Have you read Leviticus, Deuteronomy, or Exodus? Those books are filled with various reasons for which you should kill people (see here [evilbible.com]), among others.
Have you read the legal codes of 33 states of the United States? Those books are filled with various reasons for which people you should kill. Leviticus, Deuteronomy and Exodus were presenting a legal system that included capital punishment, not encouraging vigilatism. Shock horror, modern law in the US does the same thing.
Uh, none? The Crusades and the Inquisition were anti-Christian, and many Christians today will tell you exactly that.
They also weren't religious. They were a land war, and persecution of dissenters to retain political power for the Pope. You need to remember, the Catholic Church wasn't just a religion, it was also a state - and the most powerful one at the time. It's action during those times are the exact same thing corrupt states do (start wars over resources (oil/land) and persecute ideological minorities (communists/heretics)).
HTML5 is projected to be finished in 2022. By that stage, vendors will have adopted proprietary standards, not because they want to, but because the open standard was simply too damn slow to get done.
Just because HTML5 might have wrinkles to iron out doesn't mean that it's a failed endeavor. Rather, it means that the browsers, companies behind said browsers, and the users have created a massive cluster of epic proportions.
So, basically, blame everyone but the people who wrote the spec? Sounds like the consortium's made up of entire middle-managers.
HTML5 is the poster-child for designed-by-committee, slow-as-molasses processes that are out-paced by everyone else because, in the real world, things actually need to get done this decade, and the rest of us can't wait. HTML5 has been in development for eight years, and their current target is another two years before it becomes a Candidate Recommendation. Bearing in mind that they've already missed all their previous targets, Ian Hickson estimated that they'd have the requisite two, independent working implementations in 2022. That's eighteen years from start of development, 10 years from now.
By the time the spec is completed, devices will have been forced to roll their own solutions, simply because the spec isn't done. Now, they might have some inter-operable features, if that aspect of the spec had been fully codified before they had to implement it, but that's precisely the situation we had in the Netscape v. IE browser wars - each had a somewhat common base, but were independently adding new features to try an improve the browser. The features they added were mutually incompatible because there was no common standard - and we're staring straight down that road again. It's a very clear example of perfect being the enemy of good.
If size, weight, battery life, OS, adaptability (IE using a keyboard or not) aren't a paradigm shift I don't know what is
Those (with the possibly exception of adaptability) are almost the very definition of iterative improvements. Computers are always getting smaller and lighter; batteries are likewise getting smaller, lighter and more capacitive. A paradigm shift involves a change, not the ongoing process of improvement that we see all the time.
The only difference between a mainframe and a laptop is size, weight, portability, and the OS.
Right, and we didn't jump from mainframes to PCs. Mainframes were getting smaller and lighter all the time; thus came the mini computer. Mini computers likewise got smaller and lighter (and cheaper; don't forget this one) and thus came the personal computer. Personal computers got cheaper and more user friendly and, at some point, hit the sweet spot of price, size and accessibility that allowed it to go mainstream.
No it isn't. It isn't something unusual. It isn't a hack. It is a standard option for the iPad and has been for a very long time.
Why would doing what I described be a hack? People have doing it with laptops for years. If processor speed and capacity reaches a critical threshold, I wouldn't be surprised to see people doing it with phones in the near future.
Yes they are. Go back and look at the posts in this thread. Again many of them are assuming I am using an external keyboard, and still say the iPad sucks at content creation.
Which posts? I can't see any that mention you to be using an external keyboard. The only one I can see which gives any specifics at all is assuming the opposite:
Simple things like placing the caret, selecting text, precision locating, formatting, it's all far less efficient on a touchscreen
People complain about tablets for data entry because touchscreens suck for it. They obscure half the screeen. The haptic feedback is nowhere near the quality of even a cheap keyboard. It's harder to touch type, as virtual keys don't have tangible boundaries. Auto-correct can screw up what you're typing. Add an external keyboard to that, however, and those problems go away.
But the only real difference between a tablet with an external keyboard and a laptop, is the physical size and weight, and the OS. Everyone's talking about tablets as if they're a massive paradigm shift in the way we use computers. But when you find out how people who use them regularly actually use them, it turns out they're using them as miniature laptops. That's fine, there's nothing wrong with that, but it just goes to show that the tablet form factor isn't some quantum leap forward for general computing UI the way it's often hyped - it's a niche device.
Every single thing I said in my original post is 100% true. I am sorry you think I was lying, but I can't help that.
You weren't lying, you were just excluding an additional fact (that you mentioned later in one of your replies). You use an aftermarket keyboard and dock to essentially turn your tablet form-factor device into a small laptop form-factor device.
It's like saying that a phone is perfectly adequate development device, after I plug it into a dock and attach my massive LCD screens, and USB mouse and keyboard. At that stage, what device is processing the input for all those devices is irrelevant.
Nobody's claiming that these devices don't have the capacity, or the speed, or whatever, to perform productive tasks. They're saying that the form factor is not conducive to it. Plugging the processing unit into another device with an appropriate form factor for content creation doesn't defeat their point - it only goes to demonstrate it.
Wealth is finite. The fact that western nations are wealthy DOES necessitate that undeveloped nations are undeveloped. At any given point in time, there is a FINITE amount of wealth. If that amount of wealth somehow comes into my possession, instantly, then that necessarily DOES mean that NOBODY else has any wealth, at that point in time, by definition.
You're a baker. bake a cake. You take ingredients worth $2, a couple of cents worth of power, apply your time and expertise, and produce a product worth $30. You have just created $28 worth of wealth; nobody else has lost any wealth.
But creation of wealth requires that the FINITE amount of wealth in existence is increased, and that takes time, as does transfer of wealth.
You have a limited conception of wealth. It's not money. The only way to add wealth isn't to dig more gold out of the ground. Wealth is created whenever, through application of skill, or creativity, or time, we create something from raw materials worth more than the sum of its parts. Great artists can take $10 worth of raw material, and produce an item worth millions. A good coder can use no resources other than a bit of electricity and create software worth hundreds of dollars that can be infinitely reproduced at negligible cost. This is *creating* wealth.
If I have all the world's chocolate, that means nobody else has any chocolate. People can still make more chocolate to change this situation, since the amount of chocolate in the world is not constant.
Oil isn't necessary for the production of nitrogen fertiliser; it's just cheap and easy. Everything exploded when we discovered cheap, easy power. Now we have the ability to develop hard, expensive, renewable power to continue powering what we built on the back of petroleum. There's no reason nitrogen fertiliser can't be manufactured using a renewable source of energy, assuming we get our butts into gear developing an economical one - and a economical, renewable energy source is going to be a necessity for many reasons, food production being but one of them.
Predicting that our food supply will limit our population isn't the same as predicting that vast numbers of people will drop dead of starvation.
Malthus theorized that subsistence limits population. His successors (including the linked study authors) are predicting that our current food production is essentially a windfall (ie: we're living off the success of previous years, or possibly off the yield increase given by petroleum-based fertilisation techniques) and that it'll all collapse and we'll all start dying real soon now.
I hear that argued by the religious right anytime the subject of overpopulation comes up
Yay, political/religious generalizations straight off the bat. Clearly, this post is going to be quality.
We have a planet with a comfortable capacity of 5 billion
Source? Or did you just pull a convenient number out of your backside? WHO estimates of human population levelling (~10 billion) place it somewhere below the median range of the estimated carrying capacity of the earth.
I put the people who downplay the potential for mass starvation in the same category as people who deny climate change. They're both whistling past the graveyard so they don't have to make any sacrifices in terms of changing their lifestyle.
Probably because there's no need to change their lifestyle. There is not a finite amount of wealth; the fact that western nations are wealthy does not necessitate that undeveloped nations be kept so. As an example, look at Malawi; within five years, with a fairly simple improvement in the form of a fertiliser subsidy, Malawi went from famine to being a food exporter. The same thing happened in India with the Green Revolution. Now imagine if they applied more modern techniques, like widespread irrigation, or high-yield strains of grain.
Last I knew, those "experts" were pretty much on target -- vast swathes of humanity have been starving to death since there were vast swathes of humanity.
Which makes such a prediction pretty useless. What those experts are predicting is a massive uptick in starvation rates. And yes, they have been consistently wrong. In modern times, there has never been a global, sustained, starvation die-off in the vein of a Malthusian Catastrophe.
Malthus totally got it right except for two developments he couldn't foresee.
In other words, he got it wrong.
The second factor (effective birth control) is the only reason you can remain ignorant enough to call Malthus wrong.
It's more than just birth control; it's a whole slew of factors that contribute to demographic transition. And yes, it's the primary reason Malthus was wrong. One of his fundamental assumptions was:
"That population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase"
Demographic transition has demonstrated that this is false. Human population growth is not limited solely by the availability of subsistence; it self-limits given the presence of other factors that tend to occur as prosperity increases.
And how many companies has IBM sued for billions of dollars after getting their products pre-emptively banned from sale? It's not Apple's patenting stupid stuff that's causing this, it's Apple's use of their patents on stupid stuff to screw the competition that's causing it.
My first experience with programming was reading the hell out of documentation - function references, tutorials, examples, etc. I guess if you had a teacher acting as that reference you might be ok, but they'd have to be on the ball.
That's a reason not to start at age six, but not a reason not to start in primary school. I first began learning to program when I was in 3rd grade (so, about 10) when computers were far less user friendly, and there was nobody really around to teach me. With a better environment, I can't see why kids in that age group shouldn't start to learn a useful skill.
Computer programming is applied math, and requires at least some level of reading. It'd probably be easier to get kids interested in maths if it came in the form of computer programming, rather than pen and paper. Although I'm not sure what level of programming you can do before you're functionally literate or numerate (kids at age 6 are frequently neither)
Instead of one huge chunk of time, break up the year a bit more with a few weeks in mid-term. They can still have just as much time off, but not in one brain-draining slab. Also, I'm dubious about the "open 10 days more" claim - that study's looking at charter schools, and there are a whole slew more variables there that don't look like they're controlled for in this study. In fact, the study makes that same point:
We should note, however, that a long school year tends to go part and parcel with several other policies, such as a longer school day and Saturday school, and this should make us cautious about assigning too much importance to a longer school year in and of itself.
Customers are fickle (outside of the the fanboy spectrum) and will jump on whatever is "hot" at the time. That's the whole purpose of the "walled garden" that Apple - and yes, Google "Play Store" also - encourages. It's an attempt to lock people into a specific set of devices (ones that you profit from) by discouraging change. Who wants to lose music, games, etc just because there's a new device out that is a little better?
That might be the function of Apple's app store, but Google's is a little different. Restricting yourself to Android's garden is entirely voluntary - it takes a single checkbox in an easy-to-find settings screen to allow loading any app you like. Android's garden doesn't have a wall. It also doesn't lock out other app stores from the device - the fact that Google's Play Store is the primary access point for Android apps is for two reasons - it's installed by default, and none of the other stores are sufficiently superior to warrant changing. In contrast, Apple's App Store is the primary access point because it's the only one available.
Also, I don't know where you get the losing music and games bit from - you can use two different marketplaces concurrently on Android. Using another marketplace doesn't stop the stuff you got from the old one from working.
Nothing is free, you pay one way or another. Wether you pay with money or with your personal information, it's just the same.
And the Slashdot privacy nuts need to remember that, for most people, even when they know that the cost is their personal information, it's a cost they are willing to pay. Hell, I'm fully informed and willing to pay it. The private information that Google has access to is not really valuable to me. I can trade it to Google for something that is. Exchanging something someone else wants more than you do, for something you want more than they do, is the basis of trade.
People need to remember that, although they might consider it anathema to provide any single datum to an external party in case the government finds out you bought a toothbrush last Friday, most people don't.
Does this have such a resounding life-or-death import on the tech industry to warrant such attention?
Yes, yes it does. The current patent system is choking the life out of the tech industry. At first, everyone said they were just building up patent war chests for "defensive purposes". Patent trolls destroyed many of the little guys, but the big companies were largely untouched. Now Apple has unloaded it's patents against Samsung - both major companies, both with large swathes of patents, and Samsung at least has its fingers in many, many tech pies. It's not little companies getting shaken down for lunch money any more, it's superpowers taking swings at each other. And with things like the pre-emptive ban of Samsung's products, it's not a tidy little gentlemanly fight in the courts, either. The patent war just went hot.
Now, that's all a little dramatic, but it's essentially true. This case could quite possibly be the tipping point for the patent system - one way or the other - and people in technical fields are (or should be) extremely interested in the outcome.
Patent lawsuits aren't new - but they're also more plentiful than they've ever been in history, and new ones are being issued at a likewise record-breaking rate. The system can tolerate a certain number of patents - especially if its given time to thoroughly examine them and weed out all of the bad ones. But there comes a tipping point where the number of patents starts choking out the life out of the enterprise. When you've got, say, a hundred patents relating to your specific field of endeavour, going through them is a pain, but doable. When you've got ten thousand, it's not practical.
While "anarchic" might not be an entirely accurate description of the GPs post (he did, after all, say he'd be forbidding violence and fraud), it's certainly a lot closer than what you seem to think he means:
As long as nobody was physically hurting anybody else or perpetrating some fraudulent scheme I'd just let them do whatever they want. "Soft" drugs? Legal. Prostitution? Legal. Want to talk shit about the government? Go ahead, I'll take it as constructive criticism. Anonymity would not only be legal, it would be encouraged. Hell, I'd use Bitcoin as the national currency if I could make it work.
the one fact that stuck out to me is how he dealt with officials convicted of corruption: They would march the felonious cad out of the courtroom, into the street below, and promptly execute them in front of the waiting audience.
So you think when the GP said "I'd just let them do whatever they want" he forgot to add "and then execute them publicly" on the end of it? The virtue of Tito's rather abrupt justice would be largely dependant on how accurate those convictions for corruption were, and if they were prosecuted uniformly. In a lot of dictatorships, the people who get convicted tend to be the dictator's political enemies.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you read Leviticus, Deuteronomy, or Exodus? Those books are filled with various reasons for which you should kill people (see here [evilbible.com]), among others.
Have you read the legal codes of 33 states of the United States? Those books are filled with various reasons for which people you should kill. Leviticus, Deuteronomy and Exodus were presenting a legal system that included capital punishment, not encouraging vigilatism. Shock horror, modern law in the US does the same thing.
Uh, none? The Crusades and the Inquisition were anti-Christian, and many Christians today will tell you exactly that.
They also weren't religious. They were a land war, and persecution of dissenters to retain political power for the Pope. You need to remember, the Catholic Church wasn't just a religion, it was also a state - and the most powerful one at the time. It's action during those times are the exact same thing corrupt states do (start wars over resources (oil/land) and persecute ideological minorities (communists/heretics)).
HTML5 is projected to be finished in 2022. By that stage, vendors will have adopted proprietary standards, not because they want to, but because the open standard was simply too damn slow to get done.
Just because HTML5 might have wrinkles to iron out doesn't mean that it's a failed endeavor. Rather, it means that the browsers, companies behind said browsers, and the users have created a massive cluster of epic proportions.
So, basically, blame everyone but the people who wrote the spec? Sounds like the consortium's made up of entire middle-managers.
HTML5 is the poster-child for designed-by-committee, slow-as-molasses processes that are out-paced by everyone else because, in the real world, things actually need to get done this decade, and the rest of us can't wait. HTML5 has been in development for eight years, and their current target is another two years before it becomes a Candidate Recommendation. Bearing in mind that they've already missed all their previous targets, Ian Hickson estimated that they'd have the requisite two, independent working implementations in 2022. That's eighteen years from start of development, 10 years from now.
By the time the spec is completed, devices will have been forced to roll their own solutions, simply because the spec isn't done. Now, they might have some inter-operable features, if that aspect of the spec had been fully codified before they had to implement it, but that's precisely the situation we had in the Netscape v. IE browser wars - each had a somewhat common base, but were independently adding new features to try an improve the browser. The features they added were mutually incompatible because there was no common standard - and we're staring straight down that road again. It's a very clear example of perfect being the enemy of good.
If size, weight, battery life, OS, adaptability (IE using a keyboard or not) aren't a paradigm shift I don't know what is
Those (with the possibly exception of adaptability) are almost the very definition of iterative improvements. Computers are always getting smaller and lighter; batteries are likewise getting smaller, lighter and more capacitive. A paradigm shift involves a change, not the ongoing process of improvement that we see all the time.
The only difference between a mainframe and a laptop is size, weight, portability, and the OS.
Right, and we didn't jump from mainframes to PCs. Mainframes were getting smaller and lighter all the time; thus came the mini computer. Mini computers likewise got smaller and lighter (and cheaper; don't forget this one) and thus came the personal computer. Personal computers got cheaper and more user friendly and, at some point, hit the sweet spot of price, size and accessibility that allowed it to go mainstream.
No it isn't. It isn't something unusual. It isn't a hack. It is a standard option for the iPad and has been for a very long time.
Why would doing what I described be a hack? People have doing it with laptops for years. If processor speed and capacity reaches a critical threshold, I wouldn't be surprised to see people doing it with phones in the near future.
Yes they are. Go back and look at the posts in this thread. Again many of them are assuming I am using an external keyboard, and still say the iPad sucks at content creation.
Which posts? I can't see any that mention you to be using an external keyboard. The only one I can see which gives any specifics at all is assuming the opposite:
Simple things like placing the caret, selecting text, precision locating, formatting, it's all far less efficient on a touchscreen
People complain about tablets for data entry because touchscreens suck for it. They obscure half the screeen. The haptic feedback is nowhere near the quality of even a cheap keyboard. It's harder to touch type, as virtual keys don't have tangible boundaries. Auto-correct can screw up what you're typing. Add an external keyboard to that, however, and those problems go away.
But the only real difference between a tablet with an external keyboard and a laptop, is the physical size and weight, and the OS. Everyone's talking about tablets as if they're a massive paradigm shift in the way we use computers. But when you find out how people who use them regularly actually use them, it turns out they're using them as miniature laptops. That's fine, there's nothing wrong with that, but it just goes to show that the tablet form factor isn't some quantum leap forward for general computing UI the way it's often hyped - it's a niche device.
Every single thing I said in my original post is 100% true. I am sorry you think I was lying, but I can't help that.
You weren't lying, you were just excluding an additional fact (that you mentioned later in one of your replies). You use an aftermarket keyboard and dock to essentially turn your tablet form-factor device into a small laptop form-factor device.
It's like saying that a phone is perfectly adequate development device, after I plug it into a dock and attach my massive LCD screens, and USB mouse and keyboard. At that stage, what device is processing the input for all those devices is irrelevant.
Nobody's claiming that these devices don't have the capacity, or the speed, or whatever, to perform productive tasks. They're saying that the form factor is not conducive to it. Plugging the processing unit into another device with an appropriate form factor for content creation doesn't defeat their point - it only goes to demonstrate it.
That's correct, it doesn't.
Wealth is finite. The fact that western nations are wealthy DOES necessitate that undeveloped nations are undeveloped. At any given point in time, there is a FINITE amount of wealth. If that amount of wealth somehow comes into my possession, instantly, then that necessarily DOES mean that NOBODY else has any wealth, at that point in time, by definition.
You're a baker. bake a cake. You take ingredients worth $2, a couple of cents worth of power, apply your time and expertise, and produce a product worth $30. You have just created $28 worth of wealth; nobody else has lost any wealth.
But creation of wealth requires that the FINITE amount of wealth in existence is increased, and that takes time, as does transfer of wealth.
You have a limited conception of wealth. It's not money. The only way to add wealth isn't to dig more gold out of the ground. Wealth is created whenever, through application of skill, or creativity, or time, we create something from raw materials worth more than the sum of its parts. Great artists can take $10 worth of raw material, and produce an item worth millions. A good coder can use no resources other than a bit of electricity and create software worth hundreds of dollars that can be infinitely reproduced at negligible cost. This is *creating* wealth.
If I have all the world's chocolate, that means nobody else has any chocolate. People can still make more chocolate to change this situation, since the amount of chocolate in the world is not constant.
Fortunately, wealth isn't chocolate.
Oil isn't necessary for the production of nitrogen fertiliser; it's just cheap and easy. Everything exploded when we discovered cheap, easy power. Now we have the ability to develop hard, expensive, renewable power to continue powering what we built on the back of petroleum. There's no reason nitrogen fertiliser can't be manufactured using a renewable source of energy, assuming we get our butts into gear developing an economical one - and a economical, renewable energy source is going to be a necessity for many reasons, food production being but one of them.
Predicting that our food supply will limit our population isn't the same as predicting that vast numbers of people will drop dead of starvation.
Malthus theorized that subsistence limits population. His successors (including the linked study authors) are predicting that our current food production is essentially a windfall (ie: we're living off the success of previous years, or possibly off the yield increase given by petroleum-based fertilisation techniques) and that it'll all collapse and we'll all start dying real soon now.
I hear that argued by the religious right anytime the subject of overpopulation comes up
Yay, political/religious generalizations straight off the bat. Clearly, this post is going to be quality.
We have a planet with a comfortable capacity of 5 billion
Source? Or did you just pull a convenient number out of your backside? WHO estimates of human population levelling (~10 billion) place it somewhere below the median range of the estimated carrying capacity of the earth.
I put the people who downplay the potential for mass starvation in the same category as people who deny climate change. They're both whistling past the graveyard so they don't have to make any sacrifices in terms of changing their lifestyle.
Probably because there's no need to change their lifestyle. There is not a finite amount of wealth; the fact that western nations are wealthy does not necessitate that undeveloped nations be kept so. As an example, look at Malawi; within five years, with a fairly simple improvement in the form of a fertiliser subsidy, Malawi went from famine to being a food exporter. The same thing happened in India with the Green Revolution. Now imagine if they applied more modern techniques, like widespread irrigation, or high-yield strains of grain.
Last I knew, those "experts" were pretty much on target -- vast swathes of humanity have been starving to death since there were vast swathes of humanity.
Which makes such a prediction pretty useless. What those experts are predicting is a massive uptick in starvation rates. And yes, they have been consistently wrong. In modern times, there has never been a global, sustained, starvation die-off in the vein of a Malthusian Catastrophe.
Malthus totally got it right except for two developments he couldn't foresee.
In other words, he got it wrong.
The second factor (effective birth control) is the only reason you can remain ignorant enough to call Malthus wrong.
It's more than just birth control; it's a whole slew of factors that contribute to demographic transition. And yes, it's the primary reason Malthus was wrong. One of his fundamental assumptions was:
"That population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase"
Demographic transition has demonstrated that this is false. Human population growth is not limited solely by the availability of subsistence; it self-limits given the presence of other factors that tend to occur as prosperity increases.
Malthus? Is that you?
as well as the anti-placebetrino
Also known as the sciencino
Homeopathy doesn't.
It's a perfectly valid treatment for dehydration :P
And how many companies has IBM sued for billions of dollars after getting their products pre-emptively banned from sale? It's not Apple's patenting stupid stuff that's causing this, it's Apple's use of their patents on stupid stuff to screw the competition that's causing it.
My first experience with programming was reading the hell out of documentation - function references, tutorials, examples, etc. I guess if you had a teacher acting as that reference you might be ok, but they'd have to be on the ball.
That's a reason not to start at age six, but not a reason not to start in primary school. I first began learning to program when I was in 3rd grade (so, about 10) when computers were far less user friendly, and there was nobody really around to teach me. With a better environment, I can't see why kids in that age group shouldn't start to learn a useful skill.
Computer programming is applied math, and requires at least some level of reading. It'd probably be easier to get kids interested in maths if it came in the form of computer programming, rather than pen and paper. Although I'm not sure what level of programming you can do before you're functionally literate or numerate (kids at age 6 are frequently neither)
Instead of one huge chunk of time, break up the year a bit more with a few weeks in mid-term. They can still have just as much time off, but not in one brain-draining slab. Also, I'm dubious about the "open 10 days more" claim - that study's looking at charter schools, and there are a whole slew more variables there that don't look like they're controlled for in this study. In fact, the study makes that same point:
We should note, however, that a long school year tends to go part and parcel with several other policies, such as a longer school day and Saturday school, and this should make us cautious about assigning too much importance to a longer school year in and of itself.
Customers are fickle (outside of the the fanboy spectrum) and will jump on whatever is "hot" at the time. That's the whole purpose of the "walled garden" that Apple - and yes, Google "Play Store" also - encourages. It's an attempt to lock people into a specific set of devices (ones that you profit from) by discouraging change. Who wants to lose music, games, etc just because there's a new device out that is a little better?
That might be the function of Apple's app store, but Google's is a little different. Restricting yourself to Android's garden is entirely voluntary - it takes a single checkbox in an easy-to-find settings screen to allow loading any app you like. Android's garden doesn't have a wall. It also doesn't lock out other app stores from the device - the fact that Google's Play Store is the primary access point for Android apps is for two reasons - it's installed by default, and none of the other stores are sufficiently superior to warrant changing. In contrast, Apple's App Store is the primary access point because it's the only one available.
Also, I don't know where you get the losing music and games bit from - you can use two different marketplaces concurrently on Android. Using another marketplace doesn't stop the stuff you got from the old one from working.
Nothing is free, you pay one way or another. Wether you pay with money or with your personal information, it's just the same.
And the Slashdot privacy nuts need to remember that, for most people, even when they know that the cost is their personal information, it's a cost they are willing to pay. Hell, I'm fully informed and willing to pay it. The private information that Google has access to is not really valuable to me. I can trade it to Google for something that is. Exchanging something someone else wants more than you do, for something you want more than they do, is the basis of trade.
People need to remember that, although they might consider it anathema to provide any single datum to an external party in case the government finds out you bought a toothbrush last Friday, most people don't.
Does this have such a resounding life-or-death import on the tech industry to warrant such attention?
Yes, yes it does. The current patent system is choking the life out of the tech industry. At first, everyone said they were just building up patent war chests for "defensive purposes". Patent trolls destroyed many of the little guys, but the big companies were largely untouched. Now Apple has unloaded it's patents against Samsung - both major companies, both with large swathes of patents, and Samsung at least has its fingers in many, many tech pies. It's not little companies getting shaken down for lunch money any more, it's superpowers taking swings at each other. And with things like the pre-emptive ban of Samsung's products, it's not a tidy little gentlemanly fight in the courts, either. The patent war just went hot.
Now, that's all a little dramatic, but it's essentially true. This case could quite possibly be the tipping point for the patent system - one way or the other - and people in technical fields are (or should be) extremely interested in the outcome.
Patent lawsuits aren't new - but they're also more plentiful than they've ever been in history, and new ones are being issued at a likewise record-breaking rate. The system can tolerate a certain number of patents - especially if its given time to thoroughly examine them and weed out all of the bad ones. But there comes a tipping point where the number of patents starts choking out the life out of the enterprise. When you've got, say, a hundred patents relating to your specific field of endeavour, going through them is a pain, but doable. When you've got ten thousand, it's not practical.
While "anarchic" might not be an entirely accurate description of the GPs post (he did, after all, say he'd be forbidding violence and fraud), it's certainly a lot closer than what you seem to think he means:
As long as nobody was physically hurting anybody else or perpetrating some fraudulent scheme I'd just let them do whatever they want. "Soft" drugs? Legal. Prostitution? Legal. Want to talk shit about the government? Go ahead, I'll take it as constructive criticism. Anonymity would not only be legal, it would be encouraged. Hell, I'd use Bitcoin as the national currency if I could make it work.
the one fact that stuck out to me is how he dealt with officials convicted of corruption: They would march the felonious cad out of the courtroom, into the street below, and promptly execute them in front of the waiting audience.
So you think when the GP said "I'd just let them do whatever they want" he forgot to add "and then execute them publicly" on the end of it? The virtue of Tito's rather abrupt justice would be largely dependant on how accurate those convictions for corruption were, and if they were prosecuted uniformly. In a lot of dictatorships, the people who get convicted tend to be the dictator's political enemies.