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Comment Re:Unfortunately (Score 1) 702

The fragmentation issue is that there might be two phones and App #1 will run on the Red Phone but not the Blue Phone, and App #2 will run on the Blue Phone but not the Red Phone.

Apple doesn't have that problem, because everything will run on the newest model of the phone. As soon as they break that trend, they're fragmented, yes.

Comment Re:Good on him (Score 1) 632

If it's really about protecting the citizens of other countries from their evil regimes, why is the U.S. military is involved in Iraq and Afghanistan and not Saudi Arabia, the UAE, or Iran, let alone Rwanda, Libya, Sudan, Burma, Venezuela, or North Korea?

I reject the notion that you can end tyranny by killing people and blowing up things until it goes away.

Comment Re:Unfortunately (Score 1) 702

You clearly don't understand what fragmentation is.

Fragmentation isn't one device superseding another in capabilities, or rendering the first one obsolete. Those are all normal parts of evolving technology. No one expects a Pentium II to be able to run Crysis. It's simply beyond the capabilities of the older hardware.

No, fragmentation is when you have two devices of the same generation that support a different set of features. For example, the Red model might support features A and B, and the Blue model might contain features B and C. Want to make an app that requires features A and C? Tough luck!

You can call a "feature" hardware buttons, software support, or even whether a particular carrier has locked out a certain capability or not - but either way, this is a real problem that Android has that iPhone doesn't. Is Android better or worse than iOS? Debatable. But iOS isn't fragmented, and that's a point in its column.

Comment Re:The rollback of the Bush era infringements (Score 1) 359

In the absence of some outside restraining force, how do you avoid the inevitable natural concentration of power when everything is left to its own forces?

  1. Checks and balances. The federal government was designed to be an organization at odds with itself: the executive could do nothing not approved by the legislature, the legislature could do nothing not permitted by the Constitution, and the Constitution couldn't be modified without the consent of the states. Sadly, this has all but fallen by the wayside, with recent presidents using the executive order as a means of creating law, and Congress ignoring the Constitution.
  2. Citizen awareness. You need a populace with a strong education in civics and citizenship, a respect for process, and an understanding why subverting the Constitution is a Very Very Bad Thing, even if it's being subverted in the name of something you support, because one day it might be subverted for something you hate. Citizens need to understand that people who ignore the Constitution are a threat to liberty and need to be voted out of office, without exception.
  3. Strong local governments. Don't like the laws in your town? Move to the town 5 miles down the road. Don't like the laws in your country? Tough luck, you're screwed, unless you really want to leave all your friends and family behind, or go into national politics and try (probably unsuccessfully) to fix things yourself. This is precisely why the majority of lawmaking should be done at the local level.

Comment Re:1st step in something useful for deep explorati (Score 1) 284

Debris isn't really something that the engineers need to worry about. Space is very, very empty - I read something once about how if you took all the matter in the known universe and evenly distributed it throughout the volume of the known universe, it'd work out to something like one hydrogen atom per cubic kilometer. If you launch something out of orbit, the odds of it striking another object in your lifetime are virtually nil, even objects of microscopic size.

Iphone

Apple Blindsides More AppStore Developers 716

For a while now Apple has said it doesn't want "widget-like" apps in the store; but where is the boundary of that fuzzy statement? The developers of My Frame, of which three versions had already been approved for the iPhone/iPad, found out that they had already crossed it when Apple informed them their app would be pulled. My Frame had options to overlay data on whatever photo was displaying: a Twitter stream, weather, etc. When one of the developers wrote to Steve Jobs on a whim to ask what unwritten rule their app had violated, Jobs wrote back: "We are not allowing apps that create their own desktops. Sorry." "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...." A few blogs have picked up the story.

Comment Re:Ignorance, not indifference. (Score 1) 220

Sadly, I don't know if 50% of voters (at least in the US) can name Candidate A and Candidate B, much less something they disagree on.

There was some poll done a couple years ago in the US that showed that more people can name all of the Seven Dwarfs than can name two of the nine Supreme Court justices.

Comment Re:What about today's mistakes? (Score 1) 369

I've been a lifelong Catholic, been going to church every week for decades, and not once have I heard a homily threatening hell for anyone who disobeys the religion. In addition, Catholics hold philosophies such as "baptism of the heart" and "baptism of desire" which state that, in essence, good people get to heaven even if they're not Christians.

Might I suggest you read up on Catholic teaching before condemning it.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia Is Not Amused By Entry For xkcd-Coined Word 553

ObsessiveMathsFreak writes "Today's xkcd comic introduced an unusual word — malamanteau — by giving its supposed definition on Wikipedia. The only trouble is that the word (as well as its supposed wiki page) did not in fact exist. Naturally, much ado ensued at the supposed wiki page, which was swiftly created in response to the comic. This article has more on how the comic and the confusion it caused have put the Net in a tizzy. It turns out that a malamanteau is a portmanteau of portmanteau and malapropism, but also a malapropism of portmanteau. All this puts Wikipedia in the confusing position of not allowing a page for an undefined word whose meaning is defined via the Wikipedia page for that word — and now I have to lie down for a moment."

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