With a bit more experience than you I can say (per usual) that it depends. But the best business answer is usually both. Get the fix out as fast as you can, but schedule the time to refactor the code and get it right. Too far towards one way or the other leads to your hands being tied too often. Sometimes a quick hack makes sense. Sometimes it doesn't. Experience (and not always programming experience) is the best way to determine which would be better -- speed or maintainability.
I think the parent poster meant that an app stops executing, not that it necessarily gets dumped immediately now. Conceptually he is right, just wrong on the technical details.
Thanks for the links, I didn't know personally how that process worked.
I was not saying that's a fact, that's just what he said and it seemed reasonable at the time. I really am casually following this. As in, I'm listening and paying attention, but I'm not a wannabe lawyer or legislator or researcher -- I don't have time to be. His solution sounded reasonable and I am familiar enough with local politics and his stances to have an idea that he's not BSing on his answer here. I may not fully agree with what's happening, but it doesn't really matter; I'm glad that this isn't settled, that it's getting more attention. I've also heard there is more to this story than just privacy concerns, and this extra time will help address those issues as well. Throwing it all out is setting the stage for another potential sneak attack. This way it gets addressed.
Interview l heard on the radio to come to these conclusions: http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=14661633 (click the "Interview with Gov Herbert" link on the right side of the video pane)
As a resident of Utah, I've been casually following this Bill. I was very perturbed to find out that it had passed, but I think I understand after hearing the governor's explanation. He gave an interview the day after and said basically that even had he vetoed it it would have passed. So he instead amended it, calling a special session so that there would be time for public debate and changes. I don't know all of the nuts and bolts of the process, but as a casual interested party that was good enough for me. In fact I respect the fact that he told the public why he voted for it and why he amended it -- it was in everyone's best interest (except Utah's congress maybe) for him to do what he did. He was handed a crap sandwitch and he sent it back to the kitchen, even if he's still sitting in the restauraunt that served it. In the end basically it's a law that will be re-voted on before it goes into effect, with public participation and transparency. The fact that the governor is being given this award over those who pushed the bill through in the first place is fairly disgraceful, assuming that it would have gotten through regardless of what he did.
I'm cautiously optimistic, and I know enough people involved in the political process here in Utah that I expect this won't stand for long even if it goes through in a bad state.
As much as I think this isn't a good idea, as a practicing Mormon, I've got to clarify a few things here.
It's fairly offensive to hear you say that "Mormons believe that the God of Earth is nothing particularly special". We've been given everything by him. He is our Father and we are his children. God is still God and will always be our Father, just like you would expect from a parent. You may grow up and move out, but He is still your father. Mormons certainly believe he is the God of all creation, not just of earth.
To further clarify... I believe that someday I can become like God. Unlike many other religions, I have a decent idea of what I can actually be doing once I'm resurrected (via the atonement of Christ) and living forever. I get to grow up and become like my heavenly parents if I choose to do so, and take my family with me. Not exactly a terrible thing, and not particularly illogical.
On a number of occasions my children (when young) would nod their heads instead of saying yes or no as well as pointing with their fingers. It's funny when I would ask "Is mom there?" and get no answer, then when my wife gets on she asks why the kid was pointing at her. =)
This reminds me of close to end game in civilization, where the AI who has been antagonistic to you pretty well all game catches up technologically with you and passes you in some branches while you're off doing other tech advancements. Isn't always a bad thing, but can be devastating if you're not paying attention to it, and definitely something important.
While I mostly agree with what you're saying in this thread, apple did specify that they were porting the carbon API to 64 bit and then the next year told everyone (again at WWDC) that carbon would never be 64 bit and they should rewrite using the cocoa APIs. This didn't go over well for a number of developers (adobe was a big one IIRC). As a mac developer myself, not caring about 64 bit carbon I heard about it from a number of sources. Granted, this didn't make it to release, but it wasn't one of apple's better moments with it's 3rd party developer community.
That said, I agree with their decision to go cocoa only and understand it. However it was handled very poorly.
As a 10+ year mac developer, I'm pretty confident that both sides are correct here.
Home computing is going to diverge into appliance computing and "advanced" computing. Apple, as primarily a hardware company, is happy to push this and we're seeing the beginnings with the iPhone/iPad. They let 75% of the population do what they want without having to know anything about the tech. I expect that apple WILL have devices like you describe. However, to expect them to go 100% in that direction seems disingenuous with computing in general, not to mention the tinker-style training that many programmers get growing up. Long term it would be suicide to get rid of that segment completely. I can see a day that the premium apple's products will be non-appliance products and the lower tiers will be fairly basic for end users who just want to write an email or surf the web.
There's a huge amount of money out there to be had by bringing the "hard stuff" to a user level where people don't have to know much to get stuff done. That's where apple is headed. Tinfoil aside, I don't think we have much to worry about in the next 10-20 years, this will be a major paradigm shift for computing if they can get it to take off.
According to the IRS last year, I made just over 90k last year (gross) and I was in the top 15% of income earners in the U.S. So the top 10% might be lower than you think.
With my first kid my wife and I took a hypno-birthing class. The teacher pointed out once that this is pretty common, and you're in a hypnotic state. Your sub-conscious takes over the mindless task of driving (almost always along a route you frequent) and your conscious mind goes elsewhere. You're still aware of everything that's going on, but your attention is on something else. Probably as close to true multi-tasking as you can get in that sense. Dunno if it's true or not, but it's interesting stuff regardless.
I have developed a few apps and one that I wanted to develop since launch is a WiFi finder. There is no API for wifi hardware access unless you use apple's non-published APIs. APIs which are strictly forbidden by their SDK license and crap.
I've been bugged for some time that apps like these, blatantly disregarding the rules, were able to make a bunch of money while the developers who played by the rules were not able to accomplish the same thing. I'm surprised that it took them this long to do so.
That said, I think it's annoying and stupid to somewhat arbitrarily enforce these rules (or have them in the first place!). The rules are there, it would be very doable to add a technological piece to the app review process to stop this from happening entirely. For some unknown reason they are not, saying one thing and doing another.
The iPhone port of FF1 and FF2 (japan 2) are apparently the same versions as were released for the PSP, but less expensive and with some touch inputs added. They aren't perfect control-wise, but very fun for the nostalgia involved and at a reasonable price.
For what its worth, I did some research and purchased one of these recently. One of the things I heard about these brother printers is that the toner is detected by a light sensor in the toner cartridge. If you cover up the "window" in the toner cartridge after the printer tells you the toner is out, you will actually get to use all of the toner until you start mis-printing. From what I understand you can get hundreds more pages out of a toner cartridge this way.
And currently these are marked down for sub-$100 at amazon.com for anyone who is interested.
As an iPhone developer following this story, your conclusion is all that I can come up with. Having had a number of "rejected" emails from apple after submitting an application for review, it all depends on what you consider rejected. Google submitted an application. There may have been some back and forth, but apple as far as I am aware always lets you know why they are not releasing an app on the app store. They encourage you to review what they tell you and resubmit the application. Just because you don't agree with why they are asking you to make changes doesn't mean that they are explicitly rejecting the application. So it all comes down to semantics on this one.
Just for fun I'll throw in an example. I submitted my app recently and within a few days got an email back "rejecting" my application from the store for the reason that I didn't notify the user when there was no valid network connection (for a web page view and embedded google maps). They pointed me to their documentation and to some example code that dealt with similar issues. I made the changes, though grumbling about it, I'd like to think most people intelligent enough to be using my application would understand what happens if they don't have a net connection. After longer than I'd like the application was approved and put up for sale. If I had stopped and not updated there I would have been in the same situation -- Apple "rejected" my app in that they stated as-is they wouldn't publish it. That doesn't mean they wouldn't publish it at all.
That said, they have some pretty silly guidelines in some cases. But I think the greater harm comes from telling them they don't have a right to those rules in the first place. I expect this to be a non-issue after some research is done and this won't really go anywhere.
I'll say that I personally am in that boat as well. At age 33 I still have some issues at times because of this. I never had to think about much of anything until my junior year in high school. And even then it was only 2 classes. It was like hitting a brick wall. I now have a daughter that is 7, who appears to be headed in a similar direction. I hope that I can challenge her appropriately in other ways and help her to think, to work, so she never has that kind of problem. Thanks for the post.
No privately owned company should own more than 50% of the market. We have laws to force bad people to do good things. This is one example of that. We do not need more corporate feudalism. Look where unbridled greed got us.
Uh, what?
So if there are 3 private car companies out there in a given region... and one car company has 90% of the market because it can make much better, safer cars for cheaper than the other two, you think it shouldn't exist because it has >50% of the market and is a private company?
We have laws to force bad people to do good things? Who decides what is good and what is bad? If you have the wrong people making the laws the definitions of "bad" and "good" can flip flop and be worse than having no laws at all!
That said I agree that we have to have laws to keep things generally in line. But from your tone and implications, you're not thinking things through.
I have to agree with the GP here. I've been coding in C++ and legacy C for more than 10 years professionally. About a year ago jumped into objective-c. Pre-2.0 I'd maybe agree with you, but nowadays objective-C is a much better world once you get comfortable with the syntax than C++ in my opinion. Granted, a large part of it is that apple's API's are so convenient, but I really like the simplistic approach that most objective-C has over C++.
Apple changed this with I believe 2.2 so that their beta releases were under NDA, but standard releases are not. Previous to this change you are correct, but the situation has changed for the better now. So as long as they aren't currently releasing 3.1 beta specific code I believe they are fine. That's my understanding as an iPhone developer myself.
Yesterday one of my kids was complaining that her younger sister has more drink in her cup than she does. Traditionally the younger kids get a little less. We talked about regardless of what someone else has, it doesn't take anything away from what you have. The comparison and injustice is only in your mind.
So it is here.
You took a dead project and brought it back from the dead. You could because of the coolness factor of the GPL, and you're complying with that. There's nothing wrong with charging for it.
I agree, it is unfortunate that one of the original authors isn't on board. However, even if he doesn't like what you're doing (and it sounds like for some moral reasons that he believes you are violating) he has given you, or anyone really, permission to go ahead and use that source. It's just sour grapes at this point by complaining about the reasoning behind using the source.
He doesn't have anything less by you doing this. And that's the point right? The GPL is to take what's there, add to it and pass it along. As others have pointed out he's free to update and release it himself if he feels that strongly about it. He would likely tell you that it's not worth his time and/or the money to do so. But what is your time and money worth? I'm thinking he's not looking at the full picture.
I wouldn't sweat it too much. But I agree, it's too bad he feels that way. Sometimes you just have to agree to disagree.
I'm not sure that your statement is true. In my area there is this wind farm that just went online in the last 6 months or so. It's a lot of windmills right next to each other in the mouth of a canyon.
For what it worth, the apps that you purchase are tied to your itunes account, not to the phone. If you wipe your phone and go "buy" them again, it will notify you that you have already purchased the app and let you download it for free.
Slashdot Mirror
With a bit more experience than you I can say (per usual) that it depends. But the best business answer is usually both. Get the fix out as fast as you can, but schedule the time to refactor the code and get it right. Too far towards one way or the other leads to your hands being tied too often. Sometimes a quick hack makes sense. Sometimes it doesn't. Experience (and not always programming experience) is the best way to determine which would be better -- speed or maintainability.
I think the parent poster meant that an app stops executing, not that it necessarily gets dumped immediately now. Conceptually he is right, just wrong on the technical details.
Unfortunately only through iTunes.
Thanks for the links, I didn't know personally how that process worked.
I was not saying that's a fact, that's just what he said and it seemed reasonable at the time. I really am casually following this. As in, I'm listening and paying attention, but I'm not a wannabe lawyer or legislator or researcher -- I don't have time to be. His solution sounded reasonable and I am familiar enough with local politics and his stances to have an idea that he's not BSing on his answer here. I may not fully agree with what's happening, but it doesn't really matter; I'm glad that this isn't settled, that it's getting more attention. I've also heard there is more to this story than just privacy concerns, and this extra time will help address those issues as well. Throwing it all out is setting the stage for another potential sneak attack. This way it gets addressed.
Interview l heard on the radio to come to these conclusions:
http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=14661633
(click the "Interview with Gov Herbert" link on the right side of the video pane)
As a resident of Utah, I've been casually following this Bill. I was very perturbed to find out that it had passed, but I think I understand after hearing the governor's explanation. He gave an interview the day after and said basically that even had he vetoed it it would have passed. So he instead amended it, calling a special session so that there would be time for public debate and changes. I don't know all of the nuts and bolts of the process, but as a casual interested party that was good enough for me. In fact I respect the fact that he told the public why he voted for it and why he amended it -- it was in everyone's best interest (except Utah's congress maybe) for him to do what he did. He was handed a crap sandwitch and he sent it back to the kitchen, even if he's still sitting in the restauraunt that served it. In the end basically it's a law that will be re-voted on before it goes into effect, with public participation and transparency. The fact that the governor is being given this award over those who pushed the bill through in the first place is fairly disgraceful, assuming that it would have gotten through regardless of what he did.
I'm cautiously optimistic, and I know enough people involved in the political process here in Utah that I expect this won't stand for long even if it goes through in a bad state.
As much as I think this isn't a good idea, as a practicing Mormon, I've got to clarify a few things here.
It's fairly offensive to hear you say that "Mormons believe that the God of Earth is nothing particularly special". We've been given everything by him. He is our Father and we are his children. God is still God and will always be our Father, just like you would expect from a parent. You may grow up and move out, but He is still your father. Mormons certainly believe he is the God of all creation, not just of earth.
To further clarify... I believe that someday I can become like God. Unlike many other religions, I have a decent idea of what I can actually be doing once I'm resurrected (via the atonement of Christ) and living forever. I get to grow up and become like my heavenly parents if I choose to do so, and take my family with me. Not exactly a terrible thing, and not particularly illogical.
On a number of occasions my children (when young) would nod their heads instead of saying yes or no as well as pointing with their fingers. It's funny when I would ask "Is mom there?" and get no answer, then when my wife gets on she asks why the kid was pointing at her. =)
This reminds me of close to end game in civilization, where the AI who has been antagonistic to you pretty well all game catches up technologically with you and passes you in some branches while you're off doing other tech advancements. Isn't always a bad thing, but can be devastating if you're not paying attention to it, and definitely something important.
While I mostly agree with what you're saying in this thread, apple did specify that they were porting the carbon API to 64 bit and then the next year told everyone (again at WWDC) that carbon would never be 64 bit and they should rewrite using the cocoa APIs. This didn't go over well for a number of developers (adobe was a big one IIRC). As a mac developer myself, not caring about 64 bit carbon I heard about it from a number of sources. Granted, this didn't make it to release, but it wasn't one of apple's better moments with it's 3rd party developer community.
That said, I agree with their decision to go cocoa only and understand it. However it was handled very poorly.
As a 10+ year mac developer, I'm pretty confident that both sides are correct here.
Home computing is going to diverge into appliance computing and "advanced" computing. Apple, as primarily a hardware company, is happy to push this and we're seeing the beginnings with the iPhone/iPad. They let 75% of the population do what they want without having to know anything about the tech. I expect that apple WILL have devices like you describe. However, to expect them to go 100% in that direction seems disingenuous with computing in general, not to mention the tinker-style training that many programmers get growing up. Long term it would be suicide to get rid of that segment completely. I can see a day that the premium apple's products will be non-appliance products and the lower tiers will be fairly basic for end users who just want to write an email or surf the web.
There's a huge amount of money out there to be had by bringing the "hard stuff" to a user level where people don't have to know much to get stuff done. That's where apple is headed. Tinfoil aside, I don't think we have much to worry about in the next 10-20 years, this will be a major paradigm shift for computing if they can get it to take off.
According to the IRS last year, I made just over 90k last year (gross) and I was in the top 15% of income earners in the U.S. So the top 10% might be lower than you think.
As a mac developer, that was my first thought as well. Think of the minecraft!
With my first kid my wife and I took a hypno-birthing class. The teacher pointed out once that this is pretty common, and you're in a hypnotic state. Your sub-conscious takes over the mindless task of driving (almost always along a route you frequent) and your conscious mind goes elsewhere. You're still aware of everything that's going on, but your attention is on something else. Probably as close to true multi-tasking as you can get in that sense. Dunno if it's true or not, but it's interesting stuff regardless.
Actually, this is close to 2 years overdue.
I have developed a few apps and one that I wanted to develop since launch is a WiFi finder. There is no API for wifi hardware access unless you use apple's non-published APIs. APIs which are strictly forbidden by their SDK license and crap.
I've been bugged for some time that apps like these, blatantly disregarding the rules, were able to make a bunch of money while the developers who played by the rules were not able to accomplish the same thing. I'm surprised that it took them this long to do so.
That said, I think it's annoying and stupid to somewhat arbitrarily enforce these rules (or have them in the first place!). The rules are there, it would be very doable to add a technological piece to the app review process to stop this from happening entirely. For some unknown reason they are not, saying one thing and doing another.
The iPhone port of FF1 and FF2 (japan 2) are apparently the same versions as were released for the PSP, but less expensive and with some touch inputs added. They aren't perfect control-wise, but very fun for the nostalgia involved and at a reasonable price.
For what its worth, I did some research and purchased one of these recently. One of the things I heard about these brother printers is that the toner is detected by a light sensor in the toner cartridge. If you cover up the "window" in the toner cartridge after the printer tells you the toner is out, you will actually get to use all of the toner until you start mis-printing. From what I understand you can get hundreds more pages out of a toner cartridge this way.
And currently these are marked down for sub-$100 at amazon.com for anyone who is interested.
As an iPhone developer following this story, your conclusion is all that I can come up with. Having had a number of "rejected" emails from apple after submitting an application for review, it all depends on what you consider rejected. Google submitted an application. There may have been some back and forth, but apple as far as I am aware always lets you know why they are not releasing an app on the app store. They encourage you to review what they tell you and resubmit the application. Just because you don't agree with why they are asking you to make changes doesn't mean that they are explicitly rejecting the application. So it all comes down to semantics on this one.
Just for fun I'll throw in an example. I submitted my app recently and within a few days got an email back "rejecting" my application from the store for the reason that I didn't notify the user when there was no valid network connection (for a web page view and embedded google maps). They pointed me to their documentation and to some example code that dealt with similar issues. I made the changes, though grumbling about it, I'd like to think most people intelligent enough to be using my application would understand what happens if they don't have a net connection. After longer than I'd like the application was approved and put up for sale. If I had stopped and not updated there I would have been in the same situation -- Apple "rejected" my app in that they stated as-is they wouldn't publish it. That doesn't mean they wouldn't publish it at all.
That said, they have some pretty silly guidelines in some cases. But I think the greater harm comes from telling them they don't have a right to those rules in the first place. I expect this to be a non-issue after some research is done and this won't really go anywhere.
I'll say that I personally am in that boat as well. At age 33 I still have some issues at times because of this. I never had to think about much of anything until my junior year in high school. And even then it was only 2 classes. It was like hitting a brick wall. I now have a daughter that is 7, who appears to be headed in a similar direction. I hope that I can challenge her appropriately in other ways and help her to think, to work, so she never has that kind of problem. Thanks for the post.
No privately owned company should own more than 50% of the market. We have laws to force bad people to do good things. This is one example of that. We do not need more corporate feudalism. Look where unbridled greed got us.
Uh, what?
So if there are 3 private car companies out there in a given region... and one car company has 90% of the market because it can make much better, safer cars for cheaper than the other two, you think it shouldn't exist because it has >50% of the market and is a private company?
We have laws to force bad people to do good things? Who decides what is good and what is bad? If you have the wrong people making the laws the definitions of "bad" and "good" can flip flop and be worse than having no laws at all!
That said I agree that we have to have laws to keep things generally in line. But from your tone and implications, you're not thinking things through.
I have to agree with the GP here. I've been coding in C++ and legacy C for more than 10 years professionally. About a year ago jumped into objective-c. Pre-2.0 I'd maybe agree with you, but nowadays objective-C is a much better world once you get comfortable with the syntax than C++ in my opinion. Granted, a large part of it is that apple's API's are so convenient, but I really like the simplistic approach that most objective-C has over C++.
Apple changed this with I believe 2.2 so that their beta releases were under NDA, but standard releases are not. Previous to this change you are correct, but the situation has changed for the better now. So as long as they aren't currently releasing 3.1 beta specific code I believe they are fine. That's my understanding as an iPhone developer myself.
Yesterday one of my kids was complaining that her younger sister has more drink in her cup than she does. Traditionally the younger kids get a little less. We talked about regardless of what someone else has, it doesn't take anything away from what you have. The comparison and injustice is only in your mind.
So it is here.
You took a dead project and brought it back from the dead. You could because of the coolness factor of the GPL, and you're complying with that. There's nothing wrong with charging for it.
I agree, it is unfortunate that one of the original authors isn't on board. However, even if he doesn't like what you're doing (and it sounds like for some moral reasons that he believes you are violating) he has given you, or anyone really, permission to go ahead and use that source. It's just sour grapes at this point by complaining about the reasoning behind using the source.
He doesn't have anything less by you doing this. And that's the point right? The GPL is to take what's there, add to it and pass it along. As others have pointed out he's free to update and release it himself if he feels that strongly about it. He would likely tell you that it's not worth his time and/or the money to do so. But what is your time and money worth? I'm thinking he's not looking at the full picture.
I wouldn't sweat it too much. But I agree, it's too bad he feels that way. Sometimes you just have to agree to disagree.
I'm not sure that your statement is true. In my area there is this wind farm that just went online in the last 6 months or so. It's a lot of windmills right next to each other in the mouth of a canyon.
http://www.planeinsanerc.com/PlaneInsane.php?PageID=69
For what it worth, the apps that you purchase are tied to your itunes account, not to the phone. If you wipe your phone and go "buy" them again, it will notify you that you have already purchased the app and let you download it for free.