I've been developing professionally for 25 years, and used a good many languages and environments in that time, including all of those that you mention.
The vast majority of our development these days is web delivered apps, which in general appears to be the way things are going, certainly in the Enterprise. They might be a bit more work to develop, but from a deployment and maintenance point of view they're fantastic.
So, if you were to spend some time learning HTML, CSS and Javascript, then you'll be in a fine position to develop not only websites and desktop apps delivered through the browser, but also apps for the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch, Android devices and several others using the likes of PhoneGap or Titanium. These basically act as a wrapper around your web app and give you access to things like GPS, touch events etc. from within Javascript, as well as allowing installation in the same manner as a regular natively coded application.
Of course, you'll need a server side language, and whilst C# and the Microsoft.NET framework are actually pretty good, you'll be stuck with an IIS back end and therefore Windows on the server. The Mono project will give you a fairly similar environment on other platforms, but I've found that you run into minor problems which are an annoyance, and so would recommend PHP, which is a pretty good language that's a natural fit for web development, can be used in a procedural manner (as that is likely what you're used to) or Object Orientated once you're happy with the concepts, and will run on pretty much any platform.
This setup doesn't however exclude you from developing "local" desktop apps, as something like XAMPP (which you'll probably use for your development environment anyway) will give you a pretty small install that includes a web server, database, PHP and various admin utilities, which can be dropped on the user's machine. In a small production environment, you can also use XAMPP on a server. If the size of your installs is a major issue, then there are a number of tiny web servers which can just be dropped onto a client machine, and I set up one a while ago which included PHP and the relevant libraries that came in at under 2.5Mb when compressed.
You may also like to take a look at ExtJS and Touch from a company called Sencha. Whilst there's a bit of a learning curve, these Javascript libraries/frameworks provide you with a toolkit of client side components which allow you to build apps that look and behave in a very similar manner to their classic desktop GUI counterparts, and end-users tend to like that sort of thing a lot. There are other frameworks which do a similar job, but coming from a traditional GUI development background, I found that they gave me a familiar set of controls and a similar event model, which just seemed right.
If you go the PHP route, also consider using something like CakePHP for building your back end. It's a modern Model-View-Controller framework which provides a simple and scalable way to build a model driven back end, handle routing to give your application structure, and maintain a separate set of presentation pages, which depending on your application may simple be dumping out JSON or XML data. CakePHP will even automatically build you a "scaffold" which is essentially a simple web application for administering your database. You'll probably not want to use this scaffold for anything other than testing, but you get a lot, very quickly, for very little effort, and it's a good way to learn how it all fits together.
There are a lot of very good free applications out there which you can use, especially if you choose PHP as your back-end language, and with one exception (a designer for ExtJS front-ends from Sencha which is great for prototyping) everything I use day-to-day is free, and in most cases cross-platform:
- XAMPP (Apache, MySQL, PHP, FTP server, essentially a full server back-end which you can run locally on your machine)
- Netbeans (in my case the PHP v
The point is IBM said they wouldn't use these patents against open source projects, and just did.
Actually, they haven't done anything of the sort.
If you follow the link and read the letter send by IBM to the TurboHercules president, all they have done is inform him that they believe his company is infringing at least 173 of their patents. This is no less true for the two which they pledged not to use against open source projects than it is the other 171. They are still being infringed regardless of whether IBM intends to enforce them or not.
What IBM have not done is make any attempt to enforce these patents, they're just stating facts as they see them. You can be absolutely certain that the two which were part of the patent pledge won't form part of any future case, and therefore IBM haven't broken and I don't expect will break their patent pledge.
Let's say today I develop a piece of software with all the same potential and cognitive power as a full human brain, and connect it up to a series of sensors which provide the same level and quality of information at the same rate as our own human senses do, and link in a series of mechanical limbs and a voice-box etc. with identical capabilities to those in our own bodies, then, when I flick the switch, even if I truly have created something which functions perfectly and in an identical way to a new born baby's brain and systems, it's still going to be up to eighteen months until it utters its first gibberish words, probably a year or more after that before it demonstrates signs of understanding what I'm saying and can respond verbally in a meaningful way, and a further seven or eight until it learns to play chess to even a basic level, let alone take on an IBM chess playing mainframe.
The reality is that not one of these pieces, mechanical or software is anywhere near existing, so I'd say 30 years is nothing like long enough for this to happen, but my point here is really that in order to know whether you'd been successful you'll have to wait a very long time whilst the learning and development process takes places, and we're in an industry that pretty much demands instant results and proof. Worse still, if even one little piece of the puzzle isn't perfect, then the whole thing may never develop at all, and the nature of true learning systems is that once they reach a certain (but still fairly minimal) level of complexity, the millisecond they start to learn they're out of the original developer's control, and so you'd probably never be able to identify why one version of your artificial being was successful but another wasn't.
And would people settle for something that was simply as good as a human? Probably not.
Personally I feel music is essential when I'm coding (or doing anything requiring concentration) in a noisy environment.
It does need to be music you know very well though, as otherwise you *will* be distracted. With albums you know and love your brain knows what to expect and is comfortable with the audiable information it's receiving as there are no surprises. This then acts as a mask for the unpredictable noise around you. Listening to your music collection on shuffle/random is much more distracting than listening to it a complete album at a time as subconsciously you're always wondering which track is going to play next.
Listening to the radio is right out as you have no control of the music (or therefore the mood) and it will almost certainly be peppered with adverts and/or a DJ, and will therefore be more distracting than the general noise of even a busy office. The DJ's job is to engage the listener and the advertiser's goal is the same, so you are bound to have your attention repeatedly taken away from the task in hand. Had a colleague who used to listen to the radio on headphones and swore blind that it was no more distracting than music. Suffice to say he was significantly less productive than the rest of us and the attention to detail in his work was generally very poor, so despite being a potentially good developer he was eventually moved to a desktop support role.
One tip - if you have noise canceling headphones, these will allow you to listen to your music at a much lower volume and tend to block out or at least greatly reduce the low frequency and general (non-speech) office sounds around you. As you can now get such headphones which perform really well at a very reasonable price (I'm thinking of the Goldring NS1000 with a street price of around £50, instead of a £300 Bose set) they're a very good investment and would emphasize to your boss that it's all about blocking out the noise around you rather than enjoying your private music collection.
We're primarily talking about the desktop here, and as anyone with a Windows desktop can quite happily run RIA apps in their browser, there's no reason for them to switch to Linux.
RIA apps will therefore not encourage people to change from their existing desktop.
I know it's very much a chicken and egg situation, but a small developer writing software for specific smaller market sectors will probably only realistically be able to afford to develop for the one platform, and that platform is going to have to be the one used by 95% of businesses - Windows.
There's the potential for this to change with the (relatively) recent arrival a number of good RIA solutions, but these are essentially platform neutral and so aren't likely to help Linux adoption.
Any smaller business trying to find a nearby support company who are fluent in and can advise them on Linux systems will often struggle to do so, and the majority of others will of course advise them (often with generous helpings of FUD) against going the Linux route, as it's not in their (the support company's) best interests.
I'm a user and huge fan of Linux and FLOSS in general, but as a software developer who's pretty much always worked in niche markets, I'm also realistic about these things. I have to be - I need to earn a living.
In my opinion by far your best bet is something like FreeBASIC (http://www.freebasic.net/) which has a number of advantages as such:
Available for DOS, Win32 and Linux
Compiles to fast, native, very compact executables. A major advantage over Python or VB if he wants to give copies of his creations to friends.
Includes bindings for dozens of major libraries e.g. OpenGL, SDL, DirectX, MySQL, SQLite, GTK, Win32 API, FMOD, BASS etc.
Essentially based on QuickBasic (there is a QB compatability switch) but with the addition of things like pointers, basic object orientated features, a greatly expanded built-in graphics library and even in-line assembly.
Several good, free IDEs
I taught my girlfriend to program using FreeBASIC in a single evening and she picked it up really quickly, even writing her first game (using circles for the objects) over two nights.
With it being BASIC it's quick to get started, but has enough modern features and bindings that it's perfectly suitable for serious work. I've used it for quick prototyping and written quite a few helper apps and utilities for work, and I know others who've used it to write Windows Services without too much trouble.
Individual consumers are paying less and less for their broadband, which must be a good thing. Right?
Well, it's very definitely not if you're an ISP. Their profit margins are falling rapidly, and they're still having to try and undercut the competition and spend increasing amounts on advertising to try and attract customers. A number of UK ISPs are in pretty serious financial trouble, and whilst I don't know if that applies to Virgin Media, they're certainly going to be looking at every possible way of cutting costs and generating additional income. The cost cutting will result in poorer customer service, and the additional income has to come from big business.
This guy may well seem to be an idiot for making his comments public the way he has, but I suspect that this was a well thought out tactic to blow the lid off what's been going on behind closed doors within the industry for a very long time. Right now, I wouldn't be surprised if most of the other ISPs in the UK (who are all basically in the same situation, whether they are prepared to admit it or not) are sh1tting bricks because they'll soon be in the spotlight as a result of this. It may even be that Virgin Media has calculated that they've the least to hide, and ultimately could come out of this in a much stronger position.
I actually find it almost refreshing that he's prepared to say what's actually going on in the industry, because whether you like the idea or not, *ALL* ISPs are under pressure from big business (who are their only source of *real* income these days) to give them preferential treatment.
I'd rather be with an ISP who was honest and open about doing things that I'm not happy about, than one who right now is sh1tting bricks as they are very likely to be exposed for past deeds. You know exactly where you are with a guy who can't keep his mouth shut, but know nothing whatsoever about someone who never opens his.
There are plenty of people who already waste a significant amount of their lives updating blogs and communicating almost exclusively via MySpace/Facebook/Bebo/Friends Reunited/MSN and the like. As a result their lives are pretty well documented, and if any further effort were required, they wouldn't be left with enough free time to actually do any living.
My money is on this being blown out of all proportion by one of the companies (Microsoft, IBM etc.) who themselves file literally dozens of applications for "obvious" patents each week.
Presumably quite a few of you will have used an iPhone or iPod Touch. The user interface is absolutely marvelous, has been well designed, is very intuitive from a mass market consumer product point of view, and no doubt Apple spent a significant amount of money developing it. Yes, as a technology multitouch has been around for a good while, but nobody's managed to use it for anything other than high end kit or tech demos. Apple should be congratulated and rewarded accordingly for turning the promise of intuitive multitouch user interfaces into reality. They're the ones who have made this happen, certainly not those who did the original research which is already covered by applicable patents.
It's therefore only right that Apple take steps to prevent all its hard work just being ripped off and used in competitor's products without any recognition or benefit to themselves. They've single-handedly all but perfected and certainly popularised the use of multitouch in small screen consumer products, and other companies can just license the technologies covered by such patents anyway, so it's not going to prevent standards from being established.
Unless you require something that is functionally different from what Apple have done, why waste your R&D time and money trying to re-invent the wheel and have to work around the fact that someone else has done it well before. It's this sort of behavior, not the actual patenting of work like this that leads to multiple standards and the lack of standardisation.
You also have a situation where as a company producing a new product, by licensing you would already have a leg-up and your product could shine on it's own innovations, rather than reviewers being disappointed with your user interface and you missing out on sales of what otherwise might be a good and innovative product. If you genuinely think you can come up with a more intuitive way of controlling a device like the iPhone than Apple have already done, then have a go, but be realistic and don't just do it for the hell of it. It may well end up costing you significantly more than just licensing what you need from Apple would have done.
As far as I can tell, this is just the patent system working as it should to protect the hard work of one company or individual from simply being ripped off by others. Nothing more.
These devices are only used to disperse gangs which have already accumulated and who are causing trouble.
They are not emitting this sound on a constant basis, and are just fired for very short periods of time as required.
As many others have said, the UK has a very serious problem with gangs of youths causing trouble, and we're not just talking a little petty crime, there have been a number of recent cases where individuals, often adults, have actually being kicked to death or stabbed by such groups. In some areas, entire communities will not leave their homes at night, because the streets aren't safe. We're not just talking about the stereotypical elderly couple here, we're talking about regular families, it really is that bad.
It's a similar situation in shopping centres and other retail areas, where these groups of what are essentially just kids, are either actively or just by their presence stopping people from entering shops, and it is these shops who are investing in the devices. If it weren't such a major problem (and it is) and they weren't generally very effective (which they) then you could guarantee that people wouldn't be spending money on them to protect their property and business, which is actually all they are doing here. The devices are fixed in position, and people aren't just wandering around finding groups to disperse.
Many of the recordings people are listening to on the web have been processed to make them audiable to pretty much everyone. The intention is to give people an idea what it sounds like to kids, I doubt any of the the people commenting on the sound itself have every actually heard it "live" as it were. There is plenty of evidence that in the vast majority of people, by the age of around 25 their hearing has deteriorated to the extent that they cannot hear this, or if they can, it's more of a background noise that a serious annoyance. Not everyone's hearing deteriorates at the same rate, but 25 is apparently the average age for people to no longer find it annoying, but of course some 20 years olds won't be able to hear it properly, and there will be people in their 30s for whom it will be irritating.
Granted, the long term causes of these issues need to be addressed, but the fact remains that these gangs of "young people" are causing criminal damage and are at best a serious concern and in some cases a genuine threat to the safety and liberties of regular members of the public. When people talk about the rights of children, they always think of the relatively innocent ones, the ones who are probably more like we were when we were young (and this is an image that those who are anti-Mosquito are trying to foster) but the truth of the matter is that the kids this device is being used on, have little in common with the British kids of the 80s. They are the sort who have no regard for other people's property or civil rights. They are the sort for whom a night out involves underage binge drinking and for whom violent behaviour is part of the fun, so forget about being idealistic, and taking the moral high ground here. You'll notice that those people who have posted who actually live in the UK are supporting the use of this device. There's a reason for this.
I should also point out that in response to this campaign, the British Government said a couple of days ago that they will not be banning the use of the Mosquito. There is overwhelming public support for the devices, because there is a genuine need for them. I suspect a good percentage of the people who are adding their voice to the supposed "public outcry" about their use (and in truth it's a very, very small number of people relative to the population) are not fully aware of the manner and situations in which these devices are actually used. From some of the nonsense I've seen written (and I don't particularly mean here on Slashdot) that certainly seems to be the case.
Agreed. I had the PC version, which I ordered directly from the US on release as I live in the UK and we had to wait six months or more for it. It's one of the few games that I found the time and enjoyed playing all the way through.
I think you said it all with the words "I have been waiting for the Neo1983 for a long time".
Despite much promise and initial excitement, OpenMoko has actually achieved very little since it's launch. It's been pretty much stagnant, and despite my initial enthusiasm, I lost interest quite some time ago.
I also think the Neo1983 is a horrible looking phone, and with a projected price tag of $350, will simply face too much competition should it ever actually make it to market.
However, I have absolutely no doubts about Google's ability to make this happen, and that it will happen quickly. I also expect that we'll see phones and other devices running Android for much lower price points than $350. With the likes of these: http://www.clubit.com/product_detail.cfm?itemno=A4842001# having more than enough processing power as well as almost all of the necessary hardware and being available in single units at only $60 retail, it's not hard to imagine a highly functional sub-$100 set top box using regular phone lines hitting the market within a year. By then there's sure to be pretty healthy collection of applications to run on such a device, and you'd have proper integration with your mobile as they'd be running the same platform.
Mark my words, there is much more that just a mobile platform in the making here.
Nope. With the exception of the libraries, it's pretty much all Java, and actually, it would be insane for them to allow you to code natively. You loose all of the advantages of hardware independence which is exactly why this sort of platform exists in the first place.
PalmOS primarily ran on low power devices, and you pretty much needed to "hit the metal" if you wanted to get any sort of performance from your apps. It's something I used to do a great deal in the past, but not for many years.
However, we're talking about much more powerful devices here. Even the most basic smart phone packs quite a bit of processing power these days, and much of the core functionality is provided at a hardware level, so the level of abstraction provided by a driver model is absolutely essential. If you go low level, then your application isn't able to take advantage of the additional power offered by some devices but not others. You end up coding to the lowest common feature-set.
Making use of the APIs which provide interoperability and a standardised framework is the only way to ensure that your software will run on all Android devices, something which from a business point of view is essential.
For what it's worth, I was always a big fan of Palm's work back in the day, but they really haven't moved with the times, and I genuinely can't see them surviving for long now that Google have put together what, certainly at first inspection, appears to be a very fine, well thought out, free mobile platform and application stack, especially as they are also providing all of the necessary tools and support for free.
I know I'll certainly be putting in the time to fully learn the APIs and try and come up with novel commercial ideas for a chance to get hold of some of the $10M cash their putting up to get as many people involved as possible. I suspect many others will be doing the same.
With a company the size of Google behind the software, and interest from plenty of big players on the hardware front, coupled with sensible Open Source choices when it comes to the main platform components, I can't see it being anything other than a success.
Whilst it's currently being marketed as a smart phone platform, Android easily has the potential to spur on the creation the sort of non-mobile convergence devices that we've been expecting for years, but which have failed to materialise. If you look at the functionality provided by the platform, it's more than capable of providing all of most people's day to day requirements of a full PC, and not just a mobile device. If you ignore gaming, which has always been the driving force behind the push for faster hardware, then most users only require a small fraction of the processing power available in their desktop PC, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if within the year we didn't have full desktop oriented devices based around Android on the market.
As you can probably tell, I think Google have done pretty much everything right as far as Android is concerned, and I'm very excited about it. I fully expect the smart money and development talent to be behind them, if not from the very start, then very soon.
It's not quite as simple as saying that "it's just software", what you need to remember is that the firmware updates are actually carried out by the phone itself under software control, and that most of the iPhone's systems need to be fully functional for this to happen, so it's not just a case of zapping everything and replacing it with new software. If the device was being updated by an external device, e.g. a PC, then this would be possible, but not otherwise.
It's *possible* that Apple did this on purpose, anything's possible, but there's no reason to think that they actually did. These conspiracy theories seem to be completely unfounded, and I've not seen one single piece of evidence or even any real sound, sensible reasoning, it's all "Apple a bastards", "Steve Jobs in an a-hole" and the like.
"The law requires Apple to prove that installing software on a cellphone is an unreasonable action and is the direct cause of the fault. If they cannot do these things, they are held responsible for the fault."
This is insanely easy for Apple to do. They simply show that if the firmware on the device has not been modified by the end user, then the update works perfectly. The end-user modifications to the firmware are therefore the direct cause of the phone becoming bricked. End of story.
If this ever went to court, Apple could simply provide two vanilla iPhones, ask an official in the court to pick one of them at random and perform the unlocking procedure used by the plaintiff on it. Both phones would then have their firmware updated and the court would then be shown that the unmodified one works fine, but the one which had been unlocked had became bricked. You could repeat this over and over to your heart's content and the outcome would be the same, thus proving that the end-user's actions were directly responsible for the fault.
It would appear neither you nor the parent poster understand Magnuson-Moss as it applies to modern consumer products.
The act was brought in more than 30 years ago, and so does not cater in any way for the concept of hardware and firmware/software in a modern device such as an iPhone, or most modern consumer products for that matter. It was intended to support consumers who have bought physical devices which are expected/required and warranted by the manufacturer to perform a job for a specified period without failure, and it does this job well, detailing the user's rights and providing reasonable protection from deliberately vague warranty terms.
It deals with the physical aspects of devices covered by a warranty, so in this situation you have two choices - You either accept that the software in an iPhone is a part of the device (something which is quite reasonable, as it is vital for it to function correctly, but also something which could be argued is simply configuration of the physical device) and therefore covered by the warranty. In this case the unit has been physically tampered with and therefore the warranty is void. Or, you can say that it isn't part of the product, but then the software isn't covered by Magnuson-Moss. Either way, you're onto a loser with your claims.
As far as refund/replacement goes, this only covers the product from any defect or malfunction in manufacture or one which arises from normal use in the manner in which it was intended. As there is more evidence than you could possibly ever need to provide defense in a lawsuit to show that iPhone's aren't bricked unless you have tampered with the firmware and are using the phone in a manner other than it was originally intended, you're screwed with this approach too.
I'm actually based in Europe and am fully aware of the differences between regulations here and in the US.
The changes being made by people unlocking their iPhones are not however limited to the data on the SIM, they are actual changes to the firmware installed on the machine itself, if they were just SIM changes then it would be a different story.
I'm not an Apple fanboy. I don't own any Apple products, but I do know software and embedded development rather well (after 20+ years experience) and I also like to think I have sensible and objective opinions on matters like this. Something you obviously don't.
Oh, and stop swearing, it makes you come across as borderline illiterate and definitely someone in their early teens with a lot to learn about the world.
I stand to be corrected here, but is there any *actual* evidence (apart from hearsay) that the bricking was deliberate. It seems to me perfectly understandable that if the software and configuration files on the phone aren't exactly as they were shipped, then an update could quite reasonably fail, and as the iPhone isn't a consumer product which allows the user to install new software, then there is no reason for Apple to develop updates which work with anything other than the default software shipped with the unit. It's entirely their baby, and unless the update causes problems on phones with their default install, they're not responsible for any problems you may have.
We're not talking physical materials or workmanship here, we're talking about people changing the software on their phones, and that is something which goes against the terms of Apple's warranty for the product. Your car analogy isn't a particularly good one, as Apple aren't saying they won't repair a phone which has physical faults or non-software related issues. Apple are in no way responsible for the software if it's been modified by the end-user. This is fairly standard stuff in software development/support terms.
Unlocking an iPhone isn't a simple process, and it's not something you'd do accidentally or casually without understanding what you were doing. Anyone unlocking their phone did so on purpose, and knew at the time they were invalidating their warranty. It's made very clear on every single website I've seen which details one of the approaches to doing this. If you got the instructions, then you knew the risks. Simple as. Anyone who's unlocked their iPhone is no longer entitled to support either, as they're not using their iPhone for the purpose for which it was intended.
OK, so I'm with everyone else hoping that before long the practice of locking phones to specific networks gets outlawed, but in this particular case, Apple haven't done anything wrong.
They are only responsible for providing updates which work with their software as supplied, and not software and iPhones which have been hacked specifically against Apple's advice, to get them working on other networks.
If your phone gets bricked by an Apple update after you've unlocked it, then it's entirely you fault. No-one else's. You did something that you knew full well at the time you shouldn't have done, and let's face it, it's not a simple process, so there can be no possible claim that you didn't know the consequences of your actions, and if you didn't understand this process and the implications, then you're even more of a fool for doing it. You've learned valuable lesson here - don't mess with things you don't understand. You immediately voided your warranty, again something you were fully aware that you'd be doing, and began using it in a way it was never intended or designed to be used, so you're not entitled to support. And now you've came out of it looking like a cock. With no phone. You bloody idiot.
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I've been developing professionally for 25 years, and used a good many languages and environments in that time, including all of those that you mention.
The vast majority of our development these days is web delivered apps, which in general appears to be the way things are going, certainly in the Enterprise. They might be a bit more work to develop, but from a deployment and maintenance point of view they're fantastic.
So, if you were to spend some time learning HTML, CSS and Javascript, then you'll be in a fine position to develop not only websites and desktop apps delivered through the browser, but also apps for the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch, Android devices and several others using the likes of PhoneGap or Titanium. These basically act as a wrapper around your web app and give you access to things like GPS, touch events etc. from within Javascript, as well as allowing installation in the same manner as a regular natively coded application.
Of course, you'll need a server side language, and whilst C# and the Microsoft .NET framework are actually pretty good, you'll be stuck with an IIS back end and therefore Windows on the server. The Mono project will give you a fairly similar environment on other platforms, but I've found that you run into minor problems which are an annoyance, and so would recommend PHP, which is a pretty good language that's a natural fit for web development, can be used in a procedural manner (as that is likely what you're used to) or Object Orientated once you're happy with the concepts, and will run on pretty much any platform.
This setup doesn't however exclude you from developing "local" desktop apps, as something like XAMPP (which you'll probably use for your development environment anyway) will give you a pretty small install that includes a web server, database, PHP and various admin utilities, which can be dropped on the user's machine. In a small production environment, you can also use XAMPP on a server. If the size of your installs is a major issue, then there are a number of tiny web servers which can just be dropped onto a client machine, and I set up one a while ago which included PHP and the relevant libraries that came in at under 2.5Mb when compressed.
You may also like to take a look at ExtJS and Touch from a company called Sencha. Whilst there's a bit of a learning curve, these Javascript libraries/frameworks provide you with a toolkit of client side components which allow you to build apps that look and behave in a very similar manner to their classic desktop GUI counterparts, and end-users tend to like that sort of thing a lot. There are other frameworks which do a similar job, but coming from a traditional GUI development background, I found that they gave me a familiar set of controls and a similar event model, which just seemed right.
If you go the PHP route, also consider using something like CakePHP for building your back end. It's a modern Model-View-Controller framework which provides a simple and scalable way to build a model driven back end, handle routing to give your application structure, and maintain a separate set of presentation pages, which depending on your application may simple be dumping out JSON or XML data. CakePHP will even automatically build you a "scaffold" which is essentially a simple web application for administering your database. You'll probably not want to use this scaffold for anything other than testing, but you get a lot, very quickly, for very little effort, and it's a good way to learn how it all fits together.
There are a lot of very good free applications out there which you can use, especially if you choose PHP as your back-end language, and with one exception (a designer for ExtJS front-ends from Sencha which is great for prototyping) everything I use day-to-day is free, and in most cases cross-platform:
- XAMPP (Apache, MySQL, PHP, FTP server, essentially a full server back-end which you can run locally on your machine)
- Netbeans (in my case the PHP v
The point is IBM said they wouldn't use these patents against open source projects, and just did.
Actually, they haven't done anything of the sort.
If you follow the link and read the letter send by IBM to the TurboHercules president, all they have done is inform him that they believe his company is infringing at least 173 of their patents. This is no less true for the two which they pledged not to use against open source projects than it is the other 171. They are still being infringed regardless of whether IBM intends to enforce them or not.
What IBM have not done is make any attempt to enforce these patents, they're just stating facts as they see them. You can be absolutely certain that the two which were part of the patent pledge won't form part of any future case, and therefore IBM haven't broken and I don't expect will break their patent pledge.
Let's say today I develop a piece of software with all the same potential and cognitive power as a full human brain, and connect it up to a series of sensors which provide the same level and quality of information at the same rate as our own human senses do, and link in a series of mechanical limbs and a voice-box etc. with identical capabilities to those in our own bodies, then, when I flick the switch, even if I truly have created something which functions perfectly and in an identical way to a new born baby's brain and systems, it's still going to be up to eighteen months until it utters its first gibberish words, probably a year or more after that before it demonstrates signs of understanding what I'm saying and can respond verbally in a meaningful way, and a further seven or eight until it learns to play chess to even a basic level, let alone take on an IBM chess playing mainframe.
The reality is that not one of these pieces, mechanical or software is anywhere near existing, so I'd say 30 years is nothing like long enough for this to happen, but my point here is really that in order to know whether you'd been successful you'll have to wait a very long time whilst the learning and development process takes places, and we're in an industry that pretty much demands instant results and proof. Worse still, if even one little piece of the puzzle isn't perfect, then the whole thing may never develop at all, and the nature of true learning systems is that once they reach a certain (but still fairly minimal) level of complexity, the millisecond they start to learn they're out of the original developer's control, and so you'd probably never be able to identify why one version of your artificial being was successful but another wasn't.
And would people settle for something that was simply as good as a human? Probably not.
Personally I feel music is essential when I'm coding (or doing anything requiring concentration) in a noisy environment.
It does need to be music you know very well though, as otherwise you *will* be distracted. With albums you know and love your brain knows what to expect and is comfortable with the audiable information it's receiving as there are no surprises. This then acts as a mask for the unpredictable noise around you. Listening to your music collection on shuffle/random is much more distracting than listening to it a complete album at a time as subconsciously you're always wondering which track is going to play next.
Listening to the radio is right out as you have no control of the music (or therefore the mood) and it will almost certainly be peppered with adverts and/or a DJ, and will therefore be more distracting than the general noise of even a busy office. The DJ's job is to engage the listener and the advertiser's goal is the same, so you are bound to have your attention repeatedly taken away from the task in hand. Had a colleague who used to listen to the radio on headphones and swore blind that it was no more distracting than music. Suffice to say he was significantly less productive than the rest of us and the attention to detail in his work was generally very poor, so despite being a potentially good developer he was eventually moved to a desktop support role.
One tip - if you have noise canceling headphones, these will allow you to listen to your music at a much lower volume and tend to block out or at least greatly reduce the low frequency and general (non-speech) office sounds around you. As you can now get such headphones which perform really well at a very reasonable price (I'm thinking of the Goldring NS1000 with a street price of around £50, instead of a £300 Bose set) they're a very good investment and would emphasize to your boss that it's all about blocking out the noise around you rather than enjoying your private music collection.
We're primarily talking about the desktop here, and as anyone with a Windows desktop can quite happily run RIA apps in their browser, there's no reason for them to switch to Linux.
RIA apps will therefore not encourage people to change from their existing desktop.
I know it's very much a chicken and egg situation, but a small developer writing software for specific smaller market sectors will probably only realistically be able to afford to develop for the one platform, and that platform is going to have to be the one used by 95% of businesses - Windows.
There's the potential for this to change with the (relatively) recent arrival a number of good RIA solutions, but these are essentially platform neutral and so aren't likely to help Linux adoption.
Any smaller business trying to find a nearby support company who are fluent in and can advise them on Linux systems will often struggle to do so, and the majority of others will of course advise them (often with generous helpings of FUD) against going the Linux route, as it's not in their (the support company's) best interests.
I'm a user and huge fan of Linux and FLOSS in general, but as a software developer who's pretty much always worked in niche markets, I'm also realistic about these things. I have to be - I need to earn a living.
In my opinion by far your best bet is something like FreeBASIC (http://www.freebasic.net/) which has a number of advantages as such:
I taught my girlfriend to program using FreeBASIC in a single evening and she picked it up really quickly, even writing her first game (using circles for the objects) over two nights.
With it being BASIC it's quick to get started, but has enough modern features and bindings that it's perfectly suitable for serious work. I've used it for quick prototyping and written quite a few helper apps and utilities for work, and I know others who've used it to write Windows Services without too much trouble.
...misunderstandings arising from the way he pronounces the product name.
There's a good chance that interest in his "Gaydome" may come from from somewhat different quarters than he had in mind.
Individual consumers are paying less and less for their broadband, which must be a good thing. Right?
Well, it's very definitely not if you're an ISP. Their profit margins are falling rapidly, and they're still having to try and undercut the competition and spend increasing amounts on advertising to try and attract customers. A number of UK ISPs are in pretty serious financial trouble, and whilst I don't know if that applies to Virgin Media, they're certainly going to be looking at every possible way of cutting costs and generating additional income. The cost cutting will result in poorer customer service, and the additional income has to come from big business.
This guy may well seem to be an idiot for making his comments public the way he has, but I suspect that this was a well thought out tactic to blow the lid off what's been going on behind closed doors within the industry for a very long time. Right now, I wouldn't be surprised if most of the other ISPs in the UK (who are all basically in the same situation, whether they are prepared to admit it or not) are sh1tting bricks because they'll soon be in the spotlight as a result of this. It may even be that Virgin Media has calculated that they've the least to hide, and ultimately could come out of this in a much stronger position.
I actually find it almost refreshing that he's prepared to say what's actually going on in the industry, because whether you like the idea or not, *ALL* ISPs are under pressure from big business (who are their only source of *real* income these days) to give them preferential treatment.
I'd rather be with an ISP who was honest and open about doing things that I'm not happy about, than one who right now is sh1tting bricks as they are very likely to be exposed for past deeds. You know exactly where you are with a guy who can't keep his mouth shut, but know nothing whatsoever about someone who never opens his.
There are plenty of people who already waste a significant amount of their lives updating blogs and communicating almost exclusively via MySpace/Facebook/Bebo/Friends Reunited/MSN and the like. As a result their lives are pretty well documented, and if any further effort were required, they wouldn't be left with enough free time to actually do any living.
My money is on this being blown out of all proportion by one of the companies (Microsoft, IBM etc.) who themselves file literally dozens of applications for "obvious" patents each week.
Presumably quite a few of you will have used an iPhone or iPod Touch. The user interface is absolutely marvelous, has been well designed, is very intuitive from a mass market consumer product point of view, and no doubt Apple spent a significant amount of money developing it. Yes, as a technology multitouch has been around for a good while, but nobody's managed to use it for anything other than high end kit or tech demos. Apple should be congratulated and rewarded accordingly for turning the promise of intuitive multitouch user interfaces into reality. They're the ones who have made this happen, certainly not those who did the original research which is already covered by applicable patents.
It's therefore only right that Apple take steps to prevent all its hard work just being ripped off and used in competitor's products without any recognition or benefit to themselves. They've single-handedly all but perfected and certainly popularised the use of multitouch in small screen consumer products, and other companies can just license the technologies covered by such patents anyway, so it's not going to prevent standards from being established.
Unless you require something that is functionally different from what Apple have done, why waste your R&D time and money trying to re-invent the wheel and have to work around the fact that someone else has done it well before. It's this sort of behavior, not the actual patenting of work like this that leads to multiple standards and the lack of standardisation.
You also have a situation where as a company producing a new product, by licensing you would already have a leg-up and your product could shine on it's own innovations, rather than reviewers being disappointed with your user interface and you missing out on sales of what otherwise might be a good and innovative product. If you genuinely think you can come up with a more intuitive way of controlling a device like the iPhone than Apple have already done, then have a go, but be realistic and don't just do it for the hell of it. It may well end up costing you significantly more than just licensing what you need from Apple would have done.
As far as I can tell, this is just the patent system working as it should to protect the hard work of one company or individual from simply being ripped off by others. Nothing more.
These devices are only used to disperse gangs which have already accumulated and who are causing trouble.
They are not emitting this sound on a constant basis, and are just fired for very short periods of time as required.
As many others have said, the UK has a very serious problem with gangs of youths causing trouble, and we're not just talking a little petty crime, there have been a number of recent cases where individuals, often adults, have actually being kicked to death or stabbed by such groups. In some areas, entire communities will not leave their homes at night, because the streets aren't safe. We're not just talking about the stereotypical elderly couple here, we're talking about regular families, it really is that bad.
It's a similar situation in shopping centres and other retail areas, where these groups of what are essentially just kids, are either actively or just by their presence stopping people from entering shops, and it is these shops who are investing in the devices. If it weren't such a major problem (and it is) and they weren't generally very effective (which they) then you could guarantee that people wouldn't be spending money on them to protect their property and business, which is actually all they are doing here. The devices are fixed in position, and people aren't just wandering around finding groups to disperse.
Many of the recordings people are listening to on the web have been processed to make them audiable to pretty much everyone. The intention is to give people an idea what it sounds like to kids, I doubt any of the the people commenting on the sound itself have every actually heard it "live" as it were. There is plenty of evidence that in the vast majority of people, by the age of around 25 their hearing has deteriorated to the extent that they cannot hear this, or if they can, it's more of a background noise that a serious annoyance. Not everyone's hearing deteriorates at the same rate, but 25 is apparently the average age for people to no longer find it annoying, but of course some 20 years olds won't be able to hear it properly, and there will be people in their 30s for whom it will be irritating.
Granted, the long term causes of these issues need to be addressed, but the fact remains that these gangs of "young people" are causing criminal damage and are at best a serious concern and in some cases a genuine threat to the safety and liberties of regular members of the public. When people talk about the rights of children, they always think of the relatively innocent ones, the ones who are probably more like we were when we were young (and this is an image that those who are anti-Mosquito are trying to foster) but the truth of the matter is that the kids this device is being used on, have little in common with the British kids of the 80s. They are the sort who have no regard for other people's property or civil rights. They are the sort for whom a night out involves underage binge drinking and for whom violent behaviour is part of the fun, so forget about being idealistic, and taking the moral high ground here. You'll notice that those people who have posted who actually live in the UK are supporting the use of this device. There's a reason for this.
I should also point out that in response to this campaign, the British Government said a couple of days ago that they will not be banning the use of the Mosquito. There is overwhelming public support for the devices, because there is a genuine need for them. I suspect a good percentage of the people who are adding their voice to the supposed "public outcry" about their use (and in truth it's a very, very small number of people relative to the population) are not fully aware of the manner and situations in which these devices are actually used. From some of the nonsense I've seen written (and I don't particularly mean here on Slashdot) that certainly seems to be the case.
Agreed. I had the PC version, which I ordered directly from the US on release as I live in the UK and we had to wait six months or more for it. It's one of the few games that I found the time and enjoyed playing all the way through.
I think you said it all with the words "I have been waiting for the Neo1983 for a long time".
Despite much promise and initial excitement, OpenMoko has actually achieved very little since it's launch. It's been pretty much stagnant, and despite my initial enthusiasm, I lost interest quite some time ago.
I also think the Neo1983 is a horrible looking phone, and with a projected price tag of $350, will simply face too much competition should it ever actually make it to market.
However, I have absolutely no doubts about Google's ability to make this happen, and that it will happen quickly. I also expect that we'll see phones and other devices running Android for much lower price points than $350. With the likes of these: http://www.clubit.com/product_detail.cfm?itemno=A4842001# having more than enough processing power as well as almost all of the necessary hardware and being available in single units at only $60 retail, it's not hard to imagine a highly functional sub-$100 set top box using regular phone lines hitting the market within a year. By then there's sure to be pretty healthy collection of applications to run on such a device, and you'd have proper integration with your mobile as they'd be running the same platform.
Mark my words, there is much more that just a mobile platform in the making here.
By including OpenGL ES in the box as it were, you open up a whole world of nice potential interface designs.
Nope. It's definitely just "SQLite". They've never done an OpenOffice.org and incorporated the .org bit as part of the name.
Nope. With the exception of the libraries, it's pretty much all Java, and actually, it would be insane for them to allow you to code natively. You loose all of the advantages of hardware independence which is exactly why this sort of platform exists in the first place.
PalmOS primarily ran on low power devices, and you pretty much needed to "hit the metal" if you wanted to get any sort of performance from your apps. It's something I used to do a great deal in the past, but not for many years.
However, we're talking about much more powerful devices here. Even the most basic smart phone packs quite a bit of processing power these days, and much of the core functionality is provided at a hardware level, so the level of abstraction provided by a driver model is absolutely essential. If you go low level, then your application isn't able to take advantage of the additional power offered by some devices but not others. You end up coding to the lowest common feature-set.
Making use of the APIs which provide interoperability and a standardised framework is the only way to ensure that your software will run on all Android devices, something which from a business point of view is essential.
For what it's worth, I was always a big fan of Palm's work back in the day, but they really haven't moved with the times, and I genuinely can't see them surviving for long now that Google have put together what, certainly at first inspection, appears to be a very fine, well thought out, free mobile platform and application stack, especially as they are also providing all of the necessary tools and support for free.
I know I'll certainly be putting in the time to fully learn the APIs and try and come up with novel commercial ideas for a chance to get hold of some of the $10M cash their putting up to get as many people involved as possible. I suspect many others will be doing the same.
With a company the size of Google behind the software, and interest from plenty of big players on the hardware front, coupled with sensible Open Source choices when it comes to the main platform components, I can't see it being anything other than a success.
Whilst it's currently being marketed as a smart phone platform, Android easily has the potential to spur on the creation the sort of non-mobile convergence devices that we've been expecting for years, but which have failed to materialise. If you look at the functionality provided by the platform, it's more than capable of providing all of most people's day to day requirements of a full PC, and not just a mobile device. If you ignore gaming, which has always been the driving force behind the push for faster hardware, then most users only require a small fraction of the processing power available in their desktop PC, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if within the year we didn't have full desktop oriented devices based around Android on the market.
As you can probably tell, I think Google have done pretty much everything right as far as Android is concerned, and I'm very excited about it. I fully expect the smart money and development talent to be behind them, if not from the very start, then very soon.
It's not quite as simple as saying that "it's just software", what you need to remember is that the firmware updates are actually carried out by the phone itself under software control, and that most of the iPhone's systems need to be fully functional for this to happen, so it's not just a case of zapping everything and replacing it with new software. If the device was being updated by an external device, e.g. a PC, then this would be possible, but not otherwise.
It's *possible* that Apple did this on purpose, anything's possible, but there's no reason to think that they actually did. These conspiracy theories seem to be completely unfounded, and I've not seen one single piece of evidence or even any real sound, sensible reasoning, it's all "Apple a bastards", "Steve Jobs in an a-hole" and the like.
It's all about context.
"The law requires Apple to prove that installing software on a cellphone is an unreasonable action and is the direct cause of the fault. If they cannot do these things, they are held responsible for the fault."
This is insanely easy for Apple to do. They simply show that if the firmware on the device has not been modified by the end user, then the update works perfectly. The end-user modifications to the firmware are therefore the direct cause of the phone becoming bricked. End of story.
If this ever went to court, Apple could simply provide two vanilla iPhones, ask an official in the court to pick one of them at random and perform the unlocking procedure used by the plaintiff on it. Both phones would then have their firmware updated and the court would then be shown that the unmodified one works fine, but the one which had been unlocked had became bricked. You could repeat this over and over to your heart's content and the outcome would be the same, thus proving that the end-user's actions were directly responsible for the fault.
It would appear neither you nor the parent poster understand Magnuson-Moss as it applies to modern consumer products.
The act was brought in more than 30 years ago, and so does not cater in any way for the concept of hardware and firmware/software in a modern device such as an iPhone, or most modern consumer products for that matter. It was intended to support consumers who have bought physical devices which are expected/required and warranted by the manufacturer to perform a job for a specified period without failure, and it does this job well, detailing the user's rights and providing reasonable protection from deliberately vague warranty terms.
It deals with the physical aspects of devices covered by a warranty, so in this situation you have two choices - You either accept that the software in an iPhone is a part of the device (something which is quite reasonable, as it is vital for it to function correctly, but also something which could be argued is simply configuration of the physical device) and therefore covered by the warranty. In this case the unit has been physically tampered with and therefore the warranty is void. Or, you can say that it isn't part of the product, but then the software isn't covered by Magnuson-Moss. Either way, you're onto a loser with your claims.
As far as refund/replacement goes, this only covers the product from any defect or malfunction in manufacture or one which arises from normal use in the manner in which it was intended. As there is more evidence than you could possibly ever need to provide defense in a lawsuit to show that iPhone's aren't bricked unless you have tampered with the firmware and are using the phone in a manner other than it was originally intended, you're screwed with this approach too.
I'm actually based in Europe and am fully aware of the differences between regulations here and in the US.
The changes being made by people unlocking their iPhones are not however limited to the data on the SIM, they are actual changes to the firmware installed on the machine itself, if they were just SIM changes then it would be a different story.
You moron.
I'm not an Apple fanboy. I don't own any Apple products, but I do know software and embedded development rather well (after 20+ years experience) and I also like to think I have sensible and objective opinions on matters like this. Something you obviously don't.
Oh, and stop swearing, it makes you come across as borderline illiterate and definitely someone in their early teens with a lot to learn about the world.
I stand to be corrected here, but is there any *actual* evidence (apart from hearsay) that the bricking was deliberate. It seems to me perfectly understandable that if the software and configuration files on the phone aren't exactly as they were shipped, then an update could quite reasonably fail, and as the iPhone isn't a consumer product which allows the user to install new software, then there is no reason for Apple to develop updates which work with anything other than the default software shipped with the unit. It's entirely their baby, and unless the update causes problems on phones with their default install, they're not responsible for any problems you may have.
We're not talking physical materials or workmanship here, we're talking about people changing the software on their phones, and that is something which goes against the terms of Apple's warranty for the product. Your car analogy isn't a particularly good one, as Apple aren't saying they won't repair a phone which has physical faults or non-software related issues. Apple are in no way responsible for the software if it's been modified by the end-user. This is fairly standard stuff in software development/support terms.
Unlocking an iPhone isn't a simple process, and it's not something you'd do accidentally or casually without understanding what you were doing. Anyone unlocking their phone did so on purpose, and knew at the time they were invalidating their warranty. It's made very clear on every single website I've seen which details one of the approaches to doing this. If you got the instructions, then you knew the risks. Simple as. Anyone who's unlocked their iPhone is no longer entitled to support either, as they're not using their iPhone for the purpose for which it was intended.
This lawsuit is just absurd.
OK, so I'm with everyone else hoping that before long the practice of locking phones to specific networks gets outlawed, but in this particular case, Apple haven't done anything wrong.
They are only responsible for providing updates which work with their software as supplied, and not software and iPhones which have been hacked specifically against Apple's advice, to get them working on other networks.
If your phone gets bricked by an Apple update after you've unlocked it, then it's entirely you fault. No-one else's. You did something that you knew full well at the time you shouldn't have done, and let's face it, it's not a simple process, so there can be no possible claim that you didn't know the consequences of your actions, and if you didn't understand this process and the implications, then you're even more of a fool for doing it. You've learned valuable lesson here - don't mess with things you don't understand. You immediately voided your warranty, again something you were fully aware that you'd be doing, and began using it in a way it was never intended or designed to be used, so you're not entitled to support. And now you've came out of it looking like a cock. With no phone. You bloody idiot.