.
Wow, I never knew anyone had done it already. I'm downloading the Debian root fs to give it a go it even as I reply...
Such a thing is hardly insurmountable to do either, but I suspect if it ever did appear it would be buggered up beyond recognition (e.g. not supporting the LSB properly). I base my experiences on the SFU which is traumatic to install and lacklustre to run in equal measure. Cygwin beats the living crap out of it.
Of course if Microsoft had a clue about doing this properly, they'd try to make User Mode Linux working on top of XP. Done properly it would be less traumatic to install, would be self contained, would be as-near-as-dammit a true Linux environment and might earn them a few brownie points in the process.
All of the above will receive scant support and will be axed after one release. A MS spokesman will cite 'no interest' for the reason even though the half-baked, shitty software and uncertain future has more to do with it.
I would have upgraded my Vx to another Palm if one had a comparable feature set, but none does.
Once installed an extension can do anything the user can do. Normally that might be to stick a button onto the browser, but there's nothing to stop the extension searching your drive and uploading data, acting as spyware or installing a root kit etc.
Just like ActiveX, XPI files are meant to be signed so you can establish trust. But no one digitally signs their Firefox extensions! Therefore users are 'trained' to install untrusted XPI extensions. Untrusted means you have no idea who wrote it, or if it's been tampered with.
Firefox 1.0pr1 has introduced a small band-aid. Now have to indicate you 'trust' a site before you can install an XPI from it. It's better than nothing but it still won't authenticate or repudiate the XPI as being from that site - someone could have replaced the genuine XPI with a malicious one, or intercepted the entire site entirely.
The XPI model either needs to enforce certs and give contributors a way to get them conveniently and cheaply. Or it should move over to PGP signatures and a web of trust model. In some ways the latter is more beneficial since people don't have to fork out ludicrous sums to Verisign to authenticate that they wrote the extension.
In any case, I'm just indicating that a naive user could install something on Linux that they would later regret.
I was shopping for a PDA recently and I seriously considered a Zaurus. But the lack of wireless, the high price and the lack of sales / support in Europe put me right off the idea.
I bought an iPaq (which I don't like for other reasons), but it cost half the price of a Zaurus and does bluetooth and wireless. I even expect to be able to make it run Linux one day. But first and foremost it is my PDA, which includes doing wireless, if for no other reason than to sync up with Avantgo.
Frankly wireless should be a standard feature. Palm and Sharp have really dropped the ball by not including it.
Firework rockets usually consist of gunpowder propellant (to get them into the air), an explosive charge (i.e. more gunpowder tightly wrapped) and pellets containing various metallic compounds for the colourful 'starburst'. If you removed the pellets and packed it with your pathogen of choice it would have the desired effect. I imagine some thick cardboard would insulate the contents sufficiently for most of it to survive.
Still, if I were a terrorist I wouldn't be looking to buy some proper rocket system. Over the counter fireworks seem like a great way to dump anthrax spores over a wide area. Do it at an event like bonfire night, July 4, New Years Eve etc. and you'd probably have a nice crowd of people standing underneath to infect too.
The reason is simple - x86 hardware is a nightmare to support. Just look at the hundreds (with dozens of clones/variants each) of devices the Linux kernel supports. And the chances are high that any PC config you care to mention contains at least one esoteric chipset or device that OS X would have to support to make it viable.
Then there is the dearth of software for your second-tier port. You only have to look at BeOS to see the problems a new OS faces. Who's going to bother with a new OS when it offers no compelling reason for software companies to write software for it? And BeOS shipped with a toolchain and still failed.
Besides, there is nothing in it for Apple to make it work - they don't sell x86 hardware and a ubiquitous run-anywhere OS X dilutes any reason to buy a Mac. There is a second reason which is OS X works off a subscription model - $130 upgrades every 12-18 months - with older releases becoming rapidly obsoelete. It would be a unusual for new software to runs on anything below 10.2 for example. A subscription model might work when you have a captive audience, trained (and expecting) to upgrade their OS every year. It wouldn't work on x86 where five years or more are the norm. Even MS have tried and given up on the idea.
Of course Linux users upgrade a lot, but what reason would they have to switch? Apple could ship a Linux compatibility layer (just like Solaris / SCO) I suppose, but that's even more work for them.
The closest you're ever likely to get to OS X on x86 is probably Linux running GNOME 2.8, an Aqua theme and X server with XDamage/XComposite. Give it a year or two and the resemblance might even be passable.
What's wrong with the 'old fashioned' way of just slapping a plastic bracelet on the wrist of someone? It's cheap and it works.
Besides, what if a clerical error means my RFID gets transcribed with someone elses? It seems to me that a bracelet offers a greater chance of detecting the errors (especially when a relative holding my hand might notice my name is not right) than the RFID.
I sure that the other guy isn't getting his nuts cut off that day.
I went on to explain what happens within a single country...
However networks in the same country might stop customers from competing networks inadvertantly roaming onto their own. I doubt this is out of malice, but is seen as way to prevent the hell that would result from millions of phones winking in and out of each other's networks and furious calls to customer service.
But even so, networks do allow roaming for "Emergency calls only". Your phone will say as much when it can't find it's own network. In other words, you can still dial an ambulance.
I'm not au fait with GSM protocols but I assume that the network says what services it supports when you establish the link, with emergency (outgoing calls) service being the most basic. I also expect that very few GSM operators block any mobile user from this service. Even a deactivated SIM in an old phone can often make emergency calls - something worth trying out before tossing a phone.
So I don't see any issues here. The phone's regular network might be missing (because it is jammed), but the phone will see the "cinema" network and it will start using it. The phone is unlikely to not work when the only network it can find offers some service even if it is emergency calls only.
It could mean setting up your own "emergency calls only" cell in the cinema and blocking all other frequencies. If this were the case, your phone would 'roam' to the cinema network and patrons would make emergency calls through that. It would be very expensive for the cinema to shoulder the cost and possibly have some interesting legal repercussions.
Anyway, it is arguable that making it easy to call unmanaged code is an extremely bad thing to do. Call me a cynic, but I reckon MS is delighted to see people use unmanaged DLLs, COM interop and other unportable stuff since it locks them into MS Windows. What was the point of coding with .NET again?
Other points. Java as multidimensional arrays - I used one today in fact. Also, declaring exceptions is a good thing. It might be a minor pain to declare that your method throws an exception, but it sure beats calling something and having no idea whatsoever if it throws an exception.