I think it's important to note that it's actually the developer that assigns the age rating to an app and not Apple. Of course, Apple can refuse to approve an app if it decides that the rating is inappropriate but the original article does not state that.
Apple doesn't reject apps because they're stupid, they reject them if they fail to comply with the terms stated in the developer program agreement.
The real problem here is not that they reject apps that fail to comply with the dev program agreement -- that should be expected. The problem is that Apple keep creating new, arbitrary and undocumented reasons to reject both new apps and updates. Where, for example, did this "any apps with a UIWebView have to be rated 17+" come from? Has anyone seen a policy from Apple?
Can't you just post a link to a bug tracker in your product description?
You can but many people won't use it.
In the description for my app I have a link to the website (which has a support email address) and my support site (UserVoice). In my app there's an "Email me" button, a link to the website and the support website, yet I still get bug reports and feature requests posted as reviews.
With the caveat that it was a while ago that I used the GIMP, my main problem with the interface was the choice of defaults. Just selecting a tool and using the defaults tended to work okay in Photoshop and poorly in the GIMP. I wasn't keen on the proliferation of floating windows either, but the killer was that I could get better results with less work going the Adobe route.
Evolution isn't really about survival into old age, more survival to an age where reproduction is possible -- just ask a male praying mantis. So one possible reason why regeneration abilities didn't survive is that it mainly benefits older animals who are less likely to be generating off-springs.
Yet, as The Register notes, despite the low price "Pirate Bay has eight thousand concurrent downloads at time of writing." Even if you ignore the RIAA-style maths in calculating lost earnings it's not a good sign that people are not prepared to pay even $5 for 4 CDs worth of music in a DRM-free format.
I think we're some way past 2mm subscribers now. That report is dated 2003! This one says that there were over 13mm subscribers at the end of 2006, and presumably more by now.
So that means that broadband should only be made half illegal. The question becomes: should we only be allowed to receive the even or the odd bits?
Expertise assumed by authors?
on
Learning jQuery
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· Score: 2, Interesting
"One complaint of just about any book that attempts to teach a new language or technology is a presumed level of expertise by the authors."
Actually I have the exact opposite experience: whenever I try to buy a book for a new language (or whatever) they always assume that I'm starting right from the beginning, to the point of explaining what an "if" statement and a "for" loop are for. I'm sorry, but if I'm learning C++ or Perl it's pretty unlikely that it's going to be my first computer language.
I know it's difficult to get the level right but not every book has to be 1000 pages long with full colour screen-shots...
I think you have an "off by one" error there. Elements 4 is the current version on the Mac, with 5 on Windows. To be honest, if the delta between 4 and 5 is as little as that between 3 and 4 then you're probably not missing much.
Adobe have been pretty smart about choosing which features to include in Elements -- enough to keep me happy most of the time but with a little nag at the back of my mind thinking, "What if I upgraded..?" I trust they'll do something similar for the web version.
The headline for the Dobbs article is "Wi-Fi Phone Buyer's Guide" which, for something that discusses the technology and its advantages and disadvantages, is about right. It doesn't really review the phones though. You could pretty much write the article without ever having touched one! And, unfortunately, that's a very big difference. As far as I know they're all very much Version 1.0 products with some pretty serious problems.
I liked the concept and bought a Belkin Wi-Fi Phone, but ultimately I was pretty disappointed. It's currently back with Belkin being replaced.
I interviewed for a technical consultant role here in the UK. I got through two phone interviews before being rejected. My second interviewer had, apparently, had fourteen interviews before being hired. That's just an absurd number. How much holiday and sick leave can you take at short notice without arousing suspicion?! (They were both long enough or required Internet access that I couldn't do them at work.)
By the end of the second I was in two minds whether to take things any further anyway. I wanted to work for Google, but could I go through fourteen interviews? I was concerned about the money, as no number was on the job spec and big names often offer low and offer options to compensate. I can't pay my mortgage with stock options!
And, most significantly, was the style of interview. They asked brain-teasers, which I tend to think is a lousy way to scope out a candidate. Either you know the trick and can do it instantly, you get lucky or you need a hint. None of these really shows how smart you are, how well you can program a computer, interact with clients or, indeed, any other aspect of the job. The interviewer was also clearly working in the background while I was trying to answer the questions, only half listening, which was just plain rude.
Most communications were friendly and personal, right up to the last. The rejection email started, impersonally, "dear candidate."
So overall I'm not terribly impressed with Google recruitment. Okay, maybe I'm biased against them as they turned me down but as an interviewer I've always considered part of my job as leaving a positive impression of the company even with candidates that are not going to be hired. Google failed in this.
The funniest thing about all this is that, as you say, people get baffled with every new release yet they refuse to move over to OpenOffice (or any other competing suite) as they are unfamiliar.
If they don't start working on interoperability I think there will be a shakeout. All the services you note as counter examples allow you to work with other services, but if I use Skype I can't call a SIP user or someone on Google Talk. Until I found Adium I had to have MSN, Yahoo and AOL Messenger all running at the same time (and even then I can't use my iSight) which, at best, is a pain. I've not used VoIP much but the same problem is apparent.
Where does hardware stop and software start? The Pentium converts x86 instructions into lower level, RISC-like insructions internally. It was an error in this micro-code that caused the error. So yes it was burned onto a chip rather than read from a disc but I'd still say it was software.
I use Adium for exactly the reasons you suggest, however it's not perfect and the article does mention some of its greatest short-comings: multimedia. It's wonderful for text-only IM but as soon as you want audio or video you have to fire up iChat. A real pain. Not that iChat is bad, it's just that one of the reasons I like Adium is to avoid having to open multiple IM clients!
Anyone interested in antiquated computers will probably also be interested in Digital Retro, a book with loads of old machines, pictures, histories. Fascinating stuff.
Arthur: You know, it's at times like this, when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space, that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young.
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's important to note that it's actually the developer that assigns the age rating to an app and not Apple. Of course, Apple can refuse to approve an app if it decides that the rating is inappropriate but the original article does not state that.
Apple doesn't reject apps because they're stupid, they reject them if they fail to comply with the terms stated in the developer program agreement.
The real problem here is not that they reject apps that fail to comply with the dev program agreement -- that should be expected. The problem is that Apple keep creating new, arbitrary and undocumented reasons to reject both new apps and updates. Where, for example, did this "any apps with a UIWebView have to be rated 17+" come from? Has anyone seen a policy from Apple?
Can't you just post a link to a bug tracker in your product description?
You can but many people won't use it.
In the description for my app I have a link to the website (which has a support email address) and my support site (UserVoice). In my app there's an "Email me" button, a link to the website and the support website, yet I still get bug reports and feature requests posted as reviews.
If only it were that easy. Every time I've sent my resume to a recruiter in PDF format they've asked me to send it again as a Word doc.
With the caveat that it was a while ago that I used the GIMP, my main problem with the interface was the choice of defaults. Just selecting a tool and using the defaults tended to work okay in Photoshop and poorly in the GIMP. I wasn't keen on the proliferation of floating windows either, but the killer was that I could get better results with less work going the Adobe route.
Evolution isn't really about survival into old age, more survival to an age where reproduction is possible -- just ask a male praying mantis. So one possible reason why regeneration abilities didn't survive is that it mainly benefits older animals who are less likely to be generating off-springs.
Yet, as The Register notes, despite the low price "Pirate Bay has eight thousand concurrent downloads at time of writing." Even if you ignore the RIAA-style maths in calculating lost earnings it's not a good sign that people are not prepared to pay even $5 for 4 CDs worth of music in a DRM-free format.
I think we're some way past 2mm subscribers now. That report is dated 2003! This one says that there were over 13mm subscribers at the end of 2006, and presumably more by now.
So that means that broadband should only be made half illegal. The question becomes: should we only be allowed to receive the even or the odd bits?
"One complaint of just about any book that attempts to teach a new language or technology is a presumed level of expertise by the authors."
Actually I have the exact opposite experience: whenever I try to buy a book for a new language (or whatever) they always assume that I'm starting right from the beginning, to the point of explaining what an "if" statement and a "for" loop are for. I'm sorry, but if I'm learning C++ or Perl it's pretty unlikely that it's going to be my first computer language.
I know it's difficult to get the level right but not every book has to be 1000 pages long with full colour screen-shots...
I think you have an "off by one" error there. Elements 4 is the current version on the Mac, with 5 on Windows. To be honest, if the delta between 4 and 5 is as little as that between 3 and 4 then you're probably not missing much.
Adobe have been pretty smart about choosing which features to include in Elements -- enough to keep me happy most of the time but with a little nag at the back of my mind thinking, "What if I upgraded..?" I trust they'll do something similar for the web version.
The headline for the Dobbs article is "Wi-Fi Phone Buyer's Guide" which, for something that discusses the technology and its advantages and disadvantages, is about right. It doesn't really review the phones though. You could pretty much write the article without ever having touched one! And, unfortunately, that's a very big difference. As far as I know they're all very much Version 1.0 products with some pretty serious problems.
I liked the concept and bought a Belkin Wi-Fi Phone, but ultimately I was pretty disappointed. It's currently back with Belkin being replaced.
"You can't make somebody understand something if their salary depends upon them not understanding it," Upton Sinclair
I interviewed for a technical consultant role here in the UK. I got through two phone interviews before being rejected. My second interviewer had, apparently, had fourteen interviews before being hired. That's just an absurd number. How much holiday and sick leave can you take at short notice without arousing suspicion?! (They were both long enough or required Internet access that I couldn't do them at work.)
By the end of the second I was in two minds whether to take things any further anyway. I wanted to work for Google, but could I go through fourteen interviews? I was concerned about the money, as no number was on the job spec and big names often offer low and offer options to compensate. I can't pay my mortgage with stock options!
And, most significantly, was the style of interview. They asked brain-teasers, which I tend to think is a lousy way to scope out a candidate. Either you know the trick and can do it instantly, you get lucky or you need a hint. None of these really shows how smart you are, how well you can program a computer, interact with clients or, indeed, any other aspect of the job. The interviewer was also clearly working in the background while I was trying to answer the questions, only half listening, which was just plain rude.
Most communications were friendly and personal, right up to the last. The rejection email started, impersonally, "dear candidate."
So overall I'm not terribly impressed with Google recruitment. Okay, maybe I'm biased against them as they turned me down but as an interviewer I've always considered part of my job as leaving a positive impression of the company even with candidates that are not going to be hired. Google failed in this.
The funniest thing about all this is that, as you say, people get baffled with every new release yet they refuse to move over to OpenOffice (or any other competing suite) as they are unfamiliar.
Fifty three keys is still too many. I read of a Swedish keyboard with only two keys:
http://www.ysrnry.co.uk/hurdieho.htm
Doesn't OSX come with a copy of emacs? It may, however, only be the character version. Others have already mentioned the various GUI ports.
If they don't start working on interoperability I think there will be a shakeout. All the services you note as counter examples allow you to work with other services, but if I use Skype I can't call a SIP user or someone on Google Talk. Until I found Adium I had to have MSN, Yahoo and AOL Messenger all running at the same time (and even then I can't use my iSight) which, at best, is a pain. I've not used VoIP much but the same problem is apparent.
Where does hardware stop and software start? The Pentium converts x86 instructions into lower level, RISC-like insructions internally. It was an error in this micro-code that caused the error. So yes it was burned onto a chip rather than read from a disc but I'd still say it was software.
Remove the parameter, the bit after ".html," and it works fine.
I use Adium for exactly the reasons you suggest, however it's not perfect and the article does mention some of its greatest short-comings: multimedia. It's wonderful for text-only IM but as soon as you want audio or video you have to fire up iChat. A real pain. Not that iChat is bad, it's just that one of the reasons I like Adium is to avoid having to open multiple IM clients!
Anyone interested in antiquated computers will probably also be interested in Digital Retro, a book with loads of old machines, pictures, histories. Fascinating stuff.
I think slashdot had a review at one point too.
--> Stephen
This weeks I, Cringely also touts cell processors as the NextBigThing.
Arthur: You know, it's at times like this, when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man from Betelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space, that I really wish I'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young.
Ford: Why, what did she tell you?
Arthur: I don't know, I didn't listen.
Do people actually expect this to be released without a hitch?
Saw them in John Lewis in London about a month ago. Was tempted until I saw they were £150...
--> Stephen
As they say on the TV news, here is that story in full.