Proponents of the locked down "walled garden" approach seem to ignore that fact that anyone is able to implement their own locked down system on Android precisely because it is an open system.
If you really believe there is value in an app store controlled by a single large corporation, start pitching the idea to large corporations. Any of them could create their own app store for Android and lock it down to their hearts content. They could even selectively enforce the restrictions, approve and then reject apps with no explanation, and use their power to censor unpopular opinions if you wanted to recreate an authentic iExperience.
To take a developers approach... just create your own copy protection scheme (again, you can do this because the platform is open), sit back and reap the riches that will supposedly follow the elimination of piracy.
Um.. you do realize this is Apple we are talking about right??
Tiny number of OEMs, check. One in fact. Controls patents and technology like an ironfisted asshole, check. Bought up smaller companies and patents, check. Sold only through branded stores, check. Retail markups ridiculously high, check.
Sounds like Apple will fit right in, but I don't see how they will improve things for hearing aid customers one bit.
I think you vastly overestimate the complexity of writing software for Android. As someone who has written a number of commercial Android applications, I can assure you that varying OS versions, screen sizes, etc are quite easy to handle and the Android API actually has rather nice interfaces for that sort of thing. It is true that in the "gold rush" mentality some devs seem to have, they take short cuts and end up creating software that doesn't work well. However, this is their mistake, not an attribute of the platform itself. Any of my applications run on any device that uses Android 2.1 or higher (even that is an arbitrary restriction, but one that seems to cover every device my clients use). I had to change one screen drawing routine to accommodate what seems to be a bug on one older Motorola device, otherwise supporting what is essentially every Android device out there has been quite easy.
Mostly, when people say things like "I don't get it" in reference to someone being upset about something like the use of a value like B16B00B5, they are not saying they don't understand the rationale behind those who are offended.
What they are saying is that said rationale is so moronic and so unfathomably obtuse that they "don't get" how anyone could pretend to believe it and keep a straight face. They do pretty much grok the flawed thinking behind the offendees. Don't assume that someone who disagrees with you misunderstands you.
When did this ridiculous concept of an "experience" come about? Sometime around the iPhone's near miss at becoming a major player in the cellphone arena I think.
Believe it or not, for some (many?) people, a gadget's value is derived entirely by what it can do for us. There is no "experience" associated with ownership of the gadget. It is simply a tool.
We don't record video of the day we purchased a screwdriver, and we don't even notice the box that gadgets, computers, and other TOOLS come in.
If your life is so dull and pointless that owning a toy or tool has become a significant "experience", please shoot yourself in the head immediately so as to preserve air and other resources for those of us who are actually alive.
You have it entirely wrong. It is not the number of patents that anyone has a problem with.
For instance IBM is a huge patent applicant (at one time they were the largest in the country, don't know if this is still true) because they *invent new things*. They spend a massive amount of their budget on research and have some brilliant scientists working for them. When IBM files for a patent, it is because they have created something new. They are very well respected.
Apple receives scorn and criticism because they file for patents on concepts that are not new and/or not invented at Apple.
You say explicitly this is a personal project. That is why bug trackers aren't going to fit very well. Bug trackers are for teams of people to coordinate their efforts. They are mostly pointless if you're working alone.
Just put your ideas, plans, comments, and bug notes right into the source. Most IDEs will let you easily flag sections so they stand out when desired, for instance Eclipse has the TODO: tag for exactly this purpose.
Now your notes are seen every time you work on that section of code, and they benefit from versioning right along with the rest of the code (assuming you are using some sort of source control).
it is pretty spooky to see Apple fans defend the corporation. it seems to fulfill the same role in their lives as religion does for others, and the Apple people seem about as narrow minded about their chosen deity as the typical religious zealot. somehow they have missed the fact that like any corporation, Apple simply exists to make money. there is no greater purpose or higher goal driving the actions of Apple Inc. The fact that they pretend they are anything different in their advertising *should* be off-putting to anyone with any sense, its ludicrous and simply a lie... yet still somehow it suckers these poor fools in.
When Apple famously claimed that "1984 won't be like '1984'", everyone assumed it was because they didn't want an Orwellian situation in the computer industry. As it turns out, Apple is totally into the idea. They just hadn't perfected the technology back then.
obviously, since jobs death they are working with a limited supply of magic. until an entire new generation of unicorns can be grown and harvested, there simply isn't enough to fill the old full sized CPUs.
I've read this article twice, and the only supporting facts for the author's conclusions seem to be some stats about declining female enrollment in CS and the personal tale of one woman who had a slightly shitty experience at one place she worked.
WTF.. I could provide a lot more evidence to support a flat earth theory.
I don't doubt that there are places where women have a tougher time than males in the IT dept, but the conclusions this author is making seem shaky at best (not to mention flying in the face of everything I've seen in my own somewhat lengthy career in the field.. admittedly myopic but just a valid and apparently more diverse than the evidence used by the author).
it is true that ios != android, but i don't think either could solve the fundamental problems the tablet form factor has when used as a primary computing device (aka laptop replacement). typing sucks unless you use an external kb, but to carry one you're now basically taking up the same space as a laptop. not being able to run any real software sucks. maybe the win8 tablets will address that. limited local storage sucks, sad fact of life is that travellers cannot always be online even in the year 2011. there maybe android would help, removable storage and a real filesystem etc.
anyway the point is that while adding a tablet to your kit might be fun, replacing a laptop with a tablet might not be fun at all, it certainly didn't go over well here.
I am speaking from the experience after mgmt decided our IT dept must deploy iPads to 300+ mid level types company wide earlier this year.
For about a month, iPads at every meeting, out on every roadwarrior's trip (and dropped a few times, oops), always seen on desks in the office, etc.
Today... they live in drawers, under stacks of paperwork, "i forgot it at home". haven't seen anyone carry one into a conference room in recent memory.
And guess what our first major purchasing request of fiscal year 2012 is?
Replacing a laptop with a tablet, any tablet, is a nasty compromise. You'll miss your 4 year old laptop the first time you have to do any work on the tablet. If you're like most people who have this idea, you'll wind up carrying both the tablet and the old laptop (or buying a new laptop) and then one day you'll just forget the tablet at home, and within a couple months the tablet will live on your coffee table and rarely leave the house.
completely off topic, but i noticed you were thinking about ssd... just put one into a system that is also about 3 years old as the first step in what i thought would be the typical "3 year in place rebuild" involving new cpu, mb, gpu, etc mostly done together. used a relatively cheap/small ssd for os and apps and left all the crap that wouldn't benefit anyway (movies, music, etc..) on the existing hds. and, oh sweet crap this system is fast now. i had no idea, ssd is probably the most massive improvement in overall system speed i've seen from a component upgrade in many years, maybe ever. highly recommended! i might just leave the rest of the components alone for now.
We're talking about malware on an OS targeting people who can't even figure out Windows... an OS these same computer illiterates were likely told is perfectly safe and unable to get a virus by the family computer nerd that talked them into buying it. While I agree with the sentiment of your post, I think reality is that the "doesn't work on people who have a brain" thing is going to be even less of an obstacle for malware on OS X than it is in the Windoze world.
"isn't anywhere near catching up to Windows-based malware in terms of volume and variety" "may be adopting some of the more successful tactics that Windows viruses have been using to trick users" "a technique that's been in favor among Windows malware authors for several years now"
Prevents use of all current accessories without purchasing an adapter.... check Provides no improvement in the actual function of the connector... check Accessories using new standard will have limited or awkward compatibility with all existing devices.. check
Yep, this could fine it's way into an Apple product soon.
"Basic, VB, C, FoxPro, Cobol, and Assembler, but the languages I used the most were Pascal and Delphi."
It's almost like you've gone out of your way to avoid every popular language (C being the one exception). You're in a more difficult position than most because you don't have much experience in any of the top languages employers are looking for (those being C++, C, Java, PHP, Perl, C#, Python according to most studies). How did you let this happen would be my first question. It seems hard to believe someone who takes their career seriously would manage to avoid experience with all the things employers want.
although in most cases I agree that/. answers tend to question the OP too much instead of answering the OP's question, in this case I have to side with the naysayers. running your own mail server is just such a bad idea that anyone suggesting or considering it should be questioned thoroughly and made aware of what a dumb, futile, silly direction they are going. if they still decide to do it, they should be subject to mandatory psychiatric evaluation.
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Maybe it did, who knows. Until a feature is available in the OS that 95%+ of the world uses, it really doesn't matter, does it?
Proponents of the locked down "walled garden" approach seem to ignore that fact that anyone is able to implement their own locked down system on Android precisely because it is an open system.
If you really believe there is value in an app store controlled by a single large corporation, start pitching the idea to large corporations. Any of them could create their own app store for Android and lock it down to their hearts content. They could even selectively enforce the restrictions, approve and then reject apps with no explanation, and use their power to censor unpopular opinions if you wanted to recreate an authentic iExperience.
To take a developers approach... just create your own copy protection scheme (again, you can do this because the platform is open), sit back and reap the riches that will supposedly follow the elimination of piracy.
Um.. you do realize this is Apple we are talking about right??
Tiny number of OEMs, check. One in fact.
Controls patents and technology like an ironfisted asshole, check.
Bought up smaller companies and patents, check.
Sold only through branded stores, check.
Retail markups ridiculously high, check.
Sounds like Apple will fit right in, but I don't see how they will improve things for hearing aid customers one bit.
I think you vastly overestimate the complexity of writing software for Android. As someone who has written a number of commercial Android applications, I can assure you that varying OS versions, screen sizes, etc are quite easy to handle and the Android API actually has rather nice interfaces for that sort of thing. It is true that in the "gold rush" mentality some devs seem to have, they take short cuts and end up creating software that doesn't work well. However, this is their mistake, not an attribute of the platform itself. Any of my applications run on any device that uses Android 2.1 or higher (even that is an arbitrary restriction, but one that seems to cover every device my clients use). I had to change one screen drawing routine to accommodate what seems to be a bug on one older Motorola device, otherwise supporting what is essentially every Android device out there has been quite easy.
Mostly, when people say things like "I don't get it" in reference to someone being upset about something like the use of a value like B16B00B5, they are not saying they don't understand the rationale behind those who are offended.
What they are saying is that said rationale is so moronic and so unfathomably obtuse that they "don't get" how anyone could pretend to believe it and keep a straight face. They do pretty much grok the flawed thinking behind the offendees. Don't assume that someone who disagrees with you misunderstands you.
When did this ridiculous concept of an "experience" come about? Sometime around the iPhone's near miss at becoming a major player in the cellphone arena I think.
Believe it or not, for some (many?) people, a gadget's value is derived entirely by what it can do for us. There is no "experience" associated with ownership of the gadget. It is simply a tool.
We don't record video of the day we purchased a screwdriver, and we don't even notice the box that gadgets, computers, and other TOOLS come in.
If your life is so dull and pointless that owning a toy or tool has become a significant "experience", please shoot yourself in the head immediately so as to preserve air and other resources for those of us who are actually alive.
You have it entirely wrong. It is not the number of patents that anyone has a problem with.
For instance IBM is a huge patent applicant (at one time they were the largest in the country, don't know if this is still true) because they *invent new things*. They spend a massive amount of their budget on research and have some brilliant scientists working for them. When IBM files for a patent, it is because they have created something new. They are very well respected.
Apple receives scorn and criticism because they file for patents on concepts that are not new and/or not invented at Apple.
Pretty simple really.
> What happens when you have more bugs than you have time to fix?
You put a quick note in with a TODO tag
> How do you choose which to work on first?
You switch to a view that shows all your TODO tags and take your pick
> How do you remember which ones lead to data loss, and which ones have a workaround?
You type those details into the TODO tag
> How do you remember how to reproduce each bug?
See above
> How do you manage patches?
diff on commit = patch. no big deal.
> How do you remember which patches are compatible with other patches?
whatever man, you are really reaching here. make all patches compatible with all others, or pay the price. this is a personal project.
> How do you track the number of reported occurrences of a bug so you can prioritize your fixes more intelligently?
again, simply add this type of detail to your TODO tag
You say explicitly this is a personal project. That is why bug trackers aren't going to fit very well. Bug trackers are for teams of people to coordinate their efforts. They are mostly pointless if you're working alone.
Just put your ideas, plans, comments, and bug notes right into the source. Most IDEs will let you easily flag sections so they stand out when desired, for instance Eclipse has the TODO: tag for exactly this purpose.
Now your notes are seen every time you work on that section of code, and they benefit from versioning right along with the rest of the code (assuming you are using some sort of source control).
it is pretty spooky to see Apple fans defend the corporation. it seems to fulfill the same role in their lives as religion does for others, and the Apple people seem about as narrow minded about their chosen deity as the typical religious zealot. somehow they have missed the fact that like any corporation, Apple simply exists to make money. there is no greater purpose or higher goal driving the actions of Apple Inc. The fact that they pretend they are anything different in their advertising *should* be off-putting to anyone with any sense, its ludicrous and simply a lie... yet still somehow it suckers these poor fools in.
When Apple famously claimed that "1984 won't be like '1984'", everyone assumed it was because they didn't want an Orwellian situation in the computer industry.
As it turns out, Apple is totally into the idea. They just hadn't perfected the technology back then.
obviously, since jobs death they are working with a limited supply of magic. until an entire new generation of unicorns can be grown and harvested, there simply isn't enough to fill the old full sized CPUs.
Misunderstanding of what a MAC address is and how they work, that is the crux of the issue.
I've read this article twice, and the only supporting facts for the author's conclusions seem to be some stats about declining female enrollment in CS and the personal tale of one woman who had a slightly shitty experience at one place she worked.
WTF.. I could provide a lot more evidence to support a flat earth theory.
I don't doubt that there are places where women have a tougher time than males in the IT dept, but the conclusions this author is making seem shaky at best (not to mention flying in the face of everything I've seen in my own somewhat lengthy career in the field.. admittedly myopic but just a valid and apparently more diverse than the evidence used by the author).
it is true that ios != android, but i don't think either could solve the fundamental problems the tablet form factor has when used as a primary computing device (aka laptop replacement). typing sucks unless you use an external kb, but to carry one you're now basically taking up the same space as a laptop. not being able to run any real software sucks. maybe the win8 tablets will address that. limited local storage sucks, sad fact of life is that travellers cannot always be online even in the year 2011. there maybe android would help, removable storage and a real filesystem etc.
anyway the point is that while adding a tablet to your kit might be fun, replacing a laptop with a tablet might not be fun at all, it certainly didn't go over well here.
I am speaking from the experience after mgmt decided our IT dept must deploy iPads to 300+ mid level types company wide earlier this year.
For about a month, iPads at every meeting, out on every roadwarrior's trip (and dropped a few times, oops), always seen on desks in the office, etc.
Today... they live in drawers, under stacks of paperwork, "i forgot it at home". haven't seen anyone carry one into a conference room in recent memory.
And guess what our first major purchasing request of fiscal year 2012 is?
250 new laptops.
Go figure.
Replacing a laptop with a tablet, any tablet, is a nasty compromise. You'll miss your 4 year old laptop the first time you have to do any work on the tablet.
If you're like most people who have this idea, you'll wind up carrying both the tablet and the old laptop (or buying a new laptop) and then one day you'll just forget the tablet at home, and within a couple months the tablet will live on your coffee table and rarely leave the house.
completely off topic, but i noticed you were thinking about ssd... just put one into a system that is also about 3 years old as the first step in what i thought would be the typical "3 year in place rebuild" involving new cpu, mb, gpu, etc mostly done together. used a relatively cheap/small ssd for os and apps and left all the crap that wouldn't benefit anyway (movies, music, etc..) on the existing hds. and, oh sweet crap this system is fast now. i had no idea, ssd is probably the most massive improvement in overall system speed i've seen from a component upgrade in many years, maybe ever. highly recommended! i might just leave the rest of the components alone for now.
We're talking about malware on an OS targeting people who can't even figure out Windows... an OS these same computer illiterates were likely told is perfectly safe and unable to get a virus by the family computer nerd that talked them into buying it. While I agree with the sentiment of your post, I think reality is that the "doesn't work on people who have a brain" thing is going to be even less of an obstacle for malware on OS X than it is in the Windoze world.
"isn't anywhere near catching up to Windows-based malware in terms of volume and variety"
"may be adopting some of the more successful tactics that Windows viruses have been using to trick users"
"a technique that's been in favor among Windows malware authors for several years now"
I'm sure that will be a great comfort to the Mac users effected by this malware :)
Must every story about Mac malware spend more time talking about how Windows is so bad than the OS X malware they are reporting?
Prevents use of all current accessories without purchasing an adapter.... check
Provides no improvement in the actual function of the connector... check
Accessories using new standard will have limited or awkward compatibility with all existing devices.. check
Yep, this could fine it's way into an Apple product soon.
"Basic, VB, C, FoxPro, Cobol, and Assembler, but the languages I used the most were Pascal and Delphi."
It's almost like you've gone out of your way to avoid every popular language (C being the one exception). You're in a more difficult position than most because you don't have much experience in any of the top languages employers are looking for (those being C++, C, Java, PHP, Perl, C#, Python according to most studies). How did you let this happen would be my first question. It seems hard to believe someone who takes their career seriously would manage to avoid experience with all the things employers want.
although in most cases I agree that /. answers tend to question the OP too much instead of answering the OP's question, in this case I have to side with the naysayers. running your own mail server is just such a bad idea that anyone suggesting or considering it should be questioned thoroughly and made aware of what a dumb, futile, silly direction they are going. if they still decide to do it, they should be subject to mandatory psychiatric evaluation.