If you are having problems affording a $800 computer, being able to afford getting it fixed (and continue earning) may be an issue. A $150 warranty isn't a bad deal when put in that context.
Money isn't the sunlight, it's what you grow. The conditions are right to make money on Android apps, and will continue to improve and improve thanks to more and more devices and more and more market.
This is the first time I've ever seen market saturation being bragged about as a reason to support a platform. Perhaps moving to a forest where there is some sunlight would be wise if you want to ever be more than a sapling.
Basically, hogwash. Having one language and one tool chain leads to fewer methods of being able to solve problems, and reduces the utility of your computer system. Now instead of being able to use a.5mm slot head screwdriver, all I have a big ol' sledge hammer. There really is no "computer science" basis for Apple's decision. There is a marketing reason or two, though:
1. Eliminate cross platform development tools and lock in developers and users to your platform. 2. Ensure you can always put out better stuff than independent software vendors by pulling a Microsoft and adding new (undocumented or unreleased) libraries to the OS and then using the libraries to produce more functional, better integrated software than ISVs can. 3. It's easy to kill off competition or those doing things you don't like with the platform by introducing incompatibilities in system libraries.
The rest of your post, while interesting is basically speculating that Apple will create some whiz-bang complier that will solve all of the remaining big problems in computer science. I wish Apple luck, and I hope they solve at least two or three of the big challenges.
A note on languages: Objective-C does not make for instant parallelism as you still have to fix the giant game of whack-a-mole that goes on with shared memory and have a more effective way of communication between processes/threads/whatever you want to call 'em. Providing some metadata might help, but it's no magic bullet.
Here's the ugly truth: work has nothing to do with getting paid. Results do.
Actually, the salesperson is paid well beacuse of the value they deliver to the company. Engineers are paid the same way, they usually just don't get the connection between profit and pay. If you are smart, you'll take the time to find out what the company must make on your work to justify your salary, and then learn how to deliver even more value. Then when you want a fat raise, all you have to do is ask and point out the value you deliver. Here's how it works:
Engineer is paid $90,000 per year. Company must make $360,000 (professional services) - $1,400,000 (product) from the engineer's work to justify the salary. There's a lot of costs on top of your salary, so the company has to make a multiple on your salary. If you design great products or provide a service that is high value and the company can get more money for your time or will sell more product, then you should get paid more regardless of hours worked.
For salespeople it's simple - it's all about profit:
If I sell enough to generate $500,000 in profit after I get paid $250,000 who cares if I play golf three days per week and burn my expense account on entertaining clients at the local strip club?
Wow. I can't believe that MS wasted three years and $millions on this. MS really needs to take a look at what is going on and do something about it:
* MS Tablet PCs fail * Windows Mobile fails * MS ISO Standard file format fails * Windows Live fails * Zune fails
The bodies are getting stacked deep, there MS. Time to get back to what made you great and become hacker friendly again... and not in the sense that your OS and software have lots of security holes.
What did you expect from the military? There are two kind of guys that enter the military: Those that are murderers, and those that lie about it.
Funny thing, I served, and I never met anyone who was a murderer. In fact, I met a lot of very good people who were simply doing their duty. Some people were their for college benefits, others for vocational training, still others doing what they thought was civic duty. At the end of the day, though, not one man or woman I served with liked the idea of killing other people. Being around the machines of war (in my case, submarines and aircraft carriers), you arrive at a very clear understanding how terrible their purpose is, and just how horrible human beings can be to one another. It is frightening to think that people have spent the time and energy to build something so terrible as a nuclear powered submarine. It's also equally frightening when you figure out that there are real enemies, and they have the same weapons (or worse) as you side does. The only thing standing between war, peace and subjugation is simply the other side being afraid to fight.
That said, without people being willing to serve, we'd quickly find our nation and way of life being destroyed as there are people who want power, wealth and glory and are willing to stop at nothing to get it. Hitler comes to mind as the most clear and easy to understand example. Unfortunately, we do not live in Mr. Roger's neighborhood.
The only thing the US military has ever done is bombing black/brown/yellow people. Hmm. I suppose that those Germans who tried to take over the world a couple of last century were purple? Or Mr. "We will bury you" Khrushchev (who apparently was green or something) wanted good things for his enemies (that would be the US)?
The US hasn't fought a single Legitimate war since the independence wars
You, sir are either a raving lunatic or a troll of the worst sort.
Jeffery - This situation is just tragic, and those infantrymen are not "chickenshits." They were obeying orders that were put in place by commanders and political leaders eager to fight a war with minimum casualties on our side. If you want to cite cowardice, assign blame to the people who put those "grunts" in the position they were.
We've just witnessed the birth of a new buzz word.
Healthcare is a good thing. This bill is not.
on
Health Care Reform
·
· Score: 1
Any bill that expands power for the IRS (does anyone else think that the IRS has no place in making health care decisions?), places an entire sector of the economy under Government control (Biden's words, not mine) and will create lots more opportunity for people to go to jail is just not the prescription.
As it is, this law basically raises taxes, forces healthy, young people to buy insurance and creates a class of people who are too wealthy to get assistance and not wealthy enough to afford insurance, and then jails them for being squarely in the middle class. Why not take a little more time and do this right, and make it so health care becomes a right, not an enforced purchase of insurance bundled with a tax increase?
What a bunch of dip-shiat posers. First, Android apps are run on a virtual machine (yes, that's right, even on the phone). If you've actually cut code for Android, you would probably be familiar with the build/test cycle which consists of compiling and running on an Android Virual Device (AVD - an emulator that lets you simulate different phone configs) which comes with the SDK. The emulator supports multiple resolutions as well as multiple versions of the Android OS. Screen resolutions are really not that much of a challenge. Funky hardware (say, a totally bizarre, non-standard GPS chip) might be, but I have yet to run into a situation where the Android SDK doesn't provide an abstraction that just takes care of it for app development.
Note to Mr. Buy A Lot of Hardware: Your code does not know the difference between being inside an AVD or running on a real phone. I think someone at your company has a fetish for gadgets and is tickling it at your expense.
Note to/. at large:RTFM before opening mouth, RTFM and you'll be amazed what you learn. For the n00bs: RTFM = Read The Fscking Manual. More for the n00bs: typing $man fsck is not what RTFM wants you to do.
Ironically Android has been designed to provide developers a way to write one application that can be supported by many devices. It's also open source, and the SDK (and built in emulator) is freely available. This means if you want to be an expert on Android, you can download the SDK, and EVEN WITHOUT OWNING AN ANDROID PHONE write your very own applications... or try to or whatever. Just stop acting like you know what you are doing or you are some mobile software development expert when you don't even know what some guy who just installed the SDK knows about 15 minutes into trying out the SDK. Sheesh.// Feel Better Now //. continues to be/.
LOL, actually developing for Android is a joy compared to Windows. Android apps generally do not run on the hardware - they run on a java virtual machine, so a lot of the issues being discussed here are simply not true... compile once... run everywhere.
If the IOC claimed Lindsay Vonn as a tradmark, the cannot use a DMCA takedown to remove content. The C in DMCA is for Copyright. For trademark, you might get a "cease and desist" letter, but not a takedown notice.
A nation needs bread and hospitals and soldiers and flood relief for survival, but it needs something more than all that for a feeling of lasting national pride - the pyramids did that for Egypt, and NASA does that for America.
Everything is interrelated, and sometimes grand projects (connecting the east with the west via rail, for example) help identify and fix other social problems. Laws change. Attitudes change.
Without a need for change, nothing can change.
Look no further than the National Park system (which is at least an equal white elephant as the space program) which had to deal with massive corruption at the local level and in congress to achieve what it did. Or countless defense programs where the obstacles were not just technical, but that jobs were not being created in a key congressman's district. I could go on. There's benefit society wide, but a strong interest in the status quo.
Space is no different. Everyone wants the budget that NASA gets. Everyone does, however like the side benefits like velcro, miniaturization, pens that write upside down, etc...
One might say that a lack of or failed grand projects isn't a symptom of demosclerosis, it's a cause or at least contributing factor.
Space exploration has been largely aimless since then because it is largely pointless, except as a matter of pure scientific curiosity
There is no higher pursuit in science than satisfying curiosity. Every one of our great advances starts with simple curiosity.
Applied science with clear commercial gain should be left to the commercial world. Large scale pushing of the envelope? That's where the government and education world fits best.
Now, here's the issue with the current space program that I somewhat agree with.
and a more-palatable way of keeping aerospace corporations and engineers on welfare.
is that we were in a pissing match with the soviets
BTW - Nothing brings goals in to focus better than competition.
I always love debates on the space program. Lots of big ideas, but what is missing is leadership. What made NASA so successful in the 1960s and 1970s was that there was a clear objective: put a man on the moon. Build a reusable launch system. Put up a space station. The problem is that there are no real national goals with space, so it is exceedingly difficult to sell, say a heavy launch vehicle. Put some goals in, and suddenly money becomes easy because people buy into the grand plan. Say the goal is to put a permanent colony on the moon - or to put a man on Mars. Suddenly there is context and justification for spending, inventions to invent, and what is science suddenly turns into applied science.
Our politicians need to lead, not look for the people to lead them when it comes to space. An ambitious space program is just what is needed.
The issue is the the F-16 is cheaper to keep flying, but costs $32+ million when they crash due to engine failure, which happens much more frequently than with an F/A-18.
Slashdot Mirror
If you are having problems affording a $800 computer, being able to afford getting it fixed (and continue earning) may be an issue. A $150 warranty isn't a bad deal when put in that context.
Money isn't the sunlight, it's what you grow. The conditions are right to make money on Android apps, and will continue to improve and improve thanks to more and more devices and more and more market.
Good analogy, but the other forest is growing faster and has the same light, better soil, water and the temperature is more developer friendly.
+179 for a monitor and $70 for sales tax. Puts you pretty close to a grand if you buy the extended warranty.
Look at the success of the JVM, and .Net and the CLI. look at the GNU (multi-language) compiler.
Ok, they are great innovations, all of which support multiple languages. Your point is what?
Sanger just launched the world's worst FUD campaign:
My competitors are all pedophiles and their product is for distributing pedophilia.
This is the first time I've ever seen market saturation being bragged about as a reason to support a platform. Perhaps moving to a forest where there is some sunlight would be wise if you want to ever be more than a sapling.
Basically, hogwash. Having one language and one tool chain leads to fewer methods of being able to solve problems, and reduces the utility of your computer system. Now instead of being able to use a .5mm slot head screwdriver, all I have a big ol' sledge hammer. There really is no "computer science" basis for Apple's decision. There is a marketing reason or two, though:
1. Eliminate cross platform development tools and lock in developers and users to your platform.
2. Ensure you can always put out better stuff than independent software vendors by pulling a Microsoft and adding new (undocumented or unreleased) libraries to the OS and then using the libraries to produce more functional, better integrated software than ISVs can.
3. It's easy to kill off competition or those doing things you don't like with the platform by introducing incompatibilities in system libraries.
The rest of your post, while interesting is basically speculating that Apple will create some whiz-bang complier that will solve all of the remaining big problems in computer science. I wish Apple luck, and I hope they solve at least two or three of the big challenges.
A note on languages: Objective-C does not make for instant parallelism as you still have to fix the giant game of whack-a-mole that goes on with shared memory and have a more effective way of communication between processes/threads/whatever you want to call 'em. Providing some metadata might help, but it's no magic bullet.
Nah... they should go to school for and extra year to get the smart ground out of them.
Some people are into BDSM... so whatever it takes to get you off.
Here's the ugly truth: work has nothing to do with getting paid. Results do.
Actually, the salesperson is paid well beacuse of the value they deliver to the company. Engineers are paid the same way, they usually just don't get the connection between profit and pay. If you are smart, you'll take the time to find out what the company must make on your work to justify your salary, and then learn how to deliver even more value. Then when you want a fat raise, all you have to do is ask and point out the value you deliver. Here's how it works:
Engineer is paid $90,000 per year. Company must make $360,000 (professional services) - $1,400,000 (product) from the engineer's work to justify the salary. There's a lot of costs on top of your salary, so the company has to make a multiple on your salary. If you design great products or provide a service that is high value and the company can get more money for your time or will sell more product, then you should get paid more regardless of hours worked.
For salespeople it's simple - it's all about profit:
If I sell enough to generate $500,000 in profit after I get paid $250,000 who cares if I play golf three days per week and burn my expense account on entertaining clients at the local strip club?
Wow. I can't believe that MS wasted three years and $millions on this. MS really needs to take a look at what is going on and do something about it:
* MS Tablet PCs fail
* Windows Mobile fails
* MS ISO Standard file format fails
* Windows Live fails
* Zune fails
The bodies are getting stacked deep, there MS. Time to get back to what made you great and become hacker friendly again... and not in the sense that your OS and software have lots of security holes.
What did you expect from the military? There are two kind of guys that enter the military: Those that are murderers, and those that lie about it.
Funny thing, I served, and I never met anyone who was a murderer. In fact, I met a lot of very good people who were simply doing their duty. Some people were their for college benefits, others for vocational training, still others doing what they thought was civic duty. At the end of the day, though, not one man or woman I served with liked the idea of killing other people. Being around the machines of war (in my case, submarines and aircraft carriers), you arrive at a very clear understanding how terrible their purpose is, and just how horrible human beings can be to one another. It is frightening to think that people have spent the time and energy to build something so terrible as a nuclear powered submarine. It's also equally frightening when you figure out that there are real enemies, and they have the same weapons (or worse) as you side does. The only thing standing between war, peace and subjugation is simply the other side being afraid to fight.
That said, without people being willing to serve, we'd quickly find our nation and way of life being destroyed as there are people who want power, wealth and glory and are willing to stop at nothing to get it. Hitler comes to mind as the most clear and easy to understand example. Unfortunately, we do not live in Mr. Roger's neighborhood.
The only thing the US military has ever done is bombing black/brown/yellow people.
Hmm. I suppose that those Germans who tried to take over the world a couple of last century were purple? Or Mr. "We will bury you" Khrushchev (who apparently was green or something) wanted good things for his enemies (that would be the US)?
The US hasn't fought a single Legitimate war since the independence wars
You, sir are either a raving lunatic or a troll of the worst sort.
Jeffery - This situation is just tragic, and those infantrymen are not "chickenshits." They were obeying orders that were put in place by commanders and political leaders eager to fight a war with minimum casualties on our side. If you want to cite cowardice, assign blame to the people who put those "grunts" in the position they were.
We've just witnessed the birth of a new buzz word.
Any bill that expands power for the IRS (does anyone else think that the IRS has no place in making health care decisions?), places an entire sector of the economy under Government control (Biden's words, not mine) and will create lots more opportunity for people to go to jail is just not the prescription.
As it is, this law basically raises taxes, forces healthy, young people to buy insurance and creates a class of people who are too wealthy to get assistance and not wealthy enough to afford insurance, and then jails them for being squarely in the middle class. Why not take a little more time and do this right, and make it so health care becomes a right, not an enforced purchase of insurance bundled with a tax increase?
What a bunch of dip-shiat posers. First, Android apps are run on a virtual machine (yes, that's right, even on the phone). If you've actually cut code for Android, you would probably be familiar with the build/test cycle which consists of compiling and running on an Android Virual Device (AVD - an emulator that lets you simulate different phone configs) which comes with the SDK. The emulator supports multiple resolutions as well as multiple versions of the Android OS. Screen resolutions are really not that much of a challenge. Funky hardware (say, a totally bizarre, non-standard GPS chip) might be, but I have yet to run into a situation where the Android SDK doesn't provide an abstraction that just takes care of it for app development.
Here's a link to the Android developer documentation on the multiple screen resolutions. It just isn't that tough, and anyone who says multiple screen resolutions are either has never cut code for Android or simply is incapable of reading the manual.
Note to Mr. Buy A Lot of Hardware: Your code does not know the difference between being inside an AVD or running on a real phone. I think someone at your company has a fetish for gadgets and is tickling it at your expense.
Note to /. at large:RTFM before opening mouth, RTFM and you'll be amazed what you learn. For the n00bs: RTFM = Read The Fscking Manual. More for the n00bs: typing $man fsck is not what RTFM wants you to do.
Ironically Android has been designed to provide developers a way to write one application that can be supported by many devices. It's also open source, and the SDK (and built in emulator) is freely available. This means if you want to be an expert on Android, you can download the SDK, and EVEN WITHOUT OWNING AN ANDROID PHONE write your very own applications... or try to or whatever. Just stop acting like you know what you are doing or you are some mobile software development expert when you don't even know what some guy who just installed the SDK knows about 15 minutes into trying out the SDK. Sheesh. // Feel Better Now /. continues to be /.
/
LOL, actually developing for Android is a joy compared to Windows. Android apps generally do not run on the hardware - they run on a java virtual machine, so a lot of the issues being discussed here are simply not true... compile once... run everywhere.
If the IOC claimed Lindsay Vonn as a tradmark, the cannot use a DMCA takedown to remove content. The C in DMCA is for Copyright. For trademark, you might get a "cease and desist" letter, but not a takedown notice.
A nation needs bread and hospitals and soldiers and flood relief for survival, but it needs something more than all that for a feeling of lasting national pride - the pyramids did that for Egypt, and NASA does that for America.
Exactly.
Everything is interrelated, and sometimes grand projects (connecting the east with the west via rail, for example) help identify and fix other social problems. Laws change. Attitudes change.
Without a need for change, nothing can change.
Look no further than the National Park system (which is at least an equal white elephant as the space program) which had to deal with massive corruption at the local level and in congress to achieve what it did. Or countless defense programs where the obstacles were not just technical, but that jobs were not being created in a key congressman's district. I could go on. There's benefit society wide, but a strong interest in the status quo.
Space is no different. Everyone wants the budget that NASA gets. Everyone does, however like the side benefits like velcro, miniaturization, pens that write upside down, etc...
One might say that a lack of or failed grand projects isn't a symptom of demosclerosis, it's a cause or at least contributing factor.
I can't disagree with this statement more:
Space exploration has been largely aimless since then because it is largely pointless, except as a matter of pure scientific curiosity
There is no higher pursuit in science than satisfying curiosity. Every one of our great advances starts with simple curiosity.
Applied science with clear commercial gain should be left to the commercial world. Large scale pushing of the envelope? That's where the government and education world fits best.
Now, here's the issue with the current space program that I somewhat agree with.
and a more-palatable way of keeping aerospace corporations and engineers on welfare.
is that we were in a pissing match with the soviets
BTW - Nothing brings goals in to focus better than competition.
Skylab.
ISS is a hot mess.
I always love debates on the space program. Lots of big ideas, but what is missing is leadership. What made NASA so successful in the 1960s and 1970s was that there was a clear objective: put a man on the moon. Build a reusable launch system. Put up a space station. The problem is that there are no real national goals with space, so it is exceedingly difficult to sell, say a heavy launch vehicle. Put some goals in, and suddenly money becomes easy because people buy into the grand plan. Say the goal is to put a permanent colony on the moon - or to put a man on Mars. Suddenly there is context and justification for spending, inventions to invent, and what is science suddenly turns into applied science.
Our politicians need to lead, not look for the people to lead them when it comes to space. An ambitious space program is just what is needed.
The issue is the the F-16 is cheaper to keep flying, but costs $32+ million when they crash due to engine failure, which happens much more frequently than with an F/A-18.
BTW: crashing due to engine failure is BAD.