How many times do we have to flog this secure password animal? We (as IT professional) know what strong and weak passwords are, if you're even a competent IT administrator. They need to be non-literal or non-dictionary words or phrases that contain things other than alpha characters. We know that if the scheme/method for generating these passwords is too complex then people are forced to write them down, which negates the usefulness of using a password at all.
As for best practices, it's really a subjective thing as we've seen through countless "studies", but there are some hard and fast "rules" (outlined above) that we know work. The trick is in how we apply those rules. In my experience, as an IT administrator for more than 15 years, using "leeted" phrases seems to work the best. I ask folks to use something like a line from their favorite song, or passage from a book, or catch phrase, etc. i.e., $0Y0uTh1nkY0uC4nD4nc3 = So You Think You Can Dance. This way the only thing to learn is mapping what characters to numbers or specials. Everything else is simple English (for us English speakers, no offense to others). Generating very secure, lengthy passwords then becomes easy, and easy to remember. I use several (seemingly ridiculously) long passwords like that regularly and have no problem meeting any password length or character requirement.
Ok, they got the well capped, FINALLY! I guess that's one thing less to worry about, but there's still the clean up and the decades (if not centuries) of ecological and economical recovery. But, of course, the media will now pack up and move on to the next sensational story and the mess will be forgotten in two weeks, until they come back around a year later to do a follow up story. If they ever do...
This article is by the same dumbass that wrote the Juno article that was posted here yesterday! Can we put a moratorium on links to this a-hole's column until he learns to convert metric and Imperial units correctly, at the very least?!?! I would give his articles a grain of salt on being accurate in any sense!
Contact the office of student affairs and/or the President or Provost of the university and explain to them what is going on (email will work)
Contact the university's office of legal counsel, not student legal aid, the lawyers for the university and explain to them what's going on (phone call here)
If neither of those options work, contact your local media and explain to them what happened and how the university is IGNORING YOU
I will guarantee option three above will work quickly and effectively if the/. post wasn't enough. There's nothing a university hates more than negative press. I learned years ago, that if a government or private agency is NOT dong their job, make sure everyone knows and things change mighty quick!
Screw NetApp and their overpriced, underfeatured, patented crap. Really. I mean that.
I totally and completely agree with that summary of NetApp
With that out of the way, how does NetApp have any authority to enforce a license/patent on a piece of software they did not invent, nor hold the licensing for? ZFS was created by Sun and released under the CDDL. I am confused as to where NetApp fits into this equation other than being a troll of something that isn't even theirs to begin to troll with. I will do some digging online, but this is just effed up.
I fear the solution may be above your pay grade. You have a franchise agreement with Comcast. You need to have your municipal legal department review that agreement and see if Comcast is in violation of that agreement by switching to exclusively digital signaling. You need to have high level persons in the municipality negotiate with Comcast to either get a new franchise agreement or to get compensation via free digital tuner boxes for your analog monitors. Or, buy all digitally tuned TVs and laugh Comcast off.
I would be shocked if the franchise agreement was not being violated by this move so following up with legal on reviewing the agreement would be step numero uno. I would also make absolutely sure that the powers that you report to are thoroughly informed as to what is going on and what you are facing. Heck, they may say screw it and chuck the whole thing and make the individual organizations buy and pay for their own cable/satellite service on an "as needed" basis. Then your problem is solved as it would no longer be your problem.
It sounds like you have two vertical markets to look at for publishing:
ACM - Association for Computing Machinery, is the major computer science organization, http://www.acm.org/ They would be interested in the algorithm and its impact
Both of these organizations publish several different journals and you'd need to submit to the right one. You'll want to email or telephone someone on the inside to get a better idea of where your topic might fit, usually an editor, or the like. Keep in mind it would actually be two different papers as one would focus on the computer science aspects of what you did and the other would be more geoscience focused on the utility of the algorithm within the field, etc.
I've taught computational fluid dynamics and molecular dynamics workshops to university faculty members and can say this: You need to setup the examples for them to play with BEFORE class. There's really no such thing as an easy to use CFD or MD package, especially when looking at what it takes to setup initial conditions. I would strongly recommend that you do a good deal of the leg work, especially for participants that do not have the mathematical background or a background in fluid dynamics, period. It will only help you in the end.
This link will take you to lists of free and free-to-academics CFD codes, but the free ones are really, really bare bones in a lot of cases when it comes to UI. I would not turn high school students loose on these codes without pre-determined examples.
Do you think newspapers pay for the right to list MLB scores?
I know they did. They got the scores from either UPI or the AP. Those services are not free, for anyone.
As for an individual score or stat, you may be correct about the display of that stat or score by a private individual, but I will have to dig a little deeper in that one. Posting things on the Internet is considered publishing and if like the NFL the MLB or NHL has the same restrictions on accounts and stats then you would be in violation of their copyright. They may not be enforcing that right at this time, but I wonder how long it will take before they start. Again, I am NOT agreeing with the practice. I am simply stating that information like that may be copyrighted and if you don't do your homework before you publish that information yourself you may be putting yourself in a very actionable position.
You clearly don't know how this actually works. You can't just go straight down to earth, you have to aim quite precisely to make sure that you don't completely burn up.
Ok, given present technology-which is 40 years evolved from when we went to the Moon the first time-it is quite possible to design an automated (or remote control) vehicle to return "packages" from the moon to the Earth safely and securely. If, and when, we reach the point of doing colonization and mining of the Moon there will be significantly better technology and safeguards for transporting materials back to Earth. Let's also not forget that items could easily be "parked" in high-Earth orbit and retrieved, or otherwise processed from more permanent space stations in orbit around the Earth. Oh, and you don't think there will be supply missions and/or factories on the Moon to "assemble, test, power, and use" what is needed to return materials to Earth?
I do understand your pessimism given the current state of NASA and the world's space technology programs, but to dismiss the idea as unfeasible due to current limitations is just lunacy. The Earth was flat until about the 16th century. The sound barrier could not be broken until the 1940s/50s. So, you're entitled to your opinion, but we *WILL* colonize and mine the Moon. Not only is it manifest destiny, but it will be necessary to support our existence as a species. The Earth has a limited amount of resources and space, and human population continues to grow at an alarming rate. Who knows what innovation or complete economic change will come to give us the ability (or necessity) to colonize and mine the Moon, Mars, asteroid belt, Titan, etc. If we are to survive as a species, we must go out there. Poo-poo the idea all you want. It will happen. It must happen. But, there will always be the nay sayers, and more power to them. They will be dead and gone once it does happen.
And you over simplified for the sake of your argument.
It is not universally accepted that sports scores are the property of the sport any more than I can charge people for looking at a tree that grows on my front lawn. Or charge them for taking pictures of that tree and selling those pictures. Google makes money by providing a map that shows my address. Do they owe me something or do they need my permission to do so?
A tree growing naturally, viewable from a public thoroughfare is not the same thing as a baseball score from a game played on a private field where patrons have to pay money to view the game, press have to pay licensing fees to cover the game and report the scores, etc. Do some homework on that front and you'll find out that people are paying for the rights to post the scores and stats to Major League Baseball games. Sorry, that analogy doesn't hold water, except to help illustrate why Apple yanked the application.
I can learn the score of today's baseball game without having anything to do with any Major League Baseball property. I could have heard them from a friend. I could have heard them on TV, on the radio or seen them on the front page of the newspaper sitting in the paybox on my streetcorner. I could have been at the game myself.
Again, shot holes in your own argument. The newspaper paid for the right to publish those scores with advertising money. You paid money for a ticket to go to the game and not only see the game, the scores and stats, but also gave them the right to use your likeness any way they see fit. Check the ticket and the license terms thereof. You could have heard the score of a game from a friend, but they had to have heard it from a licensed source. Sorry.
So, if I post here on Slashdot that the Chicago Black Hawks are now leading the Philadelphia Flyers in the Stanley Cup series by 2 games to 1, can the NHL come after me? Can they come after Slashdot? How about if I mention that my White Sox beat Tampa Bay 8-5 Sunday night? Can MLB come after me?
I'd have to further research on the MLB rights, but possibly, yes. Is this silly and egregious? Yes, but it is legal and it is how the current intellectual property and legal system works. Sorry again. The issue isn't whether or not it makes logical sense, it's whether or not you can be sued for it. In this particular case, and others like it, the information is licensed. Sure, you can go to the Sports Illustrated or ESPN website and get scores and such, but they paid for the right to do that. It wasn't free for them even if you can see it for free. They are paying for it with ad money. It's just how things work right now. You want to do something about it I suggest you start making an effort to change the laws. Until then, you're pissing in hurricane force winds.
I am also an iPhone OS developer and have had no problem working with Apple and the App Store so I am curious about the fervor surrounding rejections. I have some simple questions to ask you:
1. How much research did you do into the information licensing that may surround the data you were aggregating?
I ask this because I created a drink recipe and general bartending app and I had to do quite a bit of research into what is and is not copyrighted, trademarked, etc. before we began development. I found out through that research that drink names can be copyrighted, but recipes cannot, for instance. As a parallel to your case in the sporting world, the National Football League (NFL), retains the rights to all information, statistics, visual and audio accounts of games, etc. You CANNOT reproduce any American football game, publish stats, etc., etc. without the "express written permission of the NFL". Now, a developer may have a problem with that, and if they created a NFL app for the Apple App Store it would probably be rejected and they might face legal action from the NFL, but that's not Apple's fault. Frankly, that was just well intentioned ignorance on the developer's part for not doing their homework.
2. How many applications have you self published?
Again, I ask this because there are TONS of legal issues that surround publishing applications, especially those that aggregate the work of others or otherwise rely on a pre-existing event, creative work, etc. I don't deny that your application was a "good idea", but it wasn't well thought out from a legal perspective and it eventually caught up to you. I have personally rejected app ideas from my developers and business partners specifically because they were based on someone else's idea in another arena. I rejected a "Wrap It Up" app because I was worried that Dave Chappelle's people would come after us and sue us for ripping off his idea. There have been a few others along those lines, where the idea sounded good in a vacuum, but would potentially create legal issues in the real world and get us sued. Don't want that.
I will admit, that there have been some odd rejections in the App Store from time-to-time, but a majority of the cases I've seen are clearly violations of Apple's SDK Agreement, or are targets for copyright or trademark infringement. I think your ire in this case would be better directed at the IPL, but if it's anything like the NFL... good luck with that! This certainly wasn't a case where Apple did something wrong. They pulled an application that was clearly violating a legal copyright to information and its distribution. In this crazy intellectual property hoarding world we are currently in you have to do your homework and make an educated decision about what applications may or may not violate someone else's rights.
I see now why people are so angry at the 'murky' nature of the App Store, and I'm starting to agree with them. My Frame was approved by Apple 3 times (once for each version we released), and... now, at version 1.2 they decide it's to be removed? How can a company be prepared to invest into a platform that can change at any time, cutting you off and kicking you out, with no course of action but to whine on some no-name blog[?] There is no alternative platform, despite what others may say about Android, it's immature and their app store(s) are a wild west nightmare. It really is Apple's way or the highway....
1. If your only software development is a single iPhone OS app, you need to diversify
2. If you want to make money quickly on the App Store, write a game not a util app. Actually, follow #1 above and write both!
3. Really? You're pissed because some knuckle head at Apple made a mistake approving versions 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2? It's not like you were on version 3.0 of the app, you were on version 1.2. Again, if this was your only app and your only source of income you were not going to be developing for iPhone OS for very long, anyway.
All of us doing development work for the iPhone OS have to deal with the "murky" parts of the SDK Agreement, but to run headlong into the murkiness and then get pissed when something you had to know was on shaky ground vis-a-vis the Agreement anyway (had you read and understood it) gets panned is a bit disingenuous at best. Hell, I had an app idea die right in my hands because the apps can't send SMS/MMS messages. Just not possible for obvious and rational security reasons, but still ended up being a loss for me. Oh well, next app! The market is huge, there are plenty of openings still in other verticals, write more apps.
Ummm, yeah. Plenty of computers in the early 1980's with 115K baud RS-232 serial ports. The port speed wasn't the problem. The problem was finding devices that weren't ridiculously expensive that ALSO operated at that speed. Now, I haven't played with any 8250s, but I did have an IBM 5150 (Yes, the 4.7 MHz, dual 5 1/4" floppy, PC) that I frequently used a null modem cable with at speeds in excess of 56K baud in 1983-1984. If I still had one or two of the damn things, and they worked, I could probably validate that statement.
Hell, even at 1/10th the 115K speed it would still copy everything overnight!
Kids, I'll tell you a story about shopping for turntable needles someday when I have time.
Been there. Done that. Bottom line: You get what you pay for in the analog world, and in a number of cases in the digital world, as well.
And sorry, but what does that have to do with the state of available devices with line-in (-6 dB) jacks? That was the OP's original complaint. My assertion was that there are a plethora of devices from the inexpensive to the expensive with line-in jacks, and that there is certainly no need to keep (and bemoan) an ancient system for such utility.
Are we trying to 'normalize' humans to a threshold of experience?
There are some poor word choices in that question.
First of all, 'normalize' is not the objective. The human eye has taken many thousands of millennia to reach the current state of evolution. The human eye has developed over time to see a spectrum of frequencies of radiation that enable us to distinguish poisonous food from edible food, to know when someone's pulse rate is elevated, and a lot more useful observations that help to keep us alive. To 'correct' a genetic defect in a highly evolved sensory organ is not normalization.
Second, what 'threshold' are we talking about? The most relevant definition of threshold is, 'the magnitude or intensity that must be exceeded for a certain reaction, phenomenon, result, or condition to occur or be manifested'. So, what magnitude or intensity is at work that would need to be exceeded to experience color vision, other than the frequency of light that is *not* being perceived by the aforementioned defective sensory organ?
Don't get me wrong. I don't think the philosophical and ethical questions of restoring the evolved function to the sensory organs of an organism should be ignored. I think the question as stated is poorly conceived and is rendered invalid by the practical concerns of human survival, even in the modern societal context. There are some clear disadvantages that color blind humans have to overcome in order to function within nature AND society, even today. To me, it would seem that the person who asked the quoted question above is wrestling with the thought of "playing God", and thereby altering the path of evolution, but I don't think that's a rational argument in this case. Evolution has determined the 'normal' condition, not society. If the affected human chooses to restore the naturally evolved functionality of their defective organs, where is the moral or ethical dilemma, and/or where's the sin?
Please. http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Transit.html On order, will review and repost. But, please. There are plenty of USB and FireWire (IEEE1394) devices that have -6 dB line in jacks; from 1/8" stereo to multi-input XLR, 24-bit/96kHz no less!
Oh, and what's the deal with the "slow" serial port excuse? The serial port should be able to do at least 56K (if not 115K if RS-232). If the drive is full (10 MB), at 115kbps the job would take little more than an hour! Waaa!
The hard drive in that ancient behemoth is most likely a MFM device. I don't think you're going to find anything "cheap" to read the data off that thing and onto some modern storage media. Other than sending it to a data recovery lab, I would have to agree with the bulk of the posts here: USE THE SERIAL PORT! Those are probably your only two options for a device that old with data that is irreplaceable and of an historic nature.
Slashdot Mirror
How many times do we have to flog this secure password animal? We (as IT professional) know what strong and weak passwords are, if you're even a competent IT administrator. They need to be non-literal or non-dictionary words or phrases that contain things other than alpha characters. We know that if the scheme/method for generating these passwords is too complex then people are forced to write them down, which negates the usefulness of using a password at all.
As for best practices, it's really a subjective thing as we've seen through countless "studies", but there are some hard and fast "rules" (outlined above) that we know work. The trick is in how we apply those rules. In my experience, as an IT administrator for more than 15 years, using "leeted" phrases seems to work the best. I ask folks to use something like a line from their favorite song, or passage from a book, or catch phrase, etc. i.e., $0Y0uTh1nkY0uC4nD4nc3 = So You Think You Can Dance. This way the only thing to learn is mapping what characters to numbers or specials. Everything else is simple English (for us English speakers, no offense to others). Generating very secure, lengthy passwords then becomes easy, and easy to remember. I use several (seemingly ridiculously) long passwords like that regularly and have no problem meeting any password length or character requirement.
Ok, they got the well capped, FINALLY! I guess that's one thing less to worry about, but there's still the clean up and the decades (if not centuries) of ecological and economical recovery. But, of course, the media will now pack up and move on to the next sensational story and the mess will be forgotten in two weeks, until they come back around a year later to do a follow up story. If they ever do...
Some more info with location here-ish: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/campaigns/oceans/pollution/trash-vortex/
I keep seeing articles on this thing, and that it's in the Pacific somewhere, but does anyone know the lat and long of where this thing is?
This article is by the same dumbass that wrote the Juno article that was posted here yesterday! Can we put a moratorium on links to this a-hole's column until he learns to convert metric and Imperial units correctly, at the very least?!?! I would give his articles a grain of salt on being accurate in any sense!
Oh yeah, try this...
weighs about 200 kilograms (500 pounds) ... and 18 kilograms (40 pounds) in mass.
So does the vault weigh 40 or 500 lbs?
I hope the article is correct and it's just the summary or we're gonna have a problem getting Juno where it needs to go!
Possibly. But, the university may also replace the laptop for all the BS the student is going through just to avoid the publicity nightmare.
Again, I've seen this tactic work, repeatedly, at the university I have worked at for the last 15 years. But, what do I know, right?
I will guarantee option three above will work quickly and effectively if the /. post wasn't enough. There's nothing a university hates more than negative press. I learned years ago, that if a government or private agency is NOT dong their job, make sure everyone knows and things change mighty quick!
Screw NetApp and their overpriced, underfeatured, patented crap. Really. I mean that.
I totally and completely agree with that summary of NetApp
With that out of the way, how does NetApp have any authority to enforce a license/patent on a piece of software they did not invent, nor hold the licensing for? ZFS was created by Sun and released under the CDDL. I am confused as to where NetApp fits into this equation other than being a troll of something that isn't even theirs to begin to troll with. I will do some digging online, but this is just effed up.
I fear the solution may be above your pay grade. You have a franchise agreement with Comcast. You need to have your municipal legal department review that agreement and see if Comcast is in violation of that agreement by switching to exclusively digital signaling. You need to have high level persons in the municipality negotiate with Comcast to either get a new franchise agreement or to get compensation via free digital tuner boxes for your analog monitors. Or, buy all digitally tuned TVs and laugh Comcast off.
I would be shocked if the franchise agreement was not being violated by this move so following up with legal on reviewing the agreement would be step numero uno. I would also make absolutely sure that the powers that you report to are thoroughly informed as to what is going on and what you are facing. Heck, they may say screw it and chuck the whole thing and make the individual organizations buy and pay for their own cable/satellite service on an "as needed" basis. Then your problem is solved as it would no longer be your problem.
[turns to Nigel] Shouldn't we be at 11 by now?
It sounds like you have two vertical markets to look at for publishing:
Both of these organizations publish several different journals and you'd need to submit to the right one. You'll want to email or telephone someone on the inside to get a better idea of where your topic might fit, usually an editor, or the like. Keep in mind it would actually be two different papers as one would focus on the computer science aspects of what you did and the other would be more geoscience focused on the utility of the algorithm within the field, etc.
I've taught computational fluid dynamics and molecular dynamics workshops to university faculty members and can say this: You need to setup the examples for them to play with BEFORE class. There's really no such thing as an easy to use CFD or MD package, especially when looking at what it takes to setup initial conditions. I would strongly recommend that you do a good deal of the leg work, especially for participants that do not have the mathematical background or a background in fluid dynamics, period. It will only help you in the end.
This link will take you to lists of free and free-to-academics CFD codes, but the free ones are really, really bare bones in a lot of cases when it comes to UI. I would not turn high school students loose on these codes without pre-determined examples.
Do you think newspapers pay for the right to list MLB scores?
I know they did. They got the scores from either UPI or the AP. Those services are not free, for anyone.
As for an individual score or stat, you may be correct about the display of that stat or score by a private individual, but I will have to dig a little deeper in that one. Posting things on the Internet is considered publishing and if like the NFL the MLB or NHL has the same restrictions on accounts and stats then you would be in violation of their copyright. They may not be enforcing that right at this time, but I wonder how long it will take before they start. Again, I am NOT agreeing with the practice. I am simply stating that information like that may be copyrighted and if you don't do your homework before you publish that information yourself you may be putting yourself in a very actionable position.
You clearly don't know how this actually works. You can't just go straight down to earth, you have to aim quite precisely to make sure that you don't completely burn up.
Ok, given present technology-which is 40 years evolved from when we went to the Moon the first time-it is quite possible to design an automated (or remote control) vehicle to return "packages" from the moon to the Earth safely and securely. If, and when, we reach the point of doing colonization and mining of the Moon there will be significantly better technology and safeguards for transporting materials back to Earth. Let's also not forget that items could easily be "parked" in high-Earth orbit and retrieved, or otherwise processed from more permanent space stations in orbit around the Earth. Oh, and you don't think there will be supply missions and/or factories on the Moon to "assemble, test, power, and use" what is needed to return materials to Earth?
I do understand your pessimism given the current state of NASA and the world's space technology programs, but to dismiss the idea as unfeasible due to current limitations is just lunacy. The Earth was flat until about the 16th century. The sound barrier could not be broken until the 1940s/50s. So, you're entitled to your opinion, but we *WILL* colonize and mine the Moon. Not only is it manifest destiny, but it will be necessary to support our existence as a species. The Earth has a limited amount of resources and space, and human population continues to grow at an alarming rate. Who knows what innovation or complete economic change will come to give us the ability (or necessity) to colonize and mine the Moon, Mars, asteroid belt, Titan, etc. If we are to survive as a species, we must go out there. Poo-poo the idea all you want. It will happen. It must happen. But, there will always be the nay sayers, and more power to them. They will be dead and gone once it does happen.
And you over simplified for the sake of your argument.
It is not universally accepted that sports scores are the property of the sport any more than I can charge people for looking at a tree that grows on my front lawn. Or charge them for taking pictures of that tree and selling those pictures. Google makes money by providing a map that shows my address. Do they owe me something or do they need my permission to do so?
A tree growing naturally, viewable from a public thoroughfare is not the same thing as a baseball score from a game played on a private field where patrons have to pay money to view the game, press have to pay licensing fees to cover the game and report the scores, etc. Do some homework on that front and you'll find out that people are paying for the rights to post the scores and stats to Major League Baseball games. Sorry, that analogy doesn't hold water, except to help illustrate why Apple yanked the application.
I can learn the score of today's baseball game without having anything to do with any Major League Baseball property. I could have heard them from a friend. I could have heard them on TV, on the radio or seen them on the front page of the newspaper sitting in the paybox on my streetcorner. I could have been at the game myself.
Again, shot holes in your own argument. The newspaper paid for the right to publish those scores with advertising money. You paid money for a ticket to go to the game and not only see the game, the scores and stats, but also gave them the right to use your likeness any way they see fit. Check the ticket and the license terms thereof. You could have heard the score of a game from a friend, but they had to have heard it from a licensed source. Sorry.
So, if I post here on Slashdot that the Chicago Black Hawks are now leading the Philadelphia Flyers in the Stanley Cup series by 2 games to 1, can the NHL come after me? Can they come after Slashdot? How about if I mention that my White Sox beat Tampa Bay 8-5 Sunday night? Can MLB come after me?
I'd have to further research on the MLB rights, but possibly, yes. Is this silly and egregious? Yes, but it is legal and it is how the current intellectual property and legal system works. Sorry again. The issue isn't whether or not it makes logical sense, it's whether or not you can be sued for it. In this particular case, and others like it, the information is licensed. Sure, you can go to the Sports Illustrated or ESPN website and get scores and such, but they paid for the right to do that. It wasn't free for them even if you can see it for free. They are paying for it with ad money. It's just how things work right now. You want to do something about it I suggest you start making an effort to change the laws. Until then, you're pissing in hurricane force winds.
I am also an iPhone OS developer and have had no problem working with Apple and the App Store so I am curious about the fervor surrounding rejections. I have some simple questions to ask you:
1. How much research did you do into the information licensing that may surround the data you were aggregating?
I ask this because I created a drink recipe and general bartending app and I had to do quite a bit of research into what is and is not copyrighted, trademarked, etc. before we began development. I found out through that research that drink names can be copyrighted, but recipes cannot, for instance. As a parallel to your case in the sporting world, the National Football League (NFL), retains the rights to all information, statistics, visual and audio accounts of games, etc. You CANNOT reproduce any American football game, publish stats, etc., etc. without the "express written permission of the NFL". Now, a developer may have a problem with that, and if they created a NFL app for the Apple App Store it would probably be rejected and they might face legal action from the NFL, but that's not Apple's fault. Frankly, that was just well intentioned ignorance on the developer's part for not doing their homework.
2. How many applications have you self published?
Again, I ask this because there are TONS of legal issues that surround publishing applications, especially those that aggregate the work of others or otherwise rely on a pre-existing event, creative work, etc. I don't deny that your application was a "good idea", but it wasn't well thought out from a legal perspective and it eventually caught up to you. I have personally rejected app ideas from my developers and business partners specifically because they were based on someone else's idea in another arena. I rejected a "Wrap It Up" app because I was worried that Dave Chappelle's people would come after us and sue us for ripping off his idea. There have been a few others along those lines, where the idea sounded good in a vacuum, but would potentially create legal issues in the real world and get us sued. Don't want that.
I will admit, that there have been some odd rejections in the App Store from time-to-time, but a majority of the cases I've seen are clearly violations of Apple's SDK Agreement, or are targets for copyright or trademark infringement. I think your ire in this case would be better directed at the IPL, but if it's anything like the NFL ... good luck with that! This certainly wasn't a case where Apple did something wrong. They pulled an application that was clearly violating a legal copyright to information and its distribution. In this crazy intellectual property hoarding world we are currently in you have to do your homework and make an educated decision about what applications may or may not violate someone else's rights.
I see now why people are so angry at the 'murky' nature of the App Store, and I'm starting to agree with them. My Frame was approved by Apple 3 times (once for each version we released), and ... now, at version 1.2 they decide it's to be removed? How can a company be prepared to invest into a platform that can change at any time, cutting you off and kicking you out, with no course of action but to whine on some no-name blog[?] There is no alternative platform, despite what others may say about Android, it's immature and their app store(s) are a wild west nightmare. It really is Apple's way or the highway....
1. If your only software development is a single iPhone OS app, you need to diversify
2. If you want to make money quickly on the App Store, write a game not a util app. Actually, follow #1 above and write both!
3. Really? You're pissed because some knuckle head at Apple made a mistake approving versions 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2? It's not like you were on version 3.0 of the app, you were on version 1.2. Again, if this was your only app and your only source of income you were not going to be developing for iPhone OS for very long, anyway.
All of us doing development work for the iPhone OS have to deal with the "murky" parts of the SDK Agreement, but to run headlong into the murkiness and then get pissed when something you had to know was on shaky ground vis-a-vis the Agreement anyway (had you read and understood it) gets panned is a bit disingenuous at best. Hell, I had an app idea die right in my hands because the apps can't send SMS/MMS messages. Just not possible for obvious and rational security reasons, but still ended up being a loss for me. Oh well, next app! The market is huge, there are plenty of openings still in other verticals, write more apps.
Ummm, yeah. Plenty of computers in the early 1980's with 115K baud RS-232 serial ports. The port speed wasn't the problem. The problem was finding devices that weren't ridiculously expensive that ALSO operated at that speed. Now, I haven't played with any 8250s, but I did have an IBM 5150 (Yes, the 4.7 MHz, dual 5 1/4" floppy, PC) that I frequently used a null modem cable with at speeds in excess of 56K baud in 1983-1984. If I still had one or two of the damn things, and they worked, I could probably validate that statement.
Hell, even at 1/10th the 115K speed it would still copy everything overnight!
Kids, I'll tell you a story about shopping for turntable needles someday when I have time.
Been there. Done that. Bottom line: You get what you pay for in the analog world, and in a number of cases in the digital world, as well.
And sorry, but what does that have to do with the state of available devices with line-in (-6 dB) jacks? That was the OP's original complaint. My assertion was that there are a plethora of devices from the inexpensive to the expensive with line-in jacks, and that there is certainly no need to keep (and bemoan) an ancient system for such utility.
Are we trying to 'normalize' humans to a threshold of experience?
There are some poor word choices in that question.
First of all, 'normalize' is not the objective. The human eye has taken many thousands of millennia to reach the current state of evolution. The human eye has developed over time to see a spectrum of frequencies of radiation that enable us to distinguish poisonous food from edible food, to know when someone's pulse rate is elevated, and a lot more useful observations that help to keep us alive. To 'correct' a genetic defect in a highly evolved sensory organ is not normalization.
Second, what 'threshold' are we talking about? The most relevant definition of threshold is, 'the magnitude or intensity that must be exceeded for a certain reaction, phenomenon, result, or condition to occur or be manifested'. So, what magnitude or intensity is at work that would need to be exceeded to experience color vision, other than the frequency of light that is *not* being perceived by the aforementioned defective sensory organ?
Don't get me wrong. I don't think the philosophical and ethical questions of restoring the evolved function to the sensory organs of an organism should be ignored. I think the question as stated is poorly conceived and is rendered invalid by the practical concerns of human survival, even in the modern societal context. There are some clear disadvantages that color blind humans have to overcome in order to function within nature AND society, even today. To me, it would seem that the person who asked the quoted question above is wrestling with the thought of "playing God", and thereby altering the path of evolution, but I don't think that's a rational argument in this case. Evolution has determined the 'normal' condition, not society. If the affected human chooses to restore the naturally evolved functionality of their defective organs, where is the moral or ethical dilemma, and/or where's the sin?
People put more damaging info on their Facebook pages than can be found in Census info...PLEASE! Stop the irrational panic already.
Please. http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/Transit.html On order, will review and repost. But, please. There are plenty of USB and FireWire (IEEE1394) devices that have -6 dB line in jacks; from 1/8" stereo to multi-input XLR, 24-bit/96kHz no less!
Oh, and what's the deal with the "slow" serial port excuse? The serial port should be able to do at least 56K (if not 115K if RS-232). If the drive is full (10 MB), at 115kbps the job would take little more than an hour! Waaa!
The hard drive in that ancient behemoth is most likely a MFM device. I don't think you're going to find anything "cheap" to read the data off that thing and onto some modern storage media. Other than sending it to a data recovery lab, I would have to agree with the bulk of the posts here: USE THE SERIAL PORT! Those are probably your only two options for a device that old with data that is irreplaceable and of an historic nature.
'Nuf said.