> US & UK have multiple agreements in place to protect IP between them.
However, software patents are not allowed in the UK (or Europe). Doesn't actually stop a few being issued, but I would presume a patent that's invalid in the UK would not be applied on behalf of the US.
I'll code to the standards if you can find someone who will accept validator output as an excuse for why their site doesn't work. Realistically, the best you can do is code to the standards as they're implemented and then work around any bugs/differences you find.
Personally, if a project needs hosting I would arrange for the customer to have an account directly with the hosting company, is that unusual? It seems like a hell of a lot easier all around - I don't have to deal with handling accounts, to start with.
I _think_ the office you're referring to is the one that would have oversight of the Apple companies in those countries. Apple have a huge setup in Ireland that covers much of their UK operations (distribution and support at the very least, last time I checked), and a wide variety of Apple stores throughout the UK: http://www.apple.com/uk/retail/storelist/
I would presume they have similar setups for many countries.
So? Yes, it's hard (very hard) to launch in multiple continents simultaneously... however they're trying to compete with a marketplace that's global, so they either have to roll out to the rest of the world, or get left behind.
What exactly are you expecting to get for your 10k? That's what... 4-6 weeks of a contract developer's time? Including all testing, documentation, and release? I don't think they're exactly going to build the next killer app on that budget... or in fact many apps worth having at all.
Platform fragmentation from the hardware side isn't the huge issue it's made to be. Anyone who has developed desktop software shouldn't have a huge issue having to target a variety of devices! There are problems that you have to think about very small screens, as well as portrait/landscape display, but it's really not that bad IMHO.
From the software side, on the other hand, it's a right pain. Honeycomb adds the concept of a "Fragment", which is a re-usable UI grouping, so on a tablet you might put three next to each other left to right, but on a phone you display each Fragment as a single screen by itself. However, as no phone runs Honeycomb, this is basically useless; you have to write a Fragment based UI to make effective use of a tablet, and an Activity (or whatever) based UI for phones, so you have two UI layers. Once Ice Cream Sandwich comes out and phones start having Fragments, that will start solving this.
It depends on various factors, but certainly there are subtle cases where layout suddenly stops doing what is expected, but both previous and new behavior are standards-compliant. There's also cases where the standard is nonsensical (for example, HTML 5 currently disallowed the maxlength attribute on number inputs, breaking backwards compatibility with HTML 4), and strictly following is impractical. Browser bugs introduced in the update are also a risk.
We finally extracted from central IT (because yes, we have non-central IT, don't ask) that they reckoned it would take a week (of a techy's time) to build & test a Firefox install to the level of confidence they needed, and then a day or two to re-test on every update they're required to push live.
By comparison, IE is installed anyway and they have no choice but to update and test it, so Firefox at all is an overhead. The cheaper option is not to use Firefox, rather than to form some external body to make enterprise-Firefox.
> President (overheard on microphone he thought was off): Man, we should just turn Kansas into a sheet of glass.
I did once actually tell a user that their change request was reasonable, but I had another equally reasonable contradictory request, and as such the two of them would have to resolve the conflict by a gladiatorial fight to the death. They took it remarkably well:)
(We implemented a configuration option to allow both)
Really? It's just that the standard desktop install here is IE 9 as of September, and we're considering whether we can tell users with IE 6 to get knotted at the same time, or if it's still too early to push them. We frequently get IE7 specific bug reports from our users with their own computers.
Who actually are the users who want the latest and greatest stuff in their browsers?
Ah... I should explain a little further. When my app asks for location data, it hands over a listener for that data. If the GPS is unavailable, that listener is never called.
If my app asks for location data and does not have permission, then an exception is thrown as if my application is requesting access to something its manifest does not describe it as needing. That's a fairly major difference...
We're using it to determine distance to a range of locations, so nearest can be presented to the user. The options are presented without distance information, and if no distance is available that simply doesn't change.
There's a point where it becomes absurd. I don't riddle my code with:
assert 2 + 2 = 4;
because it would be silly to check that the processor is still adding correctly, it's a fundamental assumption. In the same way, I don't think it's unfair to expect that if my app indicates it needs location access, that it can get it. I'm happy that I _need_ to check if location is enabled currently, and handle that the location service may be Wifi or GPS or something else based, but checking things the API told me were true seems a bit of a waste of my time...
> publishers charge a premium on Kindle books (how the hell do they justify that???)
First, consider maybe they're not charging a premium, but book sellers are trying to shift very old stock at a loss, in an attempt to recoup any of their investment.
Secondly, in the UK e-books attract sales tax (VAT), which paper books do not; this is a lot of what pushes UK e-book prices over paper editions, but it does depend on whether you're including that in the cost.
Thirdly, they're taking a risk (or, were) that the cost of converting a book to e-book format will pay off.
> The law about computer crimes should have strong penalties for managers that allow that shit to happen.
Why does this need to be a legal thing? I mean, there's employment issues to look at (like, err, should they have a job still), but why on earth would this be a legal issue?
This is what got to me. The BBC normally do a rather good joke for April Fool's, but apparently that wasn't enough, now we need fake articles from websites faking being other websites...
Slashdot Mirror
It just seems a bit odd asking about need for pseudonyms, on /.
> US & UK have multiple agreements in place to protect IP between them.
However, software patents are not allowed in the UK (or Europe). Doesn't actually stop a few being issued, but I would presume a patent that's invalid in the UK would not be applied on behalf of the US.
Well, I hope, anyway.
I'll code to the standards if you can find someone who will accept validator output as an excuse for why their site doesn't work. Realistically, the best you can do is code to the standards as they're implemented and then work around any bugs/differences you find.
> Once Diaspora and Bitcoin are integrated, it'll be an unstoppable force of social change.
Dude, that's harsh on Bitcoin!
(Not, admittedly, very harsh...)
Personally, if a project needs hosting I would arrange for the customer to have an account directly with the hosting company, is that unusual? It seems like a hell of a lot easier all around - I don't have to deal with handling accounts, to start with.
Wait... you realise they're paid per sale via the marketplace, rather than any sort of lump sum, right?
I _think_ the office you're referring to is the one that would have oversight of the Apple companies in those countries. Apple have a huge setup in Ireland that covers much of their UK operations (distribution and support at the very least, last time I checked), and a wide variety of Apple stores throughout the UK: http://www.apple.com/uk/retail/storelist/
I would presume they have similar setups for many countries.
I'd be delighted to sell a product exactly once, if you can find a customer willing to pay the full development costs.
So? Yes, it's hard (very hard) to launch in multiple continents simultaneously... however they're trying to compete with a marketplace that's global, so they either have to roll out to the rest of the world, or get left behind.
That's brilliant, many thanks!
What exactly are you expecting to get for your 10k? That's what... 4-6 weeks of a contract developer's time? Including all testing, documentation, and release? I don't think they're exactly going to build the next killer app on that budget... or in fact many apps worth having at all.
> Can we please stop to give stupid nick names for software projects?
But then I couldn't talk about us needing an Ice Cream Sandwich strategy...
Platform fragmentation from the hardware side isn't the huge issue it's made to be. Anyone who has developed desktop software shouldn't have a huge issue having to target a variety of devices! There are problems that you have to think about very small screens, as well as portrait/landscape display, but it's really not that bad IMHO.
From the software side, on the other hand, it's a right pain. Honeycomb adds the concept of a "Fragment", which is a re-usable UI grouping, so on a tablet you might put three next to each other left to right, but on a phone you display each Fragment as a single screen by itself. However, as no phone runs Honeycomb, this is basically useless; you have to write a Fragment based UI to make effective use of a tablet, and an Activity (or whatever) based UI for phones, so you have two UI layers. Once Ice Cream Sandwich comes out and phones start having Fragments, that will start solving this.
It depends on various factors, but certainly there are subtle cases where layout suddenly stops doing what is expected, but both previous and new behavior are standards-compliant. There's also cases where the standard is nonsensical (for example, HTML 5 currently disallowed the maxlength attribute on number inputs, breaking backwards compatibility with HTML 4), and strictly following is impractical. Browser bugs introduced in the update are also a risk.
> If you find that testing that it is cheaper
We finally extracted from central IT (because yes, we have non-central IT, don't ask) that they reckoned it would take a week (of a techy's time) to build & test a Firefox install to the level of confidence they needed, and then a day or two to re-test on every update they're required to push live.
By comparison, IE is installed anyway and they have no choice but to update and test it, so Firefox at all is an overhead. The cheaper option is not to use Firefox, rather than to form some external body to make enterprise-Firefox.
> President (overheard on microphone he thought was off): Man, we should just turn Kansas into a sheet of glass.
I did once actually tell a user that their change request was reasonable, but I had another equally reasonable contradictory request, and as such the two of them would have to resolve the conflict by a gladiatorial fight to the death. They took it remarkably well :)
(We implemented a configuration option to allow both)
> Users want the latest and greatest,
Really? It's just that the standard desktop install here is IE 9 as of September, and we're considering whether we can tell users with IE 6 to get knotted at the same time, or if it's still too early to push them. We frequently get IE7 specific bug reports from our users with their own computers.
Who actually are the users who want the latest and greatest stuff in their browsers?
I once accidentally mangled the GPS location in my app and relocated to a couple of kilometers off the cost of Somalia...
Ah... I should explain a little further. When my app asks for location data, it hands over a listener for that data. If the GPS is unavailable, that listener is never called.
If my app asks for location data and does not have permission, then an exception is thrown as if my application is requesting access to something its manifest does not describe it as needing. That's a fairly major difference...
We're using it to determine distance to a range of locations, so nearest can be presented to the user. The options are presented without distance information, and if no distance is available that simply doesn't change.
There's a point where it becomes absurd. I don't riddle my code with:
assert 2 + 2 = 4;
because it would be silly to check that the processor is still adding correctly, it's a fundamental assumption. In the same way, I don't think it's unfair to expect that if my app indicates it needs location access, that it can get it. I'm happy that I _need_ to check if location is enabled currently, and handle that the location service may be Wifi or GPS or something else based, but checking things the API told me were true seems a bit of a waste of my time...
> publishers charge a premium on Kindle books (how the hell do they justify that???)
First, consider maybe they're not charging a premium, but book sellers are trying to shift very old stock at a loss, in an attempt to recoup any of their investment.
Secondly, in the UK e-books attract sales tax (VAT), which paper books do not; this is a lot of what pushes UK e-book prices over paper editions, but it does depend on whether you're including that in the cost.
Thirdly, they're taking a risk (or, were) that the cost of converting a book to e-book format will pay off.
> The law about computer crimes should have strong penalties for managers that allow that shit to happen.
Why does this need to be a legal thing? I mean, there's employment issues to look at (like, err, should they have a job still), but why on earth would this be a legal issue?
This is what got to me. The BBC normally do a rather good joke for April Fool's, but apparently that wasn't enough, now we need fake articles from websites faking being other websites...
It's about 20 years too late to be funny, though...