Apple should learn from Microsoft's mistake of trying to have two rather diverse platforms (Windows and Windows mobile).
The article is mostly nonsense. The two operating systems are already pretty much the same and run on nearly the same codebase. There are just a few differences where it makes sense for there to be a difference between a desktop-oriented operating system and an appliance-oriented operating system.
Now, would it be cool if there was an option to run the appliance interface on a "regular" computer? Maybe, and maybe Apple will give developers a way to bundle an app so one package can run on both iOS and Mac OS. Until then it's trivial to develop an app that easily compiles into both an iOS version and a Mac OS version.
I see that they complain about not having regular expression support in Cocoa, well they must not realize that they are on a POSIX-compliant operating system which includes regex. There are also easily-found frameworks out there which provide an Objective-C regex API.
Anyways, it seems that the article is just a teaser for Ars's paid, premium service. This is probably why they made it so sensationalistic, so they could draw people in to pay $5 a month for their site:
(If you'd like to read what these developers had to say about recommended resources for Mac OS X developers, thoughts on Macs for scientific computing, benefits of RAD languages and tools, adopting new developer tools in Snow Leopard and iOS 4, and more, the full transcript of the live chat--jokes and all--is still available to all Ars Premier subscribers.)
Apple seems to have a particularly strong fanbase even amongst geeks which can't take valid criticism and does not hesitate to use their mod points for days after a story to stamp out any posts that can be construed as negative towards Apple.
Eh, I posted a few things the other day that weren't positive towards Apple but they were knocking down a few overzealous anti-Apple rumors and myths. I got modded down for it. It happens on both sides, a lot of people here are overly emotionally-invested in things and they tend to lash out rather than use reason.
The funny thing is that I've been capped at the highest level of karma forever and the downmods were reversed in a few days by upmods and meta-moderation. It's no biggie and I never find it useful to complain about moderation. Just keep posting reasonable statements and it will all take care of itself, post like a troll and you'll get smacked down a lot.
As for Microsoft, Apple, or whatever, all companies do stuff that is in their best interest but which might not be great for the consumer/public. It's good to be informed about their actions because that allows us to do the right thing: vote with our dollars. If you don't like how a company is run then don't buy from it.
Of course Android has bugs. In fact, it's based on WebKit and so it has many of the SAME bugs that the iOS does because many of these patched bugs are in WebKit.
Like you said, bugs are nearly unavoidable. All you can do is try your best to code well in the first place and then fix them when you find out you still have a few that you missed. They key really is the severity of the bugs, are they so blatant that they make the device unusable or trivial to exploit? Obviously the bugs aren't so bad in iOS because the devices still work well and there isn't any serious malware out there yet.
It's most likely that one of these days there will be a major bug/security flaw. We'll see how Apple handles that but so far their track record is fairly decent.
Richard Blumenthal is in the race for Christopher Dodd's Senate seat and so he's using any issue to put himself in the news. Google is a big name and by going after them Blumenthal can get his name splashed across tons of news outlets for some free publicity.
"Method of Infection - W32/Winemmem is a file infecting virus. Infection starts with manual execution of the binary. Executables in network shares may also get infected if accessed by the compromised machine"
Sounds like a trojan.
McAfee specifically tags each entry with its classification. They have a trojan classification and there are plenty of entries classified as such. If they classified this as a virus then it's probably a virus.
The description probably means that you need to execute the binary that the virus is attached to. That's how viruses work in the first place, they are attached to some binary and spread when the binary is executed. The actual nature of the binary really doesn't matter, it can be a valid program or a trojan, the virus is still a separate entity from the binary.
This may be news to you but I've written several trojans for DOS that were indeed viruses.
A trojan is a program that appears to do something the user desires but instead does something malicious behind the scenes. A virus is a self-replicating bit of code that attaches to executing code in order to replicate.
You may have written a trojan that released a virus but that doesn't mean that a trojan is a virus.
There are currently no viruses in the wild for Mac OS X. Trojans are another story.
There's no wondering involved. They had a commercial that blatantly said that Macs don't get viruses. Liars.
This may be news to you but trojans are not viruses. There are, in fact, no Mac OS X viruses in the wild. There are some spyware, adware, and trojans but they are few and far between and there is protection built-in to the operating system to deal with most of them.
Saying that Mac OS X does not have any viruses at this point in time is 100% true.
I used a gun to defend myself two years ago. And in the mid-90s a guy grabbed my girlfriend by the throat, and I forced him to run away when I put my gun to the rear of his head.
That's great that you got the guy to run off by threatening with a gun but that is absolutely the wrong way to use a gun. If you are gonna pull out a gun then you should be in a situation where you have no choice but to aim for center of mass and pull the trigger multiple times. Here's a good article on the subject.
Pulling out a gun and threatening with it can lead to a very bad situation. For example the guy might decide to fight you for that weapon and it goes off and shoots a bystander, your girlfriend, or yourself.
Now, I'm not saying that you had a choice in that situation. Obviously you had to do something and what you did worked. I just don't think that threatening with a gun as a proper use of a gun is an idea that should be perpetuated.
I name my constructs like certain aboriginal cultures name people: based on the first thing I see around my work desk when I decide to assign something to the variable
I wish some people would stop caring for my children.
If more people cared about their children we'd need less people caring about our children!
Unfortunately there are a lot of people who treat their children as accessories or side effects of sex and that's why those sort of sites spring up, to take place of people actually needing to care for their children. How about people actually watch TV with their children or *gasp* turn it off and go places or play some intelligent games?
Sorry, this is utter bullshit. Look up the European supergrid concept
You mean the supergrid that is still a couple of decades away before it can be implemented? Yeah, I was sticking to today's technologies not stuff that we might have in a generation or two. Besides, even the supergrid is projected to have sizable transmission losses, it's just they will be less than what we currently have.
The real answer is using small, reliable, nuclear reactors that can be used on a neighborhood basis and thus suffer nearly no transmission losses since the transmission distance is negligible. There are many designs which are extremely safe and can't possibly be used for anything but power generation. You drop them in place and then replace them when they are depleted, refurbishing them at a central location for re-use.
The only reason it is viable (except in a few areas with strong, consistent, unidirectional winds) is because it is heavily subsidized.
This ended up a bit wrong from how I intended it to say. What I meant was "The only reason it is viable is because it is heavily subsidized, except in a few areas with strong, consistent, unidirectional winds where it is viable without subsidy."
Sometimes I wish that you could edit your posts on Slashdot but I guess that would bring up a host of other problems. Oh well...
I don't know where this rumor started, but the iPhone 4 (in its current implementation) does NOT support 4G. It supports HSDPA 7.2, which is 3G.
Well, for that matter Verizon's LTE is also still 3G since LTE is not 4G. LTE Advanced (which is not being rolled out yet) will possibly be 4G once it is approved but that's not expected to be until 2012.
You're right though, the iPhone does not support 4G networks yet.
I want PROOF of nuclear plants that are cost effective (not excluding tons of government welfare.) We hear about next gen nuclear power and fuel recycling etc but its all just talk nobody ever cites an example. I've never seen it done yet so hypothetically, if examples are given, would they be verified credible examples?
There's tons of proof out there. Here are just a few examples I found:
I'd say that The Royal Academy of Engineering should be pretty credible as a source. The Economics of Nuclear Power also cites a lot of credible sources which can be verified.
A simple design should need one or two moving parts.
While there are gearless wind turbines most are not. Yes, they are becoming more prevalent as better designs are developed.
Said in response to a guy who is talking about putting them up in people's backyards. Huh?
Although he was talking about putting them in backyards I decided to talk about the bulk of wind power generation which is not done in people's backyards. The smaller generators that someone would generally use for a single household are very inefficient and only useful for isolated installations where you can't easily get grid power.
>> They disturb local weather patterns by lowering wind velocity and introducing eddies, which may or may not cause problems down the road if wind power becomes widespread.
Same can be said for power lines, skyscrapers, trees...
Yes, the same can be said. Of course wind turbines would also include power lines so then it would be doubly bad, I guess...
Yes, all power generation technologies have their downsides. Wind power, however, has more than most. The only reason it is viable (except in a few areas with strong, consistent, unidirectional winds) is because it is heavily subsidized. I understand the reasoning behind subsidies but we've gone too far. We're paying for less efficient means to produce power and it's a detriment rather than a benefit.
This is overly pedantic, but it's the "iPhone 4", not the "iPhone 4G". It is the 4th generation of the iPhone, so it's "4G" in that sense, but it does not make use of any 4G mobile network.
Yeah, it has been called the iPhone 4G in the press for some time and my brain hasn't reconciled its actual name with the name that has been used for the past year or so. That being said, it does support 4G once it becomes available as a service for iPhone-capable networks.
-There really are no long-term storage problems with storing it in the earth. -There really are no long-term storage problems once we get reliable and inexpensive orbital insertions. (Hurl it at the Sun, or other body)
The cost of lifting it to orbit and sending into the sun would be prohibitive, not to mention the risks if there were some sort of incident before it reached escape velocity.
These are both moot anyways. If the ban on breeder reactors was lifted then most of the waste could be recycled and re-bred into new fuel. The remaining waste from a breeder reactor has a very short lifetime and doesn't need to be stored for thousands of years, thus it has much lower cost and requirements to dispose of.
Those towers are strong enough to support themselves and the power lines. They probably couldn't support the static weight of a windmill, and they certainly couldn't support the forces an operating windmill would put on them.
Right, and building them stronger means that they are heavier, which means they need to be even stronger to support their own extra weight. You are usually better off building multiple, smaller structures rather than one huge structure that does many things.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple should learn from Microsoft's mistake of trying to have two rather diverse platforms (Windows and Windows mobile).
The article is mostly nonsense. The two operating systems are already pretty much the same and run on nearly the same codebase. There are just a few differences where it makes sense for there to be a difference between a desktop-oriented operating system and an appliance-oriented operating system.
Now, would it be cool if there was an option to run the appliance interface on a "regular" computer? Maybe, and maybe Apple will give developers a way to bundle an app so one package can run on both iOS and Mac OS. Until then it's trivial to develop an app that easily compiles into both an iOS version and a Mac OS version.
I see that they complain about not having regular expression support in Cocoa, well they must not realize that they are on a POSIX-compliant operating system which includes regex. There are also easily-found frameworks out there which provide an Objective-C regex API.
Anyways, it seems that the article is just a teaser for Ars's paid, premium service. This is probably why they made it so sensationalistic, so they could draw people in to pay $5 a month for their site:
(If you'd like to read what these developers had to say about recommended resources for Mac OS X developers, thoughts on Macs for scientific computing, benefits of RAD languages and tools, adopting new developer tools in Snow Leopard and iOS 4, and more, the full transcript of the live chat--jokes and all--is still available to all Ars Premier subscribers.)
Apple seems to have a particularly strong fanbase even amongst geeks which can't take valid criticism and does not hesitate to use their mod points for days after a story to stamp out any posts that can be construed as negative towards Apple.
Eh, I posted a few things the other day that weren't positive towards Apple but they were knocking down a few overzealous anti-Apple rumors and myths. I got modded down for it. It happens on both sides, a lot of people here are overly emotionally-invested in things and they tend to lash out rather than use reason.
The funny thing is that I've been capped at the highest level of karma forever and the downmods were reversed in a few days by upmods and meta-moderation. It's no biggie and I never find it useful to complain about moderation. Just keep posting reasonable statements and it will all take care of itself, post like a troll and you'll get smacked down a lot.
As for Microsoft, Apple, or whatever, all companies do stuff that is in their best interest but which might not be great for the consumer/public. It's good to be informed about their actions because that allows us to do the right thing: vote with our dollars. If you don't like how a company is run then don't buy from it.
Really? So Android has no bugs/exploits in it?
Of course Android has bugs. In fact, it's based on WebKit and so it has many of the SAME bugs that the iOS does because many of these patched bugs are in WebKit.
Like you said, bugs are nearly unavoidable. All you can do is try your best to code well in the first place and then fix them when you find out you still have a few that you missed. They key really is the severity of the bugs, are they so blatant that they make the device unusable or trivial to exploit? Obviously the bugs aren't so bad in iOS because the devices still work well and there isn't any serious malware out there yet.
It's most likely that one of these days there will be a major bug/security flaw. We'll see how Apple handles that but so far their track record is fairly decent.
Why this is being given such legal scrutiny.
It's very simple: election time.
Richard Blumenthal is in the race for Christopher Dodd's Senate seat and so he's using any issue to put himself in the news. Google is a big name and by going after them Blumenthal can get his name splashed across tons of news outlets for some free publicity.
"Method of Infection -
W32/Winemmem is a file infecting virus. Infection starts with manual execution of the binary. Executables in network shares may also get infected if accessed by the compromised machine"
Sounds like a trojan.
McAfee specifically tags each entry with its classification. They have a trojan classification and there are plenty of entries classified as such. If they classified this as a virus then it's probably a virus.
The description probably means that you need to execute the binary that the virus is attached to. That's how viruses work in the first place, they are attached to some binary and spread when the binary is executed. The actual nature of the binary really doesn't matter, it can be a valid program or a trojan, the virus is still a separate entity from the binary.
You an really only go as far as saying "There are, in fact, no known Mac OS X viruses in the wild".
Of course! Just like you can say "There are, in fact, no known Flying Spaghetti Monsters in the wild."
Only problem being, by that definition, Windows nowdays doesn't have viruses either. They just have spyware, adware, and trojans.
Oh really? You mean these aren't viruses?
These all fit the definition of a virus and there are tons more in the McAfee Threat Center.
This may be news to you but I've written several trojans for DOS that were indeed viruses.
A trojan is a program that appears to do something the user desires but instead does something malicious behind the scenes. A virus is a self-replicating bit of code that attaches to executing code in order to replicate.
You may have written a trojan that released a virus but that doesn't mean that a trojan is a virus.
There are currently no viruses in the wild for Mac OS X. Trojans are another story.
There's no wondering involved. They had a commercial that blatantly said that Macs don't get viruses. Liars.
This may be news to you but trojans are not viruses. There are, in fact, no Mac OS X viruses in the wild. There are some spyware, adware, and trojans but they are few and far between and there is protection built-in to the operating system to deal with most of them.
Saying that Mac OS X does not have any viruses at this point in time is 100% true.
I used a gun to defend myself two years ago. And in the mid-90s a guy grabbed my girlfriend by the throat, and I forced him to run away when I put my gun to the rear of his head.
That's great that you got the guy to run off by threatening with a gun but that is absolutely the wrong way to use a gun. If you are gonna pull out a gun then you should be in a situation where you have no choice but to aim for center of mass and pull the trigger multiple times. Here's a good article on the subject.
Pulling out a gun and threatening with it can lead to a very bad situation. For example the guy might decide to fight you for that weapon and it goes off and shoots a bystander, your girlfriend, or yourself.
Now, I'm not saying that you had a choice in that situation. Obviously you had to do something and what you did worked. I just don't think that threatening with a gun as a proper use of a gun is an idea that should be perpetuated.
I name my constructs like certain aboriginal cultures name people: based on the first thing I see around my work desk when I decide to assign something to the variable
Ahh, so just like this comic?
Apparently people do care about my children. Like these dicks:
http://www.parentstv.org/
I wish some people would stop caring for my children.
If more people cared about their children we'd need less people caring about our children!
Unfortunately there are a lot of people who treat their children as accessories or side effects of sex and that's why those sort of sites spring up, to take place of people actually needing to care for their children. How about people actually watch TV with their children or *gasp* turn it off and go places or play some intelligent games?
Ahh well, stepping off the soapbox now...
That'd almost be funny if it wasn't pasted on slashdot near daily.
Except this time it's topical!
I admit it, I went for the cheap laugh. It's not something I'm proud of but someone had to do it.
I prefer the story of this mom.
Sorry, this is utter bullshit. Look up the European supergrid concept
You mean the supergrid that is still a couple of decades away before it can be implemented? Yeah, I was sticking to today's technologies not stuff that we might have in a generation or two. Besides, even the supergrid is projected to have sizable transmission losses, it's just they will be less than what we currently have.
The real answer is using small, reliable, nuclear reactors that can be used on a neighborhood basis and thus suffer nearly no transmission losses since the transmission distance is negligible. There are many designs which are extremely safe and can't possibly be used for anything but power generation. You drop them in place and then replace them when they are depleted, refurbishing them at a central location for re-use.
The only reason it is viable (except in a few areas with strong, consistent, unidirectional winds) is because it is heavily subsidized.
This ended up a bit wrong from how I intended it to say. What I meant was "The only reason it is viable is because it is heavily subsidized, except in a few areas with strong, consistent, unidirectional winds where it is viable without subsidy."
Sometimes I wish that you could edit your posts on Slashdot but I guess that would bring up a host of other problems. Oh well...
Or geothermal.
Yes, using molten lava to power a smelting process would be quite fitting!
I don't know where this rumor started, but the iPhone 4 (in its current implementation) does NOT support 4G. It supports HSDPA 7.2, which is 3G.
Well, for that matter Verizon's LTE is also still 3G since LTE is not 4G. LTE Advanced (which is not being rolled out yet) will possibly be 4G once it is approved but that's not expected to be until 2012.
You're right though, the iPhone does not support 4G networks yet.
I want PROOF of nuclear plants that are cost effective (not excluding tons of government welfare.) We hear about next gen nuclear power and fuel recycling etc but its all just talk nobody ever cites an example. I've never seen it done yet so hypothetically, if examples are given, would they be verified credible examples?
There's tons of proof out there. Here are just a few examples I found:
The Costs of Generating Electricity: nuclear 2.26 pence/kWH, wind 5.35 pence/kWH
The Economics of Nuclear Power (average for EU 2007): nuclear: 6.4 cents/kWH, 9.8 cents/kWH
I'd say that The Royal Academy of Engineering should be pretty credible as a source. The Economics of Nuclear Power also cites a lot of credible sources which can be verified.
A simple design should need one or two moving parts.
While there are gearless wind turbines most are not. Yes, they are becoming more prevalent as better designs are developed.
Said in response to a guy who is talking about putting them up in people's backyards. Huh?
Although he was talking about putting them in backyards I decided to talk about the bulk of wind power generation which is not done in people's backyards. The smaller generators that someone would generally use for a single household are very inefficient and only useful for isolated installations where you can't easily get grid power.
>> They disturb local weather patterns by lowering wind velocity and introducing eddies, which may or may not cause problems down the road if wind power becomes widespread.
Same can be said for power lines, skyscrapers, trees...
Yes, the same can be said. Of course wind turbines would also include power lines so then it would be doubly bad, I guess...
Yes, all power generation technologies have their downsides. Wind power, however, has more than most. The only reason it is viable (except in a few areas with strong, consistent, unidirectional winds) is because it is heavily subsidized. I understand the reasoning behind subsidies but we've gone too far. We're paying for less efficient means to produce power and it's a detriment rather than a benefit.
What are you reading? Its the 5th highlight on the page you listed....
Erm, someone asked the question and I provided the link that confirmed that the A4 was the iPhone processor. What's the problem here?
I wasn't asking that question in my post, I was answering it. That's exactly why I used the html <quote> tag, to show that I was quoting someone.
This is overly pedantic, but it's the "iPhone 4", not the "iPhone 4G". It is the 4th generation of the iPhone, so it's "4G" in that sense, but it does not make use of any 4G mobile network.
Yeah, it has been called the iPhone 4G in the press for some time and my brain hasn't reconciled its actual name with the name that has been used for the past year or so. That being said, it does support 4G once it becomes available as a service for iPhone-capable networks.
-There really are no long-term storage problems with storing it in the earth.
-There really are no long-term storage problems once we get reliable and inexpensive orbital insertions. (Hurl it at the Sun, or other body)
The cost of lifting it to orbit and sending into the sun would be prohibitive, not to mention the risks if there were some sort of incident before it reached escape velocity.
These are both moot anyways. If the ban on breeder reactors was lifted then most of the waste could be recycled and re-bred into new fuel. The remaining waste from a breeder reactor has a very short lifetime and doesn't need to be stored for thousands of years, thus it has much lower cost and requirements to dispose of.
Those towers are strong enough to support themselves and the power lines. They probably couldn't support the static weight of a windmill, and they certainly couldn't support the forces an operating windmill would put on them.
Right, and building them stronger means that they are heavier, which means they need to be even stronger to support their own extra weight. You are usually better off building multiple, smaller structures rather than one huge structure that does many things.