I do agree with you on the C/C++ thing, though. There are certain categories of apps (DSP/games) where native compilation is important. But enough continual pressure from devs and Microsoft will probably provide some mechanism for that. But getting back to refuting you -- for most apps,.NET is fine, and in fact an absolutely excellent framework for mobile development. Some people will find it hard to go back to ObjC.
Wow, scary bolded phrases. There is no reasonable sense in which Microsoft is "four years behind". The WP7 platform is launching with hardware on par with other top-end 2010 smartphones, and an app SDK far ahead of the 2007 iPhone. They are a little behind, but not four years behind. Stop hyperventilating so much, dude -- just give WP7 some time and see how it does.
It's understandable that you're not excited by that stock screenshot. But the whole point of the start screen is that is different for each person. It shows media customized to you -- social networking updates, contacts, photos. If you ever get a WP7 and watch it populate the start screen with stuff from your personal accounts, you will probably at least have a better appreciation for it, even if you still prefer Android or iOS. It's hard to explain, but it's the difference between seeing a row of cold, impersonal icons that 10 million other iOS users also see, versus (with really minimal setup) seeing a tile with your SO's photo and status, and other rich media that is very much individualized.
So will that approach resonate with the public? I have no idea. Time will tell.
The lack of socket support is a minor issue compared to the lack of copy and paste and a lack of multitasking this late in the game. They rushed it out. There are gaping holes in the API which cause it to be much harder to develop on compared with even Android let alone iOS. iOS provides a rich set of frameworks whereas MSFT platforms usually offer only basic functionality and you have to either "roll your own" or buy an off the shelf third party library.
(*yawn*) When the iPhone was released, it didn't have _any_ SDK for writing installed apps, and it stomped all over existing smartphone platforms that did support custom apps, multitasking, clipboard, and sockets -- such as the old Windows Mobile. What made the iPhone a huge success was not its SDK or apps. Just stop think about that for a bit. I think it could be entirely possible for a new smartphone platform to "succeed", i.e. sell widely and turn a large profit, with a tiny app store selection -- if people found the core experience "cool" enough.
Microsoft is rolling out features slowly and deliberately. In my opinion (speaking as a WP7 app dev, previously iOS), they are doing a great job on quality of the specific features they've put out so far. There are loads of open source stuff that fills in the holes (such as SQLite). Now, don't get me wrong, I do like to see people complaining about missing features -- that's great, because it keeps pressure on Microsoft to fill in the holes. But some people need to cut out the baloney about the whole platform failing because e.g. non-HTTP socket apps can't be written yet.
...was from the lawyers. Probably MSFT engineers were thrilled with the tech community phenomenon all along, and now have permission to say so. To anyone but a lawyer it's obvious that everybody wins in this situation -- hardware hackers get really cool toys to play with, Microsoft sells a few more, and -- most importantly for Microsoft -- they will get critical technical analysis and feedback that they would never get from ordinary (game) consumers. If they're smart, they'll use this process for product improvement. Here's hoping they can keep the lawyers out at the golf course for awhile.:)
How does your desire to believe that they were in the telephone closet in order to bug it translate into evidence?
It is perfectly plausible that their request to see the telephone closet was just part of their pretexting cover. While I don't know what they were trying to do, it's pretty obvious that no evidence has surfaced about a plot to bug their phone -- that was a case of their political foes jumping the gun and starting a rumor.
I don't think they're going to compete with Microsoft. But what they are doing is trying to invent a new class of computing device, which I think is going to fail. Maybe in another ten years having a constant internet connection will be a given, but right now... I'm just imagining people trying to type a document while riding on the subway: "Whoops, lost my internet. Oh, it's back again... let me re-open my session..."
... of Microsoft's XML based / GUI / animation-friendly /.NET based vector interface technology. The beast underlying Silverlight will continue to find its widest audience in WPF on the desktop, and possibly a decent sized user base in Windows Phone 7 -- if MS can get traction on the latter. Displacing Flash on the web has always been a pipe dream, and based on the dictates of iOS not even a pipe dream worth so very much effort anymore.
"We demand the version which is illegal to release."
Either you just don't get it, or you are a blind advocate for President Obama.
Any version of his B.C. would be illegal for Hawaii to release. What's odd is that he didn't release the version everybody else would have (e.g. as McCain did) -- showing the hospital where he was born, etc. Instead, he produced a B.C. summary computer printout created around the year 2007. Now, I believe it's an official Hawaiian document, and I believe he was born in Hawaii... but it's obvious to me and to most Americans that he's hiding something embarrassing. And darn it, we want to know what it is.
Aren't you curious why he had a new document generated in 2007? Don't you want to take a peek at his original, long form B.C.? Many very respectable people and organizations including the NYT have been curious, and very much wanted a peek... however for whatever reason, Mr. Obama refused to grant access. If he just said the word, Hawaiian officials would trip over themselves in a rush to make public whatever information they have. Saying (as you did above) that the long form is somehow specially illegal is just... silly. You think Hawaii wouldn't comply with a request from Pres. Obama to release it?
Besides, he said in one of his books that he had his B.C. lying around with other papers. How about a peek at that, Mr. President? If the NYT is curious, I don't think it's unreasonable for me to be as well.:P
If you say it's none of our business because he's entitled to privacy as an American citizen, then I guess you have a point as far as that goes. But a counter-point could be made that the American people have a legitimate interest to know all the details of his background in order to judge his suitability for the top job. When an immigrant is naturalized and becomes an American citizen, he swears an oath that he disclaims and rejects any loyalty or fealty to a foreign country. Does Mr. Obama have any baggage like that? Is he, or has he ever been, a dual citizen? The secrecy surrounding his past has sort of blocked discussions of this nature. He can keep the mask of secrecy if he likes, but based on some national polls, I think it will contribute to his being a one term president.
With the producers, director, actors, production crews, and distributors facing off in a lawsuit -- a great Battle of Five Armies over a huge pile of gold.
Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to throwing my $10 on the pile. I'm sure the film itself will be great.
No, MonoTouch doesn't use Silverlight, it uses the native iOS Cocoa UI. Similarly, the forthcoming MonoDroid will use the native Android UI.
However, you can write your core logic in C# and share it between three separate projects/platforms, generating the UI with MonoTouch, MonoDroid, and Silverlight (iOS, Android, and WP7, respectively).
Currently that decision would be hard to justify unless you really love.NET (which I admittedly kinda do myself), since the viability of WP7 is a huge question mark and.NET is a somewhat of a weighty and foreign addition to the other platforms.
we are trying to figure out why you posted the link
Let me spell it out for you. When I said...
Spying on me without a warrant is a non-starter... problems might be... narrowing down the scope of the search such that society would both desire and trust the process
... I did not mean that we should allow government to spy on us in order to keep our babies safe. What I did mean was that technology such as we're discussing could have a role in preventing the commonest situation of infant heat deaths. Challenge in any such deployment of this technology would obviously include ethics and legality. Probably that would mean doing it with the "consent of the surveilled".
I can imagine, for example, private lots and parking decks using technology like this. Membership in such lots would be "opt-in", and would involve signing a contract. Besides payment terms, etc, the contract would undoubtedly be for the protection of the lot owner, so that there would not be an expectation of liability if their good faith "baby sweeps" failed to detect a child. But for many professional commuters with small children, such an arrangement would be a really nice perk of a parking lot, for which they'd be willing to pay extra.
Romantic liaisons in such a parking lot would be ill advised, unless you're one of those... oh, nevermind. But I don't see how it would violate anybody's civil rights, because they would have decided to allow their vehicles to be monitored in this fashion. If you somehow snuck your car in past the gates without a contract, you shouldn't have an expectation of privacy.
Is that clear? (Man, it is a lot of work to contribute to a Slashdot thread if you aren't moo-ing in perfect chorus with the rest of the herd.)
Good points. The 3G option would be more $$$ than a simple car alarm, but would have the benefit that it isn't simultaneously a convenient notification to would-be pedophiles and child abductors.
I'm not entirely sure why I'm bothering to interact with you on this issue, since you're too lazy to go read the article. I suppose I'm doing it just so the permanent record here provides useful information to people, and corrects the misinformation you posted. So let's take your errors one at a time, shall we?
1. You incorrectly assume that I would put up with blanket surveillance. However, I listed that as a hurdle to be overcome. I don't want to be spied on.
2. You keep erroneously saying that this is about dumb parents / bad parents / lack of intelligence / people deserving to be neutered. But if you read the article I linked to, then you would see that this kind of tragedy has happened to all kinds of people, even to people of the highest intelligence levels. It has even happened to pediatricians. It also has nothing to do with a lack of caring for the child -- it frequently happens to people who really love their kids.
3. You have a wrong view of how the human mind works. You say you would always know where your dog is. That's great. But I bet you don't drop your dog off at daycare every weekday morning at 7. Consider that to the parent in this situation, he really believes through the workday that he did drop the kid off at daycare. If you don't think the human mind is capable of playing tricks on you, think again. If you think parents are never tired and under-performing in the mornings, think again.
4. You see this as a difference between individuals, like one person would never make the error, and another person might be susceptible to it. But given the same "vulnerability surface area" (i.e. opportunities for error, like the daily daycare thing), I'm not sure that's true. I think it's more like a problem that affects the human race. We weren't designed / evolved / what have you for mission critical multi-tasking operation.
5. You make this about me. Actually, this doesn't affect me personally. I have a low "vulnerability surface area" because I work as a software engineer from home, and my spouse cares for our kids when I'm working. We have never used daycare. My interest in the problem is pretty much out of horror at the fact that it happens to other people all the time, and an ethical-geekish belief that it's a solvable problem. But the solution does not lie in badmouthing the bereaved and mourning parents. It lies in recognizing human limitations and coming up with creative solutions to compensate for them. (Like the other guy's reply suggesting that an in-vehicle IR-based alarm would be a lot more effective, which is undoubtedly true.)
Sounds like someone who hasn't read the article I linked to; there was a reason it won a Pulitzer prize this year. As Gene Weingarten painfully documents, this happens to people from all tiers of society, with all levels of intelligence, and from all ethnic backgrounds. If there is anything it is not, it is "some sort of joke".
On the other hand, if you are posting as a teenager in your mom's basement, please just ignore this for another 5 or 10 years. Someday it will be important to you.
Yes, I've thought about that, too; it solves a lot of problems with the "external" solutions. It's not too far-fetched to imagine it as a standard vehicle feature.
Spying on me without a warrant is a non-starter. But I personally would love some backup protection against accidentally leaving a young child in the vehicle on a hot day (before making snarky comments about Darwin Awards, read this Pulitzer prize winning article. It's not about intelligence. Just read it. Seriously.)
A couple of problems might be: (a) narrowing down the scope of the search such that society would both desire and trust the process, and (b) figuring out how to detect living, moving soft tissues of babies or pets in the vehicle, versus the solid metal of guns or something -- I don't know if this part is even feasible.
OK, you can start the "think of the children" cat calls now.:P But I bet there are a few Slashdot parents out there (like me) who would love to see some backup protection against their worst nightmare. The scenario is that you forget to drop your kid off at daycare, then run in to work. Many hours later, you return to your car, at which time it's too late. Your typical working parents have the opportunity to make this mistake every morning at seven, five days a week.
I think people's mental impression will vary; yours is typical of an office worker. To someone employed in construction or agriculture, a bulldozer is a symbol of getting huge amounts of work done in a very short time.
This reminds me of an ad I saw some years back for an "object oriented database", where they showed a photoshopped race car with a tractor on the back end. Their marketing message was "Why do you have a sluggish RDMS on your web app's back end?" I found it hilarious, because my reflexive response was to ask, "Why is that totally useless racecar pasted on the front of that excellent looking tractor, the kind of vehicle that is used to grow all the crops that feed the world?":)
Clearly some of the usual business-oriented players are moving in this direction (see RIM, Cisco); but Apple has shown that the big money is in entertainment devices. It's actually kind of funny how this works. Microsoft and RIM were dominating the suit-wearing, jet-setting crowd, but then Steve Jobs waltzes in and sells high end smartphones and iPod Touch's to McDonalds workers and teenagers (many of whom can't really afford them), dwarfs MSFT's profits, and creates huge new markets out of thin air.
... but getting back on subject, I agree, that sounds like a really useful gadget that I would like myself.:^)
It's not elitist, it's just a simple truism. If you "can do the job well", then you are in a very real sense "a lawyer". That's what it means, no? And if you "can do the job well", then you should be able to pass the bar exams, too. That's actually what bar exams test -- judicial knowledge and ability.
(But IANAL, I'm just trying to highlight what is in my opinion a really bad idea.)
If it were 1 or 2 out of 9 liberal art students on the IT department, maybe we could then give some better error messages than hex codes or "method of object not found"
No. The solution is _not_ to give that work to people who lack the technical skills to do it -- the solution is to give programmers and IT people better training in human interface principles. And for those doing hiring for IT/dev to actually start paying attention to whether a candidate has developed skills in those supposedly extracurricular areas.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, strike that. landswipe is right about IE. I tried it in the Bing view, which isn't the same.
Um, just tried that in IE and it worked fine.
.NET is fine, and in fact an absolutely excellent framework for mobile development. Some people will find it hard to go back to ObjC.
I do agree with you on the C/C++ thing, though. There are certain categories of apps (DSP/games) where native compilation is important. But enough continual pressure from devs and Microsoft will probably provide some mechanism for that. But getting back to refuting you -- for most apps,
Wow, scary bolded phrases. There is no reasonable sense in which Microsoft is "four years behind". The WP7 platform is launching with hardware on par with other top-end 2010 smartphones, and an app SDK far ahead of the 2007 iPhone. They are a little behind, but not four years behind. Stop hyperventilating so much, dude -- just give WP7 some time and see how it does.
It's understandable that you're not excited by that stock screenshot. But the whole point of the start screen is that is different for each person. It shows media customized to you -- social networking updates, contacts, photos. If you ever get a WP7 and watch it populate the start screen with stuff from your personal accounts, you will probably at least have a better appreciation for it, even if you still prefer Android or iOS. It's hard to explain, but it's the difference between seeing a row of cold, impersonal icons that 10 million other iOS users also see, versus (with really minimal setup) seeing a tile with your SO's photo and status, and other rich media that is very much individualized.
So will that approach resonate with the public? I have no idea. Time will tell.
The lack of socket support is a minor issue compared to the lack of copy and paste and a lack of multitasking this late in the game. They rushed it out. There are gaping holes in the API which cause it to be much harder to develop on compared with even Android let alone iOS. iOS provides a rich set of frameworks whereas MSFT platforms usually offer only basic functionality and you have to either "roll your own" or buy an off the shelf third party library.
(*yawn*) When the iPhone was released, it didn't have _any_ SDK for writing installed apps, and it stomped all over existing smartphone platforms that did support custom apps, multitasking, clipboard, and sockets -- such as the old Windows Mobile. What made the iPhone a huge success was not its SDK or apps. Just stop think about that for a bit. I think it could be entirely possible for a new smartphone platform to "succeed", i.e. sell widely and turn a large profit, with a tiny app store selection -- if people found the core experience "cool" enough.
Microsoft is rolling out features slowly and deliberately. In my opinion (speaking as a WP7 app dev, previously iOS), they are doing a great job on quality of the specific features they've put out so far. There are loads of open source stuff that fills in the holes (such as SQLite). Now, don't get me wrong, I do like to see people complaining about missing features -- that's great, because it keeps pressure on Microsoft to fill in the holes. But some people need to cut out the baloney about the whole platform failing because e.g. non-HTTP socket apps can't be written yet.
...was from the lawyers. Probably MSFT engineers were thrilled with the tech community phenomenon all along, and now have permission to say so. To anyone but a lawyer it's obvious that everybody wins in this situation -- hardware hackers get really cool toys to play with, Microsoft sells a few more, and -- most importantly for Microsoft -- they will get critical technical analysis and feedback that they would never get from ordinary (game) consumers. If they're smart, they'll use this process for product improvement. Here's hoping they can keep the lawyers out at the golf course for awhile. :)
How does your desire to believe that they were in the telephone closet in order to bug it translate into evidence? It is perfectly plausible that their request to see the telephone closet was just part of their pretexting cover. While I don't know what they were trying to do, it's pretty obvious that no evidence has surfaced about a plot to bug their phone -- that was a case of their political foes jumping the gun and starting a rumor.
I don't think they're going to compete with Microsoft. But what they are doing is trying to invent a new class of computing device, which I think is going to fail. Maybe in another ten years having a constant internet connection will be a given, but right now... I'm just imagining people trying to type a document while riding on the subway: "Whoops, lost my internet. Oh, it's back again... let me re-open my session..."
... of Microsoft's XML based / GUI / animation-friendly / .NET based vector interface technology. The beast underlying Silverlight will continue to find its widest audience in WPF on the desktop, and possibly a decent sized user base in Windows Phone 7 -- if MS can get traction on the latter. Displacing Flash on the web has always been a pipe dream, and based on the dictates of iOS not even a pipe dream worth so very much effort anymore.
"We demand the version which is illegal to release."
Either you just don't get it, or you are a blind advocate for President Obama.
Any version of his B.C. would be illegal for Hawaii to release. What's odd is that he didn't release the version everybody else would have (e.g. as McCain did) -- showing the hospital where he was born, etc. Instead, he produced a B.C. summary computer printout created around the year 2007. Now, I believe it's an official Hawaiian document, and I believe he was born in Hawaii... but it's obvious to me and to most Americans that he's hiding something embarrassing. And darn it, we want to know what it is.
Aren't you curious why he had a new document generated in 2007? Don't you want to take a peek at his original, long form B.C.? Many very respectable people and organizations including the NYT have been curious, and very much wanted a peek... however for whatever reason, Mr. Obama refused to grant access. If he just said the word, Hawaiian officials would trip over themselves in a rush to make public whatever information they have. Saying (as you did above) that the long form is somehow specially illegal is just... silly. You think Hawaii wouldn't comply with a request from Pres. Obama to release it?
Besides, he said in one of his books that he had his B.C. lying around with other papers. How about a peek at that, Mr. President? If the NYT is curious, I don't think it's unreasonable for me to be as well. :P
If you say it's none of our business because he's entitled to privacy as an American citizen, then I guess you have a point as far as that goes. But a counter-point could be made that the American people have a legitimate interest to know all the details of his background in order to judge his suitability for the top job. When an immigrant is naturalized and becomes an American citizen, he swears an oath that he disclaims and rejects any loyalty or fealty to a foreign country. Does Mr. Obama have any baggage like that? Is he, or has he ever been, a dual citizen? The secrecy surrounding his past has sort of blocked discussions of this nature. He can keep the mask of secrecy if he likes, but based on some national polls, I think it will contribute to his being a one term president.
With the producers, director, actors, production crews, and distributors facing off in a lawsuit -- a great Battle of Five Armies over a huge pile of gold.
Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to throwing my $10 on the pile. I'm sure the film itself will be great.
No, MonoTouch doesn't use Silverlight, it uses the native iOS Cocoa UI. Similarly, the forthcoming MonoDroid will use the native Android UI. However, you can write your core logic in C# and share it between three separate projects/platforms, generating the UI with MonoTouch, MonoDroid, and Silverlight (iOS, Android, and WP7, respectively). Currently that decision would be hard to justify unless you really love .NET (which I admittedly kinda do myself), since the viability of WP7 is a huge question mark and .NET is a somewhat of a weighty and foreign addition to the other platforms.
Let me spell it out for you. When I said...
... I did not mean that we should allow government to spy on us in order to keep our babies safe. What I did mean was that technology such as we're discussing could have a role in preventing the commonest situation of infant heat deaths. Challenge in any such deployment of this technology would obviously include ethics and legality. Probably that would mean doing it with the "consent of the surveilled".
I can imagine, for example, private lots and parking decks using technology like this. Membership in such lots would be "opt-in", and would involve signing a contract. Besides payment terms, etc, the contract would undoubtedly be for the protection of the lot owner, so that there would not be an expectation of liability if their good faith "baby sweeps" failed to detect a child. But for many professional commuters with small children, such an arrangement would be a really nice perk of a parking lot, for which they'd be willing to pay extra.
Romantic liaisons in such a parking lot would be ill advised, unless you're one of those... oh, nevermind. But I don't see how it would violate anybody's civil rights, because they would have decided to allow their vehicles to be monitored in this fashion. If you somehow snuck your car in past the gates without a contract, you shouldn't have an expectation of privacy.
Is that clear? (Man, it is a lot of work to contribute to a Slashdot thread if you aren't moo-ing in perfect chorus with the rest of the herd.)
Good points. The 3G option would be more $$$ than a simple car alarm, but would have the benefit that it isn't simultaneously a convenient notification to would-be pedophiles and child abductors.
I'm not entirely sure why I'm bothering to interact with you on this issue, since you're too lazy to go read the article. I suppose I'm doing it just so the permanent record here provides useful information to people, and corrects the misinformation you posted. So let's take your errors one at a time, shall we?
1. You incorrectly assume that I would put up with blanket surveillance. However, I listed that as a hurdle to be overcome. I don't want to be spied on.
2. You keep erroneously saying that this is about dumb parents / bad parents / lack of intelligence / people deserving to be neutered. But if you read the article I linked to, then you would see that this kind of tragedy has happened to all kinds of people, even to people of the highest intelligence levels. It has even happened to pediatricians. It also has nothing to do with a lack of caring for the child -- it frequently happens to people who really love their kids.
3. You have a wrong view of how the human mind works. You say you would always know where your dog is. That's great. But I bet you don't drop your dog off at daycare every weekday morning at 7. Consider that to the parent in this situation, he really believes through the workday that he did drop the kid off at daycare. If you don't think the human mind is capable of playing tricks on you, think again. If you think parents are never tired and under-performing in the mornings, think again.
4. You see this as a difference between individuals, like one person would never make the error, and another person might be susceptible to it. But given the same "vulnerability surface area" (i.e. opportunities for error, like the daily daycare thing), I'm not sure that's true. I think it's more like a problem that affects the human race. We weren't designed / evolved / what have you for mission critical multi-tasking operation.
5. You make this about me. Actually, this doesn't affect me personally. I have a low "vulnerability surface area" because I work as a software engineer from home, and my spouse cares for our kids when I'm working. We have never used daycare. My interest in the problem is pretty much out of horror at the fact that it happens to other people all the time, and an ethical-geekish belief that it's a solvable problem. But the solution does not lie in badmouthing the bereaved and mourning parents. It lies in recognizing human limitations and coming up with creative solutions to compensate for them. (Like the other guy's reply suggesting that an in-vehicle IR-based alarm would be a lot more effective, which is undoubtedly true.)
And I "predict" that they've already been using a form of the technology for a couple of decades.
Sounds like someone who hasn't read the article I linked to; there was a reason it won a Pulitzer prize this year. As Gene Weingarten painfully documents, this happens to people from all tiers of society, with all levels of intelligence, and from all ethnic backgrounds. If there is anything it is not, it is "some sort of joke".
On the other hand, if you are posting as a teenager in your mom's basement, please just ignore this for another 5 or 10 years. Someday it will be important to you.
Yes, I've thought about that, too; it solves a lot of problems with the "external" solutions. It's not too far-fetched to imagine it as a standard vehicle feature.
Spying on me without a warrant is a non-starter. But I personally would love some backup protection against accidentally leaving a young child in the vehicle on a hot day (before making snarky comments about Darwin Awards, read this Pulitzer prize winning article. It's not about intelligence. Just read it. Seriously.)
A couple of problems might be: (a) narrowing down the scope of the search such that society would both desire and trust the process, and (b) figuring out how to detect living, moving soft tissues of babies or pets in the vehicle, versus the solid metal of guns or something -- I don't know if this part is even feasible.
OK, you can start the "think of the children" cat calls now. :P But I bet there are a few Slashdot parents out there (like me) who would love to see some backup protection against their worst nightmare. The scenario is that you forget to drop your kid off at daycare, then run in to work. Many hours later, you return to your car, at which time it's too late. Your typical working parents have the opportunity to make this mistake every morning at seven, five days a week.
It was thought-provoking, anyway. Nice when advertising can be like that.
I think people's mental impression will vary; yours is typical of an office worker. To someone employed in construction or agriculture, a bulldozer is a symbol of getting huge amounts of work done in a very short time. This reminds me of an ad I saw some years back for an "object oriented database", where they showed a photoshopped race car with a tractor on the back end. Their marketing message was "Why do you have a sluggish RDMS on your web app's back end?" I found it hilarious, because my reflexive response was to ask, "Why is that totally useless racecar pasted on the front of that excellent looking tractor, the kind of vehicle that is used to grow all the crops that feed the world?" :)
Don't know about you guys, but I'm definitely putting tin foil on the seat before I sit on it.
Clearly some of the usual business-oriented players are moving in this direction (see RIM, Cisco); but Apple has shown that the big money is in entertainment devices. It's actually kind of funny how this works. Microsoft and RIM were dominating the suit-wearing, jet-setting crowd, but then Steve Jobs waltzes in and sells high end smartphones and iPod Touch's to McDonalds workers and teenagers (many of whom can't really afford them), dwarfs MSFT's profits, and creates huge new markets out of thin air.
... but getting back on subject, I agree, that sounds like a really useful gadget that I would like myself. :^)
It's not elitist, it's just a simple truism. If you "can do the job well", then you are in a very real sense "a lawyer". That's what it means, no? And if you "can do the job well", then you should be able to pass the bar exams, too. That's actually what bar exams test -- judicial knowledge and ability. (But IANAL, I'm just trying to highlight what is in my opinion a really bad idea.)
If it were 1 or 2 out of 9 liberal art students on the IT department, maybe we could then give some better error messages than hex codes or "method of object not found"
No. The solution is _not_ to give that work to people who lack the technical skills to do it -- the solution is to give programmers and IT people better training in human interface principles. And for those doing hiring for IT/dev to actually start paying attention to whether a candidate has developed skills in those supposedly extracurricular areas.