I shouldn't have to buy and carry extra gear for features that I, for my uses, consider to be core necessities.
I think the majority of users would have reciprocal complaints if the iPad had a built-in keyboard. Why do they have to add the bulk, weight and cost of a keyboard they don't want. For many years Macs were "gold plated" and included many premium features that most users didn't care about. I think Apple has learned from that mistake and rightfully makes such features options.
It sounds like your needs make a netbook a better option for you.
... the first problem of the game is to reach Jupiter with the lowest amount of propellant...
This seems like a trivial thing to do. At escape velocity give engines a little burst, coast to the orbit of the destination, a little burst to decelerate, wait for the planet to get to that point. OK, its not very efficient with respect to time but that wasn't a stated criteria. Game design is hard, even for rocket scientists.
Oops, I think I got that mixed up a little. IIRC its accelerate to maintain the destination's orbit, deceleration would be to get captured by the destination itself.
... the first problem of the game is to reach Jupiter with the lowest amount of propellant...
This seems like a trivial thing to do. At escape velocity give engines a little burst, coast to the orbit of the destination, a little burst to decelerate, wait for the planet to get to that point. OK, its not very efficient with respect to time but that wasn't a stated criteria. Game design is hard, even for rocket scientists.
One of my concerns would be that having the UDID allows for more general impersonation. With a hash specific to a particular app the impersonation is limited to your app.
Another concern would be related to personally identifiable information (PII). When non-PII is associated with PII the non-PII now falls under all the PII regulations. If you use a hash you do not have to worry about what others at the university are collecting. Keep in mind that what constitutes an association between non-PII and PII may be defined by a hostile lawyer. Maybe your team's data being on the same server as another team's.
The UDID would be a poor choice to identify a user. A person may have multiple devices, say an iPhone and an iPad, or they may replace/upgrade their device to a newer model. I think you will have to use an account name chosen by the user, an email address, etc.
That could be done just as easily without sending the UDID.
Agreed. I would use a hash of the UDID.
However for some circumstances I don't think the developer needs any sort of device ID. For example I have a scientific and hex calculator app, other modes are about to be released. I would like to get some usage data showing how much use the various modes get. I've considered adding counters that indicate how many operations are performed in each mode and sending these counters to a server periodically. All I want is aggregate data, I don't need any device ID in this case.
Some of what you cite is IRS or tax return specific. If the agency is not the IRS or if the documentation is not part of a tax return then things may be a bit less restrictive. And this is in the current environment where corps have some privacy, not in the hypothetical environment where the supreme court rules against corp privacy.
More importantly we have a forest and trees problem here. Flaws in one ad hoc example not withstanding, the general principle that eliminating corp privacy may have some unintended negative consequences remains.
You belong to a social advocacy or political group that makes a mistake on a tax filing. The IRS collects documentation including membership rolls. Now that membership roll is available through a freedom of information act request.
If you want your organization to be able to do things individuals can not, not least protect the individuals from losses, or from prosecution for negligence and lawbreaking by the organization, you have to expect that there will be compensating features of public oversight.
No. There is also the option of government oversight. Especially since it can be mandated that government agents have special access to information. For example the IRS having access to financial and business transactions that the public probably should not have access to.
I fail to see a problem here. Corporations are not people, nor are other collections of people. The reason why individuals have a right to privacy which is enshrined in various portions of the constitution is that an individual has far, far more to lose than a corporate entity does if the information is made public.
It is silly to think that an organization's information can not harm an individual. Consider the membership rolls of a "red leaning" organization during the McCarthy era.
Even with the examples you've given, I'm not seeing how it's a bad idea.
You belong to a social advocacy or political group that makes a mistake on a tax filing. The IRS collects documentation including membership rolls. Now that membership roll is available through a freedom of information act request.
If you want the right to privacy, then you need to be arrestable.
Aka, if they are found guilty of a crime, then the entire corporation must go to jail.
After all, if they can't be held responsible, then they shouldn't get the ability to hide their actions.
Corporate officers can be sued or prosecuted for their decisions and actions. Corporations themselves can be dissolved due to misconduct.
When it can die like I can. When it can be taken off the streets indefinitely for doing harm to other people, the way I can. Same goes for free speech in my opinion.
Careful, given your criteria corporations should have the right to privacy. I suspect that was not your intent. Judges can order that a corporation be dissolved for misconduct.
The problem with restricting privacy rights to individuals only is that ultimately no organization, corporate or not, will have privacy rights. Except perhaps churches in countries that grant them a special status. Beware the unintended consequences of a well intentioned idea.
I'd wager that the governments of those foreigners involved in building the Iranian nuclear infrastructure considered various plausible blowback scenarios that went far beyond upsetting the Americans. The possible risks go far beyond the financial impact of economic sanction.
Android Market apps are mostly super cheap. Who can't afford $1 on a game they'll play for a few days non-stop? Or a few bucks on a ROM management app? Prices for most paid apps are so low that I imagine that the largest barrier to entry is not price, but the effort required to set up one or more credit cards. My hypothesis, for that reason, is that a large portion of the piracy comes from the age 15-20 crowd who have fancy phones and lots of free time to figure out piracy options, but no credit card(s).
In general a low price is not necessarily a deterrent to piracy. Neither are alternative payment methods such as paypal. Piracy will simply occur whenever it can be easily accomplished. I've seen it done with highly functional low cost (US$12-15) software required for university coursework. Sales went from near zero to in line with corresponding textbook sales when a publisher added trivial-to-crack copy protection.
... if it was sourced from China or Russia likely safe...
Why? Given that the worm was idle it may have been an insurance policy, something to activate in the future should Iran start moving against the interests of current "friends". A digital sleeper agent. The current Iranian government is hostile to the west but the population is largely friendly towards the west in general. A future Iranian government that is in line with its citizens may realign itself politically. Or the current Iranian government could just start down a path that is a danger to everyone including current friends.
I don't claim the above is the more likely scenario but it is certainly highly plausible. I think the current suspect list that everyone is tossing around is a bit too short.
Yeah, but Germany isn't hostile to Iran, and German and other European companies do billions worth of business with Iran.
My understanding is that the worm has never gone active and done any damage. It has merely been discovered and removal is the problem. Perhaps the worm was installed by a country friendly to Iran, someone involved in the nuclear infrastructure project, as some kind of insurance. If at some time in the future Iran starts moving against the interests of this current "friend" then the worm would get activated. I think the suspect list that is commonly offered is too short.
... Working together to deflect this asteroid will diminish those cherished divisions...
You will have to wait for a different asteroid since this one is "only 50 meters wide". At this size it could be safely nuked so its more likely we'll be upgrading nuclear devices and their delivery systems to reach and intercept such a small fast moving target. Numerous nations can manage that on their own.
Objective-c is Apples attempt to co-opt developers
Objective-C never was a developer lock in, it is merely used by the API for the operating system. You have always been free to use C/C++ for your application's code. Whether the OS API is objective-c or C/C++ doesn't really matter, such calls are rarely portable to begin with as they are generally platform or hardware specific.
If you take the current iPad resolution and apply the iPhone 3GS pixels per inch you get about 7.9 inches diagonally. Maintaining the current resolution and using something at least as readable as the old iPhone screen might be a practical way to scale down an iPad a bit.
Print on Demand for Obscure Topics
on
Autotools
·
· Score: 1
Unfortunately, the publishing industry is driven by the need to turn a profit to fund its endeavors, and specialist items like this book are not obvious candidates for volume selling - which is a credit to No Starch Press' willingness to venture down this path.
The situation is not as dire as this post seems to suggest. Print on demand is an option for a book such as this. Getting a publisher like No Starch is great since they will provide traditional editing, review and marketing services however the publisher is not necessarily making any great investment since they too can take advantage of a print on demand type of approach. There is no longer a need to print a large number of books up front.
And the record companies pitched a complete fit over this and lobbied for YEARS for legislation to stop it, so apparently it's not so trivial to many as you imagine it.
They lobbied congress because they *paid* a royalty for each song they played. They were within the law so they were not sued, unlike those operating a site with ripped songs. Again, dubbing is a poor comparison to ripping.
An FM radio dub, made to a good quality cassette deck at the time, had FAR higher quality sound than a dub made from those stupid two bay decks (which came much later than the time I am talking about).
You are ignoring the more common dub, LP to cassette. As for radio you ignore weak signals. FM broadcasts with a little to a lot of static or other noise mixed in was quite common.
Slashdot Mirror
I shouldn't have to buy and carry extra gear for features that I, for my uses, consider to be core necessities.
I think the majority of users would have reciprocal complaints if the iPad had a built-in keyboard. Why do they have to add the bulk, weight and cost of a keyboard they don't want. For many years Macs were "gold plated" and included many premium features that most users didn't care about. I think Apple has learned from that mistake and rightfully makes such features options.
It sounds like your needs make a netbook a better option for you.
... the first problem of the game is to reach Jupiter with the lowest amount of propellant ...
This seems like a trivial thing to do. At escape velocity give engines a little burst, coast to the orbit of the destination, a little burst to decelerate, wait for the planet to get to that point. OK, its not very efficient with respect to time but that wasn't a stated criteria. Game design is hard, even for rocket scientists.
Oops, I think I got that mixed up a little. IIRC its accelerate to maintain the destination's orbit, deceleration would be to get captured by the destination itself.
... the first problem of the game is to reach Jupiter with the lowest amount of propellant ...
This seems like a trivial thing to do. At escape velocity give engines a little burst, coast to the orbit of the destination, a little burst to decelerate, wait for the planet to get to that point. OK, its not very efficient with respect to time but that wasn't a stated criteria. Game design is hard, even for rocket scientists.
... unless they put a real keyboard on the iPhone ...
Bluetooth keyboards work. I think there is at least one case that accommodates both.
One of my concerns would be that having the UDID allows for more general impersonation. With a hash specific to a particular app the impersonation is limited to your app.
Another concern would be related to personally identifiable information (PII). When non-PII is associated with PII the non-PII now falls under all the PII regulations. If you use a hash you do not have to worry about what others at the university are collecting. Keep in mind that what constitutes an association between non-PII and PII may be defined by a hostile lawyer. Maybe your team's data being on the same server as another team's.
The UDID would be a poor choice to identify a user. A person may have multiple devices, say an iPhone and an iPad, or they may replace/upgrade their device to a newer model. I think you will have to use an account name chosen by the user, an email address, etc.
That could be done just as easily without sending the UDID.
Agreed. I would use a hash of the UDID.
However for some circumstances I don't think the developer needs any sort of device ID. For example I have a scientific and hex calculator app, other modes are about to be released. I would like to get some usage data showing how much use the various modes get. I've considered adding counters that indicate how many operations are performed in each mode and sending these counters to a server periodically. All I want is aggregate data, I don't need any device ID in this case.
Some of what you cite is IRS or tax return specific. If the agency is not the IRS or if the documentation is not part of a tax return then things may be a bit less restrictive. And this is in the current environment where corps have some privacy, not in the hypothetical environment where the supreme court rules against corp privacy.
More importantly we have a forest and trees problem here. Flaws in one ad hoc example not withstanding, the general principle that eliminating corp privacy may have some unintended negative consequences remains.
You belong to a social advocacy or political group that makes a mistake on a tax filing. The IRS collects documentation including membership rolls. Now that membership roll is available through a freedom of information act request.
So.... What?
Hollywood Blacklist
If you want your organization to be able to do things individuals can not, not least protect the individuals from losses, or from prosecution for negligence and lawbreaking by the organization, you have to expect that there will be compensating features of public oversight.
No. There is also the option of government oversight. Especially since it can be mandated that government agents have special access to information. For example the IRS having access to financial and business transactions that the public probably should not have access to.
I fail to see a problem here. Corporations are not people, nor are other collections of people. The reason why individuals have a right to privacy which is enshrined in various portions of the constitution is that an individual has far, far more to lose than a corporate entity does if the information is made public.
It is silly to think that an organization's information can not harm an individual. Consider the membership rolls of a "red leaning" organization during the McCarthy era.
Even with the examples you've given, I'm not seeing how it's a bad idea.
You belong to a social advocacy or political group that makes a mistake on a tax filing. The IRS collects documentation including membership rolls. Now that membership roll is available through a freedom of information act request.
If you want the right to privacy, then you need to be arrestable. Aka, if they are found guilty of a crime, then the entire corporation must go to jail. After all, if they can't be held responsible, then they shouldn't get the ability to hide their actions.
Corporate officers can be sued or prosecuted for their decisions and actions. Corporations themselves can be dissolved due to misconduct.
When it can die like I can. When it can be taken off the streets indefinitely for doing harm to other people, the way I can. Same goes for free speech in my opinion.
Careful, given your criteria corporations should have the right to privacy. I suspect that was not your intent. Judges can order that a corporation be dissolved for misconduct.
The problem with restricting privacy rights to individuals only is that ultimately no organization, corporate or not, will have privacy rights. Except perhaps churches in countries that grant them a special status. Beware the unintended consequences of a well intentioned idea.
I'd wager that the governments of those foreigners involved in building the Iranian nuclear infrastructure considered various plausible blowback scenarios that went far beyond upsetting the Americans. The possible risks go far beyond the financial impact of economic sanction.
Android Market apps are mostly super cheap. Who can't afford $1 on a game they'll play for a few days non-stop? Or a few bucks on a ROM management app? Prices for most paid apps are so low that I imagine that the largest barrier to entry is not price, but the effort required to set up one or more credit cards. My hypothesis, for that reason, is that a large portion of the piracy comes from the age 15-20 crowd who have fancy phones and lots of free time to figure out piracy options, but no credit card(s).
In general a low price is not necessarily a deterrent to piracy. Neither are alternative payment methods such as paypal. Piracy will simply occur whenever it can be easily accomplished. I've seen it done with highly functional low cost (US$12-15) software required for university coursework. Sales went from near zero to in line with corresponding textbook sales when a publisher added trivial-to-crack copy protection.
... if it was sourced from China or Russia likely safe ...
Why? Given that the worm was idle it may have been an insurance policy, something to activate in the future should Iran start moving against the interests of current "friends". A digital sleeper agent. The current Iranian government is hostile to the west but the population is largely friendly towards the west in general. A future Iranian government that is in line with its citizens may realign itself politically. Or the current Iranian government could just start down a path that is a danger to everyone including current friends.
I don't claim the above is the more likely scenario but it is certainly highly plausible. I think the current suspect list that everyone is tossing around is a bit too short.
Yeah, but Germany isn't hostile to Iran, and German and other European companies do billions worth of business with Iran.
My understanding is that the worm has never gone active and done any damage. It has merely been discovered and removal is the problem. Perhaps the worm was installed by a country friendly to Iran, someone involved in the nuclear infrastructure project, as some kind of insurance. If at some time in the future Iran starts moving against the interests of this current "friend" then the worm would get activated. I think the suspect list that is commonly offered is too short.
... Working together to deflect this asteroid will diminish those cherished divisions ...
You will have to wait for a different asteroid since this one is "only 50 meters wide". At this size it could be safely nuked so its more likely we'll be upgrading nuclear devices and their delivery systems to reach and intercept such a small fast moving target. Numerous nations can manage that on their own.
Objective-c is Apples attempt to co-opt developers
Objective-C never was a developer lock in, it is merely used by the API for the operating system. You have always been free to use C/C++ for your application's code. Whether the OS API is objective-c or C/C++ doesn't really matter, such calls are rarely portable to begin with as they are generally platform or hardware specific.
You'd have to factor in the cost of a blackberry too.
Not if you already are, or plan to become, a blackberry user.
If you take the current iPad resolution and apply the iPhone 3GS pixels per inch you get about 7.9 inches diagonally. Maintaining the current resolution and using something at least as readable as the old iPhone screen might be a practical way to scale down an iPad a bit.
Unfortunately, the publishing industry is driven by the need to turn a profit to fund its endeavors, and specialist items like this book are not obvious candidates for volume selling - which is a credit to No Starch Press' willingness to venture down this path.
The situation is not as dire as this post seems to suggest. Print on demand is an option for a book such as this. Getting a publisher like No Starch is great since they will provide traditional editing, review and marketing services however the publisher is not necessarily making any great investment since they too can take advantage of a print on demand type of approach. There is no longer a need to print a large number of books up front.
And the record companies pitched a complete fit over this and lobbied for YEARS for legislation to stop it, so apparently it's not so trivial to many as you imagine it.
They lobbied congress because they *paid* a royalty for each song they played. They were within the law so they were not sued, unlike those operating a site with ripped songs. Again, dubbing is a poor comparison to ripping.
An FM radio dub, made to a good quality cassette deck at the time, had FAR higher quality sound than a dub made from those stupid two bay decks (which came much later than the time I am talking about).
You are ignoring the more common dub, LP to cassette. As for radio you ignore weak signals. FM broadcasts with a little to a lot of static or other noise mixed in was quite common.