Imagine a beach that's a mile long. The north end is 0, the south end is 1, and the halfway mark is 0.5. Now, if there were two ice cream stands on the beach, they would serve people best by being at the 0.25 and 0.75 mile marks. No one would have to walk more than 1/4 mile for a ice cream. Everyone from zero to 0.5 would go to Mr. 0.25's Ice Cream Stand and everyone from 0.5 to one would go to Mr. 0.75's Ice Cream Stand.
But then one day, Mr. 0.25 gets greedy. He moves his stand to 0.35. The people from zero to 0.35 come to him because he's still the closest (even though the people at zero have to walk an extra tenth of a mile) but now get gets people all the way up to 0.55--halfway between 0.35 and 0.75.
Mr. 0.75 realizes he's losing money and moves to 0.65. Now they are both 0.15 miles from the centerline and they both have 50% of the business. But Mr. 0.35 (formerly Mr. 0.25) got used to the money so he moves to 0.45 and he gets all the customers from zero (who now have to walk almost twice as far) to 0.60. Mr. 0.65 moves to 0.55 and equilibrium is restored. Eventually they are both at the centerline. (I guess they are now 0.50a and 0.50b.)
So what do we have in the end? The two ice cream men each have the same 50% of the business they started with and the average customer has to walk twice as far. The ice cream men are no better off than they were in the beginning but the people, on average, are much worse off.
Why is every comment in this thread complaining about paying $50/mo for 3G service? AT&T charges $15/mo for 250M and $25/mo for 2GB*. Also, you can turn it on and off month by month, so you don't HAVE to pay for it every month if, for example, you only need it when traveling.
That said, I think all U.S. telcos suck donkey balls for charging X dollars for Y GB AND charge extra for tethering/hotspot functionality. What the fuck?!?!? I'm paying this much money for that many bits, why can't I decide what to do with them? All the work is handled by the device--their equipment doesn't need to do a single thing if I want to tether.
Speaking of AT&T, they're selling last year's 3G iPads at steep discounts which would cover many, many months of 3G service.
* Maybe not the best rates, and maybe not as much data as you'd like, but still... the point is it's not $50/mo.
"The tablet takes cutting-edge PC technology and makes it available whenever you want it, which is why I'm already using a tablet as my everyday computer," Gates said. "It's a PC that is virtually without limits -- and within five years I predict it will be the most popular form of PC sold in America."
Alan Kay said The best way to predict the future is to invent it. I think it's clear that the current Apple under Steve Jobs is better than MS under Gates and Ballmer at delivering in this particular area.
> As soon as they stick Kinect in a smartphone they'll have a hit on their hands.
WTF? This is totally wrong for at least two reasons: 1) What in the world would you use Kinect for on a phone? 2) MS stuck another dominant product (Office) onto a phone and it didn't do them much good.
I would pay so much if someone would make a game like Time Crisis with this tech. I've been waiting for a game to be made like this ever since I first saw that Johnny Lee demo years ago but no luck yet. That kind of responsiveness plus a wall-size projection would be so awesome.
Bruce Schneier is almost certainly a lot smarter than anyone posting on this page so it would be foolish to simply dismiss anything he says out of hand. OF COURSE all the subtle nuances of their work won't fit into a Slashdot summary. Don't you think it's likely that they did some testing and determined that their results had X accuracy Y percent of the time before they published their findings? This isn't just two morons BSing in a coffee shop saying "Hey, I bet we could..." and then publishing a blog post without doing any work.
Here are two possible solutions that immediately popped into my mind and have certainly popped into theirs: 1) you could combine this with a bandwidth test to get an idea of what the user's connection is. 2) IP addresses are usually grouped, and just by IP address alone they could know if you're on dialup, cable, DSL, or a T. (Even though 3 of those 4 come through the phone company, they, too, usually group numbers--a block for dialup customers, a block for DSL, etc.)
How about: Designer comes up with interesting, relevant use of math that all the Math geeks who have been running the WWW for 20 years didn't think of on their own.
Subtitle: Bitter math nazis harp on his confusion about 1 being a prime.
Exactly. Until everyone's Internet connection is as fast as the link between a CPU and its RAM, and until Web pages can be designed to take advantage of the most recent advances in GPUs, there will ALWAYS be the desire for the speed that native apps bring.
I have absolutely no idea why Google is still going forward with the idea of Chrome OS. If they really think there's a market for an OS with no apps except a browser, they can always release a stripped down version of Android. Chrome OS was announced almost two years ago (July 2009) and if they could have shipped something quickly it might have been worthwhile (and for fuck's sake, how hard is it? I remember there was a browser-centric Linux distro over five years ago) but I can't think of a single reason for it to exist today. They might as well announce that they're going to build it on top of Hurd for all the good it'll do them.
> If making a good tablet isn't enough to sell a good tablet, that means that the > demand for tablets is being driven by Apple rather than a need for tablets.
Or, it means the competition ISN'T ACTUALLY GOOD. Can you name me one tablet with a 10 inch screen, 10 hour battery life, and the weight and thinness of an iPad, at ANY price, let alone the same price or less? Read this Ars review of the Xoom and tell me if it's something you really want to own. I'm not saying it'll never be good, but it is absolutely not there yet.
Apple, believe it or not, is KILLING on price, and they've spent over YEARS* working on this device, whereas everyone else is playing catch-up. So there's a LOT of refinement in there that isn't always immediately apparent or easily quantifiable. 15 million people purchasing a $500+ device in the middle of a recession can not be entirely explained by a) braindead sheep easily swayed by marketing, b) fanbois, or c) OMGSHINY!
Face it, techheads, the iPad is FUCKING GOOD in ways that are important to normal people and possibly beyond your ability to comprehend. How many slots you have, how many MP or flashes your camera has, how many MHz or cores you have, IS NOT EVERYTHING.
Two quotes come to mind: "No wireless, less space than a Nomad. Lame." - CmdrTaco on the original iPod "If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know." - Louis Armstrong
NOT THAT ALL IS LOST. Face it--it took Android a couple of years to get to the point where it is a really viable competitor to the iPhone on most fronts. Give Android 3.0 another year of refinement, some better tablet apps, and some better hardware and it'll be truly comparable to the iPad. But two things: 1) No matter how good they get, they're competing against a juggernaut in this space, and I expect Apple to maintain 70-80% of the market, leaving the remainder to be split among many companies, and 2) Don't expect Apple to just sit still either. They'll keep improving the iPad roughly annually, and they're leading in this space, so the competition will be trying to hit a moving target.
* at the iPhone's launch in January 2007, Steve Jobs started by saying "I've been waiting two and a half years for this day." In post-iPad interviews he has said that they started on tablets first and then decided to release a phone first instead. So even if the two-and-a-half-year figure applies to when they started on tablets, that still puts us back to June 2004. Everyone else is saying "Wow, Apple is selling a lot of iPads, what can we make that's comparable?"
The Wikipedia article is pretty cool. Those guys are getting inventive. Then again, with a QUARTER BILLION FREAKING DOLLARS at stake, so would I.
Semi-submersibles are hard to spot from patrol ships, but are easy to detect from the air. To address this problem, a new concept was adopted by smugglers. Instead of a full-featured self-propelled ship, a "torpedo"-style cargo container is used with a ballast tank (submersion control) to keep it at about 30 m under water while being towed by a regular fishing boat. If a patrol ship is spotted, the "torpedo" cargo container is released. While still submerged, it automatically releases one buoy concealed as a wooden log and equipped with a location transmitter system for a second support fishing vessel to retrieve it and continue the cocaine delivery.
Sell! Assuming you're eligible for a new iPhone every two years, get a new one every two years! Due to the fact that the iPhone is only available on 2 networks, they resell very well. I paid $250 for an original iPhone (refurbished 4 GB after the price drop) in late 2007. I sold it for enough to pay for a 3G, then sold that a year later* for enough to cover a 3GS, then sold that for enough to buy a 4. So I've had a phone that's gotten bigger and/or faster, and better, every year for no extra money, AND I've been within the 1-year standard warranty period as well! (Except for a couple months here and there.) Sites like nextworth.com will pay (for example) $75 for a (now almost 3 years old) 8 GB iPhone 3G in decent shape and you can get even more (most likely) by selling on ebay or craigslist.
Or, once you've passed the 2-year mark, you can keep your old phone and drop the mandatory data plan and save $180/year. Either way you win.
* as the main phone on a multi-phone plan, I'm eligible to upgrade about once per year.
> There's no reason one should expect last > years hardware to run next years software.
Really? REALLY? There are a MILLION reasons to expect new OS to support multi-year-old hardware. I'm using Apple as an example here, not because they're perfect, but because I have first-hand experience with them and I remember the stats off the top of my head.
iPhone users got three full years out of original iPhones before they got dropped.
OS X 10.6 supports all Intel Macs, some of which are over five years old now, and the upcoming 10.7 will probably do the same.
10.5 came out in 2007 and supported Macs that were six years old at the time, which were 8 years old by the time 10.6 came out.
Windows, of course, supports much older hardware and yes, Windows has some bloat due to the fact that it can run 20-plus-year-old software, but there IS a middle ground between "bloat up and run software for decades" and "one year and you're done."
Users should ABSOLUTELY expect good support for at LEAST 2 or 3 years, especially since 2 years is the standard length of a cell contract in the U.S.
My problem with immersion is that 3D gives the illusion of depth-of-field but you can't actually pick what to focus on. I went to an undersea IMAX thing in 3D and I kept getting annoyed that cool stuff on the edge of the screen was out of focus. Obviously 2D film has the same limitation but because it's not 3D your eyes aren't constantly trying to focus at different depths.
> I just spend $3200 (including tax) on a maxed-out 17" MacBook Pro. Call me crazy or dedicated or both.
I'll call you "crazy" if you spent $3200 without knowing ahead of time that it wouldn't be good for your job. How hard is it, exactly, to use google and find out which programs can be used to design chips on a Mac? If you do a search and it says "zero matches", DON'T BUY. By the way, chip designers are, what, maybe 0.01% of programmers out there today? I'm not exaggerating, it's probably that low. MAYBE 0.1%. So your complaints are hardly cause to dismiss the platform outright for anything called "programming."
> The Mac also has a dearth of good code editors.
Jesus Fucking Christ, didn't text editor flame wars go out of style about a decade ago? I've been editing text on various platforms for about 15 years and while some tools are better than others, I've always found one that was good enough. When you say "Every single one of them has some kind of amazingly bad UI design flaw", I would say that applies to all editors on all platforms and hell, for that matter, all platforms, and all people as well. NOTHING IS PERFECT. If something works well for you, great. I first started using BB Edit on System 7.5.5 and I've been using it ever since. (Professional, full-time web app developer here, btw.) It has some quirks but I'm used to them and to me, all other editors are worse. To each his own.
If Macs were outlawed tomorrow and I had to use Ubuntu Linux or Windows 7, I would FUCKING DEAL WITH IT and get back to work. THAT is the mark of a professional--not whining about tools.
Just to be clear: I am not saying that the Mac is the right tool for everyone. What I AM saying is that anyone who says the Mac is the WRONG tool for everyone is factually, demonstrably, provably wrong, and anyone who says so just makes themselves look retarded and immature.
Slashdot is really full of "This is how I see the world, everyone else is wrong" today. Some kind of special event or something?
1) My mother and grandfather told me ages ago, "It's a poor craftsman who blames his tools." Related to that,
2) Use the right tool for the job. If OS X is not the right tool for the job, then DON'T USE IT. But don't go out and be a whiny bitch just because you don't understand what the fuck the requirements are for your job.
I've been developing web sites for 15 years this summer, starting with Windows 3.1 and Notepad. I've been using OS X since 10.0.3 and I've been using it full-time for web development for about 8 years (since 10.2, aka "the first usable release of OS X.") Saying OS X is unsuitable for web development is flat-out wrong.
> Which is great until you realize that your > production environment runs on a > case-sensitive filesystem, while you've > been developing on HFS+ which is not > case-sensitive*... Yes, I've been bitten > by this several times.
Really? Wow. I think I got bitten by case-sensitivity once, around '97 or 98, then I LEARNED and DEALT WITH IT and it has never been a problem since.
> They were remote exploits... they required the user to visit a website, but by the > definition used by the security community that still makes them remote exploits.
Really? I have never once heard the term "remote exploit" mean "a user sits at the computer and does something."
"Remote", they way I've always heard it, means "plug a computer in, turn it, on, walk away, come back, and it's been rooted." If you have to get the user to open a malicious email or visit a malicious web page it is not a remote exploit.
They're just doing this so they can claim that it runs tons of apps.
Are these the words of a cynical, Android-hating, iPhone-loving twit? No, they are words of RIM's CEO.
"You've got the volume of the handset apps, so if you're looking for the tonnage of apps, or some kind of long tail stuff, you've got it. At the end of the day, people are going to want performance. You're just not going to get things like gaming and multimedia, you're not going to get the speed going through a VM interface."
Also note that it's only 2.3 (phone) apps, not 3.0 (tablet) apps.
Slashdot Mirror
Imagine a beach that's a mile long. The north end is 0, the south end is 1, and the halfway mark is 0.5. Now, if there were two ice cream stands on the beach, they would serve people best by being at the 0.25 and 0.75 mile marks. No one would have to walk more than 1/4 mile for a ice cream. Everyone from zero to 0.5 would go to Mr. 0.25's Ice Cream Stand and everyone from 0.5 to one would go to Mr. 0.75's Ice Cream Stand.
But then one day, Mr. 0.25 gets greedy. He moves his stand to 0.35. The people from zero to 0.35 come to him because he's still the closest (even though the people at zero have to walk an extra tenth of a mile) but now get gets people all the way up to 0.55--halfway between 0.35 and 0.75.
Mr. 0.75 realizes he's losing money and moves to 0.65. Now they are both 0.15 miles from the centerline and they both have 50% of the business. But Mr. 0.35 (formerly Mr. 0.25) got used to the money so he moves to 0.45 and he gets all the customers from zero (who now have to walk almost twice as far) to 0.60. Mr. 0.65 moves to 0.55 and equilibrium is restored. Eventually they are both at the centerline. (I guess they are now 0.50a and 0.50b.)
So what do we have in the end? The two ice cream men each have the same 50% of the business they started with and the average customer has to walk twice as far. The ice cream men are no better off than they were in the beginning but the people, on average, are much worse off.
You have lived in such a country since 1978.
>> Brother still makes and sells typewriters.
> Also the company is not shutting down.
> It also stopped making them in 2009.
But other than that it's a pretty good article. :-)
Why is every comment in this thread complaining about paying $50/mo for 3G service? AT&T charges $15/mo for 250M and $25/mo for 2GB*. Also, you can turn it on and off month by month, so you don't HAVE to pay for it every month if, for example, you only need it when traveling.
That said, I think all U.S. telcos suck donkey balls for charging X dollars for Y GB AND charge extra for tethering/hotspot functionality. What the fuck?!?!? I'm paying this much money for that many bits, why can't I decide what to do with them? All the work is handled by the device--their equipment doesn't need to do a single thing if I want to tether.
Speaking of AT&T, they're selling last year's 3G iPads at steep discounts which would cover many, many months of 3G service.
* Maybe not the best rates, and maybe not as much data as you'd like, but still... the point is it's not $50/mo.
Mod parent up. The exact quote, and source:
"The tablet takes cutting-edge PC technology and makes it available whenever you want it, which is why I'm already using a tablet as my everyday computer," Gates said. "It's a PC that is virtually without limits -- and within five years I predict it will be the most popular form of PC sold in America."
- Bill Gates, November 12, 2001 when Microsoft was introducing Windows XP for Tablet PCs.
Alan Kay said The best way to predict the future is to invent it. I think it's clear that the current Apple under Steve Jobs is better than MS under Gates and Ballmer at delivering in this particular area.
> As soon as they stick Kinect in a smartphone they'll have a hit on their hands.
WTF? This is totally wrong for at least two reasons:
1) What in the world would you use Kinect for on a phone?
2) MS stuck another dominant product (Office) onto a phone and it didn't do them much good.
Besides, the Kinect came out of the gate strong--6 million in the first two months--but it has only sold 2 million more in the next two months. Apple, on the other hand, has sold about 18 million iPhones, 4.5 million iPod touches, and 4 million iPads in the first quarter of 2011.
Ask yourself this simple two-part question:
Similarly, compare tablets before the iPad to what's on the market now.
IANAL but this lawsuit specifically deals with "trade dress" among other things.
I would pay so much if someone would make a game like Time Crisis with this tech. I've been waiting for a game to be made like this ever since I first saw that Johnny Lee demo years ago but no luck yet. That kind of responsiveness plus a wall-size projection would be so awesome.
Bruce Schneier is almost certainly a lot smarter than anyone posting on this page so it would be foolish to simply dismiss anything he says out of hand. OF COURSE all the subtle nuances of their work won't fit into a Slashdot summary. Don't you think it's likely that they did some testing and determined that their results had X accuracy Y percent of the time before they published their findings? This isn't just two morons BSing in a coffee shop saying "Hey, I bet we could..." and then publishing a blog post without doing any work.
Here are two possible solutions that immediately popped into my mind and have certainly popped into theirs: 1) you could combine this with a bandwidth test to get an idea of what the user's connection is. 2) IP addresses are usually grouped, and just by IP address alone they could know if you're on dialup, cable, DSL, or a T. (Even though 3 of those 4 come through the phone company, they, too, usually group numbers--a block for dialup customers, a block for DSL, etc.)
1) Start reading here and then check out the rest of his blog.
I can give you are some practical anecdotes which, I hope, will give you a flavour of the change.
2) a) You're a douche. b) You know Apple LOVES multi-ethnics in their ads. :-)
How about: Designer comes up with interesting, relevant use of math that all the Math geeks who have been running the WWW for 20 years didn't think of on their own.
Subtitle: Bitter math nazis harp on his confusion about 1 being a prime.
Exactly. Until everyone's Internet connection is as fast as the link between a CPU and its RAM, and until Web pages can be designed to take advantage of the most recent advances in GPUs, there will ALWAYS be the desire for the speed that native apps bring.
I have absolutely no idea why Google is still going forward with the idea of Chrome OS. If they really think there's a market for an OS with no apps except a browser, they can always release a stripped down version of Android. Chrome OS was announced almost two years ago (July 2009) and if they could have shipped something quickly it might have been worthwhile (and for fuck's sake, how hard is it? I remember there was a browser-centric Linux distro over five years ago) but I can't think of a single reason for it to exist today. They might as well announce that they're going to build it on top of Hurd for all the good it'll do them.
> You cannot truly use an iPad for production, i.e writing, video editing, programming, etc.
WRONG. Shot on an iPhone, edited on an iPad, shown on CNN.
> If making a good tablet isn't enough to sell a good tablet, that means that the
> demand for tablets is being driven by Apple rather than a need for tablets.
Or, it means the competition ISN'T ACTUALLY GOOD. Can you name me one tablet with a 10 inch screen, 10 hour battery life, and the weight and thinness of an iPad, at ANY price, let alone the same price or less? Read this Ars review of the Xoom and tell me if it's something you really want to own. I'm not saying it'll never be good, but it is absolutely not there yet.
Apple, believe it or not, is KILLING on price, and they've spent over YEARS* working on this device, whereas everyone else is playing catch-up. So there's a LOT of refinement in there that isn't always immediately apparent or easily quantifiable. 15 million people purchasing a $500+ device in the middle of a recession can not be entirely explained by a) braindead sheep easily swayed by marketing, b) fanbois, or c) OMGSHINY!
Face it, techheads, the iPad is FUCKING GOOD in ways that are important to normal people and possibly beyond your ability to comprehend. How many slots you have, how many MP or flashes your camera has, how many MHz or cores you have, IS NOT EVERYTHING.
Two quotes come to mind:
"No wireless, less space than a Nomad. Lame." - CmdrTaco on the original iPod
"If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know." - Louis Armstrong
NOT THAT ALL IS LOST. Face it--it took Android a couple of years to get to the point where it is a really viable competitor to the iPhone on most fronts. Give Android 3.0 another year of refinement, some better tablet apps, and some better hardware and it'll be truly comparable to the iPad. But two things: 1) No matter how good they get, they're competing against a juggernaut in this space, and I expect Apple to maintain 70-80% of the market, leaving the remainder to be split among many companies, and 2) Don't expect Apple to just sit still either. They'll keep improving the iPad roughly annually, and they're leading in this space, so the competition will be trying to hit a moving target.
* at the iPhone's launch in January 2007, Steve Jobs started by saying "I've been waiting two and a half years for this day." In post-iPad interviews he has said that they started on tablets first and then decided to release a phone first instead. So even if the two-and-a-half-year figure applies to when they started on tablets, that still puts us back to June 2004. Everyone else is saying "Wow, Apple is selling a lot of iPads, what can we make that's comparable?"
The Wikipedia article is pretty cool. Those guys are getting inventive. Then again, with a QUARTER BILLION FREAKING DOLLARS at stake, so would I.
Semi-submersibles are hard to spot from patrol ships, but are easy to detect from the air. To address this problem, a new concept was adopted by smugglers. Instead of a full-featured self-propelled ship, a "torpedo"-style cargo container is used with a ballast tank (submersion control) to keep it at about 30 m under water while being towed by a regular fishing boat. If a patrol ship is spotted, the "torpedo" cargo container is released. While still submerged, it automatically releases one buoy concealed as a wooden log and equipped with a location transmitter system for a second support fishing vessel to retrieve it and continue the cocaine delivery.
Sell! Assuming you're eligible for a new iPhone every two years, get a new one every two years! Due to the fact that the iPhone is only available on 2 networks, they resell very well. I paid $250 for an original iPhone (refurbished 4 GB after the price drop) in late 2007. I sold it for enough to pay for a 3G, then sold that a year later* for enough to cover a 3GS, then sold that for enough to buy a 4. So I've had a phone that's gotten bigger and/or faster, and better, every year for no extra money, AND I've been within the 1-year standard warranty period as well! (Except for a couple months here and there.) Sites like nextworth.com will pay (for example) $75 for a (now almost 3 years old) 8 GB iPhone 3G in decent shape and you can get even more (most likely) by selling on ebay or craigslist.
Or, once you've passed the 2-year mark, you can keep your old phone and drop the mandatory data plan and save $180/year. Either way you win.
* as the main phone on a multi-phone plan, I'm eligible to upgrade about once per year.
I'm flying to NYC in the morning and need to pack my "Do Not Mug Me" shirt. :-)
> There's no reason one should expect last
> years hardware to run next years software.
Really? REALLY? There are a MILLION reasons to expect new OS to support multi-year-old hardware. I'm using Apple as an example here, not because they're perfect, but because I have first-hand experience with them and I remember the stats off the top of my head.
Windows, of course, supports much older hardware and yes, Windows has some bloat due to the fact that it can run 20-plus-year-old software, but there IS a middle ground between "bloat up and run software for decades" and "one year and you're done."
Users should ABSOLUTELY expect good support for at LEAST 2 or 3 years, especially since 2 years is the standard length of a cell contract in the U.S.
My problem with immersion is that 3D gives the illusion of depth-of-field but you can't actually pick what to focus on. I went to an undersea IMAX thing in 3D and I kept getting annoyed that cool stuff on the edge of the screen was out of focus. Obviously 2D film has the same limitation but because it's not 3D your eyes aren't constantly trying to focus at different depths.
> I just spend $3200 (including tax) on a maxed-out 17" MacBook Pro. Call me crazy or dedicated or both.
I'll call you "crazy" if you spent $3200 without knowing ahead of time that it wouldn't be good for your job. How hard is it, exactly, to use google and find out which programs can be used to design chips on a Mac? If you do a search and it says "zero matches", DON'T BUY. By the way, chip designers are, what, maybe 0.01% of programmers out there today? I'm not exaggerating, it's probably that low. MAYBE 0.1%. So your complaints are hardly cause to dismiss the platform outright for anything called "programming."
> The Mac also has a dearth of good code editors.
Jesus Fucking Christ, didn't text editor flame wars go out of style about a decade ago? I've been editing text on various platforms for about 15 years and while some tools are better than others, I've always found one that was good enough. When you say "Every single one of them has some kind of amazingly bad UI design flaw", I would say that applies to all editors on all platforms and hell, for that matter, all platforms, and all people as well. NOTHING IS PERFECT. If something works well for you, great. I first started using BB Edit on System 7.5.5 and I've been using it ever since. (Professional, full-time web app developer here, btw.) It has some quirks but I'm used to them and to me, all other editors are worse. To each his own.
If Macs were outlawed tomorrow and I had to use Ubuntu Linux or Windows 7, I would FUCKING DEAL WITH IT and get back to work. THAT is the mark of a professional--not whining about tools.
Just to be clear: I am not saying that the Mac is the right tool for everyone. What I AM saying is that anyone who says the Mac is the WRONG tool for everyone is factually, demonstrably, provably wrong, and anyone who says so just makes themselves look retarded and immature.
Slashdot is really full of "This is how I see the world, everyone else is wrong" today. Some kind of special event or something?
Two things:
1) My mother and grandfather told me ages ago, "It's a poor craftsman who blames his tools." Related to that,
2) Use the right tool for the job. If OS X is not the right tool for the job, then DON'T USE IT. But don't go out and be a whiny bitch just because you don't understand what the fuck the requirements are for your job.
I've been developing web sites for 15 years this summer, starting with Windows 3.1 and Notepad. I've been using OS X since 10.0.3 and I've been using it full-time for web development for about 8 years (since 10.2, aka "the first usable release of OS X.") Saying OS X is unsuitable for web development is flat-out wrong.
> Which is great until you realize that your
> production environment runs on a
> case-sensitive filesystem, while you've
> been developing on HFS+ which is not
> case-sensitive*... Yes, I've been bitten
> by this several times.
Really? Wow. I think I got bitten by case-sensitivity once, around '97 or 98, then I LEARNED and DEALT WITH IT and it has never been a problem since.
> They were remote exploits... they required the user to visit a website, but by the
> definition used by the security community that still makes them remote exploits.
Really? I have never once heard the term "remote exploit" mean "a user sits at the computer and does something."
"Remote", they way I've always heard it, means "plug a computer in, turn it, on, walk away, come back, and it's been rooted." If you have to get the user to open a malicious email or visit a malicious web page it is not a remote exploit.
They're just doing this so they can claim that it runs tons of apps.
Are these the words of a cynical, Android-hating, iPhone-loving twit? No, they are words of RIM's CEO.
"You've got the volume of the handset apps, so if you're looking for the tonnage of apps, or some kind of long tail stuff, you've got it. At the end of the day, people are going to want performance. You're just not going to get things like gaming and multimedia, you're not going to get the speed going through a VM interface."
Also note that it's only 2.3 (phone) apps, not 3.0 (tablet) apps.
Not one of which was REMOTE, as the parent specified. Try again.