The statement "given Android programming is much easier (far more programmers know Java than Objective C)" is nonsensical. True enough that Java is popular, but Objective-C is trivial to learn. Actually the languages themselves don't have much bearing on the ease of development for the two platforms. It's the APIs. I've recently started messing around with Objective-C and Apple's Cocoa, and the language itself is VERY easy to pick up (and I'm not a professional developer s much as a person that uses programming as part of his job). The Cocoa API, however, is another kettle of fish. Not that Cocoa isn't well designed -- it's astonishingly well designed -- but, it's huge. Java is similar in that the language is relatively simple (on par with Obj-C, more or less), but you've got LOTS of APIs to learn.
I suspect that if you are a game developer, you're probably making little use of most of the APIs, and if you are big enough, I'm sure that you use a toolkit that abstracts-away the underlying platform. In either case, the primary language used probably has little bearing on the ease of development of games on either platform.
Hasn't this sort of thing been done for years? I bought a Motorola Razr phone with AT&T some time back and a number of the standard features were disabled. Verizon takes phones all the time and mucks with the software to disable features, often so that they can rent the features back to you at some cost. So, what's new about Apple's approach that makes it patentable?
The only thin that I can think of is that traditionally carriers would "provision" the phones by licensing the phone's firmware then writing a new variation and burning it into all the phones that they sell. I can only suppose that Apple's solution is reduced to a secured / signed configuration file so that you can simply install that and not screw with the phone's firmware/OS.
Even if you made the ludicrous assumption that they could consistently and accurately get meaningful results from the test (I wouldn't have that much faith in a government lab associated with the immigration office), there's the fundamental logical problem: your genes (physical composition) haven't much relation to your nationality.
A lot of American citizens came from somewhere else. Israel will accept anyone that can properly document their jewishness (honestly, I have no idea what their criteria are) as a citizen.
UK immigration rules are based on nationality, which is a mutable trait (I can change it, at will, with a certain amount of effort). Isotopic measures probably relate more to occupation than "origin", and your genetic history is an independent variable. My kids have dual nationalities, and if my wife and I adopted a child from abroad, it could have 3 or more. How would the genetic test effectively identify the provenance (in legal terms) of the child. A US citizen could easily be genetically tied to any country on the planet and be no less a US citizen than someone in Chicago.
C'mon. I'm sure the MMO is nice and all, but give credit where credit's due. Champions and the HERO system games are very good RPGs. I still have a huge collection of d6's from that... Who doesn't love the uber-villain with a 300-point VPP who puts it all into 8d6K+AP+IKB,... am I wrong?
Actually, from what I can tell, they mostly borrowed the name and a concept or two from Champions and that's about it. Not much of the ACTUAL Champions game is found in the MMOG
To be fair, for the price of the iPod Nano, which captures in VGA resolution, you can get a Flip with better optics and bigger sensor that records in 720p HD. Not to say that it's not nice to have video on the Nano, only that it's not going to impact the market that much.
But I think that it's, perhaps, shortsighted. The idea of "unschooling" is to eliminate formal presentations of information in favor of personally motivated exploration. It differs from home-schooling in that there's no curriculum and it hinges on personal motivation and curiosity.
The problem is that not everyone is curious enough to explore things in depth, nor intelligent enough to make sense of their experiences. One might easily develop an anthropomorphic or superstitious understanding of things, for example. Further, your environment is somewhat limited. You're not apt to learn, nor appreciate, much of world history, cosmology, quantum physics, anthropology, etc. from that sort of exploration, -- and you're definitely not going to develop a foundation in any sort of truly abstract discipline (e.g., math beyond arithmetic).
The trick is that optimal development of your intellectual faculties is dependent on the proper balance of rote learning, theory, practice, exposure, and play / exploration. For some, drills are really the only way that they will learn basic concepts, for others, it's a terrible waste if you don't hand them a toolbox and challenge them to convert a used car into a mill. "Unschooling" basically focuses on the play / exploration aspect and hopes for exposure. Public schools perhaps put too much emphasis on rote learning, and perhaps exposure without integrating the others. Either might be appropriate for an individual for whom those are the only ways that they can assimilate information and experiences. However, in the general case, you need all of them and get the best results when you can play up to the strengths of the individual.
... if they didn't put a clause in their agreement with AT&T that if the consumer base for the product exceeded the capacity of AT&T to service with a certain level of quality, that they would be able to add a second or third carrier to the mix. Perhaps, the only reason that Apple doesn't add Verizon is because the stampede would exceed Apple's ability to provide the phones.
I fully expect to see, at the next iPhone event in June, an announcement that the phone will be available through all carriers that want to provide it.
When you have a contract with AT&T and they modify the terms, the law permits you to reject the terms - in writing. If you reject the terms, the company can do one of three things: they can retain you as a customer per your original agreement, attempt to personally negotiate mutually acceptable terms (not likely), or terminate the agreement. If they terminate the agreement, you cannot be penalized. So, if you just got a shiny new iPhone, it's yours. Sure, you have no service, but you just got your phone on the cheap.
That said, while it makes for a nice contract clause, there's precedent that placing limits on customer's legal options isn't binding. In fact, generally speaking, arbitration clauses are increasingly less effective. The idea being that no party can enjoin another against the protection of the law. It's no different than saying, "if we do something illegal, you cannot call the police and report us." Certainly, they can try. What this clause does is create a cost-barrier to relief. Sure, it probably won't stand up in court, but you're going to have to go to court with pricey lawyers and waste time and money just to get as far as filing suit. That's what arbitration clauses do too -- even if the court decides that the arbitration clause doesn't apply, getting that far is outside the means of your typical customer. It's called gaming the system. Justice is very expensive.
That should be obvious. Whatever the book says, it applies to someone else's situation. Even if you can relate to it, it wasn't written with you in mind. It's terribly inefficient to read a 300 page book for the 10-word nugget of wisdom that might somehow be applicable some day.
Making it work is simple: it's you (the two of you) versus them (the other 8 billion people on the planet). It sounds stupid, but once you get past the warm-fuzzy aspect, marriage is about knowing that you've got someone covering your back. From that standpoint, it's all about making sure that you a.) actually cover the person's back, and b.) make sure that they know that they know you've got their back. In practice, it's not like a military unit, you aren't being shot at (I hope). Covering someone's back might be providing comfort when everything else provides stress, or helping share the risk of a new venture, you get the idea.
Common advice like "never go to bed angry", love one another, etc. are all good, don't get me wrong. But, fundamentally, they boil down to the golden rule (do unto others as you'd have them do unto you and respect each other as you respect yourself), and watching each other's back.
When you have a conflict -- and you will -- don't lose sight of the fact that it's you versus the world, and you versus each other is simply the other team winning at your expense.
Incidentally, there's this thing called sex. Enjoy that part.
The only issue I have with that is that you can't find a decent replacement for the Mighty Mouse that's got 4 buttons like the Mighty Mouse AND 360-degree trackball in it.
Mighty Mouse's biggest problem is that it's glued shut. You can't easily open it up and clean it out (important for the trackball). Otherwise, it's a pretty decent mouse.
The right-click thing is a matter of finger placement. Namely, if rest the left finger on the left button and press on the right as the same time, it will sometimes register as a left-click. The solutions are to move your second finger a few millimeters farther to the right before right-clicking, or to lift your left finger slightly while right clicking (or even pick up the left finger and use it to press the right button).
1. low-light performance 2. better optics (even my Canon has noticeable chromatic aberration) 3. better color fidelity (why doesn't a digital camera correct for the color of the flash?) 4. depth-of-field focus (like EOS, but it should be a common feature) 5. exposure bracketing 6. low-latency... the LAST thing I want is software specific to the brand or model of the camera.
Saying FFMPEG is just a codec library is like saying a Ferrari is a shiny surface for adhering horsie stickers to.
The distinguishing features of FFMPEG are that it's cross-platform (many commercial Windows and Mac apps use it under the hood), it's astonishingly fast at transcoding, has very broad codec AND container support, is fairly simple yet has a very rich set of advanced features.
What other tool are you going to use to convert your AutoDesk Animator video library to Flash video and animated gifs?
Copyright 2009, Duncan Bayne.... what you are asking for is basic copyright protection. In the absence of a license, but with the presence of a copyright notice you are permitting the person/entity that you provided the copy with to take a work and use it anyway they see fit with the restriction that they are not permitted to distribute a copy to any other party.
I understand that CCTV camera theft is much higher wherever surveillance cameras are installed. In that sense, they must be enticing criminal activity.
To qualify as a public performance, there needs to be a performer and a public audience. The book itself doesn't count as a performer, and the operator of the book probably wouldn't count as a public audience.
Why would the government have readers for the cards? They're a huge waste of money unless you actually had a use for them. Why is it that people presume that the British government wanted people to have the cards. The British government's support and legal system was necessary to assure that everyone got a card, sure, but now that everyone's got a card, extragovernmental agencies can leverage them -- which was the original point of the exercise, was it not? No point in making the taxpayer pay for a reader you can't use and the government has little use for. You can buy your own reader (and a Pringles can)...
"distribution of works covered by copyright without prior authorization of the copyright holder is frequently illegal."... there's no law against sharing files. If you've ever used a web browser, you might be surprised to learn that it's downloading files, even saving copies in a "cache". In the modern era, sharing is the norm -- not sharing is the exception. Further, sharing with permission from the copyright holder is most certainly not illegal, and it's often OK to distribute pieces of a work without permission (a video clip or picture in an editorial, for instance).
Also, if the RIAA intends to stop it's current campaign ostensibly because it generates bad PR, it should be cognizant that using extralegal means (asking an ISP to pull the plug) is probably going to be more poorly received.
That said, I think that the RIAA is finding it's current protocol untenable. There's no good way to match an IP to a real person beyond a reasonable doubt, and the only means that they've come up with have flaws (including using unlicensed investigators). They have to give up and take another approach.
First, schools pay a completely different price for a MacBook than you do. They come out cheaper than all but the real low-end PCs. Apple takes really good care of the education segment in cases like these.
Second, school systems are very cost conscious and typically low on personnel. A modern Mac has quite a bit less overhead associated with it - less malware, administration is easy, the platform is more accessible to educators (who are not typically as tolerant of Windows quirks), etc.
In this situation, it's a very viable platform. It would be nice if at some point the older kids also get exposure to Windows (might still be dominant when the kids get into the work force), and Linux (for lower-level understanding of servers and computers in general).
I'm kind of new to Macs, actually, but my experience so far is that only one vendor still operates on the one-user idea: Blizzard.com. Even MS doesn't do that.
You'll note that the cited knowledge-base article is itself an update to a previous article that said the same thing (with different links/products). In fact, for those paying attention, that same message has been on their site since the release of OS X. Apple's position has always been that antivirus is not a bad idea. Even if there are no viruses that target OS X, there might be someday, and in the mean time you do everyone a service by identifying, removing, and not passing on viruses targeting other platforms.
It's access restriction, not copy protection. The disk is still very simply bootlegged, you just can't playback the suckers on your choice of payback hardware. Copy protection might thwart bootleggers, access restrictions thwart potential consumers.
The answer is, buy copy after copy and return copy after copy saying that they disks don't play back. The retailer will pass the costs back to the publisher. Someone may eventually get the hint.
We the People. Seriously, why should industry leaders be there at all? If it's the FTC, a federal entity, they should be convening a conference of constituents or their elected representatives.
Who says security theater is there to "calm" the crowds. Most travelers aren't fearful of their safety or agitated until they experience the theatrics. The point is to make people believe that there's something to fear. There's good money and political capital in fearful and aggravated passengers.
Here's the thing... The system picked up 80% of the volunteers, none of which were an actual threat or had harmful intent, who were deliberately acting in a way to try and fool it. Er, that's unbelievably bad, don't you think? 0% of the people screened were a threat, but it flagged 80% of the actors anyway.
I wonder what it would do if you told a psycho ex-girlfriend of one of the researchers that she could kick the guy in the nuts if she could stay calm enough about it to slip by the machine. From the sound of it, the researchers would be easily emasculated.
Slashdot Mirror
The statement "given Android programming is much easier (far more programmers know Java than Objective C)" is nonsensical. True enough that Java is popular, but Objective-C is trivial to learn. Actually the languages themselves don't have much bearing on the ease of development for the two platforms. It's the APIs. I've recently started messing around with Objective-C and Apple's Cocoa, and the language itself is VERY easy to pick up (and I'm not a professional developer s much as a person that uses programming as part of his job). The Cocoa API, however, is another kettle of fish. Not that Cocoa isn't well designed -- it's astonishingly well designed -- but, it's huge. Java is similar in that the language is relatively simple (on par with Obj-C, more or less), but you've got LOTS of APIs to learn.
I suspect that if you are a game developer, you're probably making little use of most of the APIs, and if you are big enough, I'm sure that you use a toolkit that abstracts-away the underlying platform. In either case, the primary language used probably has little bearing on the ease of development of games on either platform.
Hasn't this sort of thing been done for years? I bought a Motorola Razr phone with AT&T some time back and a number of the standard features were disabled. Verizon takes phones all the time and mucks with the software to disable features, often so that they can rent the features back to you at some cost. So, what's new about Apple's approach that makes it patentable?
The only thin that I can think of is that traditionally carriers would "provision" the phones by licensing the phone's firmware then writing a new variation and burning it into all the phones that they sell. I can only suppose that Apple's solution is reduced to a secured / signed configuration file so that you can simply install that and not screw with the phone's firmware/OS.
Even if you made the ludicrous assumption that they could consistently and accurately get meaningful results from the test (I wouldn't have that much faith in a government lab associated with the immigration office), there's the fundamental logical problem: your genes (physical composition) haven't much relation to your nationality.
A lot of American citizens came from somewhere else. Israel will accept anyone that can properly document their jewishness (honestly, I have no idea what their criteria are) as a citizen.
UK immigration rules are based on nationality, which is a mutable trait (I can change it, at will, with a certain amount of effort). Isotopic measures probably relate more to occupation than "origin", and your genetic history is an independent variable. My kids have dual nationalities, and if my wife and I adopted a child from abroad, it could have 3 or more. How would the genetic test effectively identify the provenance (in legal terms) of the child. A US citizen could easily be genetically tied to any country on the planet and be no less a US citizen than someone in Chicago.
C'mon. I'm sure the MMO is nice and all, but give credit where credit's due. Champions and the HERO system games are very good RPGs. I still have a huge collection of d6's from that... Who doesn't love the uber-villain with a 300-point VPP who puts it all into 8d6K+AP+IKB, ... am I wrong?
Actually, from what I can tell, they mostly borrowed the name and a concept or two from Champions and that's about it. Not much of the ACTUAL Champions game is found in the MMOG
To be fair, for the price of the iPod Nano, which captures in VGA resolution, you can get a Flip with better optics and bigger sensor that records in 720p HD. Not to say that it's not nice to have video on the Nano, only that it's not going to impact the market that much.
But I think that it's, perhaps, shortsighted. The idea of "unschooling" is to eliminate formal presentations of information in favor of personally motivated exploration. It differs from home-schooling in that there's no curriculum and it hinges on personal motivation and curiosity.
The problem is that not everyone is curious enough to explore things in depth, nor intelligent enough to make sense of their experiences. One might easily develop an anthropomorphic or superstitious understanding of things, for example. Further, your environment is somewhat limited. You're not apt to learn, nor appreciate, much of world history, cosmology, quantum physics, anthropology, etc. from that sort of exploration, -- and you're definitely not going to develop a foundation in any sort of truly abstract discipline (e.g., math beyond arithmetic).
The trick is that optimal development of your intellectual faculties is dependent on the proper balance of rote learning, theory, practice, exposure, and play / exploration. For some, drills are really the only way that they will learn basic concepts, for others, it's a terrible waste if you don't hand them a toolbox and challenge them to convert a used car into a mill. "Unschooling" basically focuses on the play / exploration aspect and hopes for exposure. Public schools perhaps put too much emphasis on rote learning, and perhaps exposure without integrating the others. Either might be appropriate for an individual for whom those are the only ways that they can assimilate information and experiences. However, in the general case, you need all of them and get the best results when you can play up to the strengths of the individual.
... if they didn't put a clause in their agreement with AT&T that if the consumer base for the product exceeded the capacity of AT&T to service with a certain level of quality, that they would be able to add a second or third carrier to the mix. Perhaps, the only reason that Apple doesn't add Verizon is because the stampede would exceed Apple's ability to provide the phones.
I fully expect to see, at the next iPhone event in June, an announcement that the phone will be available through all carriers that want to provide it.
... I think the server crashed, just dead links.
When you have a contract with AT&T and they modify the terms, the law permits you to reject the terms - in writing. If you reject the terms, the company can do one of three things: they can retain you as a customer per your original agreement, attempt to personally negotiate mutually acceptable terms (not likely), or terminate the agreement. If they terminate the agreement, you cannot be penalized. So, if you just got a shiny new iPhone, it's yours. Sure, you have no service, but you just got your phone on the cheap.
That said, while it makes for a nice contract clause, there's precedent that placing limits on customer's legal options isn't binding. In fact, generally speaking, arbitration clauses are increasingly less effective. The idea being that no party can enjoin another against the protection of the law. It's no different than saying, "if we do something illegal, you cannot call the police and report us." Certainly, they can try. What this clause does is create a cost-barrier to relief. Sure, it probably won't stand up in court, but you're going to have to go to court with pricey lawyers and waste time and money just to get as far as filing suit. That's what arbitration clauses do too -- even if the court decides that the arbitration clause doesn't apply, getting that far is outside the means of your typical customer. It's called gaming the system. Justice is very expensive.
That should be obvious. Whatever the book says, it applies to someone else's situation. Even if you can relate to it, it wasn't written with you in mind. It's terribly inefficient to read a 300 page book for the 10-word nugget of wisdom that might somehow be applicable some day.
Making it work is simple: it's you (the two of you) versus them (the other 8 billion people on the planet). It sounds stupid, but once you get past the warm-fuzzy aspect, marriage is about knowing that you've got someone covering your back. From that standpoint, it's all about making sure that you a.) actually cover the person's back, and b.) make sure that they know that they know you've got their back. In practice, it's not like a military unit, you aren't being shot at (I hope). Covering someone's back might be providing comfort when everything else provides stress, or helping share the risk of a new venture, you get the idea.
Common advice like "never go to bed angry", love one another, etc. are all good, don't get me wrong. But, fundamentally, they boil down to the golden rule (do unto others as you'd have them do unto you and respect each other as you respect yourself), and watching each other's back.
When you have a conflict -- and you will -- don't lose sight of the fact that it's you versus the world, and you versus each other is simply the other team winning at your expense.
Incidentally, there's this thing called sex. Enjoy that part.
The only issue I have with that is that you can't find a decent replacement for the Mighty Mouse that's got 4 buttons like the Mighty Mouse AND 360-degree trackball in it.
Mighty Mouse's biggest problem is that it's glued shut. You can't easily open it up and clean it out (important for the trackball). Otherwise, it's a pretty decent mouse.
The right-click thing is a matter of finger placement. Namely, if rest the left finger on the left button and press on the right as the same time, it will sometimes register as a left-click. The solutions are to move your second finger a few millimeters farther to the right before right-clicking, or to lift your left finger slightly while right clicking (or even pick up the left finger and use it to press the right button).
1. low-light performance ... the LAST thing I want is software specific to the brand or model of the camera.
2. better optics (even my Canon has noticeable chromatic aberration)
3. better color fidelity (why doesn't a digital camera correct for the color of the flash?)
4. depth-of-field focus (like EOS, but it should be a common feature)
5. exposure bracketing
6. low-latency
Saying FFMPEG is just a codec library is like saying a Ferrari is a shiny surface for adhering horsie stickers to.
The distinguishing features of FFMPEG are that it's cross-platform (many commercial Windows and Mac apps use it under the hood), it's astonishingly fast at transcoding, has very broad codec AND container support, is fairly simple yet has a very rich set of advanced features.
What other tool are you going to use to convert your AutoDesk Animator video library to Flash video and animated gifs?
Just put some wording like this in the files:
Copyright 2009, Duncan Bayne. ... what you are asking for is basic copyright protection. In the absence of a license, but with the presence of a copyright notice you are permitting the person/entity that you provided the copy with to take a work and use it anyway they see fit with the restriction that they are not permitted to distribute a copy to any other party.
I understand that CCTV camera theft is much higher wherever surveillance cameras are installed. In that sense, they must be enticing criminal activity.
To qualify as a public performance, there needs to be a performer and a public audience. The book itself doesn't count as a performer, and the operator of the book probably wouldn't count as a public audience.
Why would the government have readers for the cards? They're a huge waste of money unless you actually had a use for them. Why is it that people presume that the British government wanted people to have the cards. The British government's support and legal system was necessary to assure that everyone got a card, sure, but now that everyone's got a card, extragovernmental agencies can leverage them -- which was the original point of the exercise, was it not? No point in making the taxpayer pay for a reader you can't use and the government has little use for. You can buy your own reader (and a Pringles can)...
To the RIAA: let's fix that statement for you...
"file-sharing is illegal."
should read
"distribution of works covered by copyright without prior authorization of the copyright holder is frequently illegal." ... there's no law against sharing files. If you've ever used a web browser, you might be surprised to learn that it's downloading files, even saving copies in a "cache". In the modern era, sharing is the norm -- not sharing is the exception. Further, sharing with permission from the copyright holder is most certainly not illegal, and it's often OK to distribute pieces of a work without permission (a video clip or picture in an editorial, for instance).
Also, if the RIAA intends to stop it's current campaign ostensibly because it generates bad PR, it should be cognizant that using extralegal means (asking an ISP to pull the plug) is probably going to be more poorly received.
That said, I think that the RIAA is finding it's current protocol untenable. There's no good way to match an IP to a real person beyond a reasonable doubt, and the only means that they've come up with have flaws (including using unlicensed investigators). They have to give up and take another approach.
First, schools pay a completely different price for a MacBook than you do. They come out cheaper than all but the real low-end PCs. Apple takes really good care of the education segment in cases like these.
Second, school systems are very cost conscious and typically low on personnel. A modern Mac has quite a bit less overhead associated with it - less malware, administration is easy, the platform is more accessible to educators (who are not typically as tolerant of Windows quirks), etc.
In this situation, it's a very viable platform. It would be nice if at some point the older kids also get exposure to Windows (might still be dominant when the kids get into the work force), and Linux (for lower-level understanding of servers and computers in general).
I'm kind of new to Macs, actually, but my experience so far is that only one vendor still operates on the one-user idea: Blizzard.com. Even MS doesn't do that.
You'll note that the cited knowledge-base article is itself an update to a previous article that said the same thing (with different links/products). In fact, for those paying attention, that same message has been on their site since the release of OS X. Apple's position has always been that antivirus is not a bad idea. Even if there are no viruses that target OS X, there might be someday, and in the mean time you do everyone a service by identifying, removing, and not passing on viruses targeting other platforms.
It's access restriction, not copy protection. The disk is still very simply bootlegged, you just can't playback the suckers on your choice of payback hardware. Copy protection might thwart bootleggers, access restrictions thwart potential consumers.
The answer is, buy copy after copy and return copy after copy saying that they disks don't play back. The retailer will pass the costs back to the publisher. Someone may eventually get the hint.
We the People. Seriously, why should industry leaders be there at all? If it's the FTC, a federal entity, they should be convening a conference of constituents or their elected representatives.
Who says security theater is there to "calm" the crowds. Most travelers aren't fearful of their safety or agitated until they experience the theatrics. The point is to make people believe that there's something to fear. There's good money and political capital in fearful and aggravated passengers.
Here's the thing... The system picked up 80% of the volunteers, none of which were an actual threat or had harmful intent, who were deliberately acting in a way to try and fool it. Er, that's unbelievably bad, don't you think? 0% of the people screened were a threat, but it flagged 80% of the actors anyway.
I wonder what it would do if you told a psycho ex-girlfriend of one of the researchers that she could kick the guy in the nuts if she could stay calm enough about it to slip by the machine. From the sound of it, the researchers would be easily emasculated.