I am someone who has made several BlackBerry apps, the most recently was last month. To me, this is no surprise. If anyone has actually worked with the BB platform at all lately, they wouldn't be surprised either. The first point that must be addressed is: you have to target BBOS 4.5 or 4.6 to reach the maximum number of devices. Now, you may say "well, I have to target Android 2.0 or 2.1, which is the same.", except, it's not. BBOS 4.5 and 4.6 are awful, and they lack many features. In fact, even BBOS6 still lacks may features (the platform). Part of the problem is they're using J2ME, whereas Android uses almost a full compliment of Java.
I'm not going to go into details about everything that bothers me about the platform, but suffice to say that it needs a real markup language for the UI (it has none right now, unless you count some hacks people have released), and it needs to update the default controls. They look terrible, and they feel severely dated. And there's just the little things, like the TreeField doesn't allow variable row heights (wtf?), and there's no workaround. There's also no API call in the framework to generate standard 128-bit UUIDs, so you have to write that function yourself.. You can't change the background on a forum without subclassing.
Sorry, looks like I did start to ramble. Suffice to say it sucks, and you spend the majority of your time re-implementing things that have existed for years, or fighting stupid bugs, or fighting the ridiculous emulators that carry no documentation and do not support hotswap.
Sorry RIM. I'm Canadian, but your platform sucks, and I really hope you get your shit together with the magical QNX release that may or may not come.
Well, I read the article you posted... It kind of makes assisted suicide out to be murder. I don't really understand that. If someone chooses to die, that's their decision. Why would it be immoral to kill yourself?
I know Silverlight is a running joke on/., and everyone here hates it, but I work at a.NET shop and we used Silverlight to create a product. Now, you may think that's insane, but what we wanted to deliver was a very rich user experience over the web that was cross platform. Furthermore, clients would install the plug-in after purchasing, so it's not like proliferation of the plug-in mattered. As well, the decision on technology was made over 2 years ago, and back then HTML5 was but a whisper, and Flash was still the big thing TM for interactive "web applications."
As I said, since we're a.NET shop, Silverlight was a really great alternative to Flash. Furthermore, if you haven't worked with Silverlight or WPF, you're really missing out on an amazing development experience.
Now, I completely agree with the mentality that plug-ins are stupid. We only did it this way because we sell a product; we don't put our stuff online to try and shove the plug-in down everyone's throat. And at the end of the day, the message from Microsoft was that Silverlight will be everywhere "in the future," so we hoped we could hit all platforms with a rich product without doing any porting.
And now this, the latest in a long steady stream of screw-overs. They have seriously broken their promise to the developer community. While I'm happy they embraced HTML5 so strongly, they should just admit that they fucked up with Silverlight and hung the devoted developer community that exists out to dry. This was a low move from a company that previously has a great track record with developers, and I'm very unhappy with how they handled this.
And yes, I fully expected to be modded down for just using Silverlight to make anything.
I'm pretty happy that this is going in the right direction. While I don't live in the United States, I'm hoping if these things are shut down there, they may be less aggressive on neighboring countries in enforcing such crude copyright laws..
I actually don't have a problem with Apple. I've owned an iPhone before I bought an Android (I had a 2G, so it was upgrade time and I felt like something different), and I still own and use an older iBook G4. But a spaceship shaped building just fits in so perfectly with the cult-image, I couldn't help but think it.
I'm pretty sure this can be solved by Superman. He can just go around the earth a few times to speed up the rotation, and thus, gravity, sucking in all the shit up there back into our atmosphere so we can start from scratch.
No one seems to comment on the fact that Microsoft could finally do what Android and iOS have so far been unable to: provide a large, widely adopted VOIP platform on mobile phones. Microsoft has enough clout to strike deals with carriers to finally allow this to happen, so it may not be all bad, this deal..
Maybe it can stop all the horrible flash ads too..
Although, sometimes they aren't so undesirable, such as when they're like this (warning: although there's no nudity you wouldn't want your boss seeing you look at that).
No offence, but do you even write for mobile devices?
I write code for both Android and BBOS, and I have to say that supporting Android's "fragmentation" included 0 work from me.. I've tested it on about 10 devices (including the Xoom, oddly enough) and it worked correctly in all of them with no changes.
I am also developing an app for BBOS4.6 (yes, an old version, to try and get some good exposure), and it does not work the same AT ALL in 4.7, 5.0 and 6.0. Each version has glitches, even different devices (i.e. 4.7.1 was only on one device) have issues (Torch). Talk about fragmentation, why does nobody mention the fact that BlackBerry is so much worse than Android for fragmentation with THEIR OWN devices? It's really awful.
While most indications seem to point in that direction, considering the playbook was not well received, and blackberry's current flagship devices are out-dated, at best, I feel it's kind of early to make this kind of claim.
I think blackberry has probably two more quarters to get a solid business phone that rivals Android/iPhone devices that runs "OS7" (nobody really knows what that is yet, though I do not believe it's QNX..) If they can pull that off, maybe they'll have a chance..
That's all I want to know. How is the sex, and can I possibly get a video?
Honestly, if the Space program needs money so bad, why don't they just send a few porn stars up now and then and sell the zero-G porn movie to make money for the actual missions?
The "cloud" is here, and those in higher up positions want "us" (devs) to use it just because. But of course, it should be used only when it actually benefits the situation.
So I guess that leads me to the next question: what are the REAL situations which would actually benefit from using the cloud? I don't really know of the "real" cloud use cases, so maybe someone can help me out here..
Slashdot Mirror
Too early.
I am someone who has made several BlackBerry apps, the most recently was last month. To me, this is no surprise. If anyone has actually worked with the BB platform at all lately, they wouldn't be surprised either. The first point that must be addressed is: you have to target BBOS 4.5 or 4.6 to reach the maximum number of devices. Now, you may say "well, I have to target Android 2.0 or 2.1, which is the same.", except, it's not. BBOS 4.5 and 4.6 are awful, and they lack many features. In fact, even BBOS6 still lacks may features (the platform). Part of the problem is they're using J2ME, whereas Android uses almost a full compliment of Java.
I'm not going to go into details about everything that bothers me about the platform, but suffice to say that it needs a real markup language for the UI (it has none right now, unless you count some hacks people have released), and it needs to update the default controls. They look terrible, and they feel severely dated. And there's just the little things, like the TreeField doesn't allow variable row heights (wtf?), and there's no workaround. There's also no API call in the framework to generate standard 128-bit UUIDs, so you have to write that function yourself.. You can't change the background on a forum without subclassing.
Sorry, looks like I did start to ramble. Suffice to say it sucks, and you spend the majority of your time re-implementing things that have existed for years, or fighting stupid bugs, or fighting the ridiculous emulators that carry no documentation and do not support hotswap.
Sorry RIM. I'm Canadian, but your platform sucks, and I really hope you get your shit together with the magical QNX release that may or may not come.
Any publicity is good publicity. Don't rule out invested interest, yet. There's been way too many articles..
Well, I read the article you posted... It kind of makes assisted suicide out to be murder. I don't really understand that. If someone chooses to die, that's their decision. Why would it be immoral to kill yourself?
I don't know about others, but for me Google's homepage does not have the guitar anymore. It also doesn't appear in Google's history for doodles.
But, through some long-winded way that included Facebook, I found this link that has it. Enjoy.
I know Silverlight is a running joke on /., and everyone here hates it, but I work at a .NET shop and we used Silverlight to create a product. Now, you may think that's insane, but what we wanted to deliver was a very rich user experience over the web that was cross platform. Furthermore, clients would install the plug-in after purchasing, so it's not like proliferation of the plug-in mattered. As well, the decision on technology was made over 2 years ago, and back then HTML5 was but a whisper, and Flash was still the big thing TM for interactive "web applications."
As I said, since we're a .NET shop, Silverlight was a really great alternative to Flash. Furthermore, if you haven't worked with Silverlight or WPF, you're really missing out on an amazing development experience.
Now, I completely agree with the mentality that plug-ins are stupid. We only did it this way because we sell a product; we don't put our stuff online to try and shove the plug-in down everyone's throat. And at the end of the day, the message from Microsoft was that Silverlight will be everywhere "in the future," so we hoped we could hit all platforms with a rich product without doing any porting.
And now this, the latest in a long steady stream of screw-overs. They have seriously broken their promise to the developer community. While I'm happy they embraced HTML5 so strongly, they should just admit that they fucked up with Silverlight and hung the devoted developer community that exists out to dry. This was a low move from a company that previously has a great track record with developers, and I'm very unhappy with how they handled this.
And yes, I fully expected to be modded down for just using Silverlight to make anything.
So it's hard for me to take seriously the MS threat that it "may go through the Russian judiciary system (from TFA)".
I'm pretty happy that this is going in the right direction. While I don't live in the United States, I'm hoping if these things are shut down there, they may be less aggressive on neighboring countries in enforcing such crude copyright laws..
I actually don't have a problem with Apple. I've owned an iPhone before I bought an Android (I had a 2G, so it was upgrade time and I felt like something different), and I still own and use an older iBook G4. But a spaceship shaped building just fits in so perfectly with the cult-image, I couldn't help but think it.
Who else immediately thought of a new space-ship-worshiping-cult after reading this?
Kind of all fits though, you know, with the Apple love..
Was anyone else reminded of The Simpsons episode where they did this?
Didn't work out so well for them.
It's 10:30pm in Tokyo as I post this. Nothing happened 4 hours and 30 minutes ago. Fail (as we all knew it would).
I sent in the story this morning with the link you cited:
link to mine. But apparently I wasn't as good as this story..
I'm pretty sure this can be solved by Superman. He can just go around the earth a few times to speed up the rotation, and thus, gravity, sucking in all the shit up there back into our atmosphere so we can start from scratch.
Right?
TFA has no pictures. I can't really read a review about a tablet that has no images of it at all. Is there a better review with some?
Unless I'm mistaken, Skype on iOS is skype-to-skype calling only, not skype-to-phone #..
No one seems to comment on the fact that Microsoft could finally do what Android and iOS have so far been unable to: provide a large, widely adopted VOIP platform on mobile phones. Microsoft has enough clout to strike deals with carriers to finally allow this to happen, so it may not be all bad, this deal..
This thread is useless without pics.
Maybe it can stop all the horrible flash ads too..
Although, sometimes they aren't so undesirable, such as when they're like this (warning: although there's no nudity you wouldn't want your boss seeing you look at that).
No offence, but do you even write for mobile devices?
I write code for both Android and BBOS, and I have to say that supporting Android's "fragmentation" included 0 work from me.. I've tested it on about 10 devices (including the Xoom, oddly enough) and it worked correctly in all of them with no changes.
I am also developing an app for BBOS4.6 (yes, an old version, to try and get some good exposure), and it does not work the same AT ALL in 4.7, 5.0 and 6.0. Each version has glitches, even different devices (i.e. 4.7.1 was only on one device) have issues (Torch). Talk about fragmentation, why does nobody mention the fact that BlackBerry is so much worse than Android for fragmentation with THEIR OWN devices? It's really awful.
While most indications seem to point in that direction, considering the playbook was not well received, and blackberry's current flagship devices are out-dated, at best, I feel it's kind of early to make this kind of claim.
I think blackberry has probably two more quarters to get a solid business phone that rivals Android/iPhone devices that runs "OS7" (nobody really knows what that is yet, though I do not believe it's QNX..) If they can pull that off, maybe they'll have a chance..
That's all I want to know. How is the sex, and can I possibly get a video?
Honestly, if the Space program needs money so bad, why don't they just send a few porn stars up now and then and sell the zero-G porn movie to make money for the actual missions?
The "cloud" is here, and those in higher up positions want "us" (devs) to use it just because. But of course, it should be used only when it actually benefits the situation.
So I guess that leads me to the next question: what are the REAL situations which would actually benefit from using the cloud? I don't really know of the "real" cloud use cases, so maybe someone can help me out here..
I find it odd that they can't track the actual recipients of all this money. Is it government sponsored? I guess that's all I want to know.
This is pretty funny in theory, but in practice, as others have noted, it's not really very professional or a good idea..
Better off just banning them, using CAPTCHA, etc.