you just said it, there are countries that don't have the murder problems we americans have.
Do yourself a favour and don't stop reading the second you think you see something that agrees with you. My point was that the USA seems to be unable to follow their example.
that proves its all about society and its attitudes, not the tools it has at its disposal.
Again, read to the end of the paragraph. I'll repeat it for you: "However the USA doesn't seem to be able to achieve this, and guns are a significant part of the problem."
No, guns are not the entire problem, but they also aren't none of the problem, and you haven't been able to fix society and its attitudes, so you should start looking at the other part of the puzzle.
Gun crime in England and Wales has been steadily declining for years. In 2010/11 there were fewer than 12K recorded offences, and that's including crime involving air rifles and imitation guns.
guns are not the problem.
No, they aren't the entire problem, as other countries have proven it's possible to have widespread gun ownership without widespread gun crime. However the USA doesn't seem to be able to achieve this, and guns are a significant part of the problem.
911 is currently used in North America, while 112 is standard across the EU and in many other countries worldwide.
112 isn't just standard across the EU and many other countries, it's part of the GSM standard. Outside of America getting its own way, there's no good reason to pick anything other than that, it's practically a worldwide standard already.
It's not an exaggeration. Generally speaking, when people are talking about earnings in terms of hourly rates, they aren't talking about salaried positions of the kind your link describes, they are talking about freelance rates. And hourly rates higher than 100USD are fairly common for good freelance iOS developers. Some hourly rates are discussed here. The developers for Twitteriffic mention charging $150/hr, the guys behond the Obama app say rates range from $100-150/hr, which is also in line with my experience.
Apple already charges developers for merely listing their apps - $99 a year. That's HUGE and more than covers all the stuff you talked about - hosting, bandwidth etc.
Let me get this straight - you think that digital marketing, billing and distribution of Office, one of the most widely used pieces of software in the world, can be achieved globally for less than $99?
I know the summary says OS X, but this is just loading Darwin binaries. You know, Darwin, the BSD-based OS that Apple voluntarily open-sourced? I know Apple have a reputation as the next evil empire, but I think suing people for doing things that they specifically enabled with an open-source release is a bit unlikely.
Seriouslt, playing around with settings,etc is frustratingly hard in iPhones atleast. The basic stuff is on the surface, the rest is 5 km below the surface
It's frustratingly hard if you need the non-basic stuff, but for the typical consumer who only needs the basic stuff, it's easier.
it might be legally correct, but that doesn't make it any less crappy for the consumers
It does, and that's the point. If you don't like the way iOS does things, you can switch to another platform without too much difficulty. When Microsoft got done for bundling Internet Explorer, switching to another platform meant things like your online banking failing to work because they'd coded it specifically for Internet Explorer. They were slowly turning the web from a cross-platform system to a Microsoft-controlled one, and that's bad for everybody even if (especially if) you weren't their customer.
In my experience, it's more version number bragging contests than anything else. The only apps that don't run on every version of Android I've used since 2.2...
I don't think that means as much as you think it does. Let me use web development as an analogy here. Until recently, there was a huge amount of pressure for web developers to support Internet Explorer 6. It was released in 2001, it's got lousy support for modern standards, and it's buggy as hell. Web developers loathe supporting it but are backed into a corner because so many people still used it (until recently, thankfully). No savvy people used it out of preference, only the people stuck with it.
Now take a look at what you're saying. Yes, it may be the case that most apps still run on 2.2. But that's not because savvy users like 2.2 and it doesn't mean that developers don't want to drop support for 2.2. It's just the inertia of people who are slow to upgrade are holding back everybody else.
Personally, I've owned several Android phones, and I've always wanted to upgrade for solid reasons. Quality control is generally very poor for Android, and newer versions are often necessary for bug fixes. My last Android phone is stuck on 2.3 despite Sony's commitments to upgrade it to 4.0, and it's useless to me because it's got a SIP bug that stops people phoning me when the phone has been idle for longer than ten minutes. That's not "bragging rights", unless you think an operational phone is something to brag about.
Everyone complains about how fragmented Android is, but literally every OS that's ever had more than one version will have that.
Version numbers are not the fragmentation that people are talking about. It's more to do with device capabilities and vendor customisations. If you develop for iOS, you only have to deal with three aspect ratios and three display densities. On Android, there's a multitude of both to deal with. If you develop for iOS, you only have to support one variant of the operating system. On Android, there are several major ones. Even if you are talking about version numbers, iOS is far more consolidated than Android in terms of reach, because the people who actually use apps tend to upgrade very quickly.
there are still plenty of 3GS devices and older-gen iPod Touch units running iOS 5.x (including every first-gen iPad), 4.x, and likely still a handful on 3.x.
No application developer has to support devices running 3.x because a) people who use apps tend to upgrade on a regular basis and b) it's not even supported in the latest developer tools. Same goes for devices older than the 3GS - everything older than that uses ARMv6, which has been dropped from the latest developer tools. Apple keep pushing things forward at a quick pace.
Mobile OS updates were RARE before the iPhone
A lot of things were rare before the iPhone - touch screens, app stores, even phones with email and data plans were relatively rare. That doesn't mean that these aren't good things that are basic requirements now.
Desktop Windows never gave free updates, and neither did OSX
Huh? They both had free update mechanisms built in long before the iPhone came along.
I'll conclude with posing the question again: Why does Android get the 'fragmented' label as a derogatory stigma and a 'problem' in need of 'solving', when literally every operating system ever can also wear that badge just as well and no one cares?
Because other operating systems can't wear that badge just as well, and this is fairly obvious.
I'm not a lawyer, but that seems to deal with using devices to make recordings, not to make copies. For instance, recording somebody singing a song as opposed to copying an MP3.
The wording refers to "musical recordings", and while there isn't a specific definition, you can see in 17 USC 101 that it defines sound recordings:
âoeSound recordingsâ are works that result from the fixation of a series of musical, spoken, or other sounds, but not including the sounds accompanying a motion picture or other audiovisual work, regardless of the nature of the material objects, such as disks, tapes, or other phonorecords, in which they are embodied.
To "make a sound recording" seems distinct to making copies of works judging by the legal definitions.
But most people don't have enough music to fill their devices and most people don't want different songs on different devices.
Now there are two giant assumptions.
Okay, I'll grant you that different types of media can have an effect on this argument (although I don't think there are all that many people out there putting lots of HiDef TV shows on their portable devices), but are you really disagreeing that most people don't want different songs on different devices? Or are you just arguing for the sake of it? Or do you really think that most iOS users have multiple devices that they want to manage individually?
After all, if I buy a CD everyone in my family can listen to it. They don't have to borrow my CD player when they want to hear it.
That's not an analogous situation because you aren't making a copy of the music. If you were ripping the CD and giving them the files, it would be a different matter.
Most phones, especially Apple phones where there is no SD card slot, have limited space available so there must be some way to select which ones you want to sync. By default iTunes just tries to sync everything as soon as you add it to your library, filling your phone up immediately.
iTunes does actually support manual syncing. It is the only option if you have multiple devices and want different songs on each of them.
Yes, I know all that and the fact that manual selection is sometimes necessary is one of the sharp corners I mentioned. But most people don't have enough music to fill their devices and most people don't want different songs on different devices. Apple aren't trying to be all things to all people, nor should they be. They are optimising for the common case, which is somebody who just wants their music in their pocket and has room for it. And when there isn't room for it, they are solving that with iCloud rather than depending on the user to manually manage files.
But then you have to buy the same stuff four or five times so everyone in the family can have it.
If you're syncing one library to devices belonging to multiple people, you're probably committing copyright infringement. Making copies of music you've bought for your own use is one thing, making copies for other people is another.
I agree, it would be nice if it was handled better, but I can understand why Apple are not building their applications to cater to illegal use cases that would harm their relationship with their suppliers.
Android lets you have multiple Google accounts associated with each device so you can have a family one for app purchases and then everyone also has their own individual ones for email and other personal stuff.
Yes, that would be very useful for iOS. But that's the opposite problem isn't it? A shared device rather than a shared library?
Switching from GCC to LLVM is not planned. From what I gathered so far, LLVM is pretty intriguing and I am tempted to explore it. But on the other hand, we are actually quite happy with our current GCC-based tool chain.
That's because it's not designed for the exact opposite.
And in case anybody is confused, that sentence was supposed to either be "not designed for that" or "designed for the exact opposite", and somehow it came out as both.
Something as simple as moving and saving songs to my phone seems like an excercise in frustration
That's because it's not designed for the exact opposite. It's designed so that the user shouldn't have to "move and save songs to their phone". iTunes should just take care of it for them.
I always end up with duplicate songs or apps from other family members' devices.
It sounds like you're using a single user account on your computer for multiple users. Rather than expect every application on your system invent their own ways of dealing with multiple users, you should just have a user account for every user on your computer.
Granted, iTunes is by no means perfect, and the sharp corners show through in some cases, but if you're looking at an Apple product and thinking "I can't do X manually", it's probably because you have an XY problem, and they are solving X while you are asking about Y. X in this case being listening to your music on your phone and Y being manually putting them there.
If the experiment is a success, they'll likely be able to push harder in the future to force their partners to remove the DRM and/or port to Mac/Linux.
I think you have that backwards. The reception to the previous bundles, which were cross-platform and without DRM, was great. Now it can go one of two ways:
The reception to this bundle is also great. This would show that the cross-platform and DRM issues aren't important to their customers and can be ignored.
The reception to this bundle is not good. This would show that the cross-platform and DRM issues are important to their customers and can't be ignored.
You don't change the behaviour of a business by giving them money and support when they do things you don't like, you reinforce their behaviour and encourage them to continue as they are.
I've noticed that you have often seen a problem on the horizon, been vociferous in warning people about it, and derided as a kook. Then what you are warning about starts happening, and the fact that you tried to warn people about it goes down the memory hole. Then it happens again, and again.
Without wanting to stir up discussion about the specifics, you're inarguably an unconventional person. Do you think that if you were a bit more conventional, you might be more effective in the early stages of your criticism? Have you identified any other problems stopping your initial warnings from being taken seriously, and if so, what steps are you taking to resolve these problems?
I used Linux for over a decade as my main OS, eventually ending up on Ubuntu. When I started using Linux, it had a reputation for being rock-solid and about as stable as you can possibly get, and I was happy with that. Newer hardware wasn't supported very well, but older hardware support was unparalleled. This was also reflected in the beginning of Ubuntu - I seem to recall you had a push to make sure the hardware on every laptop model was supported as best it could be.
However as the years progressed, I found Linux becoming more and more buggy and unstable. The final straw was when I tried to upgrade Ubuntu, and not only had I lost hardware support for several things, but there were even crashes upon loading the LiveCD installer (this was solid hardware that lasted for a couple more years). I bounced around trying to find the stability from years ago, but never found it. Today, I'm using OS X, which is far more stable than Linux in the last few years I was using it.
Wait, what? How is the iPhone 5 bleeding money for Apple? They are selling them as fast as they can make them, and Apple's margins are among the highest in the industry.
Since forever. Remember that this is the computer company that settled with a record label over the word "Apple" (this was in the 70s, long before Apple were thinking about iPods or iTunes).
A similar thing happened a few years ago with apps that displayed photos with white borders that were thicker along one edge. Apparently Polaroid have a design patent on that and complained to Apple. End result: apps can be rejected/removed from the App Store if they display a photo with a white border that is thicker along one side.
I'm hardly a Microsoft fan, but I don't expect them to just keep churning out new software for their old products. Why should they support older versions of Windows for new versions of their software?
Slashdot Mirror
Do yourself a favour and don't stop reading the second you think you see something that agrees with you. My point was that the USA seems to be unable to follow their example.
Again, read to the end of the paragraph. I'll repeat it for you: "However the USA doesn't seem to be able to achieve this, and guns are a significant part of the problem."
No, guns are not the entire problem, but they also aren't none of the problem, and you haven't been able to fix society and its attitudes, so you should start looking at the other part of the puzzle.
And just to follow up with a solid source: Homicides, Firearm Offences and Intimate Violence 2010/11. In 2010/11, 58 people were killed by a gun in England and Wales.
Gun crime in England and Wales has been steadily declining for years. In 2010/11 there were fewer than 12K recorded offences, and that's including crime involving air rifles and imitation guns.
No, they aren't the entire problem, as other countries have proven it's possible to have widespread gun ownership without widespread gun crime. However the USA doesn't seem to be able to achieve this, and guns are a significant part of the problem.
112 isn't just standard across the EU and many other countries, it's part of the GSM standard. Outside of America getting its own way, there's no good reason to pick anything other than that, it's practically a worldwide standard already.
It's not an exaggeration. Generally speaking, when people are talking about earnings in terms of hourly rates, they aren't talking about salaried positions of the kind your link describes, they are talking about freelance rates. And hourly rates higher than 100USD are fairly common for good freelance iOS developers. Some hourly rates are discussed here. The developers for Twitteriffic mention charging $150/hr, the guys behond the Obama app say rates range from $100-150/hr, which is also in line with my experience.
Let me get this straight - you think that digital marketing, billing and distribution of Office, one of the most widely used pieces of software in the world, can be achieved globally for less than $99?
I know the summary says OS X, but this is just loading Darwin binaries. You know, Darwin, the BSD-based OS that Apple voluntarily open-sourced? I know Apple have a reputation as the next evil empire, but I think suing people for doing things that they specifically enabled with an open-source release is a bit unlikely.
It's frustratingly hard if you need the non-basic stuff, but for the typical consumer who only needs the basic stuff, it's easier.
It does, and that's the point. If you don't like the way iOS does things, you can switch to another platform without too much difficulty. When Microsoft got done for bundling Internet Explorer, switching to another platform meant things like your online banking failing to work because they'd coded it specifically for Internet Explorer. They were slowly turning the web from a cross-platform system to a Microsoft-controlled one, and that's bad for everybody even if (especially if) you weren't their customer.
I don't think that means as much as you think it does. Let me use web development as an analogy here. Until recently, there was a huge amount of pressure for web developers to support Internet Explorer 6. It was released in 2001, it's got lousy support for modern standards, and it's buggy as hell. Web developers loathe supporting it but are backed into a corner because so many people still used it (until recently, thankfully). No savvy people used it out of preference, only the people stuck with it.
Now take a look at what you're saying. Yes, it may be the case that most apps still run on 2.2. But that's not because savvy users like 2.2 and it doesn't mean that developers don't want to drop support for 2.2. It's just the inertia of people who are slow to upgrade are holding back everybody else.
Personally, I've owned several Android phones, and I've always wanted to upgrade for solid reasons. Quality control is generally very poor for Android, and newer versions are often necessary for bug fixes. My last Android phone is stuck on 2.3 despite Sony's commitments to upgrade it to 4.0, and it's useless to me because it's got a SIP bug that stops people phoning me when the phone has been idle for longer than ten minutes. That's not "bragging rights", unless you think an operational phone is something to brag about.
Version numbers are not the fragmentation that people are talking about. It's more to do with device capabilities and vendor customisations. If you develop for iOS, you only have to deal with three aspect ratios and three display densities. On Android, there's a multitude of both to deal with. If you develop for iOS, you only have to support one variant of the operating system. On Android, there are several major ones. Even if you are talking about version numbers, iOS is far more consolidated than Android in terms of reach, because the people who actually use apps tend to upgrade very quickly.
No application developer has to support devices running 3.x because a) people who use apps tend to upgrade on a regular basis and b) it's not even supported in the latest developer tools. Same goes for devices older than the 3GS - everything older than that uses ARMv6, which has been dropped from the latest developer tools. Apple keep pushing things forward at a quick pace.
A lot of things were rare before the iPhone - touch screens, app stores, even phones with email and data plans were relatively rare. That doesn't mean that these aren't good things that are basic requirements now.
Huh? They both had free update mechanisms built in long before the iPhone came along.
Because other operating systems can't wear that badge just as well, and this is fairly obvious.
I'm not a lawyer, but that seems to deal with using devices to make recordings, not to make copies. For instance, recording somebody singing a song as opposed to copying an MP3.
The wording refers to "musical recordings", and while there isn't a specific definition, you can see in 17 USC 101 that it defines sound recordings:
To "make a sound recording" seems distinct to making copies of works judging by the legal definitions.
Okay, I'll grant you that different types of media can have an effect on this argument (although I don't think there are all that many people out there putting lots of HiDef TV shows on their portable devices), but are you really disagreeing that most people don't want different songs on different devices? Or are you just arguing for the sake of it? Or do you really think that most iOS users have multiple devices that they want to manage individually?
That's not an analogous situation because you aren't making a copy of the music. If you were ripping the CD and giving them the files, it would be a different matter.
Yes, I know all that and the fact that manual selection is sometimes necessary is one of the sharp corners I mentioned. But most people don't have enough music to fill their devices and most people don't want different songs on different devices. Apple aren't trying to be all things to all people, nor should they be. They are optimising for the common case, which is somebody who just wants their music in their pocket and has room for it. And when there isn't room for it, they are solving that with iCloud rather than depending on the user to manually manage files.
If you're syncing one library to devices belonging to multiple people, you're probably committing copyright infringement. Making copies of music you've bought for your own use is one thing, making copies for other people is another.
I agree, it would be nice if it was handled better, but I can understand why Apple are not building their applications to cater to illegal use cases that would harm their relationship with their suppliers.
Yes, that would be very useful for iOS. But that's the opposite problem isn't it? A shared device rather than a shared library?
For anybody wondering:
And in case anybody is confused, that sentence was supposed to either be "not designed for that" or "designed for the exact opposite", and somehow it came out as both.
That's because it's not designed for the exact opposite. It's designed so that the user shouldn't have to "move and save songs to their phone". iTunes should just take care of it for them.
It sounds like you're using a single user account on your computer for multiple users. Rather than expect every application on your system invent their own ways of dealing with multiple users, you should just have a user account for every user on your computer.
Granted, iTunes is by no means perfect, and the sharp corners show through in some cases, but if you're looking at an Apple product and thinking "I can't do X manually", it's probably because you have an XY problem, and they are solving X while you are asking about Y. X in this case being listening to your music on your phone and Y being manually putting them there.
I think you have that backwards. The reception to the previous bundles, which were cross-platform and without DRM, was great. Now it can go one of two ways:
You don't change the behaviour of a business by giving them money and support when they do things you don't like, you reinforce their behaviour and encourage them to continue as they are.
Are any parts of Curiosity made from plastic?
I've noticed that you have often seen a problem on the horizon, been vociferous in warning people about it, and derided as a kook. Then what you are warning about starts happening, and the fact that you tried to warn people about it goes down the memory hole. Then it happens again, and again.
Without wanting to stir up discussion about the specifics, you're inarguably an unconventional person. Do you think that if you were a bit more conventional, you might be more effective in the early stages of your criticism? Have you identified any other problems stopping your initial warnings from being taken seriously, and if so, what steps are you taking to resolve these problems?
I used Linux for over a decade as my main OS, eventually ending up on Ubuntu. When I started using Linux, it had a reputation for being rock-solid and about as stable as you can possibly get, and I was happy with that. Newer hardware wasn't supported very well, but older hardware support was unparalleled. This was also reflected in the beginning of Ubuntu - I seem to recall you had a push to make sure the hardware on every laptop model was supported as best it could be.
However as the years progressed, I found Linux becoming more and more buggy and unstable. The final straw was when I tried to upgrade Ubuntu, and not only had I lost hardware support for several things, but there were even crashes upon loading the LiveCD installer (this was solid hardware that lasted for a couple more years). I bounced around trying to find the stability from years ago, but never found it. Today, I'm using OS X, which is far more stable than Linux in the last few years I was using it.
What happened?
Where are you getting these delusions? You think the majority of iPhone 5s sold are being returned because they are defective?
Wait, what? How is the iPhone 5 bleeding money for Apple? They are selling them as fast as they can make them, and Apple's margins are among the highest in the industry.
Since forever. Remember that this is the computer company that settled with a record label over the word "Apple" (this was in the 70s, long before Apple were thinking about iPods or iTunes).
A similar thing happened a few years ago with apps that displayed photos with white borders that were thicker along one edge. Apparently Polaroid have a design patent on that and complained to Apple. End result: apps can be rejected/removed from the App Store if they display a photo with a white border that is thicker along one side.
I'm hardly a Microsoft fan, but I don't expect them to just keep churning out new software for their old products. Why should they support older versions of Windows for new versions of their software?