The parents were held accountable because they had to pay off their credit cards. There's your accountability right there. From there, it's up to the parents to figure out what to do beyond that.
Parents aren't perfect and they have to learn. Yes this is a mistake, and it's good that this is out in the media so that parents can learn from others who made this mistake. It's easy to armchair quarterback parents after making a mistake. I find people who do that a lot either have no kids, or have the delusion that they are perfect parents.
Yes but my point is that the 3G/4G tag adds even MORE confusion by creating an abstract layer. With cable and DSL, for cable to not get sued they had to say "speeds up to blahblah." They are weasel words, but there's not much you can do, it's still plain english, and the populace can quickly learn "oh wait... they said 'up to', sounds like marketing to me." It's just easier to catch the weasiliness and make a better informed decision. 4G is not plain english, it's an entire specification which has been co-opted and become a moving target to mean whatever the phone companies want.
In the wired internet landscape, one number matters to this day... bps. When it was about modems, there were some slight variations in speed, but it was all about bps of your modem and the max bps of the carrier. Comcast beat Verizon DSL like a redheaded stepchild with bps until Verizon came out with FIOS, and Verizon returned the favor. They keep exchanging blows as to who is faster, but you can look up clearly on their website and find out which was faster. bps is like MPH, you know what it was and could explain it to someone simply.
However, this 3G/4G crap is just like the Justin Bieber/Ozzy Ozborne commercial. It's rapidly changing, confusing and stupid. The only reason to call something 3G vs 4G is to create new marketing speak. So I say kill the xG tag. Phones should be rated by how fast they can go, period, not by some nebulous xG bullshit. It only serves to confuse the customer and make it seem like it's better even though it's not, and thus give companies a reason to ever increase their prices unnecessarily.
I got clear internet last year, in order to cut the cable cord. For a couple months it was good, then I would frequently drop to sub 1 Mbps speeds for extended periods of time. I called support, and they told me that the best antenna was to the south of my house, so they told me to move the router to the other side of the house for best signal. The problem went away for a bit but came back, so I called again, and they said the best antenna was to the north. This was in the span of 2 weeks, so I doubt they suddenly built a brand new tower in that time period. So I moved the router back to the north and since I've not had a problem.
I'm more likely to believe that this was simply stupidity on the part of their support, and I have a hard time believing in conspiracy theories, but as evidence builds I start thinking crazy things like the fact that they are just doing a shuffle while they put me on their "do not throttle" list just to shut me up.
I understand the Apple hate mongers want to come out and destroy Apple as a control freak, and the Apple fanboys want to rush out screaming defending Apple that this isn't there fault and Opera is still easy to download.
Well your both right, to a certain extent, and the truth is somewhere in the middle.
It is true that 99% of iOS apps probably don't even have parental controls turned on, so such a warning is little more than an afront to many people's delicate sensibilities about censor ship, but it's not going to kill the app. Hell I didn't even know about it until I saw this on slashdot, and I'd like to try it now that I heard about it, so all you "Apple is evil and must die" people need to chill, because Opera knows this isn't a bad thing... and so does Apple. More on that later.
It's also true that parental controls are simply a bad replacement for good parents, and an even worse replacement for society simply accepting content for what it is and stop placing values on "dirty" or "inappropriate" content, because the more we do this, the more we call attention to it rather than turn people away from it. Censorship in any level is stupid. Our current society in the US has come to a compromise on censorship by basically "warning" people that this content may be inappropriate for minors. Most people ignore such warnings, because they know they are stupid and don't solve anything. Apple really only does this because they are a major hardware provider, major content provider, and there are stupid organizations out there that would sue them for not "saving the children." Apple is simply doing basic CYA that any major corporation would do by including parental controls to make it look like they care. They really don't, and most american's don't, but if you simply follow the money, ratings and warnings are simply a way to protect their bottom line from lawsuits, not some conspiracy to control the app universe (coincidentally, there's plenty of other evidence to support that assertion, this just isn't one example).
Apple also knows that slapping this rating on the app will encourage some attention, some good, some bad. However, it won't kill them at all because they know this, and bad attention is not always really bad attention. Opera knows that this will be good for their downloads, and Apple gets another app in the app store that people will be able to chose, increasing their count total and pro apple articles will be like "hey look! You have alternatives to safari! Those apple haters are stupid!" Apple doesn't care one way or another what the rating is.
This is just one example of YASWADMYC (Yet Another Sensationalistic Web Article Designed to Make You Click).
You can get iPads, iPods and iPhones updated at the Apple store.
At the same time, Apple does envision most of these devices as part of a home device network with a Mac or PC (to them, a Mac preferably) at the center. The people who want to use these devices as standalone devices is in the minority. But I'm sure Apple will one day get over the air updates into iOS. There are very real concerns (power, rollbacks, data recovery) and these are all alleviated by simply requiring updates to be tethered. Asking people to come to a store to do the update is actually pretty clever, it works around the problem of what would happen if you lost all your data during an update. Having a backup solves all data loss problems during an update.
USB port: There is a USB port, it's the 30 pin connector. Yes it's not a standard connector but otherwise works just like a USB port. Actually it works like a USB port on steroids because it also allows you to pump audio and video thru various cables. A standard USB port would actually be a step down.
Wireless syncing: What nongeeky average joe is absolutely screaming for wireless sync? Can you give me a list of names please? At the same time, you are getting over the air file sharing, it's in iOS 4.3. Now someone is going to be complaining about over the air updating, but considering that carriers can block updates on Android, and considering the recent window 7 phone debacle which bricked phones on Microsoft's very first attempt to release an over the air update, I'm glad I have control over updates via my Mac and that the phones require a very reliable and stable cable.
Lower price: Considering that the low end Xoom is more expensive than 5 of the 6 models of iPad, I would challenge you find a way to make it cheaper. It might have been nice to see the iPad 1 continue to sell for perhaps $299 as a low end alternative, like the 3G and 3GS did when they were supplanted, but you aren't getting a cheaper iPad 2 until the other makers start offering real price competition. Seems to be flying off the shelves at $500. If you don't like the price, don't buy it. Sorry it's not for everyone.
7 Inch version: Really? Because the 7 inch competitors tablets are flying off the shelf right? Right?
You frequent Slashdot, do you even know any normal people?:) I kid, but seriously I don't know any "normal people" who are screaming for those features.
Google has not been taken to court and been declared a monopoly, but by definition they have an overwhelming market share in searching, and are by definition a monopoly. In this case they are a natural monopoly, one that has simply grown up by having all their users consume their product over competitors (and by users I mean people who search their site).
Microsoft became a monopoly in the same way, in that they tied MS DOS and then windows to IBM PC, compatibles, and clones and everyone bought them. However once they became a monopoly, they had to play by a different set of rules. Microsoft chose not to follow those rules and bullied companies into installing software onto PCs that they wanted and excluded other pieces of software, and charged higher rates for those who didn't comply with their demands. That's anti-competitive practices.
I'm not really clear if Google has done something similar, but by the laws of the US, Google is a monopoly, it just needs to make sure that it doesn't use it's dominance in one market to gain dominance in another market, like Microsoft did. It is not illegal to simply be a Monopoly unless congress passes a law saying so. By current US laws, it's illegal to be a monopoly, and then to commit anti-competitive behavior to crush competition using your monopoly power, rather than competing on quality of goods and services.
Your quibbling over definitions when I clearly said "Jailbreak your phone" in the context of your OWN phone, and when I clearly said "root your phone and allow it to be controlled by someone else."
Congrats, you successfully pointed out weak grammar, I'm sorry. I know what they are, but the GGP post still didn't make a weighty point about comparable security and neither have you.
Because the evidence you provided was ONE issue and it was plugged quickly. And ironically, it was found by a jailbreaker and the only known exploit was to jailbreak your phone, not to root your phone and allow it to be controlled by someone else. Comparatively, here are 50,000 reasons the Android might be considered insecure.
The GP never said specifically the iPhone never had issues, and I'm not personally saying the Android is better/worse than iPhone in any way. I'm just pointing out your argument doesn't have a lot of weight.
As much as people want to think otherwise, there is a direct causal link between marketshare and the amount of malware for a given OS./
Sitation please? If you are going to make such a statement, please site studies and facts. In fact there is NO direct causal link, and you are abusing the statement without facts and citations. That said, I would agree that I think there is causal link, but you are further abusing the statement by not citing the magnitude, which is where proper citations would help. Windows has thousands of variants of malware. Mac OS X is in the dozens still, if that. No system is completely secure, and there will always be attempts to compromise a system, but saying ONE piece of malware suddenly brings Apple crashing in flames and "zOMG Mac OS X is teh insecurez they will be pwned!" is the worst kind of hyperbole imaginable.
The zealotry was on show yesterday in the OS X article where it was stated that OS X is more insecure than windows
I looked for an article yesterday on slashdot and the only article I found was one about how Apple is inviting security experts to look at their system. Sounds like a pretty responsible thing if you ask me, and I found no mention of this yesterday. Perhaps you'd like to review your citations?
People persecuting MS for poor security are living in the past.
Again, no citations. You sound like a MS schill. MS still has a poor record, period. Sure it's getting better but it's massive exaggeration to try to say that somehow MS gets a pass because 6 years ago they were utterly shitty shitty shitty, and suddenly now it's okay because they have improved to stinky farty smelly.
Hopefully as marketshare increases they will take responsibility and secure their OS, if for no other reason than to maintain their image.
How odd, Marketshare doesn't seem to have an effect on how secure an operating system is, because 90% marketshare never encouraged Microsoft. I do hope security remains forefront on Apple's mind, because they are the underdogs here and it will only continue to help them to be focused on security as they continue to compete for more marketshare, but here's another example of how off kilter your rant is.
Now I'm just waiting to be modded troll....
You will be, but just one more thing to nail the coffin shut. This is a goddamn fucking TROJAN HORSE!!! Do you know what that is? Do you remember the goddamn story of Troy? There's good movie released a few years back you should watch it. A virus is something getting in without your action or knowledge, but a Trojan horse requires the user perform an action, and the way it gets in is simply by deceiving a human being. You can inject a trojan horse into any system and hope to own it, Windows, Mac OS, UNIX, or other, just send the admin an email and hope he's stupid enough to open the attachment and do the work for you! You can't put a malware scan on the brain of an uneducated admin. It's not the fault of the OS makers if the admin is uneducated enough to open a file that they should not trust.
Like many rants before it, your rant is like buying the most secure home security system in the world, then giving the key to a random person on the street for safe keeping, and complaining to the security company when your house is robbed.
The engine gets over revved, you pop the clutch, and suddenly when airbags get in your face, lose your protective restraint, and backfire... all before sheepishly puttering away.
I wish I could find a source for where I read this, but the doctor looking at the pictures isn't even an oncologist, he's in sports medicine! There's the NE for you.
The National Enquirer talks about running photos of Steve, and the entire news media gets a hard on and starts running stories on this. Has the media degraded so far that we are now counting the National Enquirer as a reliable news source?
The only people who are escalating the health worries here are the media itself to push for circulation. It's not news, it's bullshit. Thanks for contributing to the bullshit, Timothy.
This is a serious question. Apple set up the App store with the intent that they host and provide ads and what not, and they get their 30%. They are in fact providing services, so Apple's model makes sense to me, at least in terms of fairness. In terms of competition it's an entirely different matter.
It's fairly easy to post a free app to a specific Market, which is marketed and hosted by the android market, but since it's free, they get no money. You could then create an in app subscription model where you get all the subscription fees and the Android market gets nothing even though they are doing some of the lifting for you, namely app marketing and hosting.
Originally the iTunes store was a loss leader for selling iPods and creating a top to bottom environment for people to buy and consume content. Now it's a money making powerhouse for all iOS devices. Perhaps the Android Market is doing the same thing in it's early stages, but it doesn't have the benefit of music or movie downloads to help (does it?) and it would have to start turning a profit quickly to be sustainable unless Google plans on simply sinking money into it.
Again this is a serious question I'm trying to understand the model.
A smart phone is a quick communicator. It performs short quick tasks very well. It's also >4 ounces and I can carry it in my pocket, and I'm up on the go everywhere and don't have the time or patience to carry around or worry about a satchel. I don't have 2 minutes to find a place to put down a laptop, plug in my headphones and take a phone call. I can't easily switch between play lists while I'm walking down the street with a laptop. I can't tap out a 2 sentence email without sitting down and opening a laptop. I don't know about you but I find holding a phone in my hands rather than trying to balance a netbook on my knees or one hand is a lot easier when I'm on the can.
If you move from place to place and are relatively sedentary while in that place and need to do extended work, a laptop or netbook works great. But a smartphone is lighter and if you don't need to type out lots of code or a dissertation, then it works great. Ironically, compared to a full desktop computer, a laptop is a toy! I find when I'm out, a smart phone is enough, but my work has a desktop PC for me, and I have a desktop computer at home. I feel laptops, and even more so netbooks, slow me down and are "toy like" because the keyboards are cramped, you don't have a real mouse (touchpads , and they are not as powerful. If I want to get work done that requires a stretch of concentration, I want to use my desktop at home or work, not a laptop. Heck if I take my laptop outside on a nice day, I'll get distracted daydreaming and looking at the scenery and not get any work done.
It's all relative to what you do. No one device fits everyone perfectly. And in truth, aren't all these things toys in some way shape or form? Your setup works great for you, I'm glad, but your setup won't work for me so I think that detracts from your argument when imply everyone should simply have your setup, that's too broad a paint brush.
First, this app has to be running in the background. iOS apps stay in the background for some time but iOS will eventually quit the application to free up resources for other apps. No one is going to voluntarily open this app before they leave for work just to check for potholes. It also has to use data on a limited data plan. Finally a background app has to reduce some battery life to report back home. I don't see this being all that ingenious as it sounds just because of iOS limitations and limitations in general of smartphones.
Space travel is dangerous in general. Until private space travel takes off (no pun intended) we won't have a good set of figures to find out which is relatively safer, private space travel or public, and even then, private travel will have made it's way on the shoulders of publicly funded research into what was basically unknown until people were willing to take a chance.
I'm sure we can create a relatively useful and beneficial private space industry going with open minded entrepreneurs willing to cooperate with straightforward and intelligent government oversight. I hope that doesn't get in the way of summary's anti-business rail and the parent comment's anti-government hard-on rage he was going for.
What's actually born out in many software companies is that having more frequent releases with fewer features in each release actually creates software that works! The difference is your focus on features is more narrow, and you are changing less code. Once you focus on making that code as stable as possible, you move on to the next project. This also has the added benefit of making a software company able to adapt to change more quickly.
The roadmap implies they may be moving to a scrum or agile development process or refining their process further. Firefox 4 seems like something that is taking forever, and after having spent over a year in a company that switched to scrum after having many major releases fall behind time and time again, I'm very glad they are going to a fewer features/faster release model.
The 4/5/6/7 might be a small marketing decision, but it's more likely simply a result of their development process simply using those the number procession they've always used and not spending time worrying precisely what the version number is, even though the cycle has changed.
The article inadvertently makes us focus on the version numbers themselves, when all of the techs and developers out there know the version number means nothing in terms of features, we should be dwelling on what it gives us.
You speak with much sarcasm, but who's to say they aren't gaming the system a bit here?
Speak ill of the company, the stock price begins to slide, the company complies, and you rush in with a bunch of automated orders that you had queued up to scoop up the stock as the announcement is made.
I am not a stock broker, but this is a conspiracy that I might bite on.
The mainstream considers "app" an abbreviation of "application," that's what matters..app is hidden by default in Mac OS X so even the average mac user doesn't know about that extension. And Steve being a marketer didn't start calling them apps in press conferences because it was more geeky and obscure, I assure you.
...you are a mad scientist sick of the stupidity of humans and weren't sure which countries to include in your plot for global destruction. Rest assured India made it as easy as the US does.
There are hundreds of business applications where there is an "exe" or other "application" front end and a database backend. The front end could be called an application, or the entire package together could be called an application. There are hundreds of "web-based applications" and we call them applications. I would challenge the idea that Chromes "apps" are not apps. They are apps, just "web based apps."
The definition of application has always been changing. This is nothing new. This is merely taking the lexicon a step further and bringing it into the mainstream. If you were in an iPhone, and asked "What does that app do?" no one is going to have a problem figuring out what you mean. If you were in Chrome and asked "do you have this app?" again, no one is going to have a problem figuring out what you mean. The language isn't being severely diluted.
The definition of "application" has been changing since day 1. The execution of an application is still well understood by the people who create them, and the average end user doesn't care because they can get their point across simply. This is an example of a bunch of old grumpy programmers hating people who are not programmers telling them what's an "app" and what's not. That and they hate that Apple in a very "cutesy" way popularized apps by shortening the name and making it a little less geeky. "Application" has always included a broad category of computer programs that you enter data, and receive output. It's never limited the word to the structure of the code.
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The parents were held accountable because they had to pay off their credit cards. There's your accountability right there. From there, it's up to the parents to figure out what to do beyond that.
Parents aren't perfect and they have to learn. Yes this is a mistake, and it's good that this is out in the media so that parents can learn from others who made this mistake. It's easy to armchair quarterback parents after making a mistake. I find people who do that a lot either have no kids, or have the delusion that they are perfect parents.
Yes but my point is that the 3G/4G tag adds even MORE confusion by creating an abstract layer. With cable and DSL, for cable to not get sued they had to say "speeds up to blahblah." They are weasel words, but there's not much you can do, it's still plain english, and the populace can quickly learn "oh wait... they said 'up to', sounds like marketing to me." It's just easier to catch the weasiliness and make a better informed decision. 4G is not plain english, it's an entire specification which has been co-opted and become a moving target to mean whatever the phone companies want.
In the wired internet landscape, one number matters to this day... bps. When it was about modems, there were some slight variations in speed, but it was all about bps of your modem and the max bps of the carrier. Comcast beat Verizon DSL like a redheaded stepchild with bps until Verizon came out with FIOS, and Verizon returned the favor. They keep exchanging blows as to who is faster, but you can look up clearly on their website and find out which was faster. bps is like MPH, you know what it was and could explain it to someone simply.
However, this 3G/4G crap is just like the Justin Bieber/Ozzy Ozborne commercial. It's rapidly changing, confusing and stupid. The only reason to call something 3G vs 4G is to create new marketing speak. So I say kill the xG tag. Phones should be rated by how fast they can go, period, not by some nebulous xG bullshit. It only serves to confuse the customer and make it seem like it's better even though it's not, and thus give companies a reason to ever increase their prices unnecessarily.
I got clear internet last year, in order to cut the cable cord. For a couple months it was good, then I would frequently drop to sub 1 Mbps speeds for extended periods of time. I called support, and they told me that the best antenna was to the south of my house, so they told me to move the router to the other side of the house for best signal. The problem went away for a bit but came back, so I called again, and they said the best antenna was to the north. This was in the span of 2 weeks, so I doubt they suddenly built a brand new tower in that time period. So I moved the router back to the north and since I've not had a problem.
I'm more likely to believe that this was simply stupidity on the part of their support, and I have a hard time believing in conspiracy theories, but as evidence builds I start thinking crazy things like the fact that they are just doing a shuffle while they put me on their "do not throttle" list just to shut me up.
I know it's annecdotal and crazy...
I understand the Apple hate mongers want to come out and destroy Apple as a control freak, and the Apple fanboys want to rush out screaming defending Apple that this isn't there fault and Opera is still easy to download.
Well your both right, to a certain extent, and the truth is somewhere in the middle.
It is true that 99% of iOS apps probably don't even have parental controls turned on, so such a warning is little more than an afront to many people's delicate sensibilities about censor ship, but it's not going to kill the app. Hell I didn't even know about it until I saw this on slashdot, and I'd like to try it now that I heard about it, so all you "Apple is evil and must die" people need to chill, because Opera knows this isn't a bad thing... and so does Apple. More on that later.
It's also true that parental controls are simply a bad replacement for good parents, and an even worse replacement for society simply accepting content for what it is and stop placing values on "dirty" or "inappropriate" content, because the more we do this, the more we call attention to it rather than turn people away from it. Censorship in any level is stupid. Our current society in the US has come to a compromise on censorship by basically "warning" people that this content may be inappropriate for minors. Most people ignore such warnings, because they know they are stupid and don't solve anything. Apple really only does this because they are a major hardware provider, major content provider, and there are stupid organizations out there that would sue them for not "saving the children." Apple is simply doing basic CYA that any major corporation would do by including parental controls to make it look like they care. They really don't, and most american's don't, but if you simply follow the money, ratings and warnings are simply a way to protect their bottom line from lawsuits, not some conspiracy to control the app universe (coincidentally, there's plenty of other evidence to support that assertion, this just isn't one example).
Apple also knows that slapping this rating on the app will encourage some attention, some good, some bad. However, it won't kill them at all because they know this, and bad attention is not always really bad attention. Opera knows that this will be good for their downloads, and Apple gets another app in the app store that people will be able to chose, increasing their count total and pro apple articles will be like "hey look! You have alternatives to safari! Those apple haters are stupid!" Apple doesn't care one way or another what the rating is.
This is just one example of YASWADMYC (Yet Another Sensationalistic Web Article Designed to Make You Click).
You can get iPads, iPods and iPhones updated at the Apple store.
At the same time, Apple does envision most of these devices as part of a home device network with a Mac or PC (to them, a Mac preferably) at the center. The people who want to use these devices as standalone devices is in the minority. But I'm sure Apple will one day get over the air updates into iOS. There are very real concerns (power, rollbacks, data recovery) and these are all alleviated by simply requiring updates to be tethered. Asking people to come to a store to do the update is actually pretty clever, it works around the problem of what would happen if you lost all your data during an update. Having a backup solves all data loss problems during an update.
USB port:
There is a USB port, it's the 30 pin connector. Yes it's not a standard connector but otherwise works just like a USB port. Actually it works like a USB port on steroids because it also allows you to pump audio and video thru various cables. A standard USB port would actually be a step down.
Wireless syncing:
What nongeeky average joe is absolutely screaming for wireless sync? Can you give me a list of names please? At the same time, you are getting over the air file sharing, it's in iOS 4.3. Now someone is going to be complaining about over the air updating, but considering that carriers can block updates on Android, and considering the recent window 7 phone debacle which bricked phones on Microsoft's very first attempt to release an over the air update, I'm glad I have control over updates via my Mac and that the phones require a very reliable and stable cable.
Lower price:
Considering that the low end Xoom is more expensive than 5 of the 6 models of iPad, I would challenge you find a way to make it cheaper. It might have been nice to see the iPad 1 continue to sell for perhaps $299 as a low end alternative, like the 3G and 3GS did when they were supplanted, but you aren't getting a cheaper iPad 2 until the other makers start offering real price competition. Seems to be flying off the shelves at $500. If you don't like the price, don't buy it. Sorry it's not for everyone.
7 Inch version:
Really? Because the 7 inch competitors tablets are flying off the shelf right? Right?
You frequent Slashdot, do you even know any normal people? :) I kid, but seriously I don't know any "normal people" who are screaming for those features.
Google has not been taken to court and been declared a monopoly, but by definition they have an overwhelming market share in searching, and are by definition a monopoly. In this case they are a natural monopoly, one that has simply grown up by having all their users consume their product over competitors (and by users I mean people who search their site).
Microsoft became a monopoly in the same way, in that they tied MS DOS and then windows to IBM PC, compatibles, and clones and everyone bought them. However once they became a monopoly, they had to play by a different set of rules. Microsoft chose not to follow those rules and bullied companies into installing software onto PCs that they wanted and excluded other pieces of software, and charged higher rates for those who didn't comply with their demands. That's anti-competitive practices.
I'm not really clear if Google has done something similar, but by the laws of the US, Google is a monopoly, it just needs to make sure that it doesn't use it's dominance in one market to gain dominance in another market, like Microsoft did. It is not illegal to simply be a Monopoly unless congress passes a law saying so. By current US laws, it's illegal to be a monopoly, and then to commit anti-competitive behavior to crush competition using your monopoly power, rather than competing on quality of goods and services.
Your quibbling over definitions when I clearly said "Jailbreak your phone" in the context of your OWN phone, and when I clearly said "root your phone and allow it to be controlled by someone else."
Congrats, you successfully pointed out weak grammar, I'm sorry. I know what they are, but the GGP post still didn't make a weighty point about comparable security and neither have you.
Because the evidence you provided was ONE issue and it was plugged quickly. And ironically, it was found by a jailbreaker and the only known exploit was to jailbreak your phone, not to root your phone and allow it to be controlled by someone else. Comparatively, here are 50,000 reasons the Android might be considered insecure.
The GP never said specifically the iPhone never had issues, and I'm not personally saying the Android is better/worse than iPhone in any way. I'm just pointing out your argument doesn't have a lot of weight.
Anti Troll missiles locked on.
As much as people want to think otherwise, there is a direct causal link between marketshare and the amount of malware for a given OS./
Sitation please? If you are going to make such a statement, please site studies and facts. In fact there is NO direct causal link, and you are abusing the statement without facts and citations. That said, I would agree that I think there is causal link, but you are further abusing the statement by not citing the magnitude, which is where proper citations would help. Windows has thousands of variants of malware. Mac OS X is in the dozens still, if that. No system is completely secure, and there will always be attempts to compromise a system, but saying ONE piece of malware suddenly brings Apple crashing in flames and "zOMG Mac OS X is teh insecurez they will be pwned!" is the worst kind of hyperbole imaginable.
The zealotry was on show yesterday in the OS X article where it was stated that OS X is more insecure than windows
I looked for an article yesterday on slashdot and the only article I found was one about how Apple is inviting security experts to look at their system. Sounds like a pretty responsible thing if you ask me, and I found no mention of this yesterday. Perhaps you'd like to review your citations?
People persecuting MS for poor security are living in the past.
Again, no citations. You sound like a MS schill. MS still has a poor record, period. Sure it's getting better but it's massive exaggeration to try to say that somehow MS gets a pass because 6 years ago they were utterly shitty shitty shitty, and suddenly now it's okay because they have improved to stinky farty smelly.
Hopefully as marketshare increases they will take responsibility and secure their OS, if for no other reason than to maintain their image.
How odd, Marketshare doesn't seem to have an effect on how secure an operating system is, because 90% marketshare never encouraged Microsoft. I do hope security remains forefront on Apple's mind, because they are the underdogs here and it will only continue to help them to be focused on security as they continue to compete for more marketshare, but here's another example of how off kilter your rant is.
Now I'm just waiting to be modded troll....
You will be, but just one more thing to nail the coffin shut. This is a goddamn fucking TROJAN HORSE!!! Do you know what that is? Do you remember the goddamn story of Troy? There's good movie released a few years back you should watch it. A virus is something getting in without your action or knowledge, but a Trojan horse requires the user perform an action, and the way it gets in is simply by deceiving a human being. You can inject a trojan horse into any system and hope to own it, Windows, Mac OS, UNIX, or other, just send the admin an email and hope he's stupid enough to open the attachment and do the work for you! You can't put a malware scan on the brain of an uneducated admin. It's not the fault of the OS makers if the admin is uneducated enough to open a file that they should not trust.
Like many rants before it, your rant is like buying the most secure home security system in the world, then giving the key to a random person on the street for safe keeping, and complaining to the security company when your house is robbed.
I'm going to set up a Facebook page with a status permanently set to "I can spot a guilty person a mile away!"
That will get me out of jury duty for now... until Facebook is made irrelevant or goes under.
The engine gets over revved, you pop the clutch, and suddenly when airbags get in your face, lose your protective restraint, and backfire... all before sheepishly puttering away.
I wish I could find a source for where I read this, but the doctor looking at the pictures isn't even an oncologist, he's in sports medicine! There's the NE for you.
The National Enquirer talks about running photos of Steve, and the entire news media gets a hard on and starts running stories on this. Has the media degraded so far that we are now counting the National Enquirer as a reliable news source?
The only people who are escalating the health worries here are the media itself to push for circulation. It's not news, it's bullshit. Thanks for contributing to the bullshit, Timothy.
This is a serious question. Apple set up the App store with the intent that they host and provide ads and what not, and they get their 30%. They are in fact providing services, so Apple's model makes sense to me, at least in terms of fairness. In terms of competition it's an entirely different matter.
It's fairly easy to post a free app to a specific Market, which is marketed and hosted by the android market, but since it's free, they get no money. You could then create an in app subscription model where you get all the subscription fees and the Android market gets nothing even though they are doing some of the lifting for you, namely app marketing and hosting.
Originally the iTunes store was a loss leader for selling iPods and creating a top to bottom environment for people to buy and consume content. Now it's a money making powerhouse for all iOS devices. Perhaps the Android Market is doing the same thing in it's early stages, but it doesn't have the benefit of music or movie downloads to help (does it?) and it would have to start turning a profit quickly to be sustainable unless Google plans on simply sinking money into it.
Again this is a serious question I'm trying to understand the model.
... how posting a Facebook page is "fighting back?"
A smart phone is a quick communicator. It performs short quick tasks very well. It's also >4 ounces and I can carry it in my pocket, and I'm up on the go everywhere and don't have the time or patience to carry around or worry about a satchel. I don't have 2 minutes to find a place to put down a laptop, plug in my headphones and take a phone call. I can't easily switch between play lists while I'm walking down the street with a laptop. I can't tap out a 2 sentence email without sitting down and opening a laptop. I don't know about you but I find holding a phone in my hands rather than trying to balance a netbook on my knees or one hand is a lot easier when I'm on the can.
If you move from place to place and are relatively sedentary while in that place and need to do extended work, a laptop or netbook works great. But a smartphone is lighter and if you don't need to type out lots of code or a dissertation, then it works great. Ironically, compared to a full desktop computer, a laptop is a toy! I find when I'm out, a smart phone is enough, but my work has a desktop PC for me, and I have a desktop computer at home. I feel laptops, and even more so netbooks, slow me down and are "toy like" because the keyboards are cramped, you don't have a real mouse (touchpads , and they are not as powerful. If I want to get work done that requires a stretch of concentration, I want to use my desktop at home or work, not a laptop. Heck if I take my laptop outside on a nice day, I'll get distracted daydreaming and looking at the scenery and not get any work done.
It's all relative to what you do. No one device fits everyone perfectly. And in truth, aren't all these things toys in some way shape or form? Your setup works great for you, I'm glad, but your setup won't work for me so I think that detracts from your argument when imply everyone should simply have your setup, that's too broad a paint brush.
First, this app has to be running in the background. iOS apps stay in the background for some time but iOS will eventually quit the application to free up resources for other apps. No one is going to voluntarily open this app before they leave for work just to check for potholes. It also has to use data on a limited data plan. Finally a background app has to reduce some battery life to report back home. I don't see this being all that ingenious as it sounds just because of iOS limitations and limitations in general of smartphones.
Space travel is dangerous in general. Until private space travel takes off (no pun intended) we won't have a good set of figures to find out which is relatively safer, private space travel or public, and even then, private travel will have made it's way on the shoulders of publicly funded research into what was basically unknown until people were willing to take a chance.
I'm sure we can create a relatively useful and beneficial private space industry going with open minded entrepreneurs willing to cooperate with straightforward and intelligent government oversight. I hope that doesn't get in the way of summary's anti-business rail and the parent comment's anti-government hard-on rage he was going for.
What's actually born out in many software companies is that having more frequent releases with fewer features in each release actually creates software that works! The difference is your focus on features is more narrow, and you are changing less code. Once you focus on making that code as stable as possible, you move on to the next project. This also has the added benefit of making a software company able to adapt to change more quickly.
The roadmap implies they may be moving to a scrum or agile development process or refining their process further. Firefox 4 seems like something that is taking forever, and after having spent over a year in a company that switched to scrum after having many major releases fall behind time and time again, I'm very glad they are going to a fewer features/faster release model.
The 4/5/6/7 might be a small marketing decision, but it's more likely simply a result of their development process simply using those the number procession they've always used and not spending time worrying precisely what the version number is, even though the cycle has changed.
The article inadvertently makes us focus on the version numbers themselves, when all of the techs and developers out there know the version number means nothing in terms of features, we should be dwelling on what it gives us.
You speak with much sarcasm, but who's to say they aren't gaming the system a bit here?
Speak ill of the company, the stock price begins to slide, the company complies, and you rush in with a bunch of automated orders that you had queued up to scoop up the stock as the announcement is made.
I am not a stock broker, but this is a conspiracy that I might bite on.
The mainstream considers "app" an abbreviation of "application," that's what matters. .app is hidden by default in Mac OS X so even the average mac user doesn't know about that extension. And Steve being a marketer didn't start calling them apps in press conferences because it was more geeky and obscure, I assure you.
...you are a mad scientist sick of the stupidity of humans and weren't sure which countries to include in your plot for global destruction. Rest assured India made it as easy as the US does.
There are hundreds of business applications where there is an "exe" or other "application" front end and a database backend. The front end could be called an application, or the entire package together could be called an application. There are hundreds of "web-based applications" and we call them applications. I would challenge the idea that Chromes "apps" are not apps. They are apps, just "web based apps."
The definition of application has always been changing. This is nothing new. This is merely taking the lexicon a step further and bringing it into the mainstream. If you were in an iPhone, and asked "What does that app do?" no one is going to have a problem figuring out what you mean. If you were in Chrome and asked "do you have this app?" again, no one is going to have a problem figuring out what you mean. The language isn't being severely diluted.
The definition of "application" has been changing since day 1. The execution of an application is still well understood by the people who create them, and the average end user doesn't care because they can get their point across simply. This is an example of a bunch of old grumpy programmers hating people who are not programmers telling them what's an "app" and what's not. That and they hate that Apple in a very "cutesy" way popularized apps by shortening the name and making it a little less geeky. "Application" has always included a broad category of computer programs that you enter data, and receive output. It's never limited the word to the structure of the code.