I think most commenters are missing the primary focus of the author's rant. This is fair, because his letter is laden with subtext that is probably not obvious to people who aren't intimately familiar with the iPhone developer community. I believe that the primary thrust of his argument is not that he should be paid more, or that his apps can't stand on their merits, or that he is no longer in a position to play gatekeeper.
Rather, his primary complaints seem to be with the Apple-approved and required distribution mechanism for the iPhone, namely their App Store. The App Store severely limits how apps can be sold, promoted, and used. It does not allow for trial software, it does not allow for returns. There is no built-in help system or feedback mechanism. Ratings cannot be challenged. And the "top X apps" is segregated by "free" vs "pay" but not by different levels of pay. Therefore it is much easier to sell more copies of a $0.99 app and climb the charts, displacing potentially far better but more expensive apps that are naturally going to have fewer sales.
Hockenberry's letter seems aimed at encouraging or nudging in the direction of fixing many of these perceived App Store deficiencies. That is why it is addressed to Steve Jobs, and not to other developers. He isn't saying "stop selling your $0.99 apps," he's saying, give all app developers a fair playing field to encourage innovation and risk-taking.
Oh come *on* people. I wouldn't normally endeavor to explain a very old joke, but the number of people dissecting this post in all seriousness makes me fear for our youth.
The My freelance gig in front of a Mac trolls appear in virtually every discussion about Apple Computer. The troll claims to have witnessed taking 20 minutes to copy a 17 MB file from one folder to another and proceeds to question all Apple users as to their platform choice. It is a straight forward copy-and-paste from a weblog entry (http://www.kottke.org/98/11/my-mac-sucks) by Jason Kottke. It has also led to some very inspired and amusing parodies.
Seriously, no, it is theCore Location Blacklist. He got it from the Daring Fireball link he included in his comment. Apple does claim that there is a capability to remotely disable applications. He does not claim that the URL to the Core Location Blacklist is that capability.
You don't want them "pawing" through your database, but you don't give any reasons why that is a bad idea. If you can't come up with any, you're not going to get very far in your argument. If it is a read-only view of only the data they should be able to see, what is the harm?
No, seriously. Answer that question, and you have a basis for your argument. If you don't have an answer besides "it makes me feel dirty," you've lost.
Then, completely out of the blue, this guy starts going into a really passionate tirade about how the government are using mobile phone masts to plant instructions directly into our brains.
I simply make up random passwords for web forms or entry boxes and a program I use automatically captures the information, encrypts it, and stores it in a database. Each time I need a password again, it automatically fills it in for me. This system can be configured to require a master password every time it is used, to be on a timer, or to stay unlocked for as long as I am logged in. I can configure it based on application depending on how much I "trust" the program to use my passwords. I can always recover my passwords by simply launching the app, clicking the key I want, and clicking to decrypt it. This program is built into my operating system and is hooked into every program I use. It is called the Apple Keychain, and it is a life saver.
There is a throwaway reference to "your old partner who liked it better at the morgue." It all went downhill from there, and that was in the first five minutes. Kinda the way they keep dumping Austin Powers' girls.
I don't think this has been mentioned before, so here is my idea of a good court case:
Buy a Sony CD to CD machine.
Buy a Sony CD thats protected.
Burn copy of said CD.
After copy fails, sue Sony in a class-action for false advertising and false representation of a product: they imply that their machine can burn ALL proper CDs. Since they are selling these screwed CDs under the "CD Digital Audio" label, their disks supposedly are correctly licensed and proper. Their machine does not copy them, thus it is defective.
Everyone should get their money back. Sony would lose a good chunk of profit and good will and perhaps realize the boneheaded nature of their actions. And yes, I know these different divisions of Sony are under different managemnt, but i'm sure an order from On High could be enforced in each sector if it was desired by the company. Sound good?
No. In this case they are talking about narrowcasting, similar to what MP3.com wanted to do. THey want to do things like stream albums, stream custom playlists, etc. All the stuff that they sued MP3.com for doing. However, you raise a good point - for some reason they are making online radio stations have a bunch of restrictions that offline ones do not, like increased licensing, disability to publish playlists in advance, not allowed to play more than 3 songs from one album in a certain period (4 hrs?). So yeah, basically evil. this time, however, someone is fighting back - the songwriters! Yeah!
Despite what the incredibly uninformative story says, this is not a competition for destruction. In fact, it is a task-based competition. in this case, they are trying to get balls into goals and then move the goals around for points. Very fun.
He he. Not only is this a troll, but I distinctly remember this exact comment in one of the older wearable-related stories I've read on Slashdot. At least make up something original, don't recycle.
I am not sure I understand what you mean./.'s HTML strikes me as pretty straightforward. It uses little or no CSS or JS. About the only complexities of it are some nested tables.
I count 145. Now, I don't really believe they are all bad things, it just shows the lack of standardization.
If you don't care about me, I don't care about you. I've left more than one site because they only support this or that. I can't see how any commerse site can afford to not support as many browsers as possible.
Same goes for me. I don't like sites with screwy support. For instance, one of my favorite sites, Kuro5hin.org, is nice, but I never visit it, because every time I load a story it crashes my Mac. Say all you want about Macs, IE5 for the Mac is the most standards-compliant browser out there, even better than Mozilla (currently). If something your HTML is doing is so screwy as to crash my standard browser, I won't visit it, even if I love it. If only we could all standardize, there would not be this problem, as there would be few non-conforming sites and fewer non-conforming browsers.
Now... what medium of mass communication relies on flash and style over substance? Television and advertising. I'm sure you'd be hard-pressed to get your ideals of art and the goals of marketing to line up. If they do...
Yeah, ever heard of a newspaper? Lots of information (content), lots of presentation (layout), coexisting in harmony. Now try reading your eight-column typical newspaper on a 640x480 screen in Netscape 2 with rudimentary table support? Chaos. Print works because the display is consistant. Everyone who reads it sees it the way it is meant to be seen. For an example of inconsistancy in layout and how it messes up content, look at, say the etoy site in IE 3, or, even better, how about going into a college English class where they are reading Hamlet and everyone has different versions of the play, with different line numbers? I'm doing it in my class now, and it isn't pretty. All because layouts are different.
Actually, XML is all about content, but HTML is all about layout. Think abou it - HTML does nothing to differentiate what kind of information it displays. Sure, it has the heading tags (h1 - h6), but those don't care what kind of header it is. The word I just bolded won't change based on the tags I put around it, nor will your browser's method of displaying it. CSS is for style, XML is for content, and HTML is just a jerry-rigged middle layer that wasn't well enough thought out. But it certainly is about style, and not really about content.
The best thing a browser could do (IMHO, after conforming to standards) is setup a config panel where you can choose which JavaScript functions to allow, and from which sites. I don't want any site screwing with my settings unless a little dialog pops up, just like it does with cookies, telling me what is coming and what it does, and allowing me to approve or reject. This shouldn't be too hard to implement. The next step would be allowing me to allow only certain things, for instance no document.writes, or no redirections, or color checks. I think JS is very useful, but often times it is abused, and I want to be able to choose when I use it.
You may want simple, or complex, or weird, or whatever, but the fact is that this increased fracturization of the internet is destroying progress. FUD perhaps, but by God, if I have to write another stupid page with four different ways to do the same thing just so that I can support every browser out there, I am going to shoot someone. Four levels of nested tables makes sites absolutely evil, but that is what you must do if you want to maintain layout compatibility. Even then, it still breaks like crazy on older browsers. I think that if we don't have a concerted effort to get everyone to update to a 5.0 or equivalent browser, and soon, we will face an even bigger problem - new standards are just not backword compatible, and soon half the pages on the net will be accessible to only certain browsers. How are we going to improve the web landscape if we cannot even use the new standards, for fear that no one will be able to see them? I mean, DHTML is still rarely used, a few years after its release, becuase so many 3.0 and worse browsers are out there. If you really just want plain text and crap layouts, go back to Usenet. The web is all about stylized content. I mean, have you looked at Slashdot's HTML lately? The insanity must end!
In this day and age of dot-coms and IPOs, we all should really think about why we are in this business. Sure, there is good money to be made...
I'm thinking maybe Cliff put this story in the queue a year ago and Slash just decided to start displaying it now? I mean, it's funny that we talk about quality in our work on a commercial web site that seems to lack any idea of what editing is. It's weird we talk about.com (mil/bil)lionaires in an age when most of the stupid.coms have dies off. Its weird that we forget about caveat emptor - buyer beware. Its stupid that we expect car mechanics to be liers and cheats, but we expect computer mechanics to be truthful and pure. Okay, I'll stop the flaming now.
I have seen good consultants, I have seen bad consultants. I have seen good and bad people in all walks of life. Unlike many other jobs out there, computer programming and computer science is one where ethics are treated with importance during the learning process. I know that every computer science class I have taken has talked at one time or another about the ethics of managing systems, of writing programs, of handling information. I know there are plenty of college ethics classes available at most colleges that teach computer-related fields. The information and discussion is out there, and I would hope that any computer anything worth his or her salt would have taken a few of them.
Perhaps we need a certifying organization like many other industries out there? Not Microsoft-certified, not being called a Realtor (tm), and certainly nothing like TRUSTe, but maybe some kind of board that would allow people to be certified members in good standing, and then based on complaints about them and recommendations and positive comments made, they could keep or lose their membership. It would be an online system, of course, with a small fee, and then potential employers would be able to check feedback profiles.
Just an idea, it would probably take a lot more thought to work out all the details.
In a new twist to the computer industry's running "Look and Feel"
patent battles, lawyers for Dr. Upda Evidens have filed suit against 98%
of the computer industry. Dr. Evidens, CEO of the Closed Software
Corporation, asserted in court that "this is just the beginning. We are not
going to tolerate any further abuse of our patents, which, I might add, are
as rampant as they are blatant."
The briefs filed in the case indicate that up to 70% of all computer
industry professionals infringed upon CSC's patented "like shit" look and
feel. Dr. Evidens cited studies showing that on any average Monday, sixty
to seventy percent of all programmers are reported to "look and feel like
shit."
The Closed Software Corporation also notes excessive unlicensed use
of other patented Look and Feel combinations, top among them "like hell,"
"awful," and "totally gnarly."
Despite the fact that the CSC lawsuits are some of the largest and most
comprehensive in the history of the computer industry, Evidens speaks of
widening the scope of the litigation. "You see," he said at a press
conference recently, "these violations are not limited to the information
industry. I regularly see individuals in the banking industry, insurance,
government, and yes, even the media, in unlicensed use of various patents that
we hold." When asked about his goals in filing further lawsuits, Evidens
merely smiled, and offered a flash demonstration of two of the more recent CSC
patents, "filthy rich," and "powerful."
Industry analysts are watching Dr. Evidens and his lawyers closely,
(and, according to Evidens, are coming arbitrarily close to violating
another patent, the "nervous" look and feel) to see the results of this
case, and to find how it will affect future developments.
Originally posted to rec.humor.funny by goldstein@arecibo.aero.org (SAMUEL GOLDSTEIN)
For more discussion and insight into our historical connundrum of compressing time and not really having any sense of "history," read the excellent book , The Clock of the Long Now by the guys involved in the Long Now Foundation.
They're making a millenium clock and library complex to give us all a sense of history. Very interesting and insightful project.
Slashdot Mirror
I think most commenters are missing the primary focus of the author's rant. This is fair, because his letter is laden with subtext that is probably not obvious to people who aren't intimately familiar with the iPhone developer community. I believe that the primary thrust of his argument is not that he should be paid more, or that his apps can't stand on their merits, or that he is no longer in a position to play gatekeeper.
Rather, his primary complaints seem to be with the Apple-approved and required distribution mechanism for the iPhone, namely their App Store. The App Store severely limits how apps can be sold, promoted, and used. It does not allow for trial software, it does not allow for returns. There is no built-in help system or feedback mechanism. Ratings cannot be challenged. And the "top X apps" is segregated by "free" vs "pay" but not by different levels of pay. Therefore it is much easier to sell more copies of a $0.99 app and climb the charts, displacing potentially far better but more expensive apps that are naturally going to have fewer sales.
Hockenberry's letter seems aimed at encouraging or nudging in the direction of fixing many of these perceived App Store deficiencies. That is why it is addressed to Steve Jobs, and not to other developers. He isn't saying "stop selling your $0.99 apps," he's saying, give all app developers a fair playing field to encourage innovation and risk-taking.
Oh come *on* people. I wouldn't normally endeavor to explain a very old joke, but the number of people dissecting this post in all seriousness makes me fear for our youth.
What does that even mean?
Seriously, no, it is theCore Location Blacklist. He got it from the Daring Fireball link he included in his comment. Apple does claim that there is a capability to remotely disable applications. He does not claim that the URL to the Core Location Blacklist is that capability.
You don't want them "pawing" through your database, but you don't give any reasons why that is a bad idea. If you can't come up with any, you're not going to get very far in your argument. If it is a read-only view of only the data they should be able to see, what is the harm?
No, seriously. Answer that question, and you have a basis for your argument. If you don't have an answer besides "it makes me feel dirty," you've lost.
On the contrary, Nesson had a short yet distinguised legal career prior to joining the HLS faculty.
Raw data and graphs of activity are available here: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/stockspam/
I simply make up random passwords for web forms or entry boxes and a program I use automatically captures the information, encrypts it, and stores it in a database. Each time I need a password again, it automatically fills it in for me. This system can be configured to require a master password every time it is used, to be on a timer, or to stay unlocked for as long as I am logged in. I can configure it based on application depending on how much I "trust" the program to use my passwords. I can always recover my passwords by simply launching the app, clicking the key I want, and clicking to decrypt it. This program is built into my operating system and is hooked into every program I use. It is called the Apple Keychain, and it is a life saver.
There is a throwaway reference to "your old partner who liked it better at the morgue." It all went downhill from there, and that was in the first five minutes. Kinda the way they keep dumping Austin Powers' girls.
- Buy a Sony CD to CD machine.
- Buy a Sony CD thats protected.
- Burn copy of said CD.
- After copy fails, sue Sony in a class-action for false advertising and false representation of a product: they imply that their machine can burn ALL proper CDs. Since they are selling these screwed CDs under the "CD Digital Audio" label, their disks supposedly are correctly licensed and proper. Their machine does not copy them, thus it is defective.
Everyone should get their money back. Sony would lose a good chunk of profit and good will and perhaps realize the boneheaded nature of their actions. And yes, I know these different divisions of Sony are under different managemnt, but i'm sure an order from On High could be enforced in each sector if it was desired by the company. Sound good?Or you can buy my Espresso, which just happens to be on auction at Amazon right now. ;-) Yeah, shameless plug, but I need cash!
No. In this case they are talking about narrowcasting, similar to what MP3.com wanted to do. THey want to do things like stream albums, stream custom playlists, etc. All the stuff that they sued MP3.com for doing. However, you raise a good point - for some reason they are making online radio stations have a bunch of restrictions that offline ones do not, like increased licensing, disability to publish playlists in advance, not allowed to play more than 3 songs from one album in a certain period (4 hrs?). So yeah, basically evil. this time, however, someone is fighting back - the songwriters! Yeah!
Despite what the incredibly uninformative story says, this is not a competition for destruction. In fact, it is a task-based competition. in this case, they are trying to get balls into goals and then move the goals around for points. Very fun.
He he. Not only is this a troll, but I distinctly remember this exact comment in one of the older wearable-related stories I've read on Slashdot. At least make up something original, don't recycle.
::laughs:: yeah, good point. touché.
The best thing a browser could do (IMHO, after conforming to standards) is setup a config panel where you can choose which JavaScript functions to allow, and from which sites. I don't want any site screwing with my settings unless a little dialog pops up, just like it does with cookies, telling me what is coming and what it does, and allowing me to approve or reject. This shouldn't be too hard to implement. The next step would be allowing me to allow only certain things, for instance no document.writes, or no redirections, or color checks. I think JS is very useful, but often times it is abused, and I want to be able to choose when I use it.
You may want simple, or complex, or weird, or whatever, but the fact is that this increased fracturization of the internet is destroying progress. FUD perhaps, but by God, if I have to write another stupid page with four different ways to do the same thing just so that I can support every browser out there, I am going to shoot someone. Four levels of nested tables makes sites absolutely evil, but that is what you must do if you want to maintain layout compatibility. Even then, it still breaks like crazy on older browsers. I think that if we don't have a concerted effort to get everyone to update to a 5.0 or equivalent browser, and soon, we will face an even bigger problem - new standards are just not backword compatible, and soon half the pages on the net will be accessible to only certain browsers. How are we going to improve the web landscape if we cannot even use the new standards, for fear that no one will be able to see them? I mean, DHTML is still rarely used, a few years after its release, becuase so many 3.0 and worse browsers are out there. If you really just want plain text and crap layouts, go back to Usenet. The web is all about stylized content. I mean, have you looked at Slashdot's HTML lately? The insanity must end!
I have seen good consultants, I have seen bad consultants. I have seen good and bad people in all walks of life. Unlike many other jobs out there, computer programming and computer science is one where ethics are treated with importance during the learning process. I know that every computer science class I have taken has talked at one time or another about the ethics of managing systems, of writing programs, of handling information. I know there are plenty of college ethics classes available at most colleges that teach computer-related fields. The information and discussion is out there, and I would hope that any computer anything worth his or her salt would have taken a few of them.
Perhaps we need a certifying organization like many other industries out there? Not Microsoft-certified, not being called a Realtor (tm), and certainly nothing like TRUSTe, but maybe some kind of board that would allow people to be certified members in good standing, and then based on complaints about them and recommendations and positive comments made, they could keep or lose their membership. It would be an online system, of course, with a small fee, and then potential employers would be able to check feedback profiles.
Just an idea, it would probably take a lot more thought to work out all the details.
The briefs filed in the case indicate that up to 70% of all computer industry professionals infringed upon CSC's patented "like shit" look and feel. Dr. Evidens cited studies showing that on any average Monday, sixty to seventy percent of all programmers are reported to "look and feel like shit."
The Closed Software Corporation also notes excessive unlicensed use of other patented Look and Feel combinations, top among them "like hell," "awful," and "totally gnarly."
Despite the fact that the CSC lawsuits are some of the largest and most comprehensive in the history of the computer industry, Evidens speaks of widening the scope of the litigation. "You see," he said at a press conference recently, "these violations are not limited to the information industry. I regularly see individuals in the banking industry, insurance, government, and yes, even the media, in unlicensed use of various patents that we hold." When asked about his goals in filing further lawsuits, Evidens merely smiled, and offered a flash demonstration of two of the more recent CSC patents, "filthy rich," and "powerful."
Industry analysts are watching Dr. Evidens and his lawyers closely, (and, according to Evidens, are coming arbitrarily close to violating another patent, the "nervous" look and feel) to see the results of this case, and to find how it will affect future developments.
Originally posted to rec.humor.funny by goldstein@arecibo.aero.org (SAMUEL GOLDSTEIN)
They're making a millenium clock and library complex to give us all a sense of history. Very interesting and insightful project.