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Comment Or another way to look at it. (Score 1) 357

It could be that the hardware isn't worse for androids, its that it is more difficult to replace or file a claim with Apple then it is with android phones.

I had a blackberry for several years and have had an android phone for 2 and have never had any problem.

I do on the other hand know several people who have had several iphones die and were un-replaceable because of whatever excuse Apple could come up with.

That and people are far more likely to "upgrade" their iphones the moment a new version comes out instead of using their existing phone until it stops functioning.

Comment Am I wrong? (Score 1, Informative) 538

"Its syntax is very forgiving, and there are lots of ways to do most things"

Am I the only person who sees this as one of the biggest problems with PERL? Don't get me wrong, I love choice and having options. But when you're learning a language you do not want 10 different styles of writing a function, statement, loop, whatever. Because when you are working with 10+ people you now have 1 language, 10 different ways to write in (and now 10 different ways you need to read).

When I first started learning PERL and reading books, websites and downloading examples all the different styles of writing in PERL was the biggest problem. You can't just simply learn how to do an IF statement, you have to learn the 20+ different ways you COULD write an IF statement, since every example you will find online will be totally different.

Comment This guy knows what he is talking about. (Score 1) 354

This guy is spot on with pretty much everything he discussed. I have never understood why Google does the things it does. They create some fantastic products, but they their products never overlap; meaning you do not get access to many other applications within other applications.

Look at reCaptcha. Quite easily one of the best, if not the best captcha system around. Google bought it like 2 years ago; and yet they do not use it within any of their sites. They use their horrible, out-dated and unreadable captcha system.

Also look at dodgeball. It was a fantastic service that google killed off like 3 years ago. And now facebook has this exact feature that is insanely popular.

Their user account system is just awful too. Yes at least you can link your webmaster, analyst, gmail, home page, etc together, but its just done so poorly that this is very little reason to have 1 single account. Its about as continent as having several accounts.

Google was onto something with gears and with gadgets but with gears gone and gadgets basically having zero development done in 5+ years they have pretty much killed off any really cool way to share, use or access cool or useful tools.

Hopefully this changes because I would hate to see facebook continue to get bigger.

Comment And whats a hacker tool? (Score 1) 248

The concept of banning "hacking tools" is just silly. What would these people consider a hacking tool? SSH terminals since they allow people to connect to compromised systems or to connect to machines with "hacker tools"? Or what about IRC servers since many bot networks have used them or offer the ability to let people talk about hacking?

Even some of the biggest "hacker tools" are used for real network and server analysis like winshark and the like.

This is simply the wrong approach to fix a problem. This is in fact the worst way to approach the problem. The real solution is to charge software companies for making insecure software. Don't fine the hackers for finding the exploits, fine the developers for not finding them. The software developers are the ones making money off the software, if they cause people to lose data or have their systems compromised they should be the ones that should be held responsible, not the person who found it.

Instead of trying to remove the ability to make "hacker tools" why not remove the ability or need of these tools by making more secure software. I guess that would be too easy though.

Comment Only 130 million? (Score 2, Insightful) 529

I'm sorry, but are we supposed to be impressed by the 130 million on ENERGY? This is almost 1/10th the cost of a stealth bomber.

Energy is one of our biggest problems in this country and is one of the scariest things we have to look forward to in the future. 130 million will not solve any problems or come up with any new solutions and will barely line the pockets of which ever friends of friends were given government contacts that will receive this money. We need to start coming up with massive amounts of money to not only put into R & D but as basically bribery to the current oil industries (cars/aircrafts) to really pull out heads our of our asses and move on from our current primitive situation.

If our country really wanted to try solving the worlds energy problem we would be spending 130 BILLION. That is a number that will solve problems.

Comment This is not a privacy issue. (Score 3, Interesting) 142

Why are people saying this is a privacy issue? It's not. It uses publicly available information that the person freely posts online for the general public to read. Its like saying articles posted in the New York Times is private information of the authors who write for it. This program dosen't even do anything cool like make HTTP requests from state / city govermently run publicly available data.

There are all ready existing applications out there that have all the features this software has and much much more.

Comment No room for open source in the "app store" model. (Score 1) 251

Really have people in the open source community not realized this yet? App stores like Apple are not setup to distribute software or sharing code or ideas. it's about making money. Period! If apple has to choose between a sub par app that will sell for $5.00 over a similar app that is open source and free they will accept the lesser product because they can make money. It has happened in the past so don't expect it to change.

Besides with these apps stores are a dead end for open source products. People can download and use the product and it ends there. They can't download the source, make changes, distribute, etc. So these stores really limit open source software since the changes of people getting involved with them is almost non existent.

Comment This shouldn't have failed (Score 1) 366

Everything about this phone was great, and it shouldn't have died in the tree like it did. I was really excited to get one and even had a "free upgrade" through tmobile.

The reason it died is not because people didn't want to buy it online. Did you see how they were selling it online? It was just too damn confusing and this is coming from someone who has been developing confusing sites for 13 years. I couldn't understand if I was going to be buying the phone or signing up for new service. I couldn't tell exactly how much I was going to spend. I also couldn't tell if I would keep my old service. Finally after a few days I spoke with Tmobile, and it was going to cost me roughly $400 with my "free upgrade" plus my monthly bill would increase over $40.00 a month because of th service you had to get.

So no it wasn't any of their silly excuees as to why it didn't sell. Bad and confusing site design, price and forced "upgrades" were the reason. This and the fact that there were several other phones almost as good that were free (no upgrade, no out of pocket) compared to spending over 1200 freaking dollars over a 2 year period extra just to have a new fancy phone.

Comment Allow bids from open source supporters/companies (Score 1) 332

From what I know from firends who have worked with state/federal agencies most work done out of the agency requires them to accept bids for work. Meaning a number of companies or people bid on the projects to get this work. Its done this way so there can (nor should there be) any endorcement.

When projects come up conact known open source groups, companies etc that there are bids for the available work. Yes you wont be contributing directly to the projects, but you could get the developers making cash with allows them to offer more to the projects they are working on.

Comment Re:One problem killing the iPhone... (Score 3, Interesting) 347

"Apple keeps those measures of control because they help to protect their platform's image from incompetent or unscrupulous coders, and their negative impact on most users is relatively minor. If that balance ever shifts, either due to more competent coders (supposedly Flash 10.1 is heavily optimized) or more demanding users (with friends whose phones do some or all of the above), the rules can change in an instant"

Ok thats a downirght B.S. excuese right there. The majority of the flash files people would be going after/ watching/using would be from youtube.com or google.com or myspace.com for video which last time I checked had some of the top people in the world dealing with compression, codexes and flash players in the world. Saying Apple is trying to keep bad ugly un-useful flash apps from their users is like saying Apple isn't trying to not lose money from forcing people to only buy videos from their itunes store.

It has nothing to do with scary bad coders, it has everything to do with them keeping people from getting videos outside of what they control (itunes).

Comment Re:Horrible Article (Score 1) 347

Or offer your software to every other company that makes phones on every carrier other then and including AT&T.

Offer an open platform for development (free open source development that is not restricted to a MAC, pripriority lagnuage that costs money to develop in, and THEN have apple say its ok to sell your software if they WANT you to be able to).

Create software that dosen't limit you and force you to upgrade to a new phone

Buy a phone that lets you buy and replace your battery (Really? You can't replace the battery in your PHONE?)

And much much more. From what I have seen from Android alone I see promise. Iphone killer? No not at all. Does this phone have the ability to take away interest from the Iphone from the general non fanboy public? Yes very much so. Better phones, more phone features, faster hardware, better software thats more open and free which means more software available. Yeah I can see public interst shifting.

Iphone killer? No not at all. Why kill something when it will die off on its own.

Comment Simple Iphone Killer (Score 1) 347

Its very simple to come up with a Iphone killer.

Open developemet platform that costs nothing to develope in (IE dosen't require a Apple computer or money to get development liceneses) and a open application store that is available across carriers and phones.

Both of thse are available through the Android and will kill off the Iphone. Not this year, or next year but as the platform for the OS and development takes off the Iphones controled app store that is only available on the Iphone will get killed off, and the Android will take over in popularity. Apple had their chance and they dropped the ball, and Google wont make the same mistakes.

Comment A better study would be (Score 1) 590

How many games are created outside of the base gamer market stactics that succeed. I'm gussing very few. This isn't a racial issue or hardely even something that sould use any type of social science since its all based on what market will make the most money. Young white males are the largest group that buy games in the US. If you made games that had an ugly and smart woman with half naked guys everywhere trying to solve quests the game would fail. But if you change the character into a monkey boom! No racial/social/cultural comparisioin. Same goes for a game made in Japan. If a game was released in Japan where the main character was Latino or Native American doing something relating to their culture it would most likely in every case fail.

If you are a game company and can make a game for 10 million white kids or 1 million black kids which one do you think is going to be made? Its not social/racial/culteral/etc its about money.

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