Nice collection of straw men. I was responding to someone who claimed that an online confession alone should be sufficient. If that wasn't relevant to this case, then great - but you need to direct your comments to the person I replied to, not me.
And how many of the BlackBerry users really -like- BlackBerry OS and didn't just pick a BlackBerry because it was cheap, their company bought one or the like?
What sort of argument is that anyway? "How many Iphone users really -like- the Iphone, and didn't just pick an Iphone because it [insert reason why they thought it was better here]?" If people pick a phone because it has something better (which includes being the best at a particular price), then presumably they like it better than everything else they could have had.
just compare a simple cross-platform app like Facebook, the iPhone has the best quality app, next Android (especially since the last update) then WebOS, then WinMo and BlackBerry OS.
You missed the market leader.
But yes, it is true that companies write apps for the Iphone, whilst ignoring everyone else - that's the point being criticised. The military should write apps for Iphone, because Facebook write apps for Iphone?
How good is the Facebook app for Windows, Linux or OS X?
Hear hear. As soon as I saw the story, I thought "Oh, someone yet again developing only for the less popular platforms". We should be lucky they're at least releasing for Android (which, at least, are fastest growing), and not just the Iphones (which are 3rd place in the US, 4th worldwide, and also the gap is widening between them and Android, Sybmian and RIM).
Also note that worldwide, Symbian are number one - and Q2 2010 results show that their sales are growing over twice as fast as Apple (their increase being secondly only to Android).
RIM are still increasing their sales faster than Apple though - so even if Android does overtake in the US, RIM will still be a healthy 2nd place, with the gap between them and Apple widening.
No. Sure, he'd rightly investigate it, but a statement alone wouldn't constitute proof, especially in the lack of other evidence, or that a crime had even occurred in the first place. Even when it's known that someone has been murdered, and even when people confess in police interviews, it's well known that confessions may be false, and shouldn't be taken as sole proof.
In that case there'd be other evidence. Plus, you're making a circular argument, by assuming we already know the person did it - here the question is whether he is guilty or not.
Yes I have no sympathy for people actually speeding, but it's not clear that online confessions amount to proof in general. Note, even if people confess in a police interview - and even for crimes such as murder, as you suggest - a confession is not necessarily sufficient proof. People may confess for a variety of reasons other than them being guilty (protecting someone, being intimidated; in this story, reasons might include thinking it's cool to claim you were going fast).
What if it was another crime - someone claiming they'd taken drugs, or drunk when they were under age, or describing their first sexual experience which was under age? Okay for the police to charge all of them, too?
Sorry, I fail to see the distinction between a written letter, and email. A well written email by that individual should be just as valid.
And it's perfectly possible to spam with written letter (do you not get junk mail?) If a campaign group encouraged people to print out copies of the same letter, and send large numbers of it to their MPs, you'd be okay with that, because it's sent via post and has a stamp? Of course not.
Where I live, we have a very effective resident's pressure group. We have one person who directly contacts councillors, one person who is a planning specialist, and access to legal and scientific information. The rest of us supply funds and do the office jobs. We also have a fund big enough to apply for legal injunctions. This is extremely effective; local Government gets one targeted message.
But how is that supposed to work for national levels? This argument makes no sense at a national scale. 38 degrees as an organisation shouldn't be the one writing to MPs - that's not how it works. It's perfectly correct that constituents should do it. Your suggestion would hand the country entirely over to lobbyists.
and they know that it has considerable real support
How? Lobby groups are poor indicators of supports - the groups can easily inflate their numbers, and also claim that every member agrees with whatever political viewpoint they want to push, even if that's not true. Writing in as individuals is far better for democracy.
Lobbying can be done at a national level, but it is also good to encourage people to write to their own MPs on an issue. Whether by email, or letter with a stamp.
During the whole session, there is a group of 10 people which came in together and spend the whole time shouting out loud how they want something specific done, drowning everybody else during the whole session and pretty much not letting anybody else be heard.
How is each constituent sending one email analogous to shouting?
This is basically what some "pressure groups" do, only they do it via e-mail.
That may be true of some pressure groups, but you have completely misunderstood what we're actually talking about. The issue here is that constituents are sending emails on an issue, but they are finding his email on the 38 degrees site, and (IIRC) using the site to send that email.
In my example above, if the 10 people disturbing the open session were not forcefully thrown out
Um, in what way is a constituent who sends an email via 38 degrees causing a disturbance, and deserve being "forcefully thrown out"?
They were risks, risks that didn't materialise, but they were still risks. That's what a risk is.
It's the same thing with Y2K - even here, you see people claiming it as a myth or waste of time. The risks were there, and indeed, the fact that little happened is a credit to those people who worked fixing the problems. The only ones making ludicrous claims were the media - the same media who now cite the example as "experts make claims that turn out to be completely wrong".
But I would say things are better now. When you consider:
In the past, they may have got together and drafted a letter saying "500 people in your constituency alone believe this...", put together a petition or asked their members to write letters themselves.
The problem with the first two is that things like group letters and petitions are very poor indicators of support. How do we know that 500 people really believe this? E.g., it's not uncommon for an organisation to cite the number of its members as support, but we have no idea what they all individually think. How was the petition worded? Petitions are often biasedly worded, and only present one side of the argument. They also don't encourage people to actually think about the issues. And we have no idea how strongly they really care about the issue - they could just be some random person they found to say, e.g., they don't like gay marriage, but this doesn't necessarily mean they really have much of a problem with it being allowed.
I dislike copy/paste emails to some extent to, but it's still a step up. And if people can easily write in their own views, then that's good.
Reply to each email with a form letter. Not much better - form letters tend to stick out a mile and the MP knows it.
I don't see a huge problem - the problem is when form letters don't even begin to address points that anyone has made. How is this worse than only sending one reply for those 500 constituents? He doesn't have to answer every single point that each person made - he just has to outline what his or his party's position on the matter is, and if they are going to do anything or not.
And you're also missing the bigger point. When thousands of people wrote in about the Digital Economy Bill when it was being "debated", they were more concerned with the Government giving it the proper debate time it deserved rather than rushing it through. I doubt people were that bothered as to whether they got a form reply from their MP, or if it was individually written to them in reply.
Yes - whilst I tend to agree with the various campaigns that 38 degrees has been doing, I tend to not be happy at sites that encourage people to send copy-and-paste letters. I think it's much better for people to take the time to write it in their own words, putting forward their own arguments and concerns.
So to be fair, I think what he's objecting to is not people emailing him in general, endless copies of the same thing.
And we must remember - for every 38 degrees that might be doing something we support, there are other lobby organisations promoting all sorts of nonsense, and several bad laws have been passed because they managed to stir up a campaign, getting thousands of people to either sign a petition, click a button or whatever, without these people actually having to consider the actual issues deeply. So in general, I think encouraging people to write in their own words is a good thing.
I also have some sympathy as this is an individual MP. Had the last Labour Government complained about this, I'd have none - Labour were keen to cite bulk copy/paste or petition responses as "evidence the public support this" when it agreed with whatever new law they were passing; but dismissed this as "an organised campaign" when the campaign disagreed (e.g., it did this with the ID cards consultation, ignoring thousands of responses that opposed the plans).
Just one comment though:
If 38 degress was given the time it demands from this MP
38 degrees isn't demanding any time. The time is demanded by constituents of that MP, who have as much right to email him as any other - even if we did rather they write in their own words.
In the 80s and 90s, yes. But that was the 80s and 90s. Now that Apple "Macs" are now the "Mac" trademark slapped onto the same hardware you find in a PC, it doesn't matter whether you use the "personal computer" or "x86 PC" definition. Either way, they're basically Apple PCs.
Ironically, even Apple themselves referred to Macs as PCs in the PPC days (to incorrectly claim "first 64 bit PC"). They market them now as not PCs, presumably in an attempt to create the illusion of having a product distinction to other brands, even where no technical hardware distinction exists.
How well do the command line people adapt when they have to use a GUI?
(This sounds like a DOS versus Mac war from the 80s. As someone who grew up on the Amiga, I'd point out that both have their uses. There's nothing wrong with using a GUI to get things done, but sometimes a command prompt can make complex jobs easier.)
Indeed. Whilst it's still possible to make one-man PC games, generating artwork is an immense problem, and there's no hope of coming close to commercial games.
This is why I'm liking phone development - it has much of the feel of programming of years ago, in that the standards are much lower:) Yet, I've still got the advantage of modern tools (like Qt), rather than having to write it in assembler or BASIC.
(Of course it's not that simple - phones are far more powerful than the 8 bits, comparable to computers of perhaps a decade ago, and capable of running 3D games; but I think the handheld nature also makes people's expectations lower, as people aren't looking for the complexity of a full blown desktop/console game, but just something to amuse them for a few minutes. And so far, it seems like most of the commercial offerings on phones are still relatively simple, rather than having the huge team effort of PC/console games.)
There are interpreted languages out there, including ones aimed at beginners (including BASICs, like Blitz). The higher barrier is that it doesn't come installed as standard.
Writing a game in BASIC was easy. Writing a modern game in XNA takes C#, 3D experience, miles of tutorials, etc.
No, you're confusing the learning curve to knock up something very simple (e.g., 10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD" versus setting up all the compilers etc), with writing a full game. I'd argue that BASIC doesn't make this at all easy, especially the variants that existed on the 8 bits.
There's a wealth of resources to make things easier today. Even though OOP can be difficult, at the least you've got structures, which most BASICs didn't even have, leaving you to use only arrays. There wasn't dynamic memory allocation, so you were left with fixed length arrays. Most BASICs had nothing more than an awkward "gosub" for writing functions.
You have toolkits today to easily knock up GUIs, graphics and so on, rather than having to reinvent the wheel every time.
And yes, you have those tutorials - the Internet provides a wealth of information, which I didn't have access to in the 80s.
The only reason game programming is higher is because the standards are higher (e.g., writing 3D games - and not getting away with wireframe, either). But the tools or languages have not made things harder.
Go on, try firing up BASIC in a Spectrum or C64 emulator and write a game, and compare it to your modern language of choice.
Maybe if they got months' worth of disproportionate media coverage and astroturfing like a certain other company gets for free, you'd have heard of it, and people would be waiting in line for it.
The ringtone generation because they are too lazy, indifferent, unmotivated to create a 10 second ringtone they will buy it and swap it and replace it with the next fad.
I'd be curious to see if these people are really from a specific "generation". Chances are that people spending money on ringtones (and now, people spending money on trivial "fart" apps etc) may well be older people too. These people have phones too.
The excludes of course the next generation of computer geeks/nerds basically the same as the last generation just with a bias to gui use.
We had GUI use the last generation - it was just those who were using DOS who didn't:)
the gen who grew up having to fiddle with DOS just to get games to run
Not all of us. I grew up with the Amiga which just worked, and avoided the whole mess that was DOS. But that hasn't left me with an inability to solve problems, on the contrary, I'd say I'm better suited to a modern world where things like GUIs, multimedia and multitasking are standard.
On the other hand, I do think it helped me starting on 8 bits, where the choices were play simple games, or learn to program using the built in language. Today, I wonder if I'd have had too many distractions (especially with the Internet), not to mention that computers often don't come with a built in easy to learn language.
Then again, who knows. Maybe I'd be having fun learning to program my Nokia, using a language that makes development far easier than it was with BASIC.
Some people like resistive, some people like capacitive - perhaps the question of resistive is therefore a matter of opinion, and not something that's dated and inferior as you originally claimed...
Eh? Resistive touchscreens have their own advantages - I like the precision of a stylus, and not covering my expensive 5800's screen with food. I can still use finger touch fine, and I never find myself wanting multitouch. It's a matter of opinion which is better, and it's ludicrous to dismiss it as "dated".
Lots of things we use today were around in 2004 - I guess you must dislike smartphones, qwerty keyboards, mice and operating systems, as they've all been around since then.
The base system is open source, but there are a host of proprietary add-ons that you need for basic functionality. The situation is analogous to Apple's OS X / iOS and Darwin
Is it? Can I run an OS X app like Photoshop on either Darwin, or an open source version of OS X that sits on Darwin? I presume the answer is no, which is why trying to claim OS X as open source is incorrect.
And what about Android - are you saying that Android applications don't run on the open source Android, because they need "proprietary add-ons"?
This will be the situation with Meego and Maemo, and probably any such projects. You get a big bunch of vendors who team up to craft an integrated windowing system / API / framework / etc which is either a proprietary add-on
Nokia are using Qt for future Symbian and Meego releases, and Qt is Open Source. Not every company is like Apple, you know.
Not to mention, they do not even have capacitive touch.
Just as aside, I don't see capacitive as better than resistive, they each have their own advantages (e.g., resistive can be used with anything, such as a stylus for better precision, or avoiding smearing food all over your expensive phone/tablet).
(I guess there's a point that some Android applications may assume multitouch is available - but I don't see this as fundamentally different to any other hardware that might be required by some software. Since Android is open source, it's going to find itself on a range of hardware, even on phones. Even if Google have some specified requirements for access to their app store, long term they're going to need to cope with different hardware having different capabilities.)
Correct English regarding proper nouns would, at best, lead us to IPhone.
That's reasonable too - although that still leads to the trouble of having to remember whether a company calls their product "Blackberry" or "BlackBerry", and so on.
Note, I'm not saying that my way is the one true way; on the contrary, I'm just saying that writing correct English shouldn't be viewed as wrong; I disagree that reproducing trademarks in prose is the only correct way.
It is well established that proper nouns can and routinely do have capitalization which in a regular noun would be completely inappropriate.
Do you have examples - other than the circular evidence of people saying "iPhone"? For other trademarked names, there seems to be much inconsistency. Do you have examples of non-trademarked proper nouns?
Your argument that some universal law of English grammar does override proper nouns and force them into some sort of standardized capitalization is, on its face, weak... not least because no such rule exists.
It's a good thing I never claimed that then:) I was talking about overriding trademarked styles, not overriding proper nouns. On the contrary, it was proper nouns that I was referring to. And I didn't claim there were rules, or that there was one true way - I just said it's odd that correct English should be viewed as "wrong".
If there are no standard rules, then that's even more argument for saying that it should be okay not to have to reproduce the stylised trademark representation "iPhone".
That does not, however, make "iPhone" a good product name, and makes "iPod" (which doesn't even hint at what the device does) downright silly.
Well yes, indeed, this is why I originally said "Possibly you are thinking of the old Symbian C++, that apparently was a bit harder to learn?", acknowledging that it was reasonable the OP may have been thinking of the older SDK.
(Yes as you say, the SDK was available in beta for months before then, but hit 1.0 in June. I was using the SDK fine for a few months earlier.)
Even if it's only recently changed, it's nonetheless available now and working. Just as I can no longer say the Iphone can't multitask, or has a poor screen resolution, or no forward facing camera, as a criticism, even though the Iphone 4 was only recently released. It doesn't excuse spreading FUD about a platform (I'm reminded about Opera, where even years later, we still get the inevitable "It has ads!" comments).
Slashdot Mirror
Brilliant - Apple fans saying how superior the Ipad is to fictional Star Trek devices :)
Nice collection of straw men. I was responding to someone who claimed that an online confession alone should be sufficient. If that wasn't relevant to this case, then great - but you need to direct your comments to the person I replied to, not me.
And how many of the BlackBerry users really -like- BlackBerry OS and didn't just pick a BlackBerry because it was cheap, their company bought one or the like?
What sort of argument is that anyway? "How many Iphone users really -like- the Iphone, and didn't just pick an Iphone because it [insert reason why they thought it was better here]?" If people pick a phone because it has something better (which includes being the best at a particular price), then presumably they like it better than everything else they could have had.
just compare a simple cross-platform app like Facebook, the iPhone has the best quality app, next Android (especially since the last update) then WebOS, then WinMo and BlackBerry OS.
You missed the market leader.
But yes, it is true that companies write apps for the Iphone, whilst ignoring everyone else - that's the point being criticised. The military should write apps for Iphone, because Facebook write apps for Iphone?
How good is the Facebook app for Windows, Linux or OS X?
Hear hear. As soon as I saw the story, I thought "Oh, someone yet again developing only for the less popular platforms". We should be lucky they're at least releasing for Android (which, at least, are fastest growing), and not just the Iphones (which are 3rd place in the US, 4th worldwide, and also the gap is widening between them and Android, Sybmian and RIM).
Also note that worldwide, Symbian are number one - and Q2 2010 results show that their sales are growing over twice as fast as Apple (their increase being secondly only to Android).
RIM are still increasing their sales faster than Apple though - so even if Android does overtake in the US, RIM will still be a healthy 2nd place, with the gap between them and Apple widening.
No. Sure, he'd rightly investigate it, but a statement alone wouldn't constitute proof, especially in the lack of other evidence, or that a crime had even occurred in the first place. Even when it's known that someone has been murdered, and even when people confess in police interviews, it's well known that confessions may be false, and shouldn't be taken as sole proof.
What if such a person killed one of your family?
In that case there'd be other evidence. Plus, you're making a circular argument, by assuming we already know the person did it - here the question is whether he is guilty or not.
Yes I have no sympathy for people actually speeding, but it's not clear that online confessions amount to proof in general. Note, even if people confess in a police interview - and even for crimes such as murder, as you suggest - a confession is not necessarily sufficient proof. People may confess for a variety of reasons other than them being guilty (protecting someone, being intimidated; in this story, reasons might include thinking it's cool to claim you were going fast).
What if it was another crime - someone claiming they'd taken drugs, or drunk when they were under age, or describing their first sexual experience which was under age? Okay for the police to charge all of them, too?
Sorry, I fail to see the distinction between a written letter, and email. A well written email by that individual should be just as valid.
And it's perfectly possible to spam with written letter (do you not get junk mail?) If a campaign group encouraged people to print out copies of the same letter, and send large numbers of it to their MPs, you'd be okay with that, because it's sent via post and has a stamp? Of course not.
Where I live, we have a very effective resident's pressure group. We have one person who directly contacts councillors, one person who is a planning specialist, and access to legal and scientific information. The rest of us supply funds and do the office jobs. We also have a fund big enough to apply for legal injunctions. This is extremely effective; local Government gets one targeted message.
But how is that supposed to work for national levels? This argument makes no sense at a national scale. 38 degrees as an organisation shouldn't be the one writing to MPs - that's not how it works. It's perfectly correct that constituents should do it. Your suggestion would hand the country entirely over to lobbyists.
and they know that it has considerable real support
How? Lobby groups are poor indicators of supports - the groups can easily inflate their numbers, and also claim that every member agrees with whatever political viewpoint they want to push, even if that's not true. Writing in as individuals is far better for democracy.
Lobbying can be done at a national level, but it is also good to encourage people to write to their own MPs on an issue. Whether by email, or letter with a stamp.
During the whole session, there is a group of 10 people which came in together and spend the whole time shouting out loud how they want something specific done, drowning everybody else during the whole session and pretty much not letting anybody else be heard.
How is each constituent sending one email analogous to shouting?
This is basically what some "pressure groups" do, only they do it via e-mail.
That may be true of some pressure groups, but you have completely misunderstood what we're actually talking about. The issue here is that constituents are sending emails on an issue, but they are finding his email on the 38 degrees site, and (IIRC) using the site to send that email.
In my example above, if the 10 people disturbing the open session were not forcefully thrown out
Um, in what way is a constituent who sends an email via 38 degrees causing a disturbance, and deserve being "forcefully thrown out"?
I agree. Also relevant is this from the Bad Science blog: http://www.badscience.net/2009/04/parmageddon/ . In particular, people seem to misunderstand risk:
They were risks, risks that didn't materialise, but they were still risks. That's what a risk is.
It's the same thing with Y2K - even here, you see people claiming it as a myth or waste of time. The risks were there, and indeed, the fact that little happened is a credit to those people who worked fixing the problems. The only ones making ludicrous claims were the media - the same media who now cite the example as "experts make claims that turn out to be completely wrong".
But I would say things are better now. When you consider:
In the past, they may have got together and drafted a letter saying "500 people in your constituency alone believe this...", put together a petition or asked their members to write letters themselves.
The problem with the first two is that things like group letters and petitions are very poor indicators of support. How do we know that 500 people really believe this? E.g., it's not uncommon for an organisation to cite the number of its members as support, but we have no idea what they all individually think. How was the petition worded? Petitions are often biasedly worded, and only present one side of the argument. They also don't encourage people to actually think about the issues. And we have no idea how strongly they really care about the issue - they could just be some random person they found to say, e.g., they don't like gay marriage, but this doesn't necessarily mean they really have much of a problem with it being allowed.
I dislike copy/paste emails to some extent to, but it's still a step up. And if people can easily write in their own views, then that's good.
Reply to each email with a form letter. Not much better - form letters tend to stick out a mile and the MP knows it.
I don't see a huge problem - the problem is when form letters don't even begin to address points that anyone has made. How is this worse than only sending one reply for those 500 constituents? He doesn't have to answer every single point that each person made - he just has to outline what his or his party's position on the matter is, and if they are going to do anything or not.
And you're also missing the bigger point. When thousands of people wrote in about the Digital Economy Bill when it was being "debated", they were more concerned with the Government giving it the proper debate time it deserved rather than rushing it through. I doubt people were that bothered as to whether they got a form reply from their MP, or if it was individually written to them in reply.
Yes - whilst I tend to agree with the various campaigns that 38 degrees has been doing, I tend to not be happy at sites that encourage people to send copy-and-paste letters. I think it's much better for people to take the time to write it in their own words, putting forward their own arguments and concerns.
So to be fair, I think what he's objecting to is not people emailing him in general, endless copies of the same thing.
And we must remember - for every 38 degrees that might be doing something we support, there are other lobby organisations promoting all sorts of nonsense, and several bad laws have been passed because they managed to stir up a campaign, getting thousands of people to either sign a petition, click a button or whatever, without these people actually having to consider the actual issues deeply. So in general, I think encouraging people to write in their own words is a good thing.
I also have some sympathy as this is an individual MP. Had the last Labour Government complained about this, I'd have none - Labour were keen to cite bulk copy/paste or petition responses as "evidence the public support this" when it agreed with whatever new law they were passing; but dismissed this as "an organised campaign" when the campaign disagreed (e.g., it did this with the ID cards consultation, ignoring thousands of responses that opposed the plans).
Just one comment though:
If 38 degress was given the time it demands from this MP
38 degrees isn't demanding any time. The time is demanded by constituents of that MP, who have as much right to email him as any other - even if we did rather they write in their own words.
In the 80s and 90s, yes. But that was the 80s and 90s. Now that Apple "Macs" are now the "Mac" trademark slapped onto the same hardware you find in a PC, it doesn't matter whether you use the "personal computer" or "x86 PC" definition. Either way, they're basically Apple PCs.
Ironically, even Apple themselves referred to Macs as PCs in the PPC days (to incorrectly claim "first 64 bit PC"). They market them now as not PCs, presumably in an attempt to create the illusion of having a product distinction to other brands, even where no technical hardware distinction exists.
How well do the command line people adapt when they have to use a GUI?
(This sounds like a DOS versus Mac war from the 80s. As someone who grew up on the Amiga, I'd point out that both have their uses. There's nothing wrong with using a GUI to get things done, but sometimes a command prompt can make complex jobs easier.)
Indeed. Whilst it's still possible to make one-man PC games, generating artwork is an immense problem, and there's no hope of coming close to commercial games.
This is why I'm liking phone development - it has much of the feel of programming of years ago, in that the standards are much lower :) Yet, I've still got the advantage of modern tools (like Qt), rather than having to write it in assembler or BASIC.
(Of course it's not that simple - phones are far more powerful than the 8 bits, comparable to computers of perhaps a decade ago, and capable of running 3D games; but I think the handheld nature also makes people's expectations lower, as people aren't looking for the complexity of a full blown desktop/console game, but just something to amuse them for a few minutes. And so far, it seems like most of the commercial offerings on phones are still relatively simple, rather than having the huge team effort of PC/console games.)
There are interpreted languages out there, including ones aimed at beginners (including BASICs, like Blitz). The higher barrier is that it doesn't come installed as standard.
Writing a game in BASIC was easy. Writing a modern game in XNA takes C#, 3D experience, miles of tutorials, etc.
No, you're confusing the learning curve to knock up something very simple (e.g., 10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD" versus setting up all the compilers etc), with writing a full game. I'd argue that BASIC doesn't make this at all easy, especially the variants that existed on the 8 bits.
There's a wealth of resources to make things easier today. Even though OOP can be difficult, at the least you've got structures, which most BASICs didn't even have, leaving you to use only arrays. There wasn't dynamic memory allocation, so you were left with fixed length arrays. Most BASICs had nothing more than an awkward "gosub" for writing functions.
You have toolkits today to easily knock up GUIs, graphics and so on, rather than having to reinvent the wheel every time.
And yes, you have those tutorials - the Internet provides a wealth of information, which I didn't have access to in the 80s.
The only reason game programming is higher is because the standards are higher (e.g., writing 3D games - and not getting away with wireframe, either). But the tools or languages have not made things harder.
Go on, try firing up BASIC in a Spectrum or C64 emulator and write a game, and compare it to your modern language of choice.
Maybe if they got months' worth of disproportionate media coverage and astroturfing like a certain other company gets for free, you'd have heard of it, and people would be waiting in line for it.
The ringtone generation because they are too lazy, indifferent, unmotivated to create a 10 second ringtone they will buy it and swap it and replace it with the next fad.
I'd be curious to see if these people are really from a specific "generation". Chances are that people spending money on ringtones (and now, people spending money on trivial "fart" apps etc) may well be older people too. These people have phones too.
The excludes of course the next generation of computer geeks/nerds basically the same as the last generation just with a bias to gui use.
We had GUI use the last generation - it was just those who were using DOS who didn't :)
the gen who grew up having to fiddle with DOS just to get games to run
Not all of us. I grew up with the Amiga which just worked, and avoided the whole mess that was DOS. But that hasn't left me with an inability to solve problems, on the contrary, I'd say I'm better suited to a modern world where things like GUIs, multimedia and multitasking are standard.
On the other hand, I do think it helped me starting on 8 bits, where the choices were play simple games, or learn to program using the built in language. Today, I wonder if I'd have had too many distractions (especially with the Internet), not to mention that computers often don't come with a built in easy to learn language.
Then again, who knows. Maybe I'd be having fun learning to program my Nokia, using a language that makes development far easier than it was with BASIC.
Some people like resistive, some people like capacitive - perhaps the question of resistive is therefore a matter of opinion, and not something that's dated and inferior as you originally claimed...
It has a *resistive* touchscreen (hello 2004),
Eh? Resistive touchscreens have their own advantages - I like the precision of a stylus, and not covering my expensive 5800's screen with food. I can still use finger touch fine, and I never find myself wanting multitouch. It's a matter of opinion which is better, and it's ludicrous to dismiss it as "dated".
Lots of things we use today were around in 2004 - I guess you must dislike smartphones, qwerty keyboards, mice and operating systems, as they've all been around since then.
The base system is open source, but there are a host of proprietary add-ons that you need for basic functionality. The situation is analogous to Apple's OS X / iOS and Darwin
Is it? Can I run an OS X app like Photoshop on either Darwin, or an open source version of OS X that sits on Darwin? I presume the answer is no, which is why trying to claim OS X as open source is incorrect.
And what about Android - are you saying that Android applications don't run on the open source Android, because they need "proprietary add-ons"?
This will be the situation with Meego and Maemo, and probably any such projects. You get a big bunch of vendors who team up to craft an integrated windowing system / API / framework / etc which is either a proprietary add-on
Nokia are using Qt for future Symbian and Meego releases, and Qt is Open Source. Not every company is like Apple, you know.
Not to mention, they do not even have capacitive touch.
Just as aside, I don't see capacitive as better than resistive, they each have their own advantages (e.g., resistive can be used with anything, such as a stylus for better precision, or avoiding smearing food all over your expensive phone/tablet).
(I guess there's a point that some Android applications may assume multitouch is available - but I don't see this as fundamentally different to any other hardware that might be required by some software. Since Android is open source, it's going to find itself on a range of hardware, even on phones. Even if Google have some specified requirements for access to their app store, long term they're going to need to cope with different hardware having different capabilities.)
Correct English regarding proper nouns would, at best, lead us to IPhone.
That's reasonable too - although that still leads to the trouble of having to remember whether a company calls their product "Blackberry" or "BlackBerry", and so on.
Note, I'm not saying that my way is the one true way; on the contrary, I'm just saying that writing correct English shouldn't be viewed as wrong; I disagree that reproducing trademarks in prose is the only correct way.
It is well established that proper nouns can and routinely do have capitalization which in a regular noun would be completely inappropriate.
Do you have examples - other than the circular evidence of people saying "iPhone"? For other trademarked names, there seems to be much inconsistency. Do you have examples of non-trademarked proper nouns?
Your argument that some universal law of English grammar does override proper nouns and force them into some sort of standardized capitalization is, on its face, weak... not least because no such rule exists.
It's a good thing I never claimed that then :) I was talking about overriding trademarked styles, not overriding proper nouns. On the contrary, it was proper nouns that I was referring to. And I didn't claim there were rules, or that there was one true way - I just said it's odd that correct English should be viewed as "wrong".
If there are no standard rules, then that's even more argument for saying that it should be okay not to have to reproduce the stylised trademark representation "iPhone".
That does not, however, make "iPhone" a good product name, and makes "iPod" (which doesn't even hint at what the device does) downright silly.
I agree :)
Well yes, indeed, this is why I originally said "Possibly you are thinking of the old Symbian C++, that apparently was a bit harder to learn?", acknowledging that it was reasonable the OP may have been thinking of the older SDK.
(Yes as you say, the SDK was available in beta for months before then, but hit 1.0 in June. I was using the SDK fine for a few months earlier.)
Even if it's only recently changed, it's nonetheless available now and working. Just as I can no longer say the Iphone can't multitask, or has a poor screen resolution, or no forward facing camera, as a criticism, even though the Iphone 4 was only recently released. It doesn't excuse spreading FUD about a platform (I'm reminded about Opera, where even years later, we still get the inevitable "It has ads!" comments).